Dark Days Under a Black Sun

GREENVILLE

Amid the industrial grinding, blurting, spasming–where there might have been horns–Sam could hear method; each emission was in its own time, but they met every few seconds on the beat of a plastic drum machine. And then a beeping sound, like a truck backing up, out of place, just another gear for no reason. Finally, a horn blast, an actual horn, or a sample of an actual horn, signaling, drawing the whole mess together for another round. And again. Marvin looked over at Sam and shouted, “Right?”

“Yeah!”

“You’ll hear it, just wait for it.” Marvin’s eyes were wide as he beat his chest in time with an open hand. “Okay!” he said. “It’s…yeah, here it is!”

And there it was: Pachelbel’s Canon, right out of a box, laid over the top of the mayhem like cellophane.

“Right?”

“Yeah!”

It went on for longer than Sam would have expected and moved directly into the next track, even faster, featuring the unmistakable sound of an air wrench and a pounding beat that made every surface of the car tremble, the blurred dashboard shimmering in the last of the sunlight. When it finally ended, Marvin turned off the stereo. Reaching across to the passenger side with one hand–“Excuse me.”–he opened the glove box and removed an Altoids tin.

“Okay if I smoke? I was going to roll a joint.”

“Oh, of course. Thanks for asking.”

With one hand, Marvin opened the hinged lid, displaying the shallow container’s contents: rolling papers, a small Ziploc bag of marijuana, and a lighter. Never taking his eyes off the road, he placed the tin on the flat surface in front of the gear shift, removed a double-wide sheet, and flattened it gently on his right thigh. Taking a copious pinch from the Ziploc, he gently gathered the finely crushed buds the length of the paper–only once glancing down to approve the distribution–picked it up, and started rolling. It was remarkable, with just three fingers, each the length of Sam’s whole hand, he swiftly formed a perfect cylinder. Twisting one end closed, Marvin had produced a stout, firm joint. He licked it, sealed it, and held it out for Sam.

“Oh, no thank you. Gotta say though, that was amazing.”

Marvin lit the joint and took a long drag. “This? A lot of long drives, I suppose.”

“No, really, I think that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

Marvin laughed. “Yeah, I got pretty good at it. But I can’t roll for shit when the music is on. I get into it, you know?”

“Definitely,” said Sam. “So are you from Seattle?”

“Nah, just where I’m stationed at the moment. I’m from Kansas mostly, but Spokane for a few years now, whenever I’m back in the States.”

“Spokane, nice place?”

“Some people like it. My kids live there, and my ex-wife. She’s from there. It’s okay, but it’s not really for me.” He took another pull and nodded as he exhaled. “That’s a conversation we’ll have as a family. Soon.”

“How many kids?”

“Two, a boy and a girl.”

“Oh, wonderful. How old are they?”

“You ever been in the Army?”

“Sorry? Oh, no. No, I thought about it once, but no.”

“I can tell. No offense doesn’t mean anything, just I can always tell.”

“No, of course, none taken.”

“I only mean, you’re not a kid. You’re younger than me, but you’re a full man. But if you just graduated from college a few years ago…”

“Yeah, it took some time to finish school. I was working.”

Marvin nodded. “A working man, I respect that. So why Seattle now?”

“Well, I’ve been hiking backcountry for a while and just felt like it was time for a city again. And a girl I met in Clemson said I had to go to Seattle to see the clouds.”

“The clouds?”

“Yeah, she said they were like Tiepolo clouds.”

“Tiepolo, that’s a type of cloud?”

“Nah, a painter. He painted the sky a lot. I was going to go somewhere, so why not Seattle?”

“Just, why not?”

“Yeah.”

“It sounds great. It sounds like a great life.”

“Yeah, it’s fun. Even when I have to stop for a few weeks and paralegal, it’s okay because I know I’m leaving soon. But I don’t know, sometimes I feel like it was a life at some point, and now it’s what I’m doing instead of a life.”

Marvin nodded. “Introspection. I respect that. Shit, being around lawyers all day without going crazy? I respect that, too. That’s what the Army is now: lawyers. Lawyers and lawyers. Fucking lawyers. You can’t do shit unless an Army lawyer says you can. Stepped right into the chain of command, straight to the top. You know there are more lawyers in the US military than there are in the rest of the country?”

“Huh, that so?”

Marvin chuckled. “Nah, not really. I mean, I don’t know, but sounds impossible, doesn’t it? But sure seemed that way in Iraq.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

It didn’t. It was just something to say. “Oh, I don’t know, just—”

“Nothing makes sense over there. They’re animals. Just look what happened when we left.”

“Huh,” Sam said. Long ago he had mastered the sounds of neutrality: “huh,” “uh,” and “mmmm,” among others.

“There are good people over there too,” Marvin said. “But mostly animals.”

“Mmmm.”

“What kind of birds are they, on your arms?”

“My arms? Oh, I don’t know. I just thought of them as blackbirds.”

“I was thinking doves, but you know, that’s kind of corny, right? You’re not a corny guy. They don’t look like grackles. Tails aren’t long enough to be magpies. I think larks. What do you think?”

“I never thought of it.”

“Thing is, I can’t picture larks in my head. I don’t know what they look like exactly, but did you know the plural for larks is exaltation?”

“Exaltation?”

“Yeah. An exaltation of larks. Isn’t that beautiful? My son learned that in social studies.”

“Yeah, it is. I’ve never heard that.”

“Hundreds of years ago a poet just decided that’s how it was and it stuck. It makes them different from other birds, I think. What do you think? You think they could be larks?”

“I’ve never thought of it, but yeah, an exaltation on my arms—”

“An exaltation of larks.”

“An exaltation of larks on my arms. I like that. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Marvin said. “Just keep those fuckers jacked up. A lot of saggy-ass tattoos dragging around this country.”

“No doubt.”

As dusk receded, and with the moon tucked behind a thicket of clouds, the features of the landscape were reduced to their essential forms: a black line off the side of the highway, ahead—a small paved road, or gravel or dirt, curling, sloping down into the foreshortening darkness, toward or passed a huddle of small structures: a barn and sheds, or perhaps a church and adjacent residence, or a post office and storefronts. Sam had seen a sign a ways back, Green—something. Greensburg, Greensboro, Greenwood, Greenfield, Greenville—so many Greenvilles. The first roadside advertising. Good land here. Good grass. Good rainfall. Plant a crop, why don’t you. Settle down. Start a family. They might have been anywhere in America—and at any time. Without vehicles abutting or lit windows, only the utility poles, stringing electricity across the cooling plains, distinguished the cluster of buildings from ruins. And then they were gone, far behind, and all Sam could see was the broken white line running before them in the gleam of the old coupe’s headlights.