by Ace Atkins
“That’s stupid,” she said.
“I try to keep the sparks away from the gas.”
“Knew a man who died like that,” she said, squinting her eyes looking into mine.
“I’ll be more careful,” I said, glancing at the asphalt for any gas leaks.
“Sometimes just a little spark can lead to an explosion,” she said. She rested her forearms on the gas pump, price spinning higher, and looking at me. Her eyes were an unnatural blue. Beautiful, but a color not found in nature.
“I’ve heard of such things.”
She sighed and licked her lips.
“Where you from?”
I pointed south.
“Where you headed?”
I pointed north. I wasn’t being coy. I really had a hard time speaking.
“You don’t like bullshit, do you?” she said, motioning for me. “So, let me tell you a secret.”
Jon liked games. Mostly pinball. Games that weren’t too complicated, like video stuff with trucks or guns or fast cars. He didn’t like games that made you add things or play out some kind of strategy. He just liked kickin’ the ole horse in the side, mashin’ the pedal to the floor, and seein’ what it meant to be balls to the wall.
Real life wasn’t a dumb-ass game of Battleship. Real life was takin’ chances and playin’ out the consequences. You just hit it hard and things would shake out.
He stuck a quarter into Police Trainer and watched the screen explode into different ranks. He chose captain. He could be a captain. Captain. Captain America.
He aimed the gun and fired off a shot, feeling his real gun, that .45, poking him in the ribs. He pointed the plastic pistol at little balls flippin’ up in the air and cracked them in half like eggs. Kept on shootin’ as he watched the girl walk toward the bathroom and stop by some lockers.
She pulled out a key and cranked open a small compartment.
More eggs exploded for points, bells went off for passing the test, and the screen exploded into another game. This time people popped out on the screen. Good people and bad. But sometimes Jon found it hard to tell the difference. Little old woman with groceries. Scruffy guy with a sawed-off. Who could hurt you more? Who’d take you in when it was all over?
He shot everyone in sight. Shootin’ up the score and bringin’ it on back down.
The girl walked past him, a bunch of thick files in her hands, and back to the front of the truck stop.
He stopped shootin’, let the gun dangle from his finger, and tucked it back it into the slot like he was one of them ole time Japanese swordsmen.
Perfect made her voice get warm inside her lungs and blew it all out in a steady stream of breath and words. She rubbed her lips against Travers’s ear and said, “Don’t you ever fuck with me again.”
He took a step back as if seeing her for the first time while the portico lights came on and shone on rainbowed pools of oily water. She turned as he stared and saw Abby walking from the truck stop toward the Bronco.
Perfect, backing away from Travers and the pumps, pulled out the gun.
Jon was following and made a quick cut to the Taurus. She could see Jon’s hand already tucked into his leather jacket. He was chewing gum like a madman as he crawled in, started the car, and looped back to the pumps.
She didn’t say a word as she spun around and pointed the gun into his scruffy, ugly face.
Jon ran the car hard for about fifteen yards, braked, and jumped out. He leveled his gun at Travers as she went for the girl. “She’s got it,” he said. “She left it in the lockers.”
Travers put up his hands.
Abby had locked the Bronco’s door. Screaming and yelling, Perfect rammed the gun against the windows but nothing happened except a hard knock.
Perfect kept banging the shit out of the glass and yelling for that little bitch to open the fucking door. She was frantic and for the first time in about two years felt like she was really losing her shit. Her face heated up and she just wanted to tear into her with her long red nails.
Teach her something.
Jon didn’t speak as he moved slowly to Travers, Perfect watching while she tried to catch her breath, and pulled a big handgun from Travers’s jacket.
Travers just stared at Jon and clenched his right hand that stayed pointed in the air. His boots were submerged in the oily puddles and he held his face as if he were absolutely freezing. Like his feet were stuck in blocks of ice.
She waited for Jon to say something about revenge or the Bible or Elvis or announce to Travers he was back to punch out his lights. But he didn’t.
