Dark End of the Street - v4 (32 page)

U spoke a little louder when the muzzle of their guns came inches from our chests. “Hey man, saw your fire. Y’all wouldn’t know where a brother could find some decent barbecue?”

Much better, I thought, blood now swimming through my ears. Heart lodged behind my larynx. At least Al Jolson confused them.

“THRILL KILL,” Ransom said to Jon Burrows as they continued to hunt the wildcat in back of the casino. “Is that what it’s all about for you?”

“No, sir,” Jon said, takin’ good aim into the edge of cotton fields, where they’d seen the skinny ole cat disappear. He sighted down his arm and along the straight edge of the Beretta. For a moment, he wondered what would happen if he turned the gun around to Ransom and shot that grizzled fucker right in the throat. He rested the gun at his side, the grip loose in his fingers. Might as well hear what he got to say.

“Seems to me you know the difference,” Ransom said, smashing cotton plants under his muddy boots and tracking the wildcat into the woods. “You know when I was your age, I ran most of south Memphis. Took me about six months to figure out the players and then how to play them. Make them turn against each other. Make ’em afraid of me. Sometimes you got to crawl up high in a tree and watch the animals below you. It’s not hard.”

Ransom pulled out a cigar from a deep pocket in his heavy hunting coat. He snipped the end, offered another to Jon, snipped that one, and lit both. Jon took a good draw, trying to make sure he didn’t cough none and show he didn’t know nothin’ about cigars. He did. He’d been through his share of Tampa Nuggets and Swisher Sweets.

It was night and kind of cold. His face felt all funny every time the wind blew out of the trees and cut across his face. He’d shaved off his beard a few hours ago, leavin’ a pair of perfect sideburns just like E in sixty-eight, and splashed all his pores with Hai Karate. That wind ’bout tore his face up when they’d walked out back of the hotel and tromped about a half mile to that new site, lookin’ for some wildcat a guard had seen.

“How far you want to take this?”

“What you mean?” Jon said, spittin’ out the smoke from his mouth. Much more blue and heavy than them Nuggets. Felt rich.

“You travel a lot?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You taken lots of jobs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How’d you like to get out of that mess?” Ransom said. “I liked the way you took care of that body in New Orleans. You took care of any evidence real quick. If you’d moved that woman, we might have some folks breathin’ from behind. . . . Did Perfect really go crazy?”

“Yes, sir,” Jon said. He thought he saw some movement along the edge of the high grass, right near that clearing of maples. “You see it?”

Ransom aimed his Browning and fired off three quick hits into the grass. They ran over to the clearing to find an opossum, about the size of a fat squirrel, bleedin’ from the mouth. Ransom kicked it over and Jon saw a dozen little tiny babies, like pink worms, wigglin’ all about.

Ransom didn’t notice and kept walking along the edge of the woods, turning inside on a narrow path, all the way clearing away the branches for Jon. Ransom was showin’ him respect. Showed respect for his talents. Jon’s hands quivered along the handle of the gun.

Felt like he could run around the woods about a million times and not get tired. Ride into daylight without a lick of sleep. He was E.

“I could use you permanent,” Ransom said.

“Yes, sir.”

“So . . .”

Jon suddenly had the vision of Colonel Tom Parker and Hollywood and record deals and spreadin’ the word of E in every language on the gosh dang planet. E on cologne and shampoo bottles and bumper stickers. This is what Jon needed, someone to take his skills to the next level. Someone to get him them high-level killin’ jobs to make him a legend.

“Yes, sir,” Jon said, smiling, leg just ashakin’ at his side.

They were surrounded by darkness now. Nothin’ but woods and a narrow path. Tree branches swattin’ into their faces with every step. Barely even hearin’ the semis rollin’ off Highway 61.

A cry.

A dang wild animal in heat.

Jon followed Ransom down through a loose gathering of small trees. Small moon above beamin’ down some pale silver light that reflected off the leaves and the back of Ransom’s leathery neck.

Ransom crept along, listening.

“Kid, you know much about politics?”

“No, sir.”

“You know Tennessee is gettin’ a new governor next month? The first Tuesday in November?”

Jon listened for another wild cry.

“I don’t want to lose,” Ransom said. “You get back to Memphis tomorrow. All right?”

