Detroit Noir

Red quarters by Craig Holden

Hamtramck

“Fuck yeah,” said Ziggy. “We’re in.” A piece of cheek beneath his left eye jumped, then jumped again. It was a place I’d never been, right on Joseph Campau, around the corner from St. Ladislaus. But then it all felt new to me. I’d only been back in Hamtramck, city of my life, for six months. I had gone off to other places, tried other things. When I got back, my friend Danny Lewicki got me on at the Main. I would’ve never got on without him. Most of the places then were laying off.

By we, I hoped Ziggy meant him and Danny. I couldn’t shoot so well. I tried to be invisible against the wall. It was 8 a.m., and we were just off shift.

“We break,” said the long-necked regular.

It was a close narrow place, just enough room in the front for the bar and stools along one wall, and only the light from a single window throwing over the thing. In the back it opened to a room just big enough to hold the pool table, but they’d had to shorten the cues so you didn’t hit the walls when you shot.

“We break,” said Ziggy. He was an old-timer, due to retire in another year or two. He didn’t take much shit off anyone.

“We break,” said the long-necked regular. He was shiny, with thin hair that looked like he wiped it back with his palms. He wore a leather vest, and a chain secured his wallet to his trousers.

Beyond the table, a paneled hallway led off to nothing. It was just a wall at the end of it, and an old console TV sitting there all covered with the dust of a thousand shows. Through a little window cut in one of the walls, you could see into a kind of kitchen area. There was a big stove in there and some sinks. A cook, or somebody in a white T-shirt, sat at a steel counter, counting cash out onto a sheet of aluminum foil.

“Then fuck it,” said Ziggy. His hand was twitching; the middle fingers kept snapping in toward the palm. He put his cue down and headed back for the bar, so he could sit down. He looked like he needed to. He wasn’t the steadiest.

“Awright,” said the regular. “You can break.”

“Break, Dan,” said Ziggy. Danny was only a few years older than me. Ziggy was our supervisor at the Dodge Main. Poletown, they called it. This was 1979. The winter was ending, but the rumors had just started that the Main was coming down. No one believed it. It’d been there since 1912. I heard it rolled off more than thirteen million cars in them sixty-seven years. The Dodge brothers themselves built it, after they left off working for Henry. It was like a city in there, its own fire department and hospital and roads and kitchens. You could’ve been born in there and grown up and stayed inside the whole time, never coming out, and lived just fine.

“Watch this,” Ziggy said to me. The tick beneath his eye kept time, the same time as the automatic riveter or the arm that whipped the planes of sheet metal into place. Danny broke. Three dropped, two solids and a stripe.

“Solids,” said Danny.

“Drop ’em,” said Ziggy. And Dan did: two more.

The long-necked regular sank a few. Ziggy sank two. The regular’s partner, a true hefty boy, and with a scraggy little mustache, missed altogether.

“Shithead,” said the long-necked regular.

“They call you Hamtramck Fats?” Ziggy said. Danny snickered, then cleaned it off and sank the eight.

“That’s a round,” said Ziggy. “Three rums.”

“Three?” said the regular. “Only two of ya’s playin.”

“Partner there,” said Ziggy. “Eddy. He drinks too.”

“Two plays, two drinks,” said the long-necked regular. He bought two. I went out to the bar and bought my own, and sat there to drink it.

Down at the other end were two girls. I saw them when we came in. One, whose grin was half-empty of teeth, nodded at me now. And she kept eyeing me. At least, I thought she did. The light from the window made it hard to see. I looked away from them but my head kept turning back, like they were pulling a string.

“Again,” I heard the regular say.

“Rack ’em,” said Ziggy. When I heard him break, I got up and stood in the open doorway between the bar part up front and the pool room in back. I leaned against the jamb, so I could see the whole place at once.

Ziggy’s break sank a couple. Solids again.

It went on. Ziggy and Danny cleaned up again, won by four balls. I kept turning my head away from the far end of the bar.

“Another round,” said Ziggy.

“You still got your last drinks,” said the regular.

“Back ’em up,” said Ziggy.

“Markers,” said the bartender. He’d been watching through a little window between the end of the bar and the pool room. He held up a quarter someone had painted red. “Trade these in for drinks.”

“Rack ’em,” said the long-necked regular as he paid for the markers. Hamtramck Fats racked.

It went on. A stack of red quarters grew up from the bar, leaned, split into two stacks. I couldn’t figure why they’d have so many red quarters.

“Use ’em,” said Ziggy to me. “Might as well.” I traded one in. Switched from rum to beer.

It went on. Ziggy and Dan let them win a game, handed them a couple of our quarters. “Keeps ’em biting,” Ziggy whispered to me. He’d come out to the bar to rest, and I sat beside him. He had on his UAW hat, and his shirt had a UAW patch on the sleeve. Many didn’t dress like that anymore, but Ziggy always did, every shift.

I looked at him, then the girls at the other end, back and forth. I could see him looking down at them too.

Then he said something about Elaine. She was a hot one we knew from the plant. A front office secretary. I knew her from high school.

“Call her,” Ziggy said. “You could sure use some of that.”

“She’ll be in bed by now,” I said. She hadn’t been interested in me at Hamtramck High, and she wasn’t interested now.

“All the better,” Ziggy said.

I fingered the stack of red quarters.

“You know what them’re for?”

“No.”

“Bars all have ’em. Nothing’s happening, they drop a few in the pool table or juke box or whatever to get things rolling. Then when the vendor cleans out the boxes, he knows what was the bar’s to start. Don’t count it against their percent.”

“Really?”

He nodded, then got up and went back to the table, and I heard another rack and break.

“Shit!” said Hamtramck Fats, and Danny was laughing.

They played again, again, and it didn’t get any better for the regulars.

“Here,” Ziggy said when it was over and the chalk dust had settled. He handed a couple more quarters to the long-necked regular.

“Big of ya,” the regular said. He retreated with Fats to their end of the bar, where the girls sat waiting for them.

“Fuck it,” Ziggy said.

