Blacktop Wasteland: A Novel

by S. A. Cosby

  “You better keep your promises,” she moaned. He crushed his lips against hers again, and they fell against each other in a tangle of arms and legs and groans and sighs.

  EIGHT

  Jenny awoke to a series of horns and trumpets going off like Judgment Day. Her text message tone echoed through her tiny apartment. The horns reached a crescendo then started at the top of the melody again.

  She grabbed her phone off the nightstand. The contact name on the screen said Rock and Roll. Her first text message of the day was from Ronnie “Rock and Roll” Sessions.

  Need the alarm codes, the message said.

  Jenny stared at her phone and blinked her eyes. Hard.

  I don’t know what you are talking about. Call me. She typed. She hit send then grabbed her cigarettes and a lighter out of the nightstand. After her third drag off the smoke a set of bird chirps began to emanate from her phone. This was her ringtone. She touched the screen and answered the phone.

  “Don’t text me shit like that. Jesus.”

  “Well, good morning to you too,” Ronnie said.

  “I’m serious, Ronnie. Who do you think the police gonna be looking at with all the eyes they have if we pull this off? I don’t need shit like that in my phone records.”

  “Damn, you woke on the wrong side of the crypt this morning. Sound like you need a good tuning up,” Ronnie said.

  “You know, your dick ain’t the answer to everything,” Jenny said.

  “If my dick ain’t the answer you ain’t asking the right questions. But never mind all that. Can you get it?”

  “Get what?” Jenny asked.

  “The alarm code,” Ronnie said. Jenny took a long drag off her cigarette.

  “I already know it. Lou Ellen told me what it was the other day.”

  “How is your girlfriend doing? She get that call from the Cowboys yet about that starting offensive lineman position?” Ronnie asked.

  “Not funny, Ronnie. She’s nice.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re falling for her. She can’t be that good at eating pussy.”

  “You so damn nasty. She’s just nice to me. I don’t want her to get hurt. I don’t want anybody to get hurt. Not Lou Ellen, not you, not me. I just want to get out of here. Get out of Cutter County. Out of Virginia. I want to go somewhere and answer to a new name for the rest of my life. Try to start over. Maybe try not to make so many mistakes this time,” Jenny said.

  “And we will. All you got to do is exactly what I tell you to do. And before you know it we will be fucking on a bed full of hundred-dollar bills,” Ronnie said. Jenny exhaled. A plume of smoke billowed from her nostrils.

  “I just don’t want to get fucked up behind this,” Jenny said.

  “Baby girl, you won’t. All you got to do is trust me. Is that so hard? Now stop worrying about all that and let’s get back to talking about more important things. What you getting into today? Maybe I can come over. I got some Percocets and a case of beer with your name all over them.”

  “Down, boy. I gotta go into work. You know, that thing people do instead of stealing.”

  “Well shit. Hey, tell your sugar mama I said hi.”

  “Bye, Ronnie.”

  “Wait, what time you get off?”

  “About fifteen minutes after you roll off me and go to sleep,” Jenny said and hung up the phone.

  NINE

  Beauregard got up at first light. Kia was curled up next to him like a cat. He slipped out of bed and put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He grabbed a baseball cap out of the dresser drawer and pulled it down over his eyes. Then he kissed Kia on her cheek.

  “You leaving early,” she said without opening her eyes.

  “Gotta get to the shop,” he lied. He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.

  “I’m gonna need you to pick the boys up tonight. I’m going with Lakisha Berry to clean up some offices near the courthouse,” Kia said.

  Beauregard kissed her again. “That’s good, boo. I’ll get ’em when we close tonight. Love you,” he said.

