All the Colors of the Dark

He could’ve told her he didn’t ever start it. “No more trouble.”

“You walking in with Saint?”

He nodded.

Ivy would go through this with the first responder, and then Chief Nix. She’d tell them she didn’t notice anyone hanging around. Or see a dark van. Or anything much beyond the slow wake of Rosewood Avenue.

And later, when it got worse, she’d wonder how much of her son’s life she had missed.

3

Across the street Mr. Roberts pushed his new Lawn Boy. The Robertses’ house was painted each spring, white clapboard, navy gable. That night in place of Hawaii Five-O the Robertses would sit on their porch and watch the cops crawl over the Macauley house. Mrs. Roberts would pour them a couple of fingers of bourbon to steady the nerves as Mr. Roberts said it was only a matter of time before something bad happened to that kid.

Green grass. Buffed sedans. Flags hung limp and still. Their house was tall and maybe once was grand, but a generation of neglect dragged at its shine. The only rental on the street, Patch tore weeds from the yard, cleared leaves from the gutters, and hammered slates to the roof after each storm like he did not know he was furnishing someone else’s future. He’d whistle as he worked, nodding hello to passing neighbors. Smiling. Always.

The next morning the cops would walk that same road, knocking on doors and asking questions, trying to piece together events that would mar their town for years to come.

News vans would set up outside the small police station and ramp up the pressure on Chief Nix, who would stand before the flashing bulbs and stammer his way through an ill-prepared statement. For that one day, Patch would wrestle Lynette Fromme and her assassination attempt on Gerald Ford from the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

He found a long stick and slashed at the air, then turned it into a gun and fired warning shots at the approaching armada.

“Man the cannon, sea hag,” he said to the Anderson widow as she strolled past. She did not man the cannon.

At the foot of Main Street he looked for Saint, for the blue dungarees torn at each knee, the single braid she wore each day because she claimed it kept the hair from her eyes when she climbed the Morrisons’ apple tree and tossed down the choice picks.

He gave her five minutes then kicked a can along Main Street. He affected his best Curt Gowdy cowboy and commentated, “Patch Macauley, the first one-eyed boy to kick a seventy yarder.”

Outside Lacey’s Diner sat a cherry-red Thunderbird. Chuck Bradley and his older brothers leaned against it.

“Vikings,” Patch whispered beneath his breath. He tried to turn when Chuck noticed him and nudged the other two.

It would take the cops two days to get to Chuck and his brothers, but only a half hour to confirm their alibis.

Patch ducked down the alleyway behind the stores.

He heard footsteps, turned and saw the three, so backed himself into a corner.

“Nowhere to run,” Chuck said. He was tall and older and handsome enough. His brothers, wholesome copies. Chuck dated Misty Meyer, the feted beauty Patch had remained deeply in love with since kindergarten.

They moved a little closer. Patch backed up further until he felt the cool brick against him, and that was when he felt it, digging into his back.

He slipped the dagger from his belt and throttled the grip.

“No way you’re using that,” Chuck said, though Patch heard the doubt in his voice.

Patch stared at the blade as his knees shook. “November 1718, Robert Maynard finally captured the legend, Edward Teach. You’ll know him as Blackbeard.”

Chuck glanced at his brothers. One of them laughed.

“Maynard cut him twenty times with a knife just like this. Then grabbed a handful of his hair and hacked his head clean off.”

“You’re not a pirate. You’re a one-eyed freak.”

“Maynard hung Blackbeard’s head from the bowsprit of his ship to let others know not to mess with him.”

He held the dagger out.

And then he walked toward them, heart pounding as they backed off just enough. A yard past and he ran.

Threats were called.

He did not stop till he made it clear.

4

Pines rose through golds and blue shadow, the light leaves swept aside as he followed trails that skirted the town limits. A long way above he’d see Loess Hills buffeting the Missouri River, the low climb of industrial air over cities and farmland pinned by silver silos.

A Dodge with no fender was sunk in the earth, no wheels, just left for the wild, for kids to bullseye the windshield.