Danny and I drank and Ziggy told us a story about a trucker he knew who bought it on a curve on I-75. “Twenty ton come down on him,” Ziggy said. “Took ’em four hours to saw him out.” His cheek jumped. “Five ton an hour.”

The two girls got up now and scooted down the bar. I was sitting between Ziggy and Danny. The girls sat one on each side of us, the half-toothless one by Ziggy.

“Drink?” Ziggy said. He flipped them each a red quarter. The one with half her teeth did all the talking. The other one wouldn’t say nothing. She had greasy hair and little zits all over her face you could only see close up. Dan was next to this one, the Mute, and he was flicking bits of napkin at her, watching how they stuck on her hair.

“You wanna drive us to Chicago?” said the half-toothless one.

“For?” Ziggy said. He slipped off his barstool and had to climb back on. A muscle in his neck started contracting and relaxing, pulling his chin around toward his shoulder and then releasing it.

“Cause it ain’t here,” she said.

“Maybe so,” he said. “Got a car?”

“You do,” she said.

“Eddy’s drivin,” Ziggy said. He pointed at me.

“Wanna drive us to Chicago?” she said to me.

I looked away. She pulled my eyes back and grinned in a half-toothless sort of way. I traded in another quarter and went back and started shooting around on the table. Couldn’t hit a thing. It was all spinning. I had no control over my arms. I killed my Blatz and traded in another quarter.

Then I heard the half-toothless one scream and slap Ziggy. I went around to watch. She and the Mute got up and went back down to their end of the bar. Ziggy and Dan were giggling. The greasy gal talked to the long-necked regular and Hamtramck Fats and all of them started looking at us. I stuck the cue in the crotch of my arm, like it was a gun I was cradling. I was ready. I was looking at them too. Couldn’t stop.

Ziggy and Danny each traded in another red quarter.

“Think you guys had enough?” the bartender asked.

“Still got five quarters left,” said Ziggy. “You gonna take ’em away? Bought and paid for?” His fingers were snapping into his palm again, hard enough so I could hear it.

The bartender walked down to the other end of the bar.

I stepped out and leaned against the wall.

“Pool cues stay back by the table,” the bartender said. I stood where I was. The cue raised itself, pressed its butt against my shoulder, and fired — one, two, three, four, five, it picked them off.

“Get outta here, why don’cha,” said Fats.

Ziggy looked at them, then at me. His whole face was moving, different parts of it twitching at different times. I saw him raise his glass. He told the story once of how he cleared off a whole bar, up in Flint, with his empty glass, just like he was bowling.

I had set my glass on the bar. I picked it up and said, “Hey! Hey! I’m a fucking puppet.” I poured the beer over my head. They all looked at me. Then Ziggy broke up laughing.

Danny tipped his head back and balanced one of the red quarters on his nose and said, “Hey, I got a quarter growing on me.”

We cracked up. We were all laughing. Even the dipshits at the other end were laughing for not knowing what else to do. Then Ziggy gagged and pressed his palms to his face. He gagged again and stood up and his back arched; he began convulsing and spun around and smashed into the bar. Glasses and napkins and red quarters flew everywhere. He spun off the bar and fell into the stools and bounced around and finally hit the floor. He was lying face down, a line of blood running out from his mouth. I felt my arms rise up into the air and my hands rest on top of my head.

Danny said, “He’s killed.”

After the moment of dead quiet that followed, the half-toothless one got up and walked down to our end of the bar. She kicked at Ziggy a few times. She said, “He ain’t dead.”

Ziggy moaned and moved a little.

“Tol you,” she said.

“I’m a fuckin puppet,” said Danny.

Ziggy moaned again. He lifted his head and in the blood I could see some of his teeth. He rolled over on his back and I saw the blood on his face and I could see where he was an old man, older than I had ever pictured him.

“What is it?” I said. I was whimpering.

“Fit,” the half-toothless one said. She kicked Ziggy harder, in his ribs.

I remembered hearing something once about Ziggy, some brain thing he had.

“Get up,” she said. He got up. She handed him some napkins and he stuffed one inside his mouth and dried his gums. Then he sat down at the bar and propped his forehead in his hands.

“Ziggy,” said Danny.

“Ziggy,” I said.

But he would not answer us.

The half-toothless one had her hands on Ziggy’s back and she was leaning over his shoulder, talking to him. “Shush,” she told us.

“Ziggy,” I said.

“Ziggy,” said Danny.

But still he would not answer us, so we went outside to breathe. It was very bright, cloudless, a ringer of a morning. Joseph Campau, the main street of Hamtramck, stretched out in both directions, just like it always had. I had been living in some mountains before I came back but there was no good work there.

“I’m a puppet,” Danny was saying. It made him laugh.

We hadn’t believed the rumors about the Main when we heard them, but they were true. We would find out for sure in another couple months, and by June it would be all over. Chrysler was barely staying alive. They’d sell the whole thing to GM, which would up and tear it all down. And that would be that.

After a few minutes, Danny and me got up and were going to go back in to get Ziggy, but the front door was locked.

“Hey,” I said. I rattled the door and knocked on it but it wouldn’t open. I peered through the smudgy glass and could just make out the interior. There was Ziggy, sitting up at the bar with all the others, the long-necked regular and Hamtramck Fats and the Mute and the half-toothed girl. The bartender leaned on his elbows, grinning and listening, a tall stack of red quarters on the bar in front of him. Everyone was listening to Ziggy. He was telling them a story, probably about his days in the army or about one of the whores he knew or something. He was one of the best storytellers. He’d been around.

“Come on,” Danny said. “Time to go.”

I said, “But—”

“I know a bar,” he said.

“But—”

He took my arm and led me out into Joseph Campau, and across and down the sidewalk. He knew a place, he said, where it would be only the two of us and a barmaid named Brenda, and she would laugh and tell us stories about the days before the layoffs, way back when things were so busy in the city you could hardly take it all in, and the young men would come in from their shifts and fight and swear and bite the necks from the beer bottles and she would slap them on their heads to straighten them out. And we would smile and nod, weary with the beers and the hours and her tired voice.