  “Love you too,” she said. The last part of the sentence disintegrated into a sigh. Beauregard left the house and got into his truck. He turned on the radio and scrolled through the stations until he hit one playing some old-school R&B. Rev. Al Green’s trembling falsetto drifted out of the speakers like a cool mist. He headed out of Red Hill and onto Route 60 toward the interstate. Just before hitting the on-ramp he passed the abandoned Tastee Freez. The white aluminum carport that had covered the pick-up window had collapsed but the rest of the building appeared solid. A crowd of thistles and kudzu covered the eastern side of the building. Verdant green weeds had forced their way up between the seams of the pavement in the parking lot. Ellery and Emma Sheridan had run the Tastee Freez for fifty years before Ellery died in 2001. Emma had tried to soldier on without her husband, but Alzheimer’s had snatched the remnants of her mind and tossed them to the four winds. The county had stepped in after some customers had pulled up and found Emma making milkshakes and burgers in her birthday suit.

  When he had been a kid, Beauregard had loved the Tastee Freez double chocolate milkshake. It was a rare treat on a hot summer day like today. The kind of dessert that made you throw caution to the wind. His Daddy used to joke that if a van pulled up with no windows, Beauregard would jump in the back if they promised him they were taking him to the Tastee Freez. As they had ridden around on what would be the last day he would see his father, the Tastee Freez had been one of their stops. Years later, a legend spread through Red Hill that there were bloodstains on the pavement that no amount of water could wash away.

  Beauregard turned the music up and merged onto the interstate. The sounds of Rev. Green did little to drown out the memories of that long-ago day.

  * * *

  Cutter County was seventy miles away from Red Hill County on the other side of the state. Through a combination of chance and design it had begrudgingly become a suburb of the city of Newport News. Most of the residents worked in the city at one of three large employers. The naval shipyard, the Canon manufacturing plant or Patrick Henry Mall. Beauregard could see the effect of those industries on Cutter County. It was like Red Hill’s wealthier twin. He had only seen three mobile homes as he drove through town. There were more brick houses on one road than in all of Red Hill. He turned onto Main Street and passed two cleaners, a liquor store, three consignment shops and two medical offices. The traffic was light, but it was all BMWs and Mercedeses with a stray Lexus here and there. For a moment, he was afraid there would be five jewelry stores and he would have to call Ronnie from his personal cell and not a burner. Before he had to suffer that indignity, he spotted a sign for a shopping center that listed VALENTI JEWELERS as one of the tenants. Apparently, the residents of Cutter County needed a wide variety of choices for their dry cleaning, but when it came to jewelry, Valenti’s had cornered the market.

  Beauregard drove past the shopping center. He turned left at the next cross street and saw a blue sign that indicated the sheriff’s office was 3.5 miles away. He followed the road until he passed a small brick building with the Cutter County seal emblazoned on its front door. Beauregard counted two cruisers parked in front of the building. They would have to move quick. The sheriff’s office was much closer than he would have liked. He turned around at the end of the street and headed back to the shopping center.

  Beauregard pulled in and drove through the empty parking lot. The shopping center was composed of one long L-shaped building divided into individual units. The jewelry store was the last unit at the bottom of the L. It was also closest to the entrance/exit. Beauregard rolled through the parking lot and out of the shopping center. He didn’t need to go in the store. That was on Ronnie. His job was to drive. He committed the layout of the shopping center, Main Street and the road to the interstate exit to memory. He noted the one stoplight at the corner of Main and Lafayette. The speed bump at the exit of the parking lot. The coffee shop across the street with the b
ig picture window, which would give any potential witnesses a bird’s-eye view to the job. All these and dozens of other details filled his mind. It was like his brain was a sponge absorbing water. The counselor in juvie had told him he had an eidetic memory. Mr. Skorzeny had tried his best to get him to consider going back to school when he got out. Maybe college. Beauregard knew Mr. Skorzeny had meant well. Unlike a lot of the staff at Jefferson Davis Reformatory, he didn’t view boys like him as lost causes. What Mr. Skorzeny didn’t understand, what he couldn’t understand, was that boys like Beauregard didn’t have the luxury of options. No father. A mother who was one flat tire and a bad day away from a nervous breakdown, and grandparents who had lived and died in a constant state of abject poverty. For boys like Beauregard, college was the stuff of dreams. Mr. Skorzeny might as well have told him to go to Mars.