A leaflet caught in the spindles of Eastern redbud. The pinks wrapped a smiling Jimmy Carter, shirtsleeves rolled up like he was close to the kind of people he was calling on to vote for him.

The lake came into view. A faded sign warned of an undercurrent. In the summer, kids jumped from slick rocks the color of emerald. A boy named Colson had gone swimming and never come back, and rumor had it he lived at the bottom, watching the girls’ legs as they kicked, choosing the right moment to reach out and take one.

Patch picked up a flat rock and counted six skims as the water coined toward blades of common reed.

He balanced along the rusted rails of the old Monta Clare railroad, arms out, the steels red and warped.

He watched a scissor-tailed flycatcher dart from its perch.

The scream stopped him.

A hard scream.

Down into a high-sided valley he saw splinters of a navy van, the brush so thick he moved nearer still. Maybe it was a rat rod or a Ford.

He knelt in the dirt as he saw her.

Misty Meyer.

For a moment he figured she was out with a boy and he’d misread it. She was in his math class, his age but passed too easy for older.

Then he saw the back of a man, his hood up despite the heat.

Patch desperately looked around for anyone at all. Anyone who could handle this, who could ease the responsibility, the acute burden of seeing a girl in trouble.

Another scream.

He whispered a curse, reached a hand up and touched the eye patch as his mind ran to Silver-Tongue Martin, and Wild Ned Lowe. The band of fearless.

He moved.

Misty screamed as Patch slid down the bank.

He bent low and wished he had his slingshot as he picked up a rock.

At ten feet away the man heard him and turned.

A balaclava hid all but the dead of his eyes.

Patch held his breath, hurled the rock and dropped low as he took the man down at the knees.

“Run,” Patch yelled.

Misty stood frozen, fear claiming her muscles. Shirt torn, her bag in the dirt. Dazed like she’d been dragged into a nightmare.

The man rolled over him.

“Run,” Patch managed to whisper, his lungs empty. He felt a hand on his throat, and he begged Misty with his eye.

Snap from it.

Finally, she saw him.

She was tall, a track star. Their eyes met, and then she turned and pumped her arms and lit out through the woodland.

The man was up and moving to follow her, but Patch was right up with him.

He pulled the dagger for the second time that morning.

The man grabbed his wrist and twisted.

Sun hit the blade till it met Patch’s stomach.

He fell back to the ground and clutched at the wound and the forest around turned to night but he saw no moon and no stars.

The next day an army of walkers would beat the woodland to find a purple eye patch with a silver star.

Chief Nix would run over every bad man within a hundred miles.

His mother would fall apart entirely.

His best friend Saint would stalk the streets when hope had long since burned, getting herself into another world of trouble.

None would yet know of the evolving tragedy that would be their lives.

5

That same day Saint woke at dawn, crept down the stairs and out onto the rear porch.

Seven streets away Patch watched that same sunrise.

She rubbed her eyes as mist smoked from the grass like fire burned beneath.

Her morning routine, same each day since they arrived.

She was about to head in when she heard it.

Or didn’t.

She crossed the yard, bare feet in the damp, stopping a few feet from the hive.

Saint crouched and peered inside at the stragglers.

She looked around, back at the tall house, the neighbors, the treetops.

Her eyes wide as she tried to make sense of it.

The bees had gone.

Inside she barreled up the old staircase and crashed into her grandmother’s bedroom.

“Someone’s stolen the bees,” she said, breathless.

Norma turned from her spot by the window. “You’re not wearing your glasses. Maybe the bees are there but you can’t—”

Saint ran from the room.

“And brush your teeth,” Norma called.

Up spiraling steps to her bedroom in the attic. She took the round glasses from her nightstand and watched the world come to focus through lenses so thick her eyes magnified as if in perpetual amazement.

She pulled on denim dungarees, both knees newly patched.

Saint cleaned her teeth with paste on her forefinger because she’d used her brush to dust mud from a fossil Patch delivered that later turned out to be dried dog shit.