Migration by Craig Bernier

Rouge Foundry

Barry Biehn made his commute to the Rouge. He skirted along industrial sprawl, mostly forgotten properties of the Ford Motor Company. The route from his nearby Dearborn home consisted of surface streets: Oakwood to Fort, Fort to Miller, then Miller to an unnamed road leading to Old Gate Five. Each street was pitted from truck traffic and neglect, but Barry preferred them to taking his old Lincoln on the freeways. Every day edged closer to the vehicle’s last.

He drove past a fallen gate and its adjacent unmanned guard shack. Rusting metal signs hinted a cryptic warning about trespassing. Barry headed toward the toxic river. He passed through the ghost town of his father’s Rouge River Plant, archaic and obsolete. Barry turned onto a cement byroad that ran alongside the gray river and drove under the rusting legs of an old off-loading crane, past rows of stilted fuel tanks, then onto blacktop that veered him toward the switching yards.

The Mk V’s snow tires whirred a different pitch on the blacktop, an uplifting but brief chord. The blacktop switched abruptly into a cinder path that split two groups of train tracks. A plume of dust kicked up as Barry hit the cinders, like he’d thrown a switch. He passed one dormant freight car after another, a smoke screen stretching out behind him then dissipating into the wind. He thought of James Bond.

Barry arrived at the opposite side of the switching yards, the Lincoln bottoming out as he banged over a series of low rollers onto another road. He made the linchpin turn of his entire shortcut, slowing to inch the car up into the mouth of a mammoth abandoned warehouse. Like a covered bridge for titans, it was missing its two short walls. A 707 could taxi through it. This was the only passage in the miles of fencing that separated the living, breathing Rouge from its old necropolis. Barry idled through the warehouse, then dropped out the other side. He punched the car back onto the main road, then slowed again to tool into the foundry lot, slow, like clockwork. It began to snow.

The foundry works had one longitudinal parking lot, large, like a soccer field, about a quarter-mile’s walk from the main entrance. First shift had the up-close spots and most of his coworkers on second shift gobbled up the rest. Barry was not one for arriving early to the foundry, and as a consequence was often relegated to a long walk from the outskirts.

He parked the Lincoln, grabbed his brownbag, and killed the engine. The car began its routine, dieseling and knocking for more life. Barry gave it one thing: It was a survivor. Bought new in ’73, it, along with the Dearborn house, was Barry’s inheritance when his father died a few years back.The car continued sputtering even after Barry closed the door. He started toward the main and the car stopped with a backfire pop, loud, like a pistol had gone off. Barry made a mental note to put the carb back the way he found it before all the weekend tinkering — a quarter turn here, a half turn there. As of late, the car had taken on qualities akin to a curse.

Barry was enthralled with the exponentially increasing snowfall. The forecast had called for the year’s first blizzard, twelve to sixteen inches starting in the afternoon and continuing through the night. The powder was already showing accumulation, and the wind had increased in force — doubling and gusting — since Barry had left his house. He pulled up his collar and squared his pea cap down over the ears. Again, he headed into another shift he wished was his last.

Material, Planning, and Logistics (M, P & L) for the Rouge Foundry Works held an elongated storeroom aloft as headquarters. It was tidy and well organized, but impossible to keep clean from a layer of soot generated by the works running below. More than soot, really, it was like an invasive burnt dust, a fine, powdery, oil-based grime that stuck to things. It worked its way into mechanisms and crevices, up nostrils, down lungs. Workers gave in to it as reality, an absolute. Not something to be combated, as it covered all things.

M, P & L’s workspace had one large wall of square-paned, segmented windows that looked out on one of the molding bays down in the works. Looking out over the scene, the contrasts produced by darkness and fire could trance a viewer. It was not unusual from such a vantage point to ponder the existence of heaven and hell — or at least the planes of hell, higher and lower. Loud by comparison to most workplaces, this room was like the foundry’s scriptorium, its personnel like busy monks, interpreting and writing, interpreting and writing.

At changeover, first shift gave their pass-down to second. It was brief today: some procurement, but mostly shipping, incepts, and the dailies. First left second a few inspections, but all in all it would be an easy evening. The men, five from each shift, then sat on desks and squat filing cabinets to shoot the shit about the weather and the Lions.

The man closest to Barry’s age was twice his twenty-nine. M, P & L was a retirement position. Barry’s father knew people; he’d had a long run at the Rouge plant, forty-one years — thirty of those at the foundry. In an act his dad associated with grace, he pulled some strings. Since Mr. Biehn wasn’t able to keep his son from Ford and the foundry, he could at least get him out of the pits. When his dad retired, Barry was transferred to the loft. It caused no end of resentment.

Barry’s interest in his coworkers’ chatter had waned. He looked down on the smelting bay as he’d done every day since coming to the loft. The infernal chiaroscuros, the sparks and fires, the molten pour of reality, his entire sweep of vision begged Barry to consider again the question he’d been asking for over nine years now, What the fuck am I doing here?

Barry couldn’t focus lately. He was tired all the time. His daughter was six months old and not sleeping through the night. There had been a drop-off in his production. Fatigue hung around his neck and cramped it, above his eyes in headaches. He was self-conscious about the attitude of slack that had crept into his duties. His coworkers assessed that all of this was simply a byproduct of his newborn, but Barry was mystified. It couldn’t be that simple.

He felt like he was losing both the drive and ambition to get out of Ford. The foundry was supposed to be a stop along the way, a means to an end. He had planned to be gone years ago. Had he finally resigned himself to being a union man? Was that it? A Ford employee? A procurement clerk? He still went to class on Saturdays, 8 a.m. until 2. He only had a couple more semesters before he got his Associates in computers. He’d been wondering lately what this all meant.