Instead, he breathed and looked around him as if this were some kind of holy fucking moment. That he wanted to soak in everything he saw.
The air smelled like burned bacon and diesel fumes.
“Open the door,” she said. Lightly tapping this time. Barrel pointing to the girl behind the glass.
Travers shook his head.
“What do you mean? No? Jon, shoot the bastard.”
Jon cocked back the hammer, gun outstretched in his hands. But instead of pulling the fucking trigger, he let the gun drop onto his finger and tucked it inside the leather jacket.
She followed his eyes to the lot where two state trooper cars had parked near the restaurant. One patted his belly and laughed while the other double-checked locking his door. They started to walk on inside.
When she turned back, Travers was watching Jon and stepping backward to the Bronco.
The locks went up. He opened the door, scooted inside, and started the engine.
Then it was Perfect and Jon’s turn to feel that oily ice up to their knees as Travers pulled out and took a left over the highway bridge. Damned if he didn’t miss the on-ramp and kept speeding down some winding country road. Shit. He’d lose them. A million country roads on this side of the state line.
Jon jumped back in the running car and tossed her Travers’s heavy gun. She liked the weight of it in her hands as Jon opened the windows and cranked the stereo.
“I’m too damned good to lose,” Jon said. “Let’s take care of business.”
Chapter 34
I FIGURED I could lose them on a back road to Memphis. The old roads and country trails stretched into the northern hills like a million fingers, the highway providing a damned clean shot without the bends and twists of road. Besides, they’d taken my gun and I knew both of them were armed.
I took the Bronco to about seventy, before braking and downshifting, looking for more arteries to get lost. At first, I’d thought about trying to get the attention of the two troopers at the truck stop but didn’t want to risk getting killed while trying to get close.
I glanced in the rearview mirror, wondering how I hadn’t recognized the woman until Abby screamed as we peeled out. That was her. The girl from the Grand. But what bothered me more is that I knew the man, too. As I flew through a small nameless town and turned on to another road, I remembered him.
He’d worked for a California record producer who’d been killed by a friend of mine a few years back. The kid, who’d looked like a waxen replica of Elvis Presley, was supposed to be dead, too. I’d read it in the newspaper. But even with a beard and a few years on him, I recognized the pompadour, glassy eyes, and slack jaw.
Shit, the damned snakes in my head were loose from the box. Being chased by fucking ghosts.
Abby had wedged herself against the roll bar and had the seat belt gripped tight in her hands. She had her eyes closed as we went airborne for a second over a rutted back road and followed the outline of a muddy creek. Tree branches shook over our heads like an old crone’s fingers in the hollow black light that surrounded us.
We whizzed past about six trailers in a little court, found another back dirt road, and slowly drove to a muddy embankment before I stopped the truck. The heat of the engine ticked and burned as I watched Abby. Her fingers became unclenched, reaching down on the floor for the papers that had been scattered.
I took the pile from
her but before I could glance through them, the Taurus roared past and I heard the slam of brakes and the deep whine of a transmission reversing.
I opened my lockbox and tossed the papers inside before U-turning, reddish dust twirling behind us, and hitting about sixty down a rutted road to nowhere.
“You can’t drive,” Perfect said. “Hit the accelerator. We’ll never catch ’em. Go. Shit, kid. Go.”
Perfect ran her leg over Jon’s and mashed the damned pedal herself.
“Woman, let go. Woman. Gonna make me have a dang wreck.”
The rented car’s back tires fishtailed behind them on the dirt and rocks as the Bronco dipped around a corner and out of sight.
“Left,” she yelled. “The dust. Follow the dust.”
Jon did and she gritted her teeth watching the red taillights flash before her. They were in some kind of fucking tunnel of trees. Maples. Cottonwoods. Oaks. Colors on fire. Yellows and reds hot as hell against the blackened sky.
“What he got under that hood?” Jon asked himself. “That thing’s been jacked up, I do believe.”