  Beauregard turned onto Route 60 West and headed back to the interstate. He checked his watch. It was exactly thirteen minutes from the jewelry store to the exit with minimal traffic traveling at 55 mph. He would be going a lot faster than 55 when they left the parking lot. On his way into town, he had noticed the interstate was undergoing some extensive renovations. The road crested just before the exit to Cutter County and became an overpass for nearly a mile. Under that overpass was a single-lane highway that led to Cutter County through the back roads. The concrete median between the northbound and southbound lanes had been demolished. It seemed the state had finally decided to address the god-awful clusterfuck that was Interstate 64 and widen the road to six lanes. A silt fence encircled the gaping maw. Beauregard noticed that the distances between the overpass and the road couldn’t have been over twenty feet.

  Interesting.

  Up ahead Beauregard saw brake lights flash like Christmas decorations. Traffic on Route 60 moved to the left lane then back to the right. Once the box truck in front of him had changed lanes, Beauregard could see what had caused everyone in front of him to hit the brakes. A small boxy car was sitting in the middle of the road with its hazard flashers on. A slim black man with a youngish face was next to the vehicle, frantically waving his arms. A diaphanous plume of steam was billowing from under the hood of the small car.

  Vehicles zipped by the man like he was one of those tube men flapping in the air near the entrance to a car dealership. Beauregard started to pass by the man too. As he drove by, he noticed a woman was sitting in the passenger seat. A young white girl with blond hair too bright not to have come from a bottle. The blond hair was plastered to her head. She was panting like a hound dog and her eyes were closed tight.

  “Shit,” Beauregard breathed. He pulled over to the side of the road and hopped out of his truck. The man came running over before he had closed his door.

  “Hey, man, I need help. My car just broke down and my wife is in labor. Piece of shit just died on me. No warning, no nothing. Fucking piece of shit,” the man yelled.

  “Why you ain’t call a rescue squad?” Beauregard asked.

  The man cast his eyes downward. “Our cell got cut off a few days ago. I got laid off last month from the shipyard. Look, man, I think the baby is about to come. Can you give us a ride to the hospital?” the man asked.

  Beauregard took in the whole scene. The man was breathing hard. The girl in the car was moaning. He recognized that moan. He recognized the quivering lips of the man standing in front of him. They were terrified. The baby was coming, and they didn’t know what in the hell they were doing. Fifteen minutes of fun was about to turn into a lifetime of responsibility. The weight of that responsibility was pressing down on them like an anvil on their chests. He was on his way home from casing the site of a job. He needed to get in and get out without being noticed.

  The smart thing to do, the professional thing to do, was to get back in his truck and drive away. The girl moaned again. The moan became a scream that Beauregard could hear over the sound of traffic zipping by them on the lonely stretch of road. Ariel had been a breech baby. The doctors had a hell of time getting her out of Janice’s uterus. They told him that if she hadn’t been delivered in a hospital, she would have probably died.

  “Let’s get your car out of the road first,” he said.

  The two of them were able to push the car off to the side of the road without too much difficulty. Beauregard grabbed the young girl and half helped, half carried her to the truck. The man opened the door for her and together they helped her up into the cab. The man hopped in on the passenger side and Beauregard ran around to the driver’s side.

  “You think you can get us to the hospital before…” The man let the statement hang in the air. Beauregard almost smiled.

  “Just hold on,” he said as he hit the gas.

  The nearest hospital was Reed General in Newport News. It was thirty-five minutes away. Beauregard pulled up to the emergency entrance eighteen minutes after picking up the couple. The man hopped out and ran into the emergency room. A few seconds later, a nurse was following him back out pushing a wheelchair. They helped the girl out of the truck and wheeled her into the hospital. The young guy lingered by the door. Beauregard got back into his truck. When he looked up, the guy was trotting over to the window.

  “Hey, man, I don’t know what to say. I wish I could give you something. I’m just so strapped right now, and Caitlin had to stop working because of the baby. We moved in with her mom and…” Without warning, tears began to trickle from the corners of his eyes.

  “Hey. Hey. You don’t owe me nothing. I just hope everything goes alright,” Beauregard said.

