South, America

by Rod Davis

  “Let’s just keep this confined to them,” he said to Elle.

  She had broken free of the kid, or maybe he just let her go. She tried to steady me. “Why?” she yelled at him.

  “I’m okay,” I told her, straightening up into the pain.

  He grinned at her, ignoring me. “Got you here, didn’t it?” He gestured toward Lenora. “She was always kind of a bitch to me anyway, wouldn’t you agree? Put the fear of god—or at least those gods of hers—in me every time I was around her. Hell of a nice body for an old broad, though. Guess it runs in the family.”

  “I’m okay,” Lenora said again. “It’s okay. . .”

  I nodded for Elle to attend her aunt. She did, pulling up a table for Lenora to sag against and take the weight off her upstretched arms.

  Trey smiled. A small, twisted-up kind. It was eating him alive at the same time it gave him pleasure.

  “Mary washes the feet of Jesus,” he said, in the tone of a pompous art lecturer.

  “Go to hell.”

  “He will, child.” That was Lenora.

  Trey dropped to one knee, perusing them as though studying a mildly interesting nature trail. “You’re both so terrifying. Considering.”

  Elle was trying to get a good look at the fingers. I knew she was trying to be professional, from her medical training. “All this,” she said to Trey as she tried to comfort Lenora. “All this. You really thought we were hiding that damn painting?”

  “Well, yes, come to think of it.”

  “You still do?”

  “I’ve become more enlightened. Still, I knew you wouldn’t let Big Red down.” He stood, sniffed and wiped his nose, walked away a few paces, seemingly lost in a thought. It was like time meant nothing anymore, here, in this place.

  My mind began to clear again. I rubbed the knot on the back of my skull. There was a little scalp blood but mostly just another bruise. I was going to look like an eggplant again. As if it would matter. “You plan on taking it, then?” I asked him.

  “I think that’s why we’re all here, no?”

  “He said you weren’t to get it. That I was to give it to him. Period.”

  “Thanks for reminding me. By the way, not to get to business in a rush, but you do have my Echave, don’t you? I mean, this would all be so boring otherwise.”

  “Why did you have to do that to her?” Elle said, as if repeating the question would bring a better answer.

  “It was kind of a waste. She didn’t have a clue where that little whore of a nephew of hers had put it, in the end.”

  “But you thought we would know?” I asked.

  “I knew he had told something to Elle that she would figure out. Given some incentive. I mean, she’s my blood, right?”

  Elle ignored it, rearranged the cloth a little more, about the only thing she could do. In the process, she leaned in and Lenora whispered something in her ear. Elle’s face drained. Then it went deep crimson, and finally she pulled back as if electrocuted. She tried to hide her expression but it lit her up like molten lava.

  “Do share,” Trey said, coming up close to her again. “So everyone will know what a couple of fingers were worth.”

  27

  From a physical standpoint, she was only a woman in her sixties, and she had been alone, stripped of everything, no thought of rescue or hope. Maimed by a man whose lifelong fear of her apparently had been transcended. Yet even in her torment and despair she had fought back in the only way she could. The same way I imagined Terrell had, in those last hours, those last few minutes, that final second as Trey smashed in the back of his head. Whatever she had given up, it had been a feint, a strategic ploy. Trey never got from her, any more than he had from Terrell, what he really wanted.

  At least that’s how I came to think about the ensuing half hour in the gallery, after Lenora had whispered to Elle the secret that, once released, made everything fit together at the same time it was exploding all our lives apart.

  Recoiling from Lenora’s revelation, Elle tried to steady herself against the wall. She scratched out in the air in Trey’s direction with one hand but it was like a nerve twitch from a corpse. In the next moment, her legs buckled and she sank to the floor, slumping against the wall like a rag doll spat out by a Rottweiller.

  I took a step toward her, but I was off-balance and Reggie had managed to get close again and pin my left arm behind me. Now his Beretta was pressed into my cheek.

