Dark End of the Street - v4 (12 page)

His face and eyes clouded with purple smoke.

G
raceland Too stood in Holly Springs, a good thirty miles from Oxford and about fifty from Memphis. A back city street led to the old two-story plantation house guarded by stone lions. Just like the ones at E’s place. But this place wasn’t so fancy. A vine grew wild and twisted up over the first floor and by the chimney. And the owner, some heavy guy named Paul McLeod, had stuck a satellite dish out back. All for a good purpose, Jon Burrows thought. This place was jacked into Elvis twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

McLeod charged tourists five bucks to come look at his E collection. He’d take the early shift and his son, Elvis Aaron Presley McLeod, would take the night. Junior was about six foot five and had this “photographic memory.” He could remember things about E that Burrows had never even heard of.

The family had pictures of E on their walls, their ceilings, even in the damned bathroom. E played on about twenty televisions all through the house. Speedway in the living room. Change of Habit in the dining room. And the ’68 Comeback Special in the kitchen.

Burrows smiled and wiped the sweat from his brow with the black Resistol hat he’d just bought at a truck stop outside Vicksburg. It was there that he’d called Black Elvis who put him in touch with the McLeods. Black Elvis said they’d take care of him until the heat wore off a bit. So he’d stayed there with them for the last couple weeks. And man, did they treat him right. Salty country ham in the morning with a side of hot biscuits. Even had coffee mugs with E’s face on them.

Burrows walked down the gravel road, cicadas buzzin’ in the trees, a red twilight shining down on rain pools dotting the land. Tonight, everything smelled like sex. Rich and humid. Steam smoking from the hot ground. The air filled with sweet honeysuckle.

Man, he sure missed his woman, Dixie. Black Elvis said her trailer would be the first place the police would look. But, man, he wanted to call his Tupelo honey so bad right now the buttons were about to pop off his fly.

“Mister Jon,” McLeod called out into the early night.

Burrows looked up at the porch of the old house. McLeod said it was 150 years old. Maybe that’s why it kind of leaned to the right.

“Mister Jon, Elvis ’bout to put on Viva Las Vegas and I knowed that it’s yore favorite. You was tellin’ us about Miss Ann — you know, the Memphis Mafia called her Thumper — liked to get all hot when they was dancin’. You know, rubbin’ their noses together and all.”

“All right.”

“We’d made you a meal, too, Mister Jon,” McLeod said, his dentures slipping in his mouth. He held a plastic plate in his hand filled with a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. McLeod used two sticks of butter for each sandwich. He said that’s the only way E would eat ’em.

“ ‘Preciate it,” Burrows said, taking the plastic plate stamped with a picture of E from the Aloha from Hawaii special. “Think I’m gonna go hit Smart Boy in the cellar.”

“Whatever you want, Mister Jon. Black Elvis speaks real high of you. You holler out you need anythin’.”

“ ‘Preciate it,” Burrows said again, walking around to the twin doors of the cellar. He pulled the rusted handle on one of the doors and moved below the unmowed weeds and piles of chipped brick into the cool brick bunker.

He closed the door behind him and walked to the electronic screen burning beneath a framed velvet image of E. It was the holy one. The one where E is crying. A blue halo around his head.

He sat before the computer and clicked his way on to the Internet. The computer burped out some weird sounds before he heard the buzzing connection. He typed with one hand and held the sandwich with the other. What he wouldn’t give for an RC right about now.

He smacked on the sandwich, warm butter oozing down his arm, as he watched for the address prompt. Sure glad he’d hooked up with that German chick a couple years ago. When they left Mississippi for Las Vegas, she’d taught him all kind of things about computers.

Burrows pulled out a business card from his wallet and carefully keyed in the address. Within seconds, the home page for LOST YOUTH appeared. He clicked on a photograph of a poor Mexican boy and the face disappeared into another site called BOUNTY TIME. Names of wanted men were listed under regions. Burrows double-clicked on SOUTH. There he had a list of states. Under Mississippi he saw a name, picture, and last known address for a prison rat named Dock Boggs. Only $500. Shit.

The other hit was out on a woman named Lillie Fitzpatrick. She was worth $2,000, but was all the way up in Atlanta running a beauty shop.

