The Deepening Shade

THE DEEPENING SHADE

New and Collected Stories

Jake Hinkson

PRAISE FOR THE DEEPENING SHADE

"Jake Hinkson is the kind of storyteller who picks the reader up by the ankles and shakes their heart out through their throat. The Deepening Shade is the best short story collection I’ve read in years." —Benjamin Whitmer, author of Pike and Cry Father

Collectively, these stories are a feat of black magic conjured by a master wordsmith and storyteller intimate with both the dark side and the resiliency of humanity. —Eric Rickstad, author of Reap and The Silent Girls

Copyright © 2014 by Jake Hinkson

Second Edition: 2019

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by JT Lindroos

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Deepening Shade

Maker’s and Coke

The Big Sister

The Girl from Yesterday

Randy’s Personal Lord and Savior

Aftermath

The Empty Sky

Cold City

Microeconomics

Good Cover

The Serpent Box

Night Terrors

Dinner with Friends

Casual Encounter

The Theologians

Our Violence

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Books by the Author

Preview from Guillotine by Paul Heatley

Preview from Main Bad Guy by Nick Kolakowski

Preview from Hipster Death Rattle by Richie Narvaez

For

Lindsey J. Muller,

My Other Brother.

When Jesus was nailed to the cross and hung there in torment, he cried out God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me? He cried out as loud as he could. He thought that his heavenly father had abandoned him. He believed everything he’d ever preached was a lie. The moments before he died, Christ was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship? God’s silence.

—Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade…

—Theodore Roethke’s In A Dark Time

MAKER’S AND COKE

I sat up with a start and called out Ellie’s name. Our empty house seemed to absorb the sound like a black hole, and I lay back against the pillows with one arm thrown over her side of the bed. Outside my window, the weak morning sun struggled against a damp cloudbank.

I didn’t drink that day. I stayed in bed and watched television. The financial markets all around the world were melting down like nuclear reactors. Two twelve year olds in California had raped and killed a sixty-five-year-old woman. The day before, a jihadist in Afghanistan had thrown himself into a schoolroom full of little girls and killed six of them. In between these horrors, a man came on to tell me that I could be free of sexual dysfunction. Another man came on after him and said I could be rich. Later still, a preacher stared into the camera, stared right at me, and said that the root of my anxiety was my sinful nature. I lay there and took it all in. Outside my window, the light didn’t change as the day limped by. The winter sky stayed gray, and when the day was over, the dim speck of the sun burned out like a mashed cigarette dying in a tray of ashes. And still I did not have a drink.

That night on my way to work, however, I stopped by Knight’s Liquor Store.

Mr. Knight was a retired Army sergeant who still wore his gray hair short and read Soldier of Fortune. When I walked in, he looked up from his receipts. Howdy, Officer Lowell.

I dusted some snow off my shoulders and my badge. Hey, Mr. Knight.

How goes the crime-fighting?

Okay. How goes the booze trade?

They say the economy’s on the skids, but folks still need to drink, I guess. Might need it more.

I picked up a bottle of Maker’s Mark and a two liter of Coke and took it up front. I said, I guess you’re recession proof.

He looked at me over some smudged half-glasses. I guess your business is pretty recession proof, too.

I nodded and crossed my arms.

He looked at the Glock on my hip. You ever have to use that thing?

No.

Really?

I’ve had it out, but I’ve never discharged it in the line of duty.

I’ll be.

I nodded, and he rang up my whiskey and Coke.

After I paid him, he asked, Headin’ home?

I caught myself before I told the truth. Yeah, I said. Gonna sit on the porch.

He smiled and bagged my bottles. Well, good. Any day you didn’t have to fire that gun is a good day, I guess.

I’d say so. I don’t have any desire to take it out in a hurry, I can tell you that. I looked down at the gun. ’Course, still…

He pushed my bag toward me. Still what?

I shook my head. Nothing, I was just thinking. It’s funny. I’m a crackerjack shot.