  “What the hell, big sister, you didn’t even know Rose was alive.”

  I had never seen news delivered with such enthusiasm and sadistic glee, and I had once made my living among practitioners of the art.

  “Go to hell . . .” Her voice broke off, something that couldn’t rise from the bottom of a dank well.

  “The fuck do you care anymore? It’s not like you were much of a mom.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lenora moaned. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Elle managed. Then, flatly, evenly, “It’s nothing.”

  Trey laughed. “Nothing?”

  “It has . . . nothing . . . to do with this.” Stronger with each word.

  I started thinking about the best way to slap the gun away from Reggie and grab the Colt. Except that would leave Elle and Lenora vulnerable.

  “I think it has a lot to do with it. But hell, don’t let me be the judge. Share. You know. Your darlin’ daughter. Tell us all about her. Tell all of us about Rose. Tell your boyfriend here.”

  Elle looked up toward me.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Shut up.” Reggie tapped the muzzle against my nose. I tried not to show the sharp zing of pain.

  “Leave him alone.” Elle raised herself to her feet slowly, finding support from the wall. She leaned there more than a minute. Nobody said anything.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lenora said again, and began singing softly, some kind of hymn.

  “Rose is my daughter,” Elle finally said, each word a discrete agony. Her eyes tried to convey added meaning. Same as when she’d had to tell me Trey was her brother. All I could do was hope my eyes spoke in kind.

  Trey relaxed against one of the wall shelves. Hard to say what had happened to his face. It was arrogant, and smug, but more than that.

  The kid, Ernie, was sitting on one of the tables, watching everything with a cheap grifter smirk I was more than eager to erase.

  “I haven’t seen her since she was born.” Elle cleared her throat, choking down any hint of suffering.

  “It was fifteen years ago. I was in college. We all were.” She paused. Her jaw muscles twitched. Lenora continued singing, the words in a melody too slurred to understand. She had checked out.

  “It was the holidays,” Elle said, looking at me, more erect now, hands pressed against the wall, maybe digging into it with her fingers. “We had all come back home and decided to get together, talk about getting away to college, that kind of thing. First couple of days it was okay, but you know, we had changed a little. Trey, especially.”

  He smiled, crossed his arms.

  “He was drinking a lot and had started in on coke, although back then it didn’t seem like what it got to be.” She stopped for a moment and looked at Lenora, as though she had just remembered she was in the room. She knelt to pick up the drop cloth that had fallen off her aunt’s naked shoulders and draped it around her again. Lenora smiled and continued to sing.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” I said, before Reggie slapped the muzzle against my ear.

  “Stop it,” she said to Reggie, with that same authority she’d used on the redneck on the river trail back in Rosedale. Then, to me: “I’m going to. Tell it. I’m going to now.”

  Trey clapped, watching her. “Bravo, big sister. Sweetheart. Whatever. Get it all out. This is soooo arts district.”

  “Shut up.”

/>   He zipped his finger across his mouth. In that instant, I knew what I would do to him. I didn’t know how I would get there, but I knew. Reggie wouldn’t make it, either.

  “So one night Trey wanted to drive over to Clarksdale to hear some music and we all went, the three of us. We heard some of the local guys in a little place downtown. It wasn’t built up like it is now for the tourists. It was pretty rough.”

  She stood next to Lenora, stroked her cheek, smiled at her and turned to face the rest of us full on.

  “It got to be late and we’d all had too much to drink. Young Henry said he’d met someone and was going with him and would get a ride home and for us not to worry about it. It seemed okay, and then Trey and I went outside, down toward the river and railroad tracks back of town. Trey’s mood went funky the more we walked on. I think he was pissed at my brother.”

  He made a face of mock indignation.

  It fueled her. I could see the power of her wrath course back into her body.

  “So we were behind this warehouse building and the moon was almost full, and it was getting cold. I said we needed to get back but neither one of us were in much shape to drive so we decided to get a room at a little motel up on 61. Remember it, Trey? The Dixie Inn?”