  The man wiped at his face. He had a close-cropped haircut and the beginnings of a moustache. Beauregard figured he was barely out of his teens.

  “Yeah. Me too. Hey look, thanks, man. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t stopped. Everybody else drove by us like we were shit that they didn’t want to get on their shoes. I tell you what, you one driving mofo. I think we got here before we left,” the man said. He held his hand out to Beauregard. Beauregard took it and shook it. The guy had a firm grip. A working man’s grip.

  “Hey, what’s your name? If it’s a boy, we might name it after you,” the man said. Beauregard didn’t say anything. He shook the man’s hand again.

  “Anthony,” he said finally. His father’s name tasted like a bitter pill that could save your life by almost killing you.

  He let go of the man’s hand and drove away.

  Red Hill County

  August 1991

  Beauregard could feel the power of the Duster’s engine rumbling up through the floorboards, through the seat and out the top of his head. A Buddy Guy cassette was playing in the tape deck. The warbling whine of Buddy’s polka-dot guitar erupted from the radio speakers. His Daddy had one hand on the steering wheel while his other hand gripped a brown bag. He alternated between singing along with the cassette and taking swigs from the bottle. Beauregard glanced at the speedometer. They were approaching 90 miles an hour. The trees and the rolling fields looked like pieces of Technicolor taffy as the Duster flew by.

  “You know why I wanted to have you come over this weekend, don’t ya, Bug?” Anthony said.

  Beauregard nodded. “Mama says you going away. For a long time,” he said.

  His Daddy took another long swig from his bottle. He switched it from his right hand to his left hand while holding the steering wheel steady with his knee. Then he launched it out the window. Beauregard heard it smash against a sign that stated the speed limit on Town Bridge Road was 45 mph.

  “Your Mama say anything else?” Anthony asked. Beauregard turned his head and gazed out the window. “That’s what I thought. Your Mama … your Mama is a good woman. She just can’t stand herself for falling for my bullshit. She don’t take it out on you, do she, Bug?” Anthony asked.

  Beauregard shook his head. He hated lying to his Daddy. But he hated seeing his parents argue more.

  “Well, I ain’t going away for that long, Bug. A year, maybe two. Just until things cool down,” Anthony s
aid.

  “Where are you going?” Beauregard asked. He already knew, but he wanted to hear his Daddy say it. Until he said where he was going, it wasn’t real.

  Anthony cut his eyes at Beauregard. “California. There’s work out there for a man that can drive,” he said. They slid through a curve without downshifting. Anthony pressed on the brake and the clutch with his feet and let the car drift into the turn then hit the gas before it could stall. Neither one of them spoke for a few minutes. The 340 did all the talking for them.

  “Why you gotta go away, Daddy?” Beauregard asked.

  Anthony didn’t turn his head. He gripped the steering wheel so tight Beauregard could hear it creak. The muscles in Anthony’s neck bulged under his dark obsidian skin. The Duster leaped forward as they descended a slight incline. Beauregard felt his stomach float up near his neck.

  “Bug, I want you to listen to me here. Really listen. I’m gonna say two things and I don’t want you to forget them, alright? Shit, what am I saying, you don’t never forget nothing. First thing is I love ya. I done some fucked-up shit in my time but the best thing I ever done was be your Daddy. No matter what nobody ever tells you, including your Mama, don’t ever doubt I love ya,” Anthony said.

  A park-and-ride lot came into view about five hundred feet up ahead. As they approached it, Anthony whipped the steering wheel to the right and the Duster skidded across the gravel until it came to a stop in front of a concrete parking bumper.

  “Second: When it comes down to it, don’t nobody care about you the way you care about yourself. Don’t ever let nobody make you do for them something they wouldn’t do for you. You hear me, boy?” Anthony asked.

  Beauregard nodded. “I hear ya, Daddy,” he said.

  “People want you to put up with something for a lifetime they wouldn’t put up with for five minutes. I’ll be damned if I’m doing that. Hey, look, I know your grandma put her foot in them biscuits but I could use a shake. You want to go to the Tastee Freez?” Anthony asked.