He looked back at Jon. Jon felt a heat spread through his body. Real warm. Man appreciated him. Colonel Ransom.

“Yes, sir,” Jon said, biting into the cigar and taking a long puff. A nice old buzz mixing with the Benzedrine.

Another wild cry. The fast rush of leaves and little twigs cracking under paws.

Jon saw the dang cat first. Didn’t even wait for Ransom, just squeezed off five rounds from his Beretta. That cat crying and wrigglin’ on his back, screaming wild as hell and swattin’ that ole tail.

Ransom laughed and ran to the animal. “Hot damn, boy,” he said. “That was a hell of a shot. See what I mean about lookin’ around you. Can you do that fast for me?”

Jon nodded as Ransom aimed at the wrigglin’ cat, ears pinned back and teeth exposed with fright, and fired off two rounds into the animal’s skull.

He kicked the cat in the side. “Mean bitch, too,” he said.

“Can you do that again?” Ransom asked.

Jon didn’t understand but didn’t want to say it. He looked down at his cigar; it had gone out and sat wet and useless in his mouth. He wanted to relight it more than anything in the dang world.

“Can you take care of another mean ole bitch?” Ransom asked.

The cat’s blood was scattered and red on Ransom’s boots like a crazy painter’s dream.

P
erfect walked back to her hotel room adjoined with Jon’s and noticed the connecting door was cracked open. She heard the buzz of a television on some kind of teenage sitcom where this little girl was a witch and had a damned talking cat. The cat made some kind of crack about the teenage witch’s boyfriend being stupid and a sissy and was shut up into a pet kennel to the delight of a laugh track.

She called out Jon’s name. Nothing. She checked the bathroom and even the closet and made sure the hall door was locked. Even if he was at the door right now she could scoot on out of Dodge before he knew she was in there. Nothing much in the bathroom. A toothbrush and a bottle of white pills. Wet towels on the floor. A wrinkled JCPenney catalog, opened to the teenage girl’s underwear page, lay wide open by the toilet along with a couple Captain America comic books and a Gideon’s Bible with a crude hand-painted image of Elvis on the cover.

The drawing was so bad that she could barely recognize the singer. His head was kind of lopsided and he had on a high, white collar studded with jewels and thick black sideburns. Below were the words: My name has Evil and Lives. It’s probably better not to worry too much about it.

Back in the bedroom, she opened the drawers in a long chest. Nothing. Not even lint. She looked under the bed and in the nightstand. Some stray socks and a book on numerology and sexual positions. But tucked behind a long row of curtains, standing on its side, sat a little Captain America suitcase. Something seriously made for an eight year old. It had been buckled tight, its plastic hide ragged and worn at the edges. She pulled it up to a coffee table, loose beams of sunlight breaking through the blowing curtains, opened it, and rifled through.

Inside: four pairs of dark-indigo unfaded Levis, five white T-shirts (crisp and ironed), four pairs of tube socks, a couple leather wristbands, a couple Polaroid shots of a naked woman with dark hair and long legs in a shower stall (on the back, words written in German), a couple more Captain America comics, Vitalis hair oil, a dozen identical postcards of Graceland, a beat-up cassette of Elvis: Live at Madison Square Garden, and a full bottle of Hai Karate cologne.

She thought she’d unearthed about every weird object that li’l ole boy could have until she found a purple Crown Royal bag under the Vitalis. Inside the bag, she discovered three books tucked away like holy texts. Elvis, by Jerry Hopkins; Elvis, What Happened?, by Red and Sonny West; and The Private Elvis, by May Mann. Each of the books had been charred at the edges and broke off in blackened pieces when she touched the ragged pages. Almost every line underlined in blue or red ink with paragraph sections in yellow highlighter.

It was Gladys who inspired him and encouraged him when the going was so brutal, so rough, when he was disclaimed, when he was ridiculed. It was Mama who made him believe that he could be a great star! Those people making fun of him, yelling and jeering and calling him “Elvis the Pelvis,” resounding in his ear into nightmares, would go, his mother reaffirmed. They would accept him, once they understood what he was really doing.

The paragraph from the Mann book was highlighted with yellow and had scrawled third-grade writing in the margins. Seemed like equations. Love + Mamma = acceptance/fortune. Acceptance comes with understanding of skills. Gladys’s middle name was L-O-V-E. Love is success.