The early ’80s had been hard on Detroit. Except for the Tigers, there wasn’t much brightness. After last season, it looked like even the recent world champs were headed for the shitter. Jobs like Barry’s were under fire, but at least they were unionized. Mechanization and outsourcing had killed some skill sets, databases and inventory systems snuffed others. A round of contract talks approached, and no one, from plant managers down to the lowest committeemen, could muster much hope.

Hank, the man twice Barry’s age, tapped Barry’s knee with a clipboard holding triplicates.

“You get that, Bear?”

“Sure,” Barry lied. He took the clipboard from Hank, but did not go out to begin the procurement inspections. Instead, he went to his desk as the pow-wow broke up. The word wife popped into his head, so he called.

“Hey,” he said as she picked up on the first ring.

“Hey,” she said back.

“Snow bad?”

“Kind of. Pretty, though. What’s up?”

“Nothing. Just thought I’d call.”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay. Don’t shovel. I’ll do it when I get home.”

“You know Burns. He loves you. He’ll be over here like clockwork with the snowblower around 9:00. Guaranteed.”

“I think Burns loves you, not me.”

“Either-or, he’ll probably beat you to the punch.”

“Okay, baby. Well, I just wanted to check in.”

“Be careful driving tonight. Oh! Bunny, I’m going to move Kara’s crib into our room tonight.”

“Just wait and I’ll do it when I get home.”

“Shush. I’m fine. I can do it. I’ve been cleared to lift things, jackass.”

“Well,” Barry said, “watch your back.”

“You watch yours,” Sera replied.

“Lates,” Barry said.

“Lates,” Sera replied.

He drifted for a moment, then set his inner-ear plugs and headed to the floor. Barry was splitting Johnson’s work with Brown, as Johnson had lost some fingers last week when he decided to help out some guys with a winching chain. Johnson was still on medical and was sure to milk it. Barry donned his headphone-sized ear protectors over the inner-ear plugs. The world slipped into a light, constant humming as he walked down flight after flight of metal fire escape stairs.

Barry walked through the foundry with his clipboard making a series of check marks on procurement triplicates. He went to Johnson’s areas and did the same. Minutes stretched into hours. This was Barry’s shift. Later, he returned to the loft and ate a meat loaf sandwich. He spent the rest of the evening sorting and filing, miserable work.

Barry joined the long line waiting to punch out at the main. He mashed his time card into the old clock slot when he reached it. The stamp crashed down with mechanical crispness born of another generation. They did not build things like that time clock anymore. His card was stamped on the last Friday of the two-week register: 10:16 p.m.

Barry passed through the metal detectors and the Pinkerton security that manned them. Normally, this twisted his guts, made him feel like stealing just to spite the fuckers. But aside from the tools that everyone had already stolen three sets of, what was there to take from this place? Raw brake drums? Frame parts? Axle castings?

He stopped at the bay of pay phones to call Sera, but he could not get through, busy both times. He sat in the booth watching coworkers trudge by. It seemed they’d been set upon by a blackness deeper than the film that coated them. They traipsed after a shift, as if the ingots that stuck to their coveralls each weighed a ton. Barry tried the call several more times, but gave up after a few minutes as the last of the foot traffic had passed. He made for the exit and wrestled with the soft dread of new fatherhood. He wondered if something had happened. Was everything okay?

It had snowed fourteen inches in all. No tricky drifting as the wind had died, just a snow laid heavy, flake upon flake. Someone had shoveled the walk leading from the main to the lot, but typical union, they’d done a half-ass job. It was unsalted and slick to each footfall. Barry ran and slid on the sidewalk leaving furrows as he went — running and sliding, running and sliding. He thought of the Hawaiian Islands and surfboards.

To everyone’s surprise, the snow crews had hit the foundry’s lot. But it must have been hours ago as there remained about six inches of snow. Vehicles spun and churned like slot cars trying to lock in a rut which would guide them out. Barry slowed to a shuffle and took some long, powerful strokes to mimic a speed skater, but he couldn’t get enough glide in his gait to do it right. He switched again to a careful walk, after almost falling, then tilted his head and stuck out his tongue.

The flakes that struck his face were hefty, cottony straggler types. One landed electric on his tongue and sent a shiver to his pelvis. The ones that touched his face cleaned a little of the carbon from his skin. Barry stopped at the lot’s main road to put on his gloves and pea cap. He heard a compressed air burst from far off. It sounded like a rocket had ignited. He was always captivated at night by the view of smokestacks all around shooting orange pollutant fire into the skies, strangely beautiful, as he imagined combat might be. The air burst dissipated with a hiss. Barry could hear what sounded like the approach of geese.

They came on quick, out of nothing. A line stretched across his entire field of view. Three great V formations approached, squawking and honking as they made adjustments in the echelon. Barry watched them approach. The geese grew silent falling into final ranks. A few honks and replies as they passed overhead, but mostly just the silence of birds in flight. They disappeared quick into the night.

An air horn blast startled Barry. A freight truck slid, its tires locked above the snow. Barry put his arm out instinctively to brace for the blow. The truck groaned to a stop with its grill touching Barry’s outstretched hand. It was mildly warm from diesel heat, wet and gritty to the touch. He could feel the truck nudging slightly forward against his palm. The stack pipe exhaust caps tapped in a syncopated rhythm. Barry stepped backwards and apologetically raised his hand. Barry had lost track of how many times a day he felt like this, a complete and utter dunce.

The driver gave him a pistol point, forefinger and thumb. He moved his thumb a couple of times to indicate shots Barry had just dodged. The back tires of the rig spun and dug for traction. The trailer moaned a long sigh of metal fatigue as the rig caught and dragged it — cold and overloaded with axle castings — out toward the main road.

Barry reached his car and heard a solitary squawking from the sky. A straggler from the flight was trying to catch up. A small, fleeting fear washed over Barry, like he’d forgotten something on his desk. The goose flew intently south into the empty sky. It made no sound as another compressed air burst began. The goose disappeared into a low canopy of cloud cover which was illuminated in orange from the various pipe flames and the piss-poor Rouge lighting. Barry was filled with a great desire to be home. It felt acidic here in the parking lot, a grand doom settling over the foundry, the district, the city, the world.

