by T. Braddy
“But guess what? You’re going to come out. Some of y’all – the old-timers here – have been through this a number of times. You might even have a name somewhere on you. Somebody slipped and fell and didn’t get back up. Some of the people we lost didn’t go six feet southward, but off into their own worlds, their own heads. They turned their backs on us to go back to what darkness held them tight, because the light was too much.”
Winston had paused to wipe his eyes, to give his voice a chance to recover.
“But the light is all we have. It’s a pinprick at the end of a long and dark hallway, but goddamnit, it’s there, and you’ve got to hold onto it. Through your anger, through your sadness, through your desire to drink, you have to hang onto hope, because sometimes that’s the only rope that will get you through the darkest passageways of this journey. Right now, that might be all you have.”
The silence in the church at that moment could have crushed a Buick. Winston leaned forward on the lectern, knuckles white against the stained wood, opening his mouth as if he had something else, one last thing, he wanted to say. Instead, he fought his cracking voice enough to say, “That’s enough. Let’s share our memories of Brother Tayquan.”
It was dark passageways I contemplated as I got home. I slipped in through the back door and noticed an immediate shift in the air.
“Hello?” Someone was in the house. I smelled it. I felt it. I sensed it in my bones, the way I had become accustomed to, detecting when my waking life melted into a hellish Salvador Dali painting.
The lamp by the living room couch flicked on, and instead of a skinny dude with a shark’s stare looking back at me – which is what I had imagined – instead, I was shocked to see Jess leaning forward, hair hanging in her face.
She leaned back, and the bruises became immediately apparent. Someone had kicked the living shit out of her, and I figured I could take a few guesses who.
“I didn’t come to you because I need revenge,” she said. Her weak voice strained to reach me all the way across the living room. “I came to you because I’d hoped you would understand.”
She had placed a small trash can between her feet and now spat a gob of red liquid into it.
“Ex boyfriend?” I asked.
She forced a smile. “You could say that.”
“Richie,” I said.
I didn’t know this girl. Didn’t know her history. Richie was the only real answer I had.
“We used to date. He’s harmless.”
I backed into the kitchen and wrapped some ice in a hand towel.
“Doesn’t seem harmless,” I said, handing it to her.
“You coming around him freaked him out. He can be paranoid.”
“He can also be getting high again. In fact, he’s most definitely doing that. Guys who fall off the wagon often land hard, blame other people for it. Get crazy. Get violent. That why he hit you? He geeking again?”
She pressed the ice against her lip and half-nodded.
“So you come to me in the middle of the night because...well, why did you come here?”
She sniffed. “I don’t know. He had a message for you. Wanted me to warn you, all that shit, but I got here and felt stupid, so I knocked on the door, and it opened.”
I chose my words carefully. “What do I have to be warned about? More importantly, who do I need to be warned about?”
“Richie’s” – she touched her face – “He’s whatever, but he runs – he ran – with a pretty tough crowd. They’ve got a handle on the drug trade here. Lots of illegals bring coke and whatnot from Mexico with their wolves when they cross the border. And then there’s the meth.”
“How high are you?”
“A little. I’m coming down.”
“How much of your argument with Richie was drug-fueled?”
She held her index and thumb close together. “I love him, but I don’t want to be with him.”
“He’s not sober.”
“Neither of us is sober. Can I smoke in here?”
I shook my head but led us to the front porch.
“Listen,” I said, sitting on the steps, with her easing down beside me, “I didn’t mean to get in the middle of something–”
“You didn’t,” she replied quickly. “Richie and I are like a math problem you can’t solve, or one of those paintings by that one guy, M.C. something or another.”
I shrugged.
She said, “He is not in the picture, but I stick around because it’s comfortable. He thinks you and I have something, and he wouldn’t normally give a shit about that, but– Rolson.”
“Yeah?”