She tossed the burned book back into the suitcase as if it was still on fire. As if the sickness of the mind that wrote it would somehow contaminate her. But before she could close the top of the suitcase, a little yellowed photograph came flying out. A middle-aged woman with massively huge hair — had to have been a wig — with a bulging throat and pig’s eyes held a small boy.

The boy wore a small T-shirt emblazoned with the face of Elvis wearing a lei. It read,
ALOHA
! The woman beamed like she was holding the answer to the world’s problems but the little boy had no emotion at all. Black circles under his eyes. His tiny arms as skinny as twigs with malnourishment. On the back, someone (obviously not the book scrawler) had written Patsy Roach with son, Absalom. 1939–1983. House fire.

She heard a key click into a slot, the jiggling of the tumbler, and a hard clack. She closed the suitcase, shoved it under the curtains, and bolted from the room.

She listened at the cracked door as he walked inside.

And for a moment, she thought she heard Jon sniffing the air like an animal hunting for its prey.

She was out of here. She’d find her way back to Memphis tonight if she had to walk the whole way.

ONE OF THE black-faced white boys made a mistake when he grabbed U’s five-hundred-dollar pair of binoculars and tossed them down the hill. The boy, thick-necked with a bristled haircut, then made a crack about the shiny rims on U’s truck. With a snicker, asked how long U had financed his vehicle. U smiled and nodded, giving one of those okay-you-got-me looks, his big hands at his sides. But as he dropped his head, U gave me a wink. So fast they didn’t see it.

His hands flew from his sides and knocked the AK-47 out of the man’s arms. As the other turned, I punched the fucker right in the throat and caught his gun before it crashed to the ground. I turned the gun around and used the muzzle as a handle and the butt for a club. I smacked the guy — a little skinnier than the other, with bad teeth — in the jaw and rammed him hard in the stomach, lucky the gun didn’t crackle to life, but not really caring. My face and ears felt as if they were baking in the sun as I threw the gun over my shoulder and straddled the man, beating the ever-loving shit out of him. I hit him across the temples and directly in the eyes and rammed my fist deep into his gut. He puked blood on himself as I reared back and felt strong hands grabbing my arms and pulling me back.

I clawed at the hands and kept punching that little redneck fucker right in the jaw, seeing Loretta lying on the floor of the bar and those tattered bedroom slippers on JoJo’s feet at the hospital. More hands reached for me and yanked me away. Spit flying from my mouth, yelling words I didn’t feel myself consciously saying. As Bubba and U pulled me away, I kicked the son of a bitch hard in the head.

“Cool it,” U said.

I was breathing so hard I almost choked in air. And as U’s face came back into focus, I bent at the waist as if waking from a strange dream. Bubba patted his strong fingers on my back and smiled at me.

“It’s all right, dude,” he said, in this cracked hoarse whisper. “Dude, it’s all right.”

“Bubba?” I asked. He speaks. The revelation made me almost forget about those stupid rednecks.

As I looked into his face, a white-hot light shined down from the trees and gunshots erupted closer. My body seemed filled with heated blood.

We ran quickly toward U’s truck.

But before we got close, about fifty men slathered in camou face paint, carrying rifles, and driving ATVs blocked our path. I slowed to a jog. I heard Bubba’s labored breath beside me.

The men told us to drop the guns.

We did.

We just stood there, hands on top of our heads, until they jabbed the muzzles of semiautomatic guns into our backs, and marched us down a thin but old path and into the valley.

A
n hour later, my knees screamed from standing on them so long. My shoulder, that I’d dislocated for the thirtieth time, ached in its socket so bad that I clenched my teeth in pain. I had my hands laced on top of my head. Bubba’s and U’s had been lashed behind their backs with rope.

The floor was smooth concrete and splatted with the occasional patch of leaking oil. Over our heads stretched a huge arc of corrugated tin forming some kind of large garage with a retractable door big enough for an airplane. The door was open. I could smell the Sons of the South campfires burning and hear gaggles of men talking.

Every time I breathed, the hot air expelled in a cloudy mass.

I looked over at U. He slowly shook his head and kept his eyes focused on the twelve men guarding us. He was watching hard, taking it all in.