  He feigned a yawn, looked at his watch. “You’re telling the story. Tell it how you want.”

  She took a step toward him. Ernie jumped up, ready to do whatever he was commanded.

  “Make my day,” Reggie hissed in my ear, pulling my left arm up a little higher.

  Elle checked her impulse and stayed put. I could see in her eyes that she wouldn’t for much longer. I wouldn’t, either.

  “So we had gotten double beds, one for each of us, and we went in and it seemed like it was just the end to the night. I’d just come out of the bathroom and was ready to crawl in my bed when he got other ideas.”

  I could feel Reggie’s ugly breath against my ear. “Don’t cry,” he said. “You’ll get over it real soon.”

  Elle glared at Reggie to shut him up again, then back at Trey. It worked. Even Lenora had stopped her singing and seemed to be conscious again of everything around her.

  “So basically he ripped off my clothes and smacked me around a couple of times and he raped me.” She was looking at nobody but Trey. “The worst. The worst . . . he said he loved me.”

  I don’t know what was passing between their eyes. It sucked the energy out of everything else in the room.

  “And then I passed out and I think he did, too. We woke up in the morning and he acted like nothing had happened. I guess I did, too. I just wanted to get home and I had nothing to say. No one to tell it to. We’d gone away, got drunk stayed in a motel. Who’d believe me? A black girl’s word against the rich white boy? We left before lunch.”

  Trey sniffed, wiped his nose again. I realized he’d been doing coke before we got there.

  “But the real news came about a month later. I thought about an abortion, but I couldn’t.”

  Her eyes went down a long moment. She looked at me and I knew it was just to know that I was there. Then back to him. His face was blank, as if he wasn’t sure how it was affecting him, hearing it.

  “I dropped out of school for a semester. I moved in with Lenora in Jackson. Even my mom and dad didn’t know where I was. I sent them letters from other places and told them I was working a semester with some friends. I had the baby a month early. We named her Rose.”

  At that her voice started to break. “The nurses took her and the adoption people came and that was the last I ever saw of her.” A long pause. “I was so worried there might be something wrong.”

  She took another step toward Trey. “But she’s fine. I guess that especially means something to you. Now.”

  Then she was on him. But he caught her right arm as it swung toward him in an roundhouse arc. Then he seized her left. He twisted both until her face showed the pain.

  Reggie wrenched up my arm and put the muzzle against my throat. “Like I said. A fucking excuse.” In doing so, he almost lost his balance with the bum leg. I almost went for him, but checked myself to see what Trey would do. Something was still missing.

  His face glowered, inches from hers. “You want to blame someone, talk to your aunt over there. She knew about us all the time. Why you think she took you in like that, with the baby? You think she wasn’t ready to deal with things if some little incest monster came out of your pussy?”

  “Shut up.” Her body struggled but he was stronger than he looked.

  “Ask her.”

  Elle got one arm free but he grabbed it again.

  Lenora tried to straighten up. If there were any way another ounce of misery could show on her face, it made an appearance.

  “Don’t, auntie. You don’t have to do anything he says.”

  “I just wanted to take care of you. Your momma and daddy couldn’t know. They couldn’t go through all that.” Then she slumped until the pain in her arms forced her to stand again.

  “Hell, they didn’t have to, did they,” Trey said. “Mine, neither. Dead people don’t feel a damn thing. You think my daddy’s plane crashed by accident? Hell, he knew what had come up from all this.”

  “What?”

  “His lawyer found out. Told him the whole deal about our little Rose. He was really quite ill about it.” He paused. “Beat the hell out of me. Actually he didn’t but some friends of his did, all the way out in Stanford. Hell of a deal. We never seemed to get real close after that.”

  “You’re lying. Junior would never do that.”

  Trey let Elle’s arms go. In the next moment he backhanded her so hard across her face she reeled almost to the shelves.

