Caitlin Kiernan - Silk

“Whatever,” she said.

“I needed to talk to him.”

“Too late for that,” and she’d handed him the bag. “Did Spyder send you around to kick my ass?”

He looked down at the bag, back at Daria, drawing a perfect blank with his eyes. “What?”

“Do you have a name?”

“Walter,” he’d said, shifted the bag in his arms, “Walter Ayers. I used to be a friend of Spyder Baxter’s…”

“‘Used to be’?” and she’d started walking, him following a few steps behind, the bag noisier than their footfalls in the long empty alleyway.

“I think that’s what she’d say, if you asked her,” he said, walking faster to catch up. “I’m pretty sure that’s what she’d say.”

“Spyder seems to have her little heart set on burning bridges these days,” and she’d touched her swollen lip, but the pain couldn’t quite reach through the boozy haze, far-off sensation, like the cold all around.

“She thinks I had something to do with what happened to Robin,” he said.

“Robin? Spyder’s girlfriend?” Daria stopped, and the shrike stopped, too.

“Yeah,” and he’d looked back the way they’d come, anxious eyes, anxious tired face.

“Did you?” but he hadn’t answered, just stared back down the alley like he thought they were being followed.

“Why’d you want to talk to Keith?” and that hurt, his name out loud, from her lips, little cattle-prod jolt of pain right to the fruitbruise soft spot inside her, the place the wine and beer couldn’t numb.

Walter shrugged and hadn’t looked at her.

“I thought maybe he would help, because of that night in the parking lot, when he stuck up for Spyder and Robin. I thought he might know what to do.”

“You’re losin’ me, Walter.”

“Who was the girl that left with Spyder tonight?” he’d asked, changing the subject, starting to piss her off. “The Japanese girl?”

“Her name’s Niki, and she’s not Japanese. She’s Vietnamese and she’s Spyder’s new girl. She moved in with Spyder a couple of weeks ago.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

Daria had thought about that a second, thought about all the shit that had gone down in the weeks since Niki Ky walked into the Bean, almost a month now, and if she were superstitious…

“Yeah, she’s a friend of mine,” she answered.

“Then you ought to know that she’s in danger.”

And Daria remembered the welts on the back of Niki’s hands, like someone had begun a game of tic-tac-toe on her skin with a branding iron, like the ink in Spyder’s skin.

“Spyder’s not right,” he said.

“Spyder Baxter’s a fucking froot-loop,” Daria said and now she was staring back down the alley, trying to see what he saw, what he was afraid of.

“No. I don’t mean about her being crazy. I mean, she’s not right.”

“Walter, will you please just tell me what the hell you’re talking about and stop with the damn tap dancing?”

And back in the shadows, then, a garbage can had fallen over, bang, and the sound of metal and rolling glass on asphalt, before something dark and fast had streaked across the alley. Walter almost dropped the bag, and she’d taken it from him.

“What the hell’s wrong with you? It was just a cat, or a dog, for Christ’s sake…”

“Spyder’s not right,” he said again, like maybe she’d understand if he repeated it enough times, “and if you care about your friend, you’ll keep her away from that house. Robin knew, and she tried to tell us, and now she’s dead. And Byron believed her, and no one knows where the hell he is.”

“I think I’m way too drunk for this shit,” she’d said. and started walking again. Walter hadn’t moved.

“I’ll wait a day or two,” he’d said as she’d walked away. “Just a day or two, and then I’ve gotta leave. If you want to talk, I’ll be around.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” she’d muttered, not caring if he heard, just wanting to be back in her apartment, just wanting another drink.

And the last thing, before she’d stepped out of the alley and into the cold-comfort glare of streetlights: “I’m not crazy,” he’d said. “I swear to God, Daria. I’m not crazy.”

She’d found Claude in her bed, making time with his boy, and she’d made them move it to the sofa. Had found a cleanish glass in the kitchen and screwed the top off a big bottle of Jim Beam, filled the glass to the brim and set the bottle of bourbon next to the bed.

“Maybe you’ve had enough,” Claude had said, careful, and a glare had been all it took to shut him up. He’d taken his boy and they’d left the apartment, left her alone. Her face, her hands felt fevery, wind-chapped, and her side hurt from Spyder’s boot. A miracle she didn’t have broken ribs; wondered if maybe she was bleeding somewhere inside, and Daria took a long, burning drink of the Jim Beam and went to the bathroom to piss. Just beer piss, safe yellow. She’d finished the bourbon, filled the glass again, and had lain down, head on her own pillow, soft and slightly funky, stared at Claude’s big poster of Billie Holiday through the syrup-colored liquor. The sadness, the fight with Spyder, the weirdness in the alley with Walter, everything running together like candle wax, waxen weight pulling down, and in a few minutes she was asleep.

“I don’t hate her,” her father says, “I love your mother,” and she looks up from her crayons, her color swirl under black wax and the lines she’s begun to scratch into it with her nails. Outside the sky is low and she can smell ozone and the rain rushing across the Mississippi prairies toward them, can see the electric lizard-tongue flicks of lightning on the horizon. The car bleeds red dust behind them, and she tells him that she knows that, that she never thought he hated them. Scratches at the rising welts on her arms and hands, and he puts his arm around her, pulls her close to him and the steering wheel: her crayons are in the backseat now, and she feels cold and sick at her stomach. The storm talks in thunder, and the orange speedometer needle strains toward ninety.

“I’m gonna get you to a doctor, Daria, and you’re gonna be fine. So don’t be afraid, okay? You’re gonna be fine. I swear I’d never let anything happen to you.”

The world rumbles under the thunder, and the car bumps and lurches along the dirt road.

“I should have listened to your Mammaw,” he says, and she tries not to think about what happened back at the gas station, the old shed and the biting spiders all over her, in her clothes and hair, and the look on her father’s face almost as bad as all those legs on her skin.

“I was scared, Daria, I didn’t know what to do.”

Crack, sky cracking open like a rotten egg and blue yolk fire arcing over them. Blistered sky boiling, and she closes her eyes; the blanket that the man at the gas station gave her father to wrap her in itches and she wants to kick it off, but he’s bundled her too tight.

“I just couldn’t let her hurt you again.”

She shivers and listens to the thunder. And something else, a wail like the storm has learned to howl, opens her eyes and she looks over dashboard faded plastic and the stitches in the earth laid out before them, bisecting the dirt-red road, iron spikes and steel rails and pinewood ties to close some monstrous wound up tight, and the train, crawling the tracks like a jointed metal copperhead, train so long, boxcar after boxcar, that she can’t even see the end. Can see the candy-striped gate arm coming down in front of them ahead, red crossing light flashing its useless warning.

Her father presses his foot down hard on the accelerator, and now he’s praying, praying loud, please God, please God, if we get stuck behind that thing she’ll die. And the train bigger than God, the God that hides behind His storm up above and sticks at the land with hatpin fire.