Blacktop Wasteland: A Novel

by S. A. Cosby

  Skunk had called Chuly, and Chuly had said he had thirty days to get it to them.

  “He gave you thirty days cuz he likes you,” Skunk had said in that gravelly voice that made his skin crawl. He sounded like he gargled with battery acid.

  “What happens if I don’t have it in thirty days? You gonna kill me?” Ronnie had asked as they walked him out of the strip club.

  Skunk had pushed him into the passenger seat of Reggie’s car and closed the door.

  “Nah, not at first. First, I’ll come get you and take you out to the farm. Cut off a couple of your toes. Let you watch me feed them to the pigs,” he said. He tapped the roof of the car and motioned for Reggie to leave.

  “Jesus, Ronnie, what you gonna do? He was talking about cutting off your damn toes. I think that fucker would do it too. He got crazy eyes,” Reggie said as they barreled out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

  “Shut up, Reggie,” Ronnie had said. His head had begun to spin and not from the all the alcohol he had drunk.

  Ronnie took a sip from his beer. The sun was shining through the small window over the sink. The rays of light found every crack and crusty crevice in the trailer and highlighted them. Ronnie pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. He turned on the stove and lit his smoke from the blue flame of the front burner. He had gone to Wonderland last night to find another driver. He had fucked things up with Beauregard. That much was obvious. He might as well as gone to a chicken coop to count hen’s teeth. There wasn’t one decent driver among all the pill-popping, moonshine-swilling meth head patrons of Wonderland. At least not one he trusted with his life. And none of them had one ounce of the skill Beauregard had. Ronnie heard some noise from Reggie’s room. Maybe they could do it without Beauregard. Him, Reggie and Quan. He pushed that thought away. He loved his brother but what little in the way of brains the good Lord had given him was being eaten away by pills and on occasion Mr. Brownstone. Technically Reggie could operate a motor vehicle. He just couldn’t drive.

  Reggie came stumbling out of the bedroom. He tripped, righted himself, then headed for the fridge.

  “I gotta take Ann back up to Wonderland. You wanna go with?” Reggie said. He opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of orange juice and took off the top.

  “Don’t drink that. That shit’s rancid. I can smell it from here,” Ronnie said. He took a drag off his cigarette.

  “Might as well finish it. My EBT don’t come until next week,” Reggie said.

  Ronnie took another hit of the beer. When you grew up poor you got used to waiting. Wait for a welfare check in the mail. Wait in line for the poor box from church. Wait for the parishioners to gaze at you with a sour look of pity on their faces. Wait for your brother to outgrow his no-name sneakers so you could take over gluing them back together. Wait, wait, wait. Wait to die so you can finally get out of debt. He was sick to death of waiting.

  “So, you coming?” Reggie asked.

  “Nah. I gotta find somebody to help me with this thing,” Ronnie said.

  “You gonna call Bug? He said to call him,” Reggie asked.

  “I don’t think it’s gonna happen. Anyway, I didn’t get the burner,” Ronnie said.

  “I did. I got it from the 7-Eleven last night when we left Wonderland,” Reggie said. He took a drink from the jug of orange juice.

  Ronnie stubbed out his cigarette on the stove top. “When was that?” he asked. He didn’t even remember stopping at a store last night. Maybe he was the one who needed to cut back on the moonshine.

  “I just told you. When we left Wonderland. Ann wanted something to eat so I stopped,” Reggie said.

  “Well, that ain’t no fucking shock,” Ronnie said. Reggie grimaced.

  “Hey, she might hear you,” Reggie said in a hushed tone.

  “And? What she gonna do? Sit on me?” Ronnie asked.

  “Why you so mean, Ronnie?” Reggie asked. Ronnie finished his beer. He felt his gorge try to rise but he forced it back down through sheer will.

  Hair of the dog my white ass, he thought.

  “Where’s the phone?”

  Reggie jerked his thumb toward the door. “It’s in the car. You gonna have to plug it into the charger,” he said.

  “Wow, thanks. I had no idea I’d have to plug a brand-new phone in to charge. I was only gone five years. I ain’t Buck fucking Rogers. You and Big Bertha hang tight for a minute,” Ronnie said. He walked out the door and down the rickety steps.