He clicked on the next best thing. Louisiana. As the computer struggled to pull up the names, he finished off the sandwich and scraped the excess peanut butter off the roof of his mouth with his tongue.

In the past two years, he’d killed over thirty men and women. Made some good money at it, but was always on the run. He felt like E did at the end, when no one understood how hard it was to travel. But he didn’t have people to put tin foil on his windows while he slept in hotels during the day or give him special pills to make him feel all happy. He just hit the road with his gift, driving through the truck stops of the South. A hot shower and a country meal were about the only thanks he ever got for his true talent.

The computer screen brightened.

Just as you start to feel all sorry for yourself, E illuminates a man to his true purpose. “I’ll never doubt you again, E,” Burrows said, crossing his heart with his sticky fingers.

Jon Burrows knew one of the bounties.

He pulled out the switchblade his mama had bought him at Wal-Mart and flicked it open. In the gleam of its sharpened steel, he could see a warped image of himself. Beard. A couple years older. And tougher than ever.

Burrows snapped the blade shut and stared at the screen. The face of a white man with a scar across his left eyebrow appeared. Black hair with gray on the sides. Yep, it was him all right.

NICK TRAVERS.

And damn if he wasn’t gettin’ more valuable.

Twenty thousand dollars.

THE NEXT MORNING, I felt brittle carpet fibers on my cheeks and a hot slice of sunlight in my eyes. Sometime last night, I’d grabbed a stiff bedspread and pillow before the girl fell asleep and was slowly waking up sore as hell. I usually tried not to think about how many body parts I’d broken, sprained, or dislocated, but mornings like this made me aware. The girl was still curled up in bed, a loose strand of blond hair in her eyes. Lips pursed. Tightly wrapped in a smooth blue blanket.

Abby. Her name was Abby.

Last night, I could barely get her to eat the chicken sandwich that I’d ordered from the Peabody’s room service. Kept on saying she had to go, and made it to the door twice before I convinced her to stay. I showed her my driver’s license, scattered notebooks, and even the battered cassette recorder I’d used in the Delta. I tried to make her relax and even laugh.

She never did trust me. She was just beaten and scared. Absolutely no place to go. She spent the few hours before she went to sleep silently watching Letterman and then the last half of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in a worn JoJo’s Blues Bar T-shirt and pair of my Scooby Doo boxers. Didn’t even blink when Holly lost Cat.

She must’ve fallen asleep with the television on, I thought as I rolled on my back, still wearing the same clothes from last night but missing a sock, and stared up at Saturday morning cartoons. I got to my feet, scratched the back of my neck, and flipped the channels until I found Scooby. One of the originals with the miner 49er and the ghost town. Man, I loved that one.

“It’s the innkeeper,” the girl said in a sleepy voice.

I turned to see her hugging the pillow, her brown eyes underlined with dark circles.

“He found uranium in the mines.”

I turned back to the television and watched Scooby eating Shaggy’s sub sandwich topped with whipped cream and olives. I pulled the loose sock off my foot and took a seat by the girl. Canned laughter filled the room.

“You ever see the one with Mama Cass?”

“She owns a candy factory,” Abby said.

“Wow,” I said. “Thought you had to be a child of the ‘sixties to understand.”

“Cartoon Network.”

“Ah,” I said. “Probably watched Smurfs.”

“What?”

“Blue people,” I said, shrinking the distance between my fingers. “Real small.”

Abby looked away, her hair wired with static electricity, and clutched the pillow tighter to her chest. She exhaled a long breath as if she were trying to expel a sickness. “You going to tell me who you are?”

“I did.”

“What’s that then?”

I looked over to my Army duffel bag topped off with the Stones and North Mississippi All-Stars CDs and a stainless-steel Browning 9mm. A leg of clean 501s poked from the top.

She said: “Doesn’t look like teacher’s shit to me.”

I smiled at the girl. “I have a slight inferiority complex.”

I covered the gun with the leg of my worn jeans and opened a window. I looked out at the new baseball stadium built for the Memphis Redbirds and lit that first morning cigarette. As soon as I took a drag, the smell got to me.