  With that, Ernie was across the floor and behind me—quick little shit—holding my other arm, pinning me between him and Reggie. I didn’t move. If I struggled and they found the Colt, we had no chance. But the math was still bad. Even discounting Lenora, Trey would be one on one with Elle. One of the hardest things to teach a soldier is to stand your ground even when you’re getting pummeled, and wait for the right moment. Because the wrong moment favors the enemy. It gets you killed.

  “Just a little taste of what your beloved Junior could do,” Trey snarled. “Trust me, sister, you never got to see the pugilist side of your dear old daddy. Me and mom did.”

  Elle regained her balance, legs apart, glaring, her hand on the red splotch on her cheek.

  “Anyway, Jack, my old friend, she seems to have lost the thread of this little saga. Ernie, watch her.”

  He obeyed and went to stand next to Elle in what I’m sure he felt was a pose of menace. Reggie decided to get a better angle on the gun and pushed the muzzle into my upper spine. I didn’t know how much longer before he might realize I was armed.

  “Sorry, got to watch you kids.” Trey moved to the center of the room. I computed my vectors of attack. “Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase and say that our little Rose went off to live with who knows who, who knows where. But this little voudou queen of an aunt knew. Sure did. She had her hand in everything, one way or another, didn’t you sweet?” He approached Lenora. Even in pain, her eyes had gone as hard as Elle’s.

  “You’ve gone down a bad way, Trey Barnett,” Lenora said.

  “Nice talk. Considering you’re hanging naked inside my gallery.”

  Elle shifted her position and Ernie stood directly in front, as if to block her.

  “So like I was saying, I was talking to dear Lenora here earlier tonight, in the back of a delivery van, touching up her manicure and so on.”

  Elle glared at him. “Shut up. Just shut up.”

  “Hey, baby sister, you told us your little tale. Thought you’d want to hear mine.”

  “I don’t.” But her glance to me said that she did.

  He sniffed.

  “He can’t stop talking,” I sa
id. “White line fever.”

  I knew the blow was coming and didn’t care. It came. But I managed to stand straight this time. What wasn’t killing us was making both of us stronger.

  “I mean,” Trey said, winking at me, shark-grinning at her, “I want you to listen real close because at the end there’ll be a quiz. It’ll be like, ‘What do I have to do to keep from flying up to heaven to see my faggot brother?’”

  “Screw you.”

  “Done that.”

  She held.

  “Turns out that to make the will work—for you, so you could rob me of my rightful inheritance—they would need an original birth certificate. Because otherwise who the hell would believe we’re related?”

  “We’re not.”

  “Pay attention, now, son.” It was Reggie, that bad breath again.

  “I know, culturally and all that we’re not, but of course by the iron laws of genetics it’s a lock. Now, I did a little looking through a lawyer friend of my own. Thing is, that birth certificate isn’t in the hospital records, or with the county, or anywhere at all that I know of.”

  He went back to Lenora, the coke trailing off, making him jittery. “But she does. Like I said, she had a hand in everything in that family.”

  Elle went to stand next to her aunt. Trey didn’t stop her.

  “I was helping Pearl,” Lenora said.

  “Well, be that as it may, you were messing me all up.” He walked close to Elle. His words came out a coke-y combo of steely staccato and syrupy drawl. “And here’s the kinkiest thing about it. Your brother, when he wasn’t fucking everyone else and stealing paintings from me, he was going to find that birth certificate and get it to me for a cool hundred thou in cash. That was the deal. You know: we meet, he gives me the painting, all is forgiven on that, and then for a little extra change I get the birth certificate and you know, life goes on. Hell, you never even would’ve known.”

  “Nice plan,” I interrupted. “So you killed him instead.”

  Trey waved one hand up to forestall Reggie’s expected bitch slap, as if it wasn’t worth the trouble. He came over to me, looked me over, shook his head, clicked his teeth.