Outside she found her grandmother standing before the empty hive, squinting toward the sky.

Norma cleared her throat, her silver hair cut short, wiry muscles in her forearms hinting at steel beneath. “But why would they—”

“Could be ants. But I laid the traps,” Saint said, low panic in her voice.

“Can’t be then.”

“Like, if you keep interfering then they go. But I…”

Norma sighed. “You sit out here with them each day, sometimes for hours.”

“They know me by now. It’s been four years.”

“Could be a skunk,” Norma offered.

Saint straightened at that. “A rotten old skunk. I’ll go fetch my slingshot.”

“I read about a keeper over in Wayne County…. He got arrested for stealing hives.”

Saint stopped dead, her small nose turning up into a snarl. “Someone stole my bees?” She paced up and down, oblivious to the burgeoning regret on her grandmother’s face.

“I’ll bet it was Mr. Lewis.” Saint spat the name.

“The old deacon? He’s—”

“He’s a greedy old diabetic—”

“Language,” Norma warned.

“He took three samples last time I laid out my stall. Licking it from his fat old fingers, didn’t even buy a jar neither. I told Patch to limit the tasters. I’ll go there and I’ll—”

“You will not go there.”

“I’ll take it to Chief Nix then. He can cuff the fat old—”

“Enough.”

Saint turned and ran from the side gate.

Norma sighed and shook her head in despair.

6

Saint spent more than an hour tramping woodland that fanned like a seashell around the back of the tall house and toward the Tooms farmland beyond, stopping now and then and hoping to God to hear the low hum of her bees, that they’d simply clustered on a tall elm while her scouts looked for a new home.

By the time she made it to Main Street her braid had pulled a little loose and sweat was beginning to dot her upper lip. In the small police station she was about ready to call for the arrest and swift beheading of Mr. Lewis when she saw Misty Meyer standing before a cop.

Young and scared and breathless.

The skin scraped from her knees.

Saint saw a stack of papers fluttering as the girl fell like she’d been robbed of the bones in her body. The cop caught her and helped her into a chair.

“Take a breath,” he said, kneeling in front of her.

“He’s there,” Misty said, glancing back into the bright of the street, her body shaking as she stared straight through Saint.

Saint noticed the red print on her arm. A hand. A big hand. A slight swelling by her eye, her shirt torn at the neck.

“You’re safe now,” the cop said. “There’s no one out there.”

“You don’t get it,” she said, still breathless. “He saved me.”

“Who saved you?”

Misty took a drink of water, her lips full and pink against hair so light it touched platinum. A halo for a girl who already carried too much that shone.

Saint might have turned, left her bees for another day, but then she heard it, and her blood cooled and her skin pricked, and it was like she knew that things would be different from then on.

“The pirate kid,” Misty said.

Saint moved toward them, instinct guided her. Instinct and that cold kind of dread.

“He hit him. But the guy was so big,” Misty said, tears falling now.

Saint felt her pulse quicken. “Joseph Macauley?”

Both turned and noticed her. Saint stood there tiny, her frames balancing on a small nose with a smattering of freckles. Her collar bones stood proud, her braid thick over one shoulder. She wore a simple gold cross on a thin necklace. Her grandmother had given Patch a matching one.

“Where is he now?” Saint said.

The cop crouched, his muscles tight against a shirt bright and unblemished.

Saint knew about shock, the way it purged rational thought. She’d learned that the day she came home from school and found her grandfather lying in the kitchen as her grandmother pumped his chest, face straight like she was beating a mixture.

“Misty.” Saint tried a smile. Her grandfather had said it was a good smile, the kind that lit January mornings, that recalled spring in the belly of Missouri winter.

“Where did this happen, Misty?” the cop tried.

Misty made no sound as the cop took a jacket and wrapped her in it to stay the shivering.

“Goddamn, where the hell is Patch?” Saint said, as the cop reared up.

“The clearing. By the old railroad,” Misty said.

Saint heard the cop reach for the radio, and then she sprinted down Main Street, drawing looks as she seared toward the woodland.