The Lincoln fired up on first crank. An anomaly. Barry let it warm while he cleared its layer of covering snow. The car normally didn’t start and go straight to its high idle, usually it fluttered and knocked at start-up like the weak heart of an old man being resuscitated. But the car seemed brand new as Barry cleaned it with a whisk broom and scraper. He could remember his father bringing this car home in ’73, tickled pink that he finally owned a Lincoln.

There were no cars where Barry was parked. He got in and gassed the Mk V a few times, then he dropped it in drive and kicked it. The snow tires shot a long rooster tail into the rearview. The lot was slick, icy underneath, but utterly desolate except for a skeleton third shift. The only other vehicle in the outskirts was Vernon Reed’s Buick Regal, broken and cin-derblocked since summer when he transferred to midnights. Barry got crazy: reckless donuts, power slides, spins induced by oversteer. He considered this a fine end to the shift.

He took the main road out from the foundry, and caught himself smiling in the rearview as he went. The year’s first blizzard put a slowness over the city, like a hex had been cast on Detroit. There was an utter lack of urgency in anyone not driving a salt truck. The few other people that had to be out were mostly other shift workers headed home, trudging along purposefully, sliding to stops, spinning at starts.

Perfect, this fraction of time. To Barry it placed him in a free zone, a brief space, a world outside the one of responsibility that seemed born with his daughter like her twin. He wondered if he was just making a big deal out of all of this. He wondered if things were okay with the phone being busy and all. He wondered if he should even be entertaining the thought of stopping by the Shamrock for a beer. Did it make him a bad person? A rotten husband? A drunk? But without much more thought, Barry announced to his father’s plastic hula girl — always a freakish sight, but especially against a snowy backdrop — that he was stopping for a quick beer and a shot. He would call home from there.

Just like he promised, Barry order a beer and a Beam back. He showed Hal, the owner and a regular acquaintance, obligatory baby pictures. Barry accepted a second, congratulatory shot from Hal. It was the good stuff — single batch bourbon — stuff he didn’t share with the patrons. Barry got a dollar’s worth of quarters for the juke box which sat sad and quiet in the corner, like it was serving out a punishment. But as a plow truck scraped by the bar’s front window, Barry got a guilty feeling. After a moment, he pocketed the coins and checked his watch. Almost 12:00; too late to ring the phone. He cashed out, said good night, left a nice tip, then cursed himself for stopping on an evening such as this. He felt sure Sera would be freaked as he angled the Lincoln back to the drag.

He thought back to a time right before the two of them got married. They were dating and had stopped at Micky D’s after pricing air compressors from Sears.

“You want kids?” she asked as she popped a chicken nugget into her mouth.

“Yeah. Absolutely — kids. But not, like, until I’m finished with school and have a good job. I mean, anything but the foundry, really. But yeah, definitely, kids. Definitely with you.” They craned across the bench seat of his truck for a kiss that tasted of hot mustard and fryer oil while driving up the Lodge. Only five years back, but Barry reckoned the past in dog years. It seemed like he’d uttered those words more than thirty years ago.

The salt trucks and plows had hit the main thoroughfares, but the Lincoln was rear wheel and open differential. It made even slightly slippery a chore. Barry now drove carefully on the remnant ice. He cursed himself for losing track of time, for stopping at the bar. It was just after midnight. Why didn’t he just call from there? He could see the low, full moon through patchy clouds and breaks in the sky. He turned off the radio and tried to concentrate on the road, but not the moon. It was bigger than him, and it sat just above his hood like a deluxe option his father had ordered for the vehicle when it rolled off the line. Barry sat back in the bucket seat as he got a good, clear view. He was iffy, and prepared to ask the moon for answers, but stopped short as the dead rock looked back stupid, offering nothing but luminescence.

He pulled onto Avalon from Van Born and noticed the streetlamps were out. The block was dark, then the next, and the next. No house lights, just the beams from the Lincoln cutting a path Barry could drive in his sleep. He moved through the old streets and turned into the cleaned and salted drive. Mr. Burns had indeed come by and ran the snowblower over everything. That old man and his snowblower. Sera must have shoveled the steps and porch.

The porch light was off and Barry knew he was in trouble, as the light was always left on. The house was colder than normal. On the kitchen table, a large candle sat on an old stone plate. The three wicks flicked with the drafts from outdoors. A note lay on the clean Formica table top near the candle.

Barry ate quietly, by the light of the candle: a plate of cold roast beef, dab of brown gravy, cold redskin potatoes with onions, milk from the carton still cold in the fridge.

He soaked the dishes in water; carried the candle into the downstairs bathroom, where he showered. He checked his watch on the way up to bed: 12:55.

The bedroom seemed warmer to Barry, yet utterly dark without the glow of the digital clock. His calm child slept in her crib, and his wife, soundly in their bed. The two of them breathed soft and patterned in unison as he did everything not to wake them. The quilt his mother-in-law had made by hand had emerged from its seasonal retreat. Barry pulled himself so softly into bed. His wife spoke in half-sleep as she stirred to face away from him.

“I was worried,” she mumbled. A long second passed, then another. “Couldn’t stay awake though,” she said. A moment drifted by and Sera asked with a sleepy concern, “What time is it, baby?”

“It’s not too late,” Barry whispered as he pulled up next to her. “Eleven-thirty.” He repeated, “Not too late,” and mimicked her shape while nuzzling in search of what was still good in the world. He listened for some time expecting something, anything, but heard only the tiny signs of patterned life en-gulfing the small, dark room.

Night coming by Desiree Cooper

Palmer Woods

Why doesn’t the key fit?

Nikki hesitated for a second in the early dusk, wondering if she was at the right house — whether the hundred-year-old, rambling Tudor was really where she lived. She put down her briefcase, and looking around nervously, laid her black leather purse down beside it so that she could try the key with both hands.

Nikki had left work early hoping to avoid just this kind of meeting between herself, a locked door, and sundown. The spiral topiaries flanking her front door stood mute. She flinched as a squirrel darted across the damp cedar mulch.