“Those guys are really dangerous. They’ve put junkies in the hospital, hacked dudes to pieces. They have this one guy, Grin–”
“Grin?”
“Grin.” She took a long drag, blew the smoke into the air above us. “He’s got a rusty old saw, says he keeps a collection of hands nailed up in his workroom.”
“Christ.”
“Right.”
“He got a scar?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Tattoo on one side of his neck? Bad complexion?”
Jess flicked ash on the highest step. “Doesn’t sound like somebody I know. White dude? Black dude? What?”
“Mixed, maybe. Tan. Blue eyes. He’s definitely got a few bodies on him.”
She shook her head. “Never seen him. I’ll let you know if I do.”
I contemplated that for a while. Even in my mind, dude’s eyes cut right through me. He was going to be trouble, and something told me he wasn’t going away.
She finished her cig and stubbed it on the steps, flicked the butt into the shrubs to her right.
Something wasn’t right. It didn’t make sense. Richie used people, sold drugs, obsequiously gained friends, but he didn’t hit women. It was a stab in the dark. An answer because it was the only answer I’d had. I didn’t expect it to be correct. But she swore that was the case, and I wasn’t about to give her the third degree over it.
I said, “What are you really doing here? You’ve got plenty of streetwise friends, and I don’t suspect you need me to protect you, so what’s going on?”
She turned, glanced away, and for a split second, she looked exactly like Vanessa. Was Vanessa. Might have been a simple trick of the brain, but she wore it like it was reality. Maybe people caught in awkward lies are possessed of a certain kind of facial expression.
“Maybe I do have friends,” she said. “Maybe they aren’t that trustworthy. Maybe they’re all meth zombies who need a mad scientist. Maybe Richie’s that guy. Maybe it’s the guys above him.”
“That’s a lot of uncertainty.”
“Either way, I don’t have a lot of help where I can get it.”
Her face swayed before me like the shimmer of still water, and she dropped her head on my shoulder. It felt strange, but that very well could have been the absence of human contact playing its usual games with me. Something long complacent inside me stirred, and I let it linger there for a while.
“If you want to understand what Vanessa went through in Savannah, you’ll need to take a running dive into the rabbit hole.” She sighed. “I know that’s what you want. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it? In Savannah?”
Yes.
“I just think I’d ended up killing myself had I stayed in Lumber Junction any longer.”
I felt a wetness on my shoulder. “I think that’s what’s happening to me here in Savannah. I’m fucking killing myself.”
She sniffed.
I didn’t press the issue. I said, “That’s the path I was on. It took a slug to the guts for me to get on my feet and stumble away. Maybe a little bit more than that.”
“The bullets have missed me, so far.”
“Uh-huh.”
She said, “I mean, literally. I’ve been shot at, saw a few people catch one in the head. Crowded around a table, smoking out, having some dude kick in the door and empty a clip
. No shit, two people directly next to me died.”
I stood up, and she stretched.
“I’m going to push a little bit harder on Richie, see what he can give me. Might help your situation, but more likely it’ll push him even closer to the edge.”
She said, “So you’re staying I should stay at an arm’s length from the dickbat.”
“Absolutely.”
“I can’t stay at home. He knows where I live. His heavies-”
She stopped, looked up. Now I didn’t believe anything she said. I wanted to ask, Who did this to you? Who actually did it to you?
But I didn’t. She was my in. Even more than Richie, she appeared to have the inside track on the people who knew Van, the ones who could give me insight into who was tormenting me and how I might fight back.
“I could...stay here.”
My heart lunged in my chest. She was a beautiful, if damaged, woman, and she wasn’t serious about me. I had no mistaken ideas about what would happen were she to stay the night.
“I’ve got this secondhand couch,” I said. I played it straightforward. “My bed ain’t much, but it’s got sheets on it, and they’re mostly clean.”
Her posture faltered. “That’s not exactly what I meant.”