7

Trees swayed as Saint parted the cover of a willow to roots rising like hands reaching up, preaching caution at each step.

She moved past the quake of aspens, white trunks thin and strong and pocked dark. An old metal sign rusted through, the letters too faint. The grove thickened. She smelled dust and Christmas. Sometimes when it rained she and Patch walked to the confluence three miles up to sail paper boats into the waters’ fold.

Trees took the light as a low hill leveled out, her mind on her friend, on how he smiled too much for a kid with such a draw, on how his mother once told him of pirates because that made his difference more than affliction.

Her breath crowned in her ears.

She moved quick past fallen trees that bookended the clearing. Head up, she scouted, but it wasn’t till she met the foot of the valley that she saw the spot.

The T-shirt.

The blood.

8

Word ate through the town. The easy wheels of local business ground to the kind of stop that left Main Street dying as they gathered at the edge of the woodland. Kids rode hard, red cheeked as they dumped bicycles, spoke beads still spinning as they joined the procession, watching and waiting for a dead kid to shade the color of their childhoods.

Saint stood apart from them and watched as Chief Nix rolled his cruiser past a line of local press, already backed up and herded by a barrier made from traffic cones and some tape.

He climbed out and blocked the sun with his hat. Most days his moustache framed a smile. He watched Saint as she watched a man photograph the tire tracks, like they weren’t baked hard into the mud, the kind of fossilized nightmare Saint would pay homage to over the coming weeks.

Saint looked up at his handsome face, then back down at the mud again. A low pain spread in her stomach. A tightness across her bony shoulders that would mature and stop her sleeping each night until she no longer knew herself. Each part of that woodland was claimed with soft memories, and she battled tears. Her and Patch holding out stick guns and chasing phantom goons. Her hanging upside down from the twisting limbs of sweet gum, warning him not to try it because his missing eye fucked up his balance. Him trying to stand on one leg to prove her wrong. Her helping him back to his feet.

Nix crossed before her, hollering to the other cops, “All points. Got the whole damn county locked up tight. Highway 42 to 86, you can’t get in or out without a flashlight in your face.”

“Interstate 35,” she spoke in a whisper that carried toward the big chief, who stepped toward her.

“You’re the bus driver’s granddaughter?”

She nodded.

“You’re friends with this kid?”

She nodded again.

“He did a brave thing.”

She might’ve screamed that he was not tough enough. She might’ve told them he once sat on the low roof by her bedroom window the whole winter night when she got sick with bad flu. That Norma found him blue in the early hours and brought him in to thaw. That he spent six hours rounding up silverfish, longhorn beetles, and even a luna moth when she fretted over her vacant bug motel. That he stole only what he needed, and not ever what he wanted.

Dogs jumped from the back of a white Taurus.

The scream hit them.

A cop stood his ground, one arm wrapped around the waist of Ivy Macauley as he struggled to keep hold of her.

Chief Nix waved a hand toward the cop who gratefully let her free. Ivy walked toward them slow, didn’t lose it again till she saw the bloodied shirt in the bag. She was put together, always, even when she cleaned at night. When she scrubbed piss from the floor of bathrooms and swept tobacco from mahogany desks.

Ivy folded, arched her back and screamed the kind of wrenching sound that stained them all. The echo Saint would hear when she sat in the yard that night, shivering though it was warm. Trying hard not to cry out when news spread through the town.

A local, Pattie Rayburn, had seen the van.

It made a right turn onto Highway 35.

Patch was gone.

9

That first night was like none Saint had known.

She sat cross-legged on the front porch, the soles of her feet dark with dirt. Her grandmother standing when the low lights of a police cruiser passed by. Norma did not offer comfort or platitudes. Saint did not know a tougher woman to fear or emulate.

She could not smell the barbecue smoke or see church lanterns or the verdancy of Monta Clare, so beautiful it clung to memory when you left. Patch hung over the small town like city smog so turgid mothers ushered their children inside and made sure the news was deadbolted at the door. Saint had felt the pervade of those passing minutes as cops came from the towns of Pecaut and Lenard Creek. Chief Nix sent them out armed with a photograph that showed her friend smiling widely, eye patch in place.