He stared at me over his half-glasses and the thick ball of his nose. That a fact?

Marksman.

Different thing shooting at somebody real.

I assume so, but I’m not looking to put it to a test unless I have to.

He took off his glasses and rubbed the crinkled bags under his eyes. Different thing shooting at somebody real, he said again.

I went outside, stashed the bottles in the trunk and drove over to the station to report in. By midnight, I was parked in the side lot of a gas station looking down Colesville Road at the Metro station, and I hadn’t touched that booze in the trunk yet. Beside me, in the passenger’s seat, was an empty Chick-fil-A bag and a Styrofoam cup full of melting ice. I watched the buses roll in and out of the Metro station, watched the trains from DC coming and going. I tried not to think of Ellie, but I couldn’t stop. She was like a virus eating away at my brain. I couldn’t think right. I couldn’t hold any thought in my head for more than a second unless I was thinking about her. When I did think of her, my brain would just grind to a halt. The terrible thing, of course, was that there was really nothing left to think about. She wasn’t coming back, and that was the all of it. She had said there was no one else, no other guy, and I believed her. It wouldn’t really matter if there was someone else, anyway. She didn’t love me, and that was the main thing. She’d made that clear enough. She didn’t love me. Once I thought about it, I realized no one else loved me, either. I sat there and considered it. There was no one left on this earth who loved me. That wasn’t self-pity; it was math. My world had gotten smaller and smaller, year by year, and now that Ellie was gone, it was a world of just me.

Fuck it, I thought. Why think about this shit?

I pulled the patrol car behind the gas station dumpster where no one would see me, got out of the car and opened the trunk, dug out the bottles and went back to my seat and made a tall whiskey and coke. I didn’t use much whiskey. Didn’t want to get drunk. I just wanted to clear the decks a little, clear my brain out so I could think about other things.

I had a drink. It was good. I finished that cup in about one minute, maybe two. I figured I didn’t use enough Maker’s. I’d barely tasted it. I stiffened up the drink, drank it slower. Took my time with it and watched the last trains pulling into the Metro station down the hill.

I had a third drink, and maybe a forth, making them a little stronger as I went along. I was still okay, and I wasn’t really thinking about Ellie anymore. I was thinking about a girl I had met in college. She was in my Spanish class, and she had black hair and blue eyes, I couldn’t remember her name.

I had another drink. I lost count as to the number of drinks. I thought about things. I thought about all the things I’d forgotten, like that girl’s name, or the sound of my mother’s singing. She had sung to me when I was a kid, but I could no longer recall what her voice sounded like. I couldn’t remember Ellie’s birthday. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. I couldn’t remember a lot of the people I’d known. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like I’d lost most of my life. The days had slipped past, and now they were gone.

This life is a faithless whore, I said, slurring the words a bit.

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. Needed to stop drinking soon or I wouldn’t be able to make it home. Down at the Metro station, the workers closed the big iron gates for the night. Then I saw something in my rearview mirror. A short old man stepped out of the gas station. He had a funny face, and he was wearing a fleece jacket. I shook my head and turned around in my seat. He was about twenty-five yards away from me. His whole head was weird.

It took me a second. His head was Dick Cheney. He looked around. C’mon, he said to someone.

Another guy in a Dick Cheney mask came out of the gas station. He was taller than the first. He wore a puffy black jacket and carried a hatchet in his right hand.

Fuck, I said.

When I spun around in my seat, I dropped my cup. Whiskey and coke exploded all over the place. The seat, the steering wheel, the windows.

Damn it!

I looked up in the dripping rearview mirror. The two guys hadn’t seen me behind the dumpster yet. The shorter guy was looking around. He was nervous. They were waiting on something. I shook my head, rubbed my eyes. I cursed again and pulled out my Glock.

Now what? I said to the empty car. You gonna go up there and arrest them?