I fully intended to brush her advance aside, but moments later found her lips on mine, and all my resolve softened like hot wax. I didn’t believe her, didn’t know that I could trust her, but what was physical was undeniable. Absolute. She tasted like blood and whiskey and something else underneath.
I pressed against her, hands searching the sides of her shirt, fingers sliding around the top of her jeans. Our mouths parted, and the next moment our tongues found one another.
It happened quickly and not without some clumsiness, but it happened nonetheless.
Afterwards, she grabbed my hand and clasped it, sliding her fingers between mine. “Thank you, Rolson. You’ve got a good heart, underneath all the scar tissue.”
I kissed her shoulder, pressed my face into the crook of her neck.
“Thank you,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so in place of that, I shifted uncomfortably in the bed. “For the compliments, I mean.”
She sensed my tension. “You don’t believe I’m being truthful,” she said. It sounded like an echo in a small space.
“My mother taught me to be respectful of victims.”
“I’m no victim,” she said. “Any son-of-a-bitch comes after me will get an eyeful of my fingernails. I ain’t strong, but I’m tough. You save your pity for somebody needs it, ‘cause I sure don’t.”
I nodded in the dark. “Fair enough.”
“You’ve got no place else to go, Rolson. I’m full of shit. Richie’s full of shit. The whole town’s full of shit, so far as I’m concerned. You’ll do better just packing up and getting the hell out.”
“I’ve got my reasons for hanging around,” I said.
“A death wish,” she said.
“Maybe in part. I’m not afraid of Richie.”
“He ain’t the one to be afraid of. Richie’s a pushover. He’s– he does what’s best for Richie. Always. Don’t you forget that, and you might end up being okay.”
“Why don’t you just tell me the truth, then?” I asked.
She laughed, a breathy, reedy sound. “It’s more fun this way.”
“You want me to kick the shit out of Richie, all you need to do is ask. You need not pull a Fight Club on yourself to get my help.”
“Who said any of this was fake?” she replied.
“Then what did happen?” I was starting to grow weary of her game. I had let my physical yearning get in the way of cold logic. She was just so pretty, so vulnerable. Not a victim, like she said, but someone, well, someone.
And now life was complicated again. I had arrived in Savannah alone and without entanglement. It had only taken me six months to find myself drifting into a triangle, of sorts, without the tools to navigate. Allison and I weren’t together, and I didn’t necessarily think this thing with Jess would even happen. To me, she was a conduit to a time in Vanessa’s life I had no connection to. She was attractive, more innately sexual than Allison, which I suppose had drawn me to the point of losing my wits.
But Allison, she was something else. Represented something else to me. What, I couldn’t quite say yet. I just knew I didn’t want to spoil it, to let it die on the vine without ripening just yet. Jess, with her honesty and openness, gave me comfort, but Allison enlivened a part of me I thought had long been made brittle by time and misuse.
What would Allison think of this rendezvous with Jess?
Would she even care? Would I even see her again?
Jess rolled away from me.
We lay on opposite sides of the bed, naked and spent, when I heard the door click. I didn’t have time to further contemplate my romantic misfortune. I grabbed the .45 from just under the nightstand and sat up. Jess stirred, but I silenced her with a nonverbal gesture. She rolled over, facing me, her body milky white against the glow of the moonlight. Her eyes were two orbs, wide and frightened, but I tried to calm her with a single, raised palm.
It didn’t work, so I pressed an index finger against my lips and pointed toward the front of the place. She nodded and scrunched against the wall on the far side of the bed, making herself as small as possible.
I reached down and tossed her the clothes she’d left strewn about and pointed toward the closet in the corner of the room. She slid languidly from her spot on the bed and crouched low as she fumbled into the closet.
The hallway was a dark, blank void. I couldn’t even see the walls for the blackness. I stepped forward, and the next moment, I was on the ground. Bright stars. My jaw, throbbing. Two loud sounds, and my ears and eyes exploded with overwhelming input.