  “Who?” Reggie asked as Ronnie went out the door.

  * * *

  Ronnie plugged the phone into the charger then called information and got the number for Montage Motors. He started the car and turned on the AC. The AC in the car was cooler than the one in the damn house.

  “Montage Motors,” a voice said.

  “Hey, Beau? It’s Ronnie.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, um … that thing. We good to go or you ain’t…,” Ronnie stammered. He didn’t know how much he should say over a cell phone.

  “You mean that car you want me to look at? Yeah, I’m good to go,” Beauregard said. Ronnie had been slouching to his right. He sat up so fast he bumped his head on the roof.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what’s up. So, when you wanna get up and talk about it?” Ronnie said. His skin felt like he had sat too close to a wood stove. This was happening. He was gonna do it. He was going to be able to keep all his toes.

  “I can come take a look at it later today. Where you got the car at?” Beauregard asked.

  Ronnie didn’t say anything. He was lost. “Um … I uh have it out at my brother’s place. Over on Fox Hill Road,” he said finally.

  “Alright. I won’t get done around here till seven. I’ll see you then. If I call you back and can’t get you, just sit tight. I know you been having trouble with that phone. Hope you don’t have to trash it,” Beauregard said.

  Ronnie caught that one. He had to trash the phone. “Alright, alright, alright. See you then,” he said. The line went dead. Ronnie got out of the car, threw the phone on the ground and crushed it beneath his black motorcycle boots. He gathered the pieces and carried them back into the trailer. He tossed the remains in the trash. Muffled grunts and groans were coming from Reggie’s room. Ronnie flopped back on the couch and grabbed Reggie’s cell phone off the coffee table. He called Quan.

  “What up?” Quan said.

  “The guy I was telling you about is in. We bout to do this. Can you get to my brother’s place around seven thirty?” he asked.

  “Man, I don’t wanna come down to that country-ass, big-mosquito-having redneck town. Why can’t y’all come up to Richmond?” Quan asked.

  “Cuz I’m the one planning it. You in or you out? I mean if you don’t want $80,000 I can always get somebody else,” Ronnie said.

  “Hold your horses, white boy, I’ll be there. Shit. Goddamn mosquitoes driving trucks down there,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, just put a Dixie flag in your back window, you be fine,” Ronnie said.

  “Fuck you, Ronnie,” he said. The line went dead.

  He dialed Jenny’s number from memory.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” she asked in that honey-coated husky voice that drove him crazy.

  “Hey, we on. You wanna come by tonight and celebrate?” he asked. All he heard was the hum of the open line.

  “Celebrate what? Planning a robbery? I don’t know, maybe we should call the whole thing off,” Jenny said. He could see her in his mind. Sprawled out across her futon in that efficiency apartment over in Taylor’s Corner. Her red hair fanning out around her head like a wreath made of fire.

  “Come on now, baby girl. We done talked about this. Nobody gonna get hurt. Nobody is gonna get caught. I got it all planned out. Don’t back out on me now. I need you. None of this works without you, baby girl,” he cooed. He had known Jenny since high school. They’d been on-again off-again for decades. Whenever she got on her feet, they were off. Whenever she found her
self adrift, they were back on. They usually made each other feel good for a few weeks. That was a better ratio than some supposedly monogamous couples.

  “I only been working there for a few months, Ronnie. Don’t you think they gonna be all up in my face if the place gets robbed?” she said.

  “Not if you play it cool. Sit on your cut for a few months. Then slip away. We can go down South. Florida. Maybe even the Bahamas. If there’s as much as you say, we can be farting through silk the rest of our lives,” Ronnie said. He couldn’t let her back out now. The thirty days were almost up. The guy in DC who was going to pay them for the stones was waiting. He had gotten Beauregard on board. He would sweet-talk her until she had Type 2 diabetes if he had to, but he couldn’t let her back out.

  More silence.

