All the Colors of the Dark

by Chris Whitaker

At thirteen he believed entirely that there was gold beyond the Ozark Plateau. That there was a brighter world just waiting for him. Though later that morning, when he lay dying in the woodland, he’d take that morning still and purse it till the colors ran because he knew it could not have been so beautiful. That nothing was ever so beautiful in his life.

often for kids like him the flair of fiction dulled a reality too severe.

and he wondered just how tough it was to be a parent, and if at times all poor kids were some kind of well-intentioned regret.

“Today will be the best day of my life,” he said. He said that often. Because he could not know what would come.

or how loud she played Dylan to remind herself that times were changing. “We take something from every knock,” he said, and screwed up the letter. He scanned the empty shelves in the refrigerator.

Sometimes she looked at him like he was the sum of her failings. Each night he lifted rusted dumbbells until his skinny arms burned, grinding his childhood away.

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

it was only a matter of time before something bad happened to that kid.

his mind ran to Silver-Tongue Martin, and Wild Ned Lowe. The band of fearless. He moved.

Her eyes wide as she tried to make sense of it. The bees had gone.

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.

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.

Saint knew that some people mistook money for class, anger for strength. When he closed the door all she felt was his fear.

“It should be that girl missing. The Meyers, they have so damn much.” She caught herself, raised a hand of apology to an audience Saint could not see.

She would not sleep more than a few hours each night. She would be there to watch each second of their summer die.

“It’s okay to have more than one friend.” “I don’t need more than one friend.”

Saint wondered how Misty could be so poised, so complete at that age when she should be ill-fitting parts and contradiction.

A poor girl who had no sense of style, or femininity, no chance of finding a boy and then a man. A girl who looked to books for answers to questions that would never be asked of her. Weighed questions that had nothing to do with fashion or baking or making a goddamn motherfucking home.

To her he was an exotic creature she would do well not to grasp too tightly for fear of scaring him off.

“You’re smart, right? Already you know that you’re smart. But also, in the right light, you look a little like Evelyn Cromer. She was the most beautiful pirate that ever sailed. Of course, she wore her hair in a braid, and slaughtered—” “You think I’m beautiful?” He nodded. “Entirely and absolutely.”

“Fair has little to do with religion and politics.” Life in all its uneven fairness went on.

“You think he’s dead?” Misty said, hands deep in her pockets, her legs neatly crossed, her face drawn with the worry. Saint knew there was not always an exact moment when children turned to adults. For the lucky ones it was a long, hard-earned acceptance of responsibility and opportunity. But for her, and for Misty, the divide had been curt and fatal.

“I keep trying to remember something. Even though my parents…they pay someone to make me forget.” Saint watched Misty’s tears. “Tell me something about him.”

“You’re different today,” she said. “I’m just tired, I guess.” “Tired of what?” “Of being me.”

“The North Carolina Coastal Plain. The sandhills. No one knows for sure why they do it. But it’s real purple. It glows. It’s like proof, Patch. There’s magical things out there just waiting on you.”

“That was dumb,” Saint said as she helped him to his feet and dabbed blood from his lip. “You’re all I’ve got,” he said. And she thought, I’m all you’ll need.

“I caught her stealing smokes from my truck. And sneaking booze at Thanksgiving. It’s the spirit, right. That’s what we miss. It’s the rough edges. The parts you know she’ll grow out of.”

and slowly remove the posters of the boy with the eye patch. She took one from him and at home placed it on the high shelf in her closet. She read more, of trauma and amygdala. The Polson book of forensic science. Her head buried in books that would somehow keep her link to him alive.

On the walk back she found herself in the spot where it had happened. She no longer cried.

Saint did not understand how they went on with their lives like anything else could matter so much again.

“Why did you bring these?” she asked. “I just wanted to show you that sometimes things survive despite the harshest of odds.”

Saint had moved to enter the house, but Norma had placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, smiled sadly, and led the girl away from a neglect Saint could not yet understand.

Saint wanted to ask what it was like, to lose the thing that defined you. But perhaps she knew: it left you someone else. A stranger you had no choice but to tolerate, and see each day and feel and fear.

Saint finally smiled. And Norma took the last photo on her roll.

“If you ever get the chance to make someone smile, or better yet, make someone laugh, then you take it. Each and every time,” Norma said.

She saw books stacked floor to roof. “Best education you can get,” he said. “See through someone else’s eyes and you understand more of everything.”

This was the kind of trouble she read about in newspapers and saw on news bulletins. The kind of trouble that no one recovers from.

She did not know fear like it. Fear that claimed her muscles, her blood and breath, her mind. Fear that told her to get up and break and run. That she had made a brave mistake, the same kind Patch had made.

Patch knew right then it was an act, and that death when it came was not light or confession, forgiveness or peace or fire. It was that cold piece of time before you were born, that glance into history books that told you the world went on before and would go on again, no matter who was there to witness it.

At ten years old he realized that people were born whole, and that the bad things peeled layers from the person you once were, thinning compassion and empathy and the ability to construct a future. At thirteen he knew those layers could sometimes be rebuilt when people loved you. When you loved.

He did not believe in God, just in Saint and her grandmother, and sometimes his mother.

Patch knew dreams were experience and anticipation, the trace of memories and proportioned acts.

Patch thought of the metal that pierced his stomach, that maybe it left something in him, something slow acting but something that might slowly change him. A rust. Burnt red and brown creeping through that healthy flesh till decay set in like rot through timbers.

“Our universe is black. A galaxy and stars and dark matter, the planets and people and organisms. Everything is contained in this room with no light at all. Even when we get out, we’ll take it with us, our own private black hole that’ll swallow every good thing.”

They did not have money for specialists, but then Patch was in no way special.

“I’m not strong enough for this,” he said. He cried then. “You’re tough,” she said. “I—” She placed a hand on his cheek. “You are. We sense our own kind. Kids dealt a losing hand. We look at others with fucking trivial problems, and we think how long they’d last with a taste of our childhoods.” He sobbed. She smoothed his hair, her voice a whisper. “When you make it out of here no one will know how you lost everything, how you stared at an ending they can’t comprehend. It’ll give you power. It’ll make them wish they never fucked with you.”

“You don’t need charity. And I’ll bet that’s what Saint already knows. She’s being kind because she loves you.”

“She’ll see it now I’m gone.” “See what?” she said. He spoke without intent, just a brutal and complete honesty. “How little I left behind.”

“He wore black because he identified with the downtrodden. And there ain’t no one more trodden down than you, Patch.” “Right.” “But don’t worry, I keep a close watch on that heart of yours.”

“Where does the man go?” Patch said, handing her his bottle. “Hunting.” “Hunting for what?” She pressed her lips softly to his ear. “Bad people like you and me.” He thought of his mother then, and again felt the betrayal of tears. “We don’t cry anymore,” she said, and wiped his eye. “He doesn’t get our tears. No one does.”