Two shots. I slid sideways, kicking at the source. Some impact, and I managed to get distance between us. Raised the gun, fired off two myself.
“Ah, fuck!”
A guy’s voice in the darkness. My eyes growing accustomed to the dark. Vision of a man fumbling backward and turning in the same, graceless movement. I’d landed a shot. Only a grazing shot, but enough.
I fired off two more rounds, and I knew I hit him. Center mass. Should have dropped him. Instead, he turned and fled for the front door. Blood seeping out in droplets on the carpet. Security deposits are for the secure, anyway.
A rectangle of muddled light appeared as the front door opened. The guy’s silhouette was hunched over and rounded off. He was hurt. I scrambled into the bathroom, just off the hallway. Wood and drywall splintered from a nearby wall as the guy emptied his clip back into the house.
Hope Jess made it to the closet.
A moment of silence, and I whirled and followed the would-be assassin through the door. “Stay here,” I yelled behind me, as I made my way outside.
People had already begun to gather outside their houses. “Get back in your houses,” I said, padding down the street barefoot and in my boxers.
“Get back!” I screamed at people lingering in their doorways.
A trail of blood, only droplets at first, led me deeper into the bowels of greater Savannah, away from the river. The burgundy circles increased in frequency and then volume before ending abruptly near a back road. Someone must have picked him up, because the blood just sort of vanished.
I felt my grip on the nature of this chase slipping after the blood trail dried up. Too many side streets. Too much darkness.
Illumination the color of old highlighter spread through the moss on the trees. Sirens wailed distantly, handing out shadows everywhere. Giving cover for the my bleeding target.
How in the hell could he have stayed upright this long?
I had definitely hit the bastard, and he wasn’t getting far with the way the blood trail looked. He might He’d be in a hospital or back alley pretty soon, and maybe later a grave, if he wasn’t careful.
I didn’t care if he was careful.
&nbs
p; I spat blood on the concrete at my feet. My jaw pulsed. Teeth loose. Might lose a few back molars, if I weren’t careful. The swelling would make my head look lopsided.
Eventually, I hit a dead end. Blood trail dried up. No sign of the guy or a car trying to run me down. I stood, dumbfounded, for the longest time.
Was it you, you tattooed son-of-a-bitch? I wondered.
Whoever had taken that round to the chest was not having a good time. Couple days, at best, without treatment. Couple of hours or minutes if he bled quickly?.
When I found myself walking in circles, I turned back, persisting in looking over my shoulder for that familiar black car.
“Are you all right?” Jess asked me, as I rounded the corner to the house.
“More or less,” I said. “Aim’s off, but that won’t be true for very much longer.”
“Was that Richie?” she asked, after a long pause.
I shook my head, went inside to put on some sweatpants. Of course it wasn’t Richie. Richie didn’t have the cojones to try and take me out.
I came back out, placed the gun on the top step of the house, and walked out toward the road. The sirens had drawn closer.
“Was it the guy – the other guy you mentioned?”
I sucked my teeth and sighed. “Couldn’t tell. All I got was a flash from the barrel as I fired on him, but my guess would be no.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t think the guy I’m thinking of would have missed.”
“Oh,” she said, as if she had realized something horrible. And maybe she had.
“I’m definitely in for helping you,” I said. She opened her mouth to say something. “Or helping myself. Whatever.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and sat on the steps to smoke a cigarette.
It was no longer a question of me wanting to know what to do about Richie and the unknown gangster, but how to go about it. Either way, I figured it was going to take some blood and bodies to get to the answer, and I felt myself being slowly dragged back into the darkness which had slowly consumed me in Lumber Junction.
* * *
The cops came and did their business quickly, but there were still too many questions for my taste. They checked my weapon registration and went through the normal rigmarole over the sequence of events. They separated me from Jess and made it horribly apparent they thought we were attacked for sexual transgressions of some kind.