“Catch him,” she said, pulling out the Smith & Wesson and finding two speed rounds in her purse. “This is the place. We’ll shoot both of ’em. Drop both of their bodies where they stand and then make sure that truck can’t be seen from the road. Be spring till someone finds them.”
Jon pushed the accelerator hugging a turn, fishtailing again, a hell of a grin on his face. He gave a rebel yell as they bounced off the ground and landed with a fast, hard thud. At that moment, Perfect knew Jon didn’t care about dying.
She clutched his knee and watched his face flush with excitement.
“Get close,” she said, letting her window down and pointing her gun at the truck. “I got ’em.”
The shots came just as we rambled over a short wooden bridge, bumping and jostling, and turned onto another dirt road that I hoped led back to the highway. I figured we were racing through some kind of state park; every few miles, I saw wooden markers and signs that outlawed hunting. No people. No buildings. Just these smooth dirt roads cut into the Mississippi hill country.
The shots came again.
Two more harsh echoes cracking behind us. I didn’t hear a hit but that didn’t stop me from punching that 302 V-8 hard around the twists and straightaways. I told Abby to get on the floorboard, and she did, with her hands over her ears and her face buried in her knees.
I could see the Taurus in the rearview, the woman aiming a handgun at the back of the truck. As I punched the pedal around another long straight shot, my rear window exploded.
“Shit,” I yelled, mashing the brake and banking the truck hard to the side, praying that we wouldn’t flip.
The road had ended.
Only way back was through the Taurus.
“Hot damn,” Jon yelled, feelin’ the same way as when he won the potato sack race back in Vacation Bible School. He’d won. Just shoot ’em. Let Perfect get them papers and he’d be forty thousand dollars richer. Hot damn. He could finally get that Cadillac for Miss Erdele. Miss Erdele. Mamma. Jon Burrows/Jesse Garon.
It all made sense now. Everything was looping back to his past and his future and the holy numbers that Black Elvis told him about. Said he was born under a moon sign. Moon dance. Moon child. Hell, he was shiftin’ and changin’ like that spotlight that never really disappears from the earth.
“I’m full force,” Jon said.
“What?” she yelled.
Jon slowed, ran the car into neutral, and watched the old Bronco just idling there waiting for them to come and take what was theirs. Travers was in there, just a damned wreck after seeing ole Colonel Jon Burrows. How did he live? Why had he come back?
Damned comeback. ‘Sixty-eight style, motherfucker.
He jammed the car into drive and mashed the pedal.
“Jon!” Perfect yelled. “No, we got ’em. We got ’em.”
I saw him coming and dropped it hard into first gear, hearing my tires spin behind me, and headed right for the grille work on the Taurus. Hard gunning and waiting for him to drop away. My teeth ached they were clamped so hard.
I could see the car getting closer and closer as I headed up to about fifty.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Abby said, softly over the gun of the engine.
I gritted my teeth harder and punched the 302, juicing out every bit of muscle she had down a single rutted road only made for one car.
I could see the boy doing the same. Almost could make out his eyes, maybe ten yards between us, when I broke hard to the right, jumped up on a long embankment, darted around him, and kept on flying by.
I pounded the roof of my truck three times and kept on moving around the curves trying to find my way out.
I was smiling and laughing. Really just relieved as hell, with my damned heart in my throat, as I reached down and pulled Abby back into her seat. I knew they were gone. I was too far ahead and they’d never catch up.
She buckled back in and I took another road.
I’d gone too far. Too many choices for them.
I kept on smiling and laughing, rubbing Abby’s back for reassurance when the ground disappeared from under us.
We must have been going about sixty, no road, just air below, when we came crashing back down.
It was a hard landing. My back exploded with heat, black amoebas crawled over my eyes as my seat belt yanked me back hard.
Then I closed my eyes.
Never more in my life had I wanted to sleep so badly.