At nine her grandmother climbed the stairs and told Saint that she should not stay up late because the boy would likely return soon enough, and she would need her energy to receive him.

At ten Saint climbed onto her rusted Spyder and pedaled hard in the direction of Main Street, breaking her grandmother’s strict curfew.

Main Street was lit with locals gathered outside Lacey’s Diner. She propped her bike outside the Aldon Funeral Parlor and listened as they talked of calls coming in from Jefferson City and Cedar Rapids and even one of the Amana Colonies. Later that night she would fix pins to the map that hung above her bookshelf.

I hear they got a guy over by Pike Creek.

I heard that.

Alibi has him working a double shift at the Roan Arnold Energy Center.

Could be. Midwest derecho wrecked a cooling tower.

And so it went.

She ducked through a cluster of onlookers and made it to the window of the station, and inside saw the kind of bustle that calmed her a little. The phone rang out as cops gathered around maps and pored over files. At the far end she saw Chief Nix pinch the bridge of his nose like the unfurling was too much.

In the state of Missouri two high school girls and a college kid had gone missing in the past eight months. Cops had shown up at Monta Clare High School and told the students the importance of vigilance, said it while they hooked their thumbs into their waistbands, fingers meeting the steel of their Model 39s. For a while the town hung in the kind of rampant fear that meant Saint was no longer allowed out of her yard when the sun dropped.

They’ll catch this devil, her grandmother had said as she sucked on a Marlboro and rocked on her chair.

“Go home, kid. Ain’t you heard, there’s a bad man out there,” a Pecaut cop said as he passed by.

10

At eleven she rode down Main Street. Carved into a valley, the town of Monta Clare rose out and crept the low rise of the mountain, the roads neatly forged into acres of tilted green.

She coasted, then pedaled hard to meet the foot of the climb onto winding streets minted with Virginia bluebells and butterfly weed and bear’s breeches. So much fucking color. Sheaves of warmth ached from grand homes. When the trail grew too steep she dumped her bicycle in a flourish of bushes and hiked the last couple of hundred yards.

Where the hell are you, Patch?

Up the wind of a steep driveway toward the spread of stucco and leaded glass; turreted rooflines of blue slate above a porch of natural stone topped with reclaimed wood gnarled just deep enough to tell it had traveled to adorn something so beautiful. Saint turned and saw the town spark a long way beneath.

She had not seen the Meyer house up close before. But she knew it. Everyone in town knew it.

The door opened before she could knock. A man filled it, and she noticed his tired eyes and the pavilion trusses behind him, his bare feet on parquet floor.

She swallowed back nerves of different kinds. “Mr. Meyer.”

He fixed her with apathy like what had gone before had scooped out everything he thought he knew about their town and his daughter’s place in it.

“You’re Misty’s friend,” he said, like he knew nothing of his daughter’s life.

A lamp burned behind, her shadow spearing the glow.

“Is she—”

“She’s sleeping. You shouldn’t be out this late.”

Saint tried not to see everything the Meyer family had, instead how much they might have lost.

She glanced back and could just make out the tops of eastern white pine. Beneath them Patch Macauley had saved the life of his daughter. Saint blinked back her tears. “I have to talk with her.”

“She’ll speak with Chief Nix after she’s slept. Her mother…” He swallowed. “You go on home now.”

Saint knew that some people mistook money for class, anger for strength.

When he closed the door all she felt was his fear.

11

That night she did not sleep at all, instead stared at her map and marked with a yellow highlighter the route the van had taken. Her shelves bulged with books; the walls held no posters or photographs. She did not own makeup or perfume or a wardrobe that extended beyond school and church.

At dawn she found her grandmother sitting at the oak table, and the old lady’s eyes told that she had not slept even though she would drive the bus that morning from Monta Clare through six towns and the forge of Palmer Valley.

“The bees?” Saint asked, and her grandmother shook her head.