I suddenly had the urge to wash my hands. Maybe take a shower. I could smell the burn of the rifle on my fingers — I’d later dumped both guns in the Mississippi — and could still feel their heat in my hands. I remembered the sound the man’s body made as it dropped with bloated weight into the cotton field. That wicked moon bathing his dead face with a bright glow.

Abby steadily got to her feet and joined me at the window. Small city noises bleated inside. Abby wasn’t that tall, came up about to my chest. Her hair was bobbed to her chin. She had the kind of face that could wear her hair like that. Delicate. Chin like the point of a heart. Bet she had a dynamite smile if she’d ever smile.

A warm breath of wind washed over my face and I kept staring at the downtown buildings and the bridges crossing the Mississippi. I’d fucked up last night. No matter what was going on in the casino, I’d killed a man. I’d shot him right in the heart. My head pounded and my mouth tasted like cotton.

I tried to take a deep breath but the air felt shallow in my lungs. I’d been in several scuffles and I’d fired my gun a few times. But each time I awoke not truly knowing myself.

All of a sudden Abby asked me, “You ever feel like you could stick your hand in a fire and not feel a thing?” She was rubbing the reddened marks on her calves and sort of talking to herself.

I listened. A couple of horns honked from down on Union. Scooby and the gang ran from the space ghost. I looked down at my bare toes. I wiggled the ones on the left foot. “Sometimes. . . . You want to tell me what was going on?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

“Who were they?”

Abby sat on the floor, pulled her knees to her chest, and started rocking. I came to her, bent down, and put my hand on her back. I dropped into this awkward half crouch, my knees aching like hell, but didn’t move my hand.

“I don’t know who they are,” she said again.

“Why would they want to hurt you?”

“You can’t help me.”

“Why would they want to hurt you?”

Abby placed her head on her forearms. “You tell me who they are and I’ll tell you everything,” she said.

“I have a friend we need to see,” I said, standing. “He’ll know.”

“You trust him?”

“Like a brother.”

ULYSSES DAVIS RAN a bail bonds business down off Poplar not far from the courthouse and the Shelby County Jail. The neighborhood had nothing but bondsmen for several blocks, their neon signs advertising in the windows with telephone numbers and assurances:
ANYTIME, ANY PRICE
. But you couldn’t miss ole U’s place. At first, it looked like a damned art gallery. A lot of blue neon and pictures of martial arts film stars lining the walls. I once kidded U about it, said it looked like these were the folks he’d bailed out of jail. But U didn’t think that was funny. Since the time we played on the same Saints’ defense, U rarely thought I was funny.

He was sitting at this big presidential wooden desk when I walked in with Abby. From his stereo, Marcus Roberts played jazz piano while patchouli incense burned from a nearby shelf. He’d tied his braided hair into a ponytail, sweat burned off his dark brown skin. A black leather jacket lay on the edge of his desk where he was filling out some papers.

Almost didn’t see the young black kid sitting across from U. Kid had a shaved head and multiple nose- and earrings. Couldn’t help notice there was a jagged slot in his left ear where he was bleeding pretty badly. Kid had duct tape across his mouth and was handcuffed to a ladderback chair.

“Hey, motherfucker,” I said.

U kept his eyes down on the paperwork and broke into a broad grin. “And how is your momma, Dr. Travers?”

Abby gave me a skeptical stare.

The kid handcuffed to the chair started making groaning noises.

U finished dotting some “i” or crossing some “t” and threw down his pen. He stood up to his six-foot-four, 240-pound frame and grasped my hand. Felt like he’d been working out. ‘Course that was all U seemed to do. Lift weights, practice tae kwon do, and eat his health food. Tofu and wheat grass. God. I had spent three years trying to get him to eat some ribs and drink some beer without luck.

“What the fuck do you want?” U asked.

“Tell you that I’ve always loved you. Make up for lost time.”

“Well, wait for me in the lobby, punk. Be through in a second. Antoine here decided to fuck me one time too many. Time to get my money back.”

Abby took a seat in front of a huge plate glass window with a view looking onto the gray coldness of the jail. She was wearing a pair of jogging pants I bought for her in the hotel lobby and another one of my T-shirts.

Outside, cops and worn-out families milled about. A couple of women dressed in pleather pants and halters walked by the glass window with a cold, indifferent affection.