  “This is what I do, Jenny. You know that. I been doing this since I had hair on my nuts. This is what I do, and I’ve only taken one fall and that was because of a fucking snitch,” he said. That was partly true. He had gotten five years for robbery for stealing a gold-plated cupola from a vacation house out in Stingray Point. But he hadn’t gotten caught because of a snitch. He had gotten caught because Reggie hadn’t fixed the tail lights on his old truck. When the cops had pulled them over he had taken the whole fall. Reggie wasn’t built for doing time. He couldn’t be in tight spaces. He freaked out in elevators. He lost his shit in revolving doors. If you yelled at him, he would shut down like a robot who had gotten his plug pulled. So he took the weight. Those three years taught him two things. One: Prison food tasted like wet, piss-soaked cardboard. Two: He was never going back.

  “I can’t come down tonight. I gotta work today from noon till close. Then tomorrow I open,” Jenny said.

  Ronnie smiled. She was still in. He could hear her letting herself be talked into it.

  “Alright, well, things gonna start moving fast,” he said.

  “I’ll call you when I get off. Maybe you can come by,” she said. Ronnie thought she was thinking about white sand beaches and margaritas the size of washtubs.

  “No doubt,” he said.

  “Okay. I gotta go take a shower,” she said.

  “Thanks for that nice mental image. I’ll be filing that away for later,” he said.

  “Nasty,” she said. He could hear the smile on her face.

  “Talk to you later, baby girl,” he said. They hung up and Ronnie lay back down. He let his boots hang over the arm of the sofa. This was it. The big one. This was the one that you had wet dreams about. This wasn’t some stupid-ass sickly horse or some roof trinket. This was the one that let you write your “fuck you” list. He’d told Beauregard there was five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds.

  That wasn’t exactly true either. Lying in her bed after bumping uglies, Jenny told him it was three times that much. Even after taking a hit from the fence and giving Beauregard his cut plus his goddamn $3,800 and paying off Chuly, he would still be able to use ten-dollar bills for toilet paper. If everything worked out, people would be waiting on him from now on. If he was superstitious like his Mama had been, he might have worried about things falling into place so easily. Getting in the hole one week, then having this jewelry store drop in his lap the next. Things didn’t usually work like that for the Sessions family. He didn’t let it shake him. He didn’t believe in superstitions or religion. His Mama had spent her life watching Sunday morning televangelists and throwing enough salt over her shoulder to season a full-grown hog. She still died broke and lonely on the bathroom floor of a bingo hall in Richmond. That wasn’t how he was going out. Not now. He started humming “Money Honey.” It was one of the King’s lesser-known hits, but it was one of Ronnie’s favorites. Because everyone knew in the end it always came down to money, honey.

  SIX

  Beauregard pulled down the first bay door and locked it while Kelvin shut off the air compressors and the overhead lights. The sun had finally set over Red Hill County, but the heat hadn’t subsided at all. A few lightning bugs performed aerial acrobatics near the motion lights. They didn’t have enough mass to set off the sensors. Beauregard paused and watched them for a second before closing the other two doors. They reminded him of summers gone by when he would sit on his grandparents’ porch playing checkers with his granddad. The old man was a checkers savant. The day Beauregard finally beat him was the day he knew his grandfather was slipping away.

  “You wanna go over to Danny’s Bar and play some pool? I got a few hours to kill before Sandra gets off work,” Kelvin asked.

  Beauregard wiped his face with the least dirty rag in his pocket. “Who is Sandra? I thought you was seeing Cynthia and the other one,” Beauregard said.

  Kelvin grinned. “Met Sandra on Snapchat. She from Richmond. I’m riding up there when she gets off from her job at the tobacco plant,” Kelvin said.

  “Nah, I got something I gotta do,” Beauregard said.

  Kelvin raised his eyebrows. “That something got anything to do with Ronnie Sessions?” Kelvin asked.

  “Something like that,” Beauregard said.

  “You want me to go with you?”

  Beauregard shook his head. “No. I’m just getting more details. It still might be nothing,” Beauregard said.

  Kelvin shrugged. “Whatever, man. Let me know. I’ll be at Danny’s till about ten. If y’all get done. I might be down if it’s something worth doing,” Kelvin said.

  “I’ll let you know,” Beauregard said. Kelvin walked toward Beauregard and held out his hand. Beauregard slapped it as Kelvin passed him and headed out the door. He heard Kelvin’s Nova start up and tear out of the parking lot.