Chapter 35
THE LEAVES SMELLED of death. The sweet aroma of moist dirt with the tang of old copper pennies. Fresh blood. Even before I opened my eyes, I felt the warm, sticky wetness on my head. Everything was muffled and silent and soft. Coated in leaves. Buried beneath them. Over my face and in my mouth. Some kind of bug with a million legs crawling on my arm. I spit out some dirt, my head absolutely swimming. That same feeling of getting off the big roller coaster and bringing the curves home with you. I felt like I needed to throw up.
A small hand held my face. I opened my eyes to darkness above me. Seeing nothing. Small lips pressed close to mine.
“Shh,” Abby said. I held my body still. Wasn’t hard. I wasn’t sure I could move my toes.
I heard the crunching sound of feet running on old leaves. Branches breaking. Voices. A man and a woman. Too far away to make out the words. Just voices. Connotations from the sounds.
It was night now. Was sure of it. Goddamn, my head hurt, I thought, trying not to move my eyes or budge a finger. Everything moved in the haziness of the worst hangover I’d ever known.
Abby’s arms wrapped around me and pulled me toward her chest. I could feel her breasts against my neck and her nails digging into my skin. Before me was a mouth of a narrow dirt cave. The moon’s gray glow shot through the trees and onto a thick, wet carpet of forest floor.
I moved my arms. Maybe not a cave. A little opening in a hill. A concave mound of dirt and rock that had been eroded into a little burrow. Somewhere a dog would hang out during a storm.
I didn’t speak. I didn’t move.
The voices were clearer now.
All of it coming back. The woman from the casino. A man I knew. A hired gun. The wreck. The blackout. Jesus, how long had I been away?
Abby’s chest rose and fell in quick bursts. She held me even tighter. Her hands coated in wet black dirt. Leaves dissolving back to earth brushing across my face. I suddenly had the thought that this was what it was like to be dead, but awake. I was just getting loopy. I wanted to stay still.
I wanted those fucking voices to go away.
Shit, no gun. No car. No place to escape. Miles and miles of anonymous woods.
I took a breath and felt a groan coming on, the wet plink of rainwater beating some dead kudzu at the mouth of the burrow.
Two black boots appeared.
“I bet they followed the god dang creek,” the man yelled.
The woman yel
led back.
He stood there for a moment. Not more than three yards away from my feet. Almost playing with us. Toying. Just make our hearts explode until he stuck the muzzle in the shallow dirt grave and finished it.
I remembered him. I remembered how he’d tried to rape a woman I knew and how he’d tortured an old hermit who was so shy he could barely look you in the eye.
I gripped Abby’s knee.
The rain plinked on a fattened brown leaf again.
The foot disappeared.
The crunch of boot soles on smooth creek bed fading into the distance.
“Do we stay here?” she whispered.
I held my head in my hands and wiggled my toes. They worked.
Sickness. Vomiting on my shirt.
I held my head some more and pushed myself from the muddy hole, with the arm that didn’t hurt, and out into the forest. A million raindrops sliding off trees and across saplings and down into decaying leaves and puddles. Little slivers of moonlight, almost too weak to notice, making the distant surface of the creek look gray. Cold as the air around us.
God, I was soaking.
Abby helped me to my feet. I wiped the puke off my face with my jacket and straightened my back and felt my arms. My left arm hung loose at my side and I felt a numb tingling in my fingers.
We walked. Each step something to concentrate on, until I saw a fat pine. I listened to the flow of the creek and the rain patter. Convinced they were gone, I thrust my shoulder into the trunk and heard a sickening pop — pain shooting through my torso and into my bruised head — until I fell to my knees, biting the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t howl.
“God. God. God.” Abby was on her knees now, too. She was smoothing the wet hair away from my forehead. She held my head in her hands and spoke some kind of low, mumbled prayer.
“I’m fine,” I said. I moved my fingers and felt the shoulder rotating as it should in the socket. “Used to do that all the time. Always comes out.”