“Damn!” she said out loud, jiggling the key impatiently in the swollen lock. “Damnit all!”

It was stupid, she knew, but suddenly she wanted to cry. Maybe it was the tension that had built up during the desperate rush home to meet Jason, only to see that he hadn’t made it there yet, the house disappearing into blackness, the porch cold and unlit.

Maybe it was because she didn’t really want to go with him to the Diaspora Ball after all. They went to the benefit for African American art at the museum every year. She was tired, feeling nauseous. Couldn’t they skip it, just this once?

Stemming easy tears, she gathered her things and clomped to the back of the house, her sleek pumps crushing the brittle leaves in her wake. The motion-sensitive lights along the side of the house blinked on, holding her startled in their beams.

Entering the backyard, Nikki scanned it quickly: the brick barbeque pit, the teak outdoor furniture, the star-white mums offering a last bloom before frost.

No one was there.

Of course no one’s back here, she thought, sniffling courageously. This neighborhood is safe.

It was as if the house had been waiting for those magic words, for her hands to turn the key with patience, for her clammy palm to push open the door, for her feet to tread cautiously into the warmth of the kitchen.

“Whew,” Nikki blew, immediately flipping on the light and locking the door behind her. Putting the briefcase down, she kicked off her pumps and rolled down her panty hose, which, of late, seemed to be even more confining.

Hungrily, she opened the refrigerator. It was typical of DINKS — couples with double income, no kids. Leftover Chinese, a bottle of Fat Bastard Chardonnay, fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt, Diet Coke.

Nikki eyed the wine but thought the better of it, slamming the door. Instead, she took out a box of Cheerios from the pantry and munched to quell her nervous stomach.

Just a few handfuls, she promised herself, glancing at the clock. Jason will be home soon and we’ll eat dinner at the party.

She dialed him on his cell, but got his voicemail. Shrugging, she picked up her purse and briefcase and went to the front of the house to turn on the lights.

5:30 p.m. It wasn’t like Jason to be late without letting her know where he was — especially these days. Nikki paced before the leaded glass windows of the living room, her mind racing.

Maybe there’s been an accident, she thought. Maybe he’ll never walk again. Maybe he’s …

“He’s just running late,” she said out loud, her voice echoing around the vaulted ceiling. She tried Jason’s cell again. No answer.

Making her way across the marble foyer to the den, she turned on the lights in each room as she passed. The quivers returned to unsettle her stomach. Her muscles drew taut like a cat’s. Placing her briefcase on the coffee table, Nikki plopped on the leather sofa. She tried to concentrate on the paperwork she’d brought home, but stopped after only few minutes. It was futile. The words had no meaning. She felt like an actress, improvising busyness for some invisible audience.

Every once in a while, Nikki touched the back of her neck where her short black hair lay in soft curls against her chai tea skin. Had she imagined that swift puff of air — a stranger’s warm breath?

She thought about Jason’s bottle of wine chilling in the refrigerator and was tempted to dash back through the empty house to take a sip. Instead, she picked up the remote, turning on the design channel. But soon she found her attention shifting from the flat-screen TV to the neighborhood security truck outside, its yellow patrol lights splitting the night.

“You’ll love it in Detroit,” Jason had said about his hometown.

That was five years ago, only weeks after they’d graduated from Emory’s business school. Nikki remembered the wide grin on Jason’s handsome chestnut face as he’d flapped open his offer letter from General Motors. She’d thrown her arms around him, her heart clutching. Her mediocre grades had left her without similar options.

Nikki’s mother had cried when she’d found out her baby girl was moving from Atlanta to Detroit, of all places. Nikki had cried, too, as she’d followed Jason to the Motor City, red-eyed and rudderless.

The newlyweds had sublet a loft in the Cass Corridor next to Wayne State University that first summer. Jason had convinced her that it would be a hip place to live, a place where the hookers coexisted with organic bakeries and socialist bookstores.

For Nikki, Detroit had been her first real adventure. Raised by a black middle-class Atlanta family, she’d walked on the debutante stage at sixteen and graduated from Spelman University at twenty with a marketing degree — the third woman in her family to attend the historically black women’s college. She’d applied to Emory to assuage her parents, who’d kept asking, “What are you going to do now?” Her performance at Emory was lackluster, reflecting both her ambivalence to business school and her waning interest in marketing. But when she’d met Jason Sykes, a well-heeled Detroiter who had a way with numbers and women, she decided that her investment in graduate school would pay off in one way that she hadn’t predicted. She married him after their first year.

She’d been immediately seduced by the side of Detroit that never made newspaper headlines. There was the large, tight-knit black upper class, with their galas and vacations on Martha’s Vineyard. In addition, there were the unbelievably long July days when the sun didn’t set until after 9 p.m. During her first summer, the city seemed to be in permanent celebration with endless concerts, happy hours, ethnic foods, and festivals.

Maybe Jason was right, Nikki had thought. Detroit just gets a bad rap.

But being from Atlanta, she had no way of knowing that she was experiencing only a seasonal euphoria. As summer turned to fall, a paralyzing darkness encroached upon the city. By December, it seemed to cut the afternoons in two. Nikki found herself leaving the house in the morning and coming home at night without ever seeing the sun. For months on end, the drag of winter circled from gray to black, then back again.

Thankfully, she’d landed a position as a private banker with a suburban boutique bank that first fall. The high-powered job helped rescue her mood.

Their second year, they’d bought in the exclusive Palmer Woods, the same integrated, ritzy neighborhood where Jason had grown up. Despite her privileged upbringing, Nikki had a hard time comprehending the wealth that the stately homes represented.

“The Archbishop of the Detroit Archdiocese lived there,” Jason had said, pointing to a sprawling estate that looked more like a castle than a house. “Then one of the Pistons moved in — can you believe it? And that’s the old Fisher mansion.”