Then what? Call for back up? Stinking of whiskey?

I hit the steering wheel and jumped when I heard a gunshot. I looked back at the two Dick Cheneys. There were looking at me because I’d just shot a hole in the roof.

God damn it, I muttered as I stumbled out of the car.

They took off. I stumbled after them in my soggy shoes and soaked pants, but when I got up to the gas station I heard another gun discharge and felt the inside of my chest change. My insides moved. I turned and a third Dick Cheney stood in the doorway of the gas station. He had fired a handgun. I was too drunk to be scared about that. His arm had jerked back. He righted his arm and aimed at me, and I shot him through one of the eye holes in his mask.

He spun to his left, his arm flying up like he was trying to catch something, and he crashed back into the gas station, knocking over a display of chips. Wobbling over to him, I felt an odd movement in my chest, like a tire deflating. I sat down beside him and pulled off the mask. Half his head came off with it. What was still attached was the freckled face of a teenager.

A man kneeled down next to me. He was a brown-skinned man with a short beard. His name tag displayed the name of the gas station and his name: Ataurraheem.

Are you okay, officer? he said.

How do you say your name? I asked. I had to pull the words up from my chest. He stared at me a second.

He said something.

I shook my head and leaned back on the linoleum to be more comfortable. Leaning over me, he said he would call the police.

I clutched his hand.

Please, I said. Don’t go.

Ra-heem, he said. My friends call me Ra-heem.

Raheem, don’t go. Don’t call them yet.

You’re bleeding, he said. You’re bleeding a lot.

Wait, I said. Don’t call them till it’s…See, I’m drunk. She left and I’m drunk and I just killed a kid. Don’t call them till it’s too late.

He had soft brown eyes, kind eyes. I held his hand. Please, I said. Don’t call them till I’m gone. I saved you. Don’t call them yet.

He nodded. Okay, I’ll stay with you.

Thank you, I said.

I had to push that last word out and then my voice sucked down into my chest. All of me seemed to draw into my chest. I closed my eyes, but I held onto his hand until I couldn’t feel it anymore.

Then I let go.

Back to TOC

THE BIG SISTER

I was shaking my tits at the Friday night crowd when I saw my little sister walk through the back door of The Fur Trap. Cinque, the bouncer, asked her for her ID, and then they talked for a second. Janie must have told him she was looking for me because Cin said something, and Janie looked up at the stage where I was straddling a chair in nothing but high heels and sweat. I spun off the chair, scooped up some moist clumps of cash from the stage, and then with one last jiggle for the boys in the front row, I danced off through the tinsel backdrop.

They cut the song I’d been dancing to, and an awkward silence filled the bar before the crowd started muttering. As I hurried to the dressing room, I heard Ralph fumbling over the loudspeaker, Uh…that was Miss Dixie Delight, ladies and gentlemen. She’ll be back…later, later on in the evening. Up next…let’s see…

A new redhead named Nancy rushed past me, stubbing out the cigarette she’d just lit up. She grumbled as she slipped through the tinsel, You owe me one.

I heard Ralph boom, Vanessa Domination, ladies and gentlemen! as the crowd started to clap and cheer.

I thought about running out to the floor to find Janie, but I didn’t want to be mobbed by a bunch of drunk assholes on the way. I kicked off my heels and pulled on some jeans. I was digging through my gym bag for a bra when Janie came through the backdoor.

My sister was seventeen years old, and she didn’t look a thing like me. She looked like our mother, as short and shapely as a French fry. Somehow I wound up with all the tits and ass in our family. I loved Janie, of course, but we’d never been close because I’d always felt weird that I was so much better looking than her. That sounds like an arrogant way to think about it, but it’s the simple truth. Janie looked like a math nerd, which is what she was—or at least what she had always been. She had a plain face with a small nose, small lips and tiny little ears. She never met a frumpy sweatshirt she didn’t like. When she came through the backstage door and caught me topless, I felt weird