  He went and sat in the Duster. The old leather on the seats smelled like tobacco that had been soaked in oil. He could see his Daddy sitting in the same seat he now occupied. He could see himself sitting in the passenger seat. Beauregard didn’t dream of his Daddy. He didn’t have dreams. He never had nightmares. At least none he could remember. He slipped into a quiet darkness when he slept and then emerged from that blackness when he awoke. Usually to the sounds of Darren and Javon fighting about any and everything.

  When his father came to him, it was through memories. Waking dreams that grabbed him by the neck and pulled him into the past. He would see himself and his father as they had been. Sometimes he would see his grandparents or his mother. But mostly he saw his father. Smiling, laughing, sullen or sad. His father working on the Duster. His father coming up behind his mother and wrapping his tree trunk arms around her waist. His father storming out of the trailer and slamming the door so hard the whole structure rocked. His father beating down Solomon Gray with a bar stool. Him and his Daddy sitting on the hood of the Duster under a star-filled night sky looking for Orion’s belt. He remembered how his five-year-old self had thought it would look like an actual belt. Whenever he went into these fugue states, he felt like Janus. Looking forward and backwards with equal amounts of trepidation.

  Sitting there in the darkened garage, he was transported back to the last day he saw his father. It was hellishly hot that day too. He had waited on the steps of their trailer for his Daddy to come pick him up and go riding. He had known this visit would be a different one. His mother was more agitated than usual. He had overheard her talking to one of her friends about “Anthony done got himself in some shit he won’t talk his way out of,” but he didn’t know what that meant. By the end of that day, he would learn.

  His cell phone rang, breaking the spell. He pulled it out of his pocket. It was Kia.

  “Hey,” he said when he answered it.

  “The boys want to spend the night at Jean’s. Her neighbor’s grandson got dropped off while they were there. I told them it was okay,” she said.

  “Hey, I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said. When he had gotten home last night, she was in the bedroom pretending to be asleep. He had stayed in the living room playing with the boys. When he had finally put them to sleep and gone to lie down, she wasn’t pretending anymore. He had left before breakfas
t. His temper could be like a lightning strike. Kia was like a smoldering forest fire. He knew he had to give her some space to let it burn itself out.

  “Yeah, me too. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

  “I shouldn’t have slammed the door like that. You know I’m just trying to do right by you and the boys. And Ariel,” he said.

  “You wanna do right by us, don’t do nothing with them boys that came by yesterday. As far as Ariel goes, you been trying to do for that girl. Ain’t your fault her mama a cracked-out bitch,” she said.

  Beauregard clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Knowing these boys, it probably ain’t nothing too serious,” he said.

  Kia grunted. “Baby, nobody gets you to drive their aunty to the store. So, don’t talk to me like I’m dumb. You wouldn’t even be thinking about it if it wasn’t something big. And that means it’s dangerous,” she said.

  “I don’t wanna argue with you, Kia,” Beauregard said.

  “And I don’t wanna lose you, Bug,” she said.

  They both went quiet.

  “I’ll talk to you when I get home. I gotta go,” he said.

  “Yeah, you will. We need to do a lot of talking,” she said. She hung up.

  Beauregard put the phone in his pocket and got out of the Duster. The thing about loving someone was that they knew all your pressure points. They knew all the spots that were open and raw. You let them into your heart and they cased the place. They knew what made you feel weak and what ticked you off. Like somebody hanging up on you. He opened his mouth and closed it like a lion then shook his head violently side to side. He had to let that go.

  He needed to have his head in the game. Getting ready for a job was like putting on a new coat. You had to make sure it fit. If everything didn’t look right he would walk away. Leave that coat on the rack. No matter how much money was on the table. He glanced back at the Duster. The money was important. God knows they needed it. So many people were depending on him. Kia, his Mama, the boys, Ariel, Kelvin. He thought about what Boonie had said. About how he wasn’t like his father. That’s what he liked to believe. That they were completely different. In some respects that was true. No matter how intense the pressure got, he didn’t run out on his family or his friends. He wasn’t Anthony Montage. So why did he feel a flutter in his chest like a hornet was trapped in his ribs? If he wasn’t like his Daddy, why did he miss the Life?