Fisher, she realized, as in Alfred Fisher, the auto baron. As in one of the many car moguls who blossomed in Detroit in the early twentieth century. Jason was full of stories like that, stories that made her think of the neighborhood of stone mansions, carriage houses, and English gardens as something out of a fairy tale.

“During World War II,” he said, “people had to wall off entire sections of their homes to save energy. Neighborhood patrols went around at night and knocked on people’s doors if any light was showing through the windows. Some people filled their attics with sand in case the roof caught on fire.” When Nikki looked at him quizzically, he added, “Air raids.”

Their own house had only three owners, the last of whom had sealed the drafty milk chute and turned the maid’s quarters into an exercise room. But it was the back staircase — the one that went from the maid’s room to the kitchen — that had given Nikki pause.

“Why would we need that nowadays?” she’d asked as they considered putting down an offer.

Jason had looked at her and shrugged. “I don’t know. A secret escape route?”

It had been just a joke, but many nights since, Nikki had been lying awake imagining herself scampering down the back stairs, away from an intruder. Or worse, an intruder creeping up the hidden staircase to where they lay sleeping.

Nikki had quickly filled the den, dining room, and master bedroom with furniture from mail order catalogs — the working couple barely had time for grocery shopping, much less interior decorating. They left the rest of the sprawling Tudor echoing and empty. On weekends, she and Jason spent Sundays trolling for antiques to accent the other rooms in the century-old house.

But deep down, Nikki worried that escape would be harder when weighed down with useless things.

Outside, a car pulled up in the driveway, the headlights forming prison shadows through the blinds.

Jason! Nikki thought. But before she could get up, the car backed out, then headed in the opposite direction down the winding, elm-lined street.

She sighed heavily, pushing aside her briefcase, hating herself for being so clingy. She’d rushed out of her suburban office at 5:00 so that she could beat the Friday afternoon traffic and meet Jason at home. She was always tired these days, and had hoped they’d have a couple hours to unwind before getting to the Diaspora Ball by 8:00.

Now it was nearly 6:30, according to the dull green readout on the cable box. I guess I should get ready, she sighed.

Her footfalls made the refinished wood stairs creak. She laughed at herself for wondering — if only for a second — whether the sounds were coming from someone else lurking inside the old house.

She went into the bathroom, with its white pedestal sink and claw-footed tub. Running the hot water, she slowly took off her navy-blue knitted suit. She couldn’t help but notice the slight bulge of her stomach, which made her self-conscious even though it was easily hidden beneath her straight-cut jackets.

She hated being vulnerable in the bathtub with only the sounds of the settling house to keep her company. She thought about turning on the television in the master bedroom, or putting on some Miles Davis, but what if someone tried to break in and she couldn’t hear?

Jason will be home soon, she thought.

The warm water was like a baptism. She breathed in the lavender aroma of the suds, and let her shoulders relax. Sometimes she could be so silly, she knew.

When had she become a woman afraid to stay alone in her own house?

It was the news. The constant stories of car jackings and murders. The endless stream of black men in mug shots, or bent low with their hands cuffed, getting into the back of police cruisers.

No, it wasn’t just the news, it was the way the different social classes bumped up against each other in Detroit. In Atlanta, this house — all 5,000 square feet of it — wouldn’t come with a neighborhood, but with horses and a long, gravel driveway. And even if it came with neighbors, it wouldn’t come with poor ones.

Nikki added more hot water to her bath and closed her eyes. She remembered her first Halloween in Palmer Woods. How she’d gone and bought three bags of candy, even though she’d seen very few children in the neighborhood.

That Halloween had been particularly cold, and she’d wondered how the children were going to show off their angel wings and Superman capes if they were bundled up like Eskimos. She’d just come home from work and barely had a bowl of soup before the doorbell rang.

She’d put on her witch’s hat and run to the door, expecting to see tiny tots hollering, “Trick or Treat!” Instead, there were adults and teenagers, most with only a half-cocked attempt at a costume — the stark white face paint of the “Dead Presidents,” or a terrifying Freddy Krueger mask — holding out a pillowcase for candy. They came in droves all night, kids tumbling out of buses and church vans, and the hungry adults vying with them for the best candy.

The enormity of it had shocked and depressed her. As she opened the door, some of them peeked inside. “You have a nice house,” they’d said and she’d blushed, Marie Antoinette doling out her little pieces of cake.

Within an hour after sunset, she’d given away all of her candy and had started combing the kitchen for bags of chips, apples, anything. She’d finally closed the door and turned off all of the lights, trembling. And still, the footsteps came.

This was Detroit. A city where there was no place to hide.

“Nikki? Nikki!”

Suddenly came her husband’s voice on the stairs — the front stairs — his keys jangling in his hand. Nikki felt a wash of relief. “I’m in the tub getting ready. Where were you?”

“On an international conference call, couldn’t get away to call you. Sorry.”

Just like that, there he was grinning in the doorway, his teal silk tie setting off his russet complexion.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked, his eyes lingering on the bubbles glistening against her amber skin.

In his presence, the noises of the house silenced themselves. Her fears shriveled.

“Stop playing,” she said. “Get dressed.”

There’s no such thing as a little bit pregnant.

Nikki was surprised at how true the old adage was, how completely pregnancy had changed everything, though she was only nine weeks and barely showing. Even now, as Jason helped her into her plush, vintage Mouton coat, she felt a tip in the balance between them, something she hadn’t known in their five-year marriage.

“Careful,” he said, as he tucked her into the Cadillac.

Nikki noticed how her own senses had become heightened, almost feral. As they walked up the marble steps to the Detroit Institute of Arts, the cold spotlight of the moon caused her to squint. She could almost hear the clacking of the brittle limbs overhead as the autumn wind tossed the branches. Jason’s cologne — the bottle she’d bought him on her last business trip to New York — was suddenly overpowering. She thought, too, that she could sense something uneasy in the way he guided her by the elbow into the Diaspora Ball.

No, she thought. It was her own insecurity. The long-coming surprise of a baby after two years of trying. The kind of doubts that a child can raise in even the most prepared couples.

Jason had been less than accepting when Nikki had presented him with the blue plus sign on the plastic stick. Maybe he’d been going along with her quest for a child because he’d come to believe that they’d never conceive. But the positive pregnancy test had called his bluff.

Suddenly, he’d been full of reasons why they shouldn’t have a baby: He traveled too much; they didn’t have enough savings; in Detroit, they’d have to commit to twelve years of private school, not to mention a nanny.

Nikki had listened to his rational arguments and smiled. At least he was thinking like a father, even if he wasn’t sure he wanted to be one. Maybe what both of them needed was time to get used to the idea.

Since then, the baby had floated in the silent sea between them.

“Julie!” came Jason’s greeting as he planted the customary kiss on an acquaintance’s cheek. “Julie, you remember my wife? Nikki …”

Nikki smiled and offered a limp handshake. There was an effort at conversation — the Pistons, the mayoral election, the coming auto show — then on to another couple. Sipping club soda with a lime twist, Nikki soon found herself wandering away from Jason’s salesman-like energy. She needed to breathe.

She found herself where she always ended up whenever she visited the art institute, even when she came there for Thursday night jazz or Sunday Brunch with Bach.

The N’konde, a nail figure from the Congo.

It was like no other artifact in the African collection. Standing nearly four feet tall and carved out of ebony, its features were oddly un-African — a jutting chin, sharp nose, and bony cheeks. Against the palette of the smooth, smoky wood were the figure’s half-moon eyes, as white and dazed as a mummy’s. Nikki hadn’t noticed the cowrie shell belly button before. Suddenly it seemed to gape open rawly, like the figure had just been yanked from an umbilical cord.

What always drew her to the N’konde was its torso, jabbed and jammed with rusted nails, screws, and blades. According to the placard, when two parties reached an agreement, they’d drive a nail into its body to seal the oath. If anyone broke the promise, the N’konde’s spirit would punish him.

This N’konde’s body was a garment of promises, spikes sticking horribly from its chest, belly, shoulders, and even its chin. The figure’s mouth was partially open in a punctured surprise, its jagged teeth guarding a deeper darkness.

Nikki gazed at it in horrified fascination, wondering how the parties had decided where to impale the figure to seal a deal. What were they doing now, their contracts hijacked to this glass case, their promises forgotten and unaccounted for?

The din of the party nearly evaporated as Nikki stood there, entranced. The figure seemed to want to tell her something. She was suddenly aware of the low-grade nausea that was her constant companion. Her head started to swim.

Then came the sound — a man’s familiar laughter echoing in the empty exhibit hall.

“What else do you want me to do to you?”

Low murmurs. A woman’s muffled giggles.

Nikki thought she had heard that same sexy bass in her own ear many times. “Jason?” she whispered, as the N’konde stared, eyes hard white.

Her heart began to pound. Spinning around, she saw no one nearby. Wobbling, she wondered if she’d dreamed the voices. She fought to tamp the bile gathering at her throat. Heading into the crowd, she hoped to make an escape. She was nearly to the door when someone grabbed her arm.

“Nikki? I didn’t know you were here!”

It was her sorority sister, Terry Hines, dressed, as always, in shades of pink and green.

“Hey, Terry,” Nikki managed foggily.

“Girl, are you okay?”

Nikki blinked twice. Try to get it together. “I–I’m pregnant.”

As soon as it left her lips, she regretted the slip. Detroit was a small, big town. People were constantly cross-pollinating. Gossip took root quickly.

“WHAT???” Terry shrieked, her garnet lips shimmering against her dark honey skin. Then, lowering her voice conspiratorially, she asked, “How far along are you? Do you need to sit down?”

Before she could answer, Jason was at her side. “There you are,” he said, exasperated. “I was wondering where you’d wandered off to!” He sidled up to her, lovingly planting a kiss on her cheek.

“My God, Jason, Nikki just told me!” gushed Terry, not catching the look of foreboding in Nikki’s eyes.

Jason glanced from Terry’s exuberant face to Nikki’s miserable one, sizing up the awkward pause.

“The baby?” Terry prompted.

Jason was taken aback, but tried to conceal it. “OH!” he said, smiling uneasily. “Yeah! Imagine me — a dad!”

“We’re not really telling people yet,” Nikki said. “It’s still early, you know …”

Terry’s eyes grew large and she covered her mouth as if to cap a secret. “Of course,” she said. “But I just know that everything will be fine.”

“I’d better get you home,” Jason said. “You look a little pale.”

Nikki nodded, letting him lead her toward the door, his hand firm around her waist. Her body went limp against his, seeking forgiveness.

Outside, the night air had turned frosty, the flat moon giving the ground its luster.

“It slipped,” Nikki said finally, as they waited for their car.

Jason nodded, but said nothing.

While they rode home, she glared at the sights along Woodward, the strange people with their nightshade business, shivering in the cold. She was tired, her bones heavy.

Jason noticed her trembling and turned up the heat. The fan only blew the freezing air harder and she reached up to close the vents. She could feel his eyes on her, but he said nothing to lighten the mood. The moon, yellowing as it rose, followed them home.

His silence humiliated her, and she wondered how he’d managed so quickly to turn the tables. Wasn’t it he who’d just backed another woman against a display case and fondled her? Wasn’t it he who’d suddenly been unable to come home on time like he used to, who always left her waiting, who wouldn’t return her calls?

He pulled the Cadillac into their driveway, got out of the car, and walked around to her side to let her out. On the porch, he was about to put the keys in the lock, but instead he turned and looked at her.

“I don’t want a baby,” he said.

He stared at her, his eyes accusing her of ruining everything. But she stared back, her feet planted and steady, the queasiness fading into resolve.

“I do,” she said back, the shivering now ceasing. “I do.”

He lowered his eyes. For a long moment, he didn’t speak. “It’s cold out here,” he said finally. “Let’s talk inside.”

He leaned to put the key in the door, but like a dark invitation, it swung open by itself. His eyes shot her a question: “Didn’t you lock the door?” But it was too late.

Inside the house, the night moved.