Twilight of the Drifter

by Shelly Frome

  Roy rearranged the logs feigning complete disinterest.

  “Well?” Sonny said. “Sounds like this little girl was maybe trying to worm her way in or pull something. Don’t know how this big fella fits in. But definitely somethin’ must be going on.”

  Roy held still, mulling over the part about Bubba. Then became aware of a snapping sound. Glancing over, he noticed a side-handle rod by Sonny’s back pocket, the handle sticking out of a holster affixed to his uniform belt.

  “What you got there, Sonny?”

  While nervously snapping and unsnapping the holster a few more times, Sonny said, “Well now, you might say this kinda figures in too. It so happens we got this call from this woman—wouldn’t give her name--that someone also fitting Bubba’s description had been so drunk he run his flatbed truck over her picket fence, smashed into her shed and scared her half to death banging on her door asking for work. And there been other calls about drunk guys acting menacing to women. So two weeks ago I got me this rapid rotation baton. Situation don’t call for a firearm, but you go up against rapidly changing circumstances, if you get my meaning.”

  In that nervous way of his, Sonny showed how, with the holster unsnapped in breakaway, you can defend with it blocking a blow, or swing it above your head to a striking position. But as soon as he held it high as if about to come on down hard across Roy’s shoulder, the coonhound came leaping over the porch steps, tearing around and barking like mad, coming within inches of pouncing on Sonny and knocking him to the ground. If Roy hadn’t stepped between them, there was no telling what might have happened.

  Roy half-dragged half-led the hound by the choke collar back up the steps and into the cabin. Returning, looking down at Sonny from the top step as Sonny ambled over, re-holstered his baton and snapped it in place, Roy said, “That what you call changing circumstances?”

  “Sorry, didn’t realize. But I am real good with this thing, I swear. At the ready, thinkin’ thinkin’ all the time.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “It is. This was a fluke. You add in all the stuff we’ve been talking about, something is bound to break loose. Truth to tell, I come here with this ‘cause I was wondering . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, soon as some of it maybe pans out, some of what Darryl and Strother been feeding me, you could put in a word. Mention it to Johnny Reb while I still got a chance.”

  “Now don’t you go tossin’ that word around.”

  “I won’t, I swear. But if you could see to it.”

  “You got it backwards. You’d best see to it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “See to it you pay Strother no mind. See to it Darryl don’t go off half-cocked. Might need to use that rotation rod on him.”

  At a loss, Sonny just stood there for a time. Then meandered back to the cruiser, slipped behind the wheel and didn’t move for another good three or four minutes before he hit the ignition, put the cruiser in gear and drove off.

  Roy went back inside. He sat at the long table and toyed with the old Colt Reb revolver, drop-in conversion cylinder and center-fire bullets, the hound fast asleep at his feet.

  To clear his head, he called on the inscription on the Confederate Memorial on the Oxford Square:

  A loving tribute to our dead heroes. In memory of the patriotism of these Confederate soldiers who gave their lives in a just and holy cause.

  Accounts he’d memorized from nearby dusty books came next:

  Southern pride was self-evident in the valiant quest for independence, along with immortal and self-sacrificing courage. Our men gave their all in fighting the battles for their homes and their country . . .

  On our right the moon shed its rays on the column of men, while on our left a comet beckoned us onward. High in the sky glowed the Southern Cross and we all sang Dixie.

  Our cause is just. I have little fear in going into this, our great struggle for liberty and our way of life.

  Presently, his own part in the struggles a while back, in recent years and what was lying in wait down the road began to merge and then got twisted around.

  Could it be that this runaway put the bug in Bubba’s ear or, leastwise, went along with what Bubba was after? And was in cahoots with some phony trucker to boot? Trust in some and none of what you hear was starting to seem more like you’d best pay heed to some of what you hear. He thought of where the runaway might be headed and what she might begin to remember. He thought of what this big bearded guy might be up to. He thought of what might have happened up in Memphis and what they call collateral damage. But none of this was clear-cut like he needed, like he had to have.

  He decided to make another quick call. His only consolation that the big fella and the runaway were from up north and maybe the sweet battle lines were drawn.

  15.

  Late that afternoon, the day’s work done, Josh entered Billy’s place and came upon Ella nursing a tall bourbon on the rocks with a mess all around her.

  There she was, sitting on a stool at the far corner of the bar as if taking a break. Behind her, where once stood an old wood-framed photo of a woman in a white dress plucking a banjo and a companion mirror, lay shards of glass. Directly in front of her were overturned tables, a silver bowl, paper cutouts and pieces of an ad layout along with peanut shells strewn all over the floor. But Ella seemed to take it all in stride and raised her highball glass as if offering Josh a New Year’s toast.

  Josh not only had no idea what to make of this scene, he still had no idea how to take Ella. Word had it that she’d been a high-priced call girl at the Peabody in days gone by, had let herself go to seed, hooked up with Billy with nothing better to do and stayed on. Some said she’d always vacillated between bartending and plying her trade. Others said she’d had a rough life, a slew of failed marriages and one-night stands and what it would take to get a rise out of her was anybody’s guess.

  As Ella plunked a few more ice cubes in her glass, Josh stepped behind the bar, picked up the old faded photo and saw that it had a gash in its center as if someone had stabbed it. Avoiding the pieces of glass around his feet and the ones still lodged in the corners of the frame, Josh placed the broken mirror and the photo on the bar by Ella’s ice bucket and waited for her to say something.

  Glancing up, barely raising that husky voice of hers, Ella said, “It’s seen better days. Haven’t we all?”

  “What happened?”

  “Life happened, what else?”

  “When?”

  “Oh, I’d say a little while ago.”

  As Josh was about to step around the bar and stand the tables back up, Ella said, “Leave it, will you, pal? I’m just getting used to the new décor.”

  “Okay, would you mind giving me a clue?”

  “Maybe. You never know.”

  “And what about Alice? She have anything to do with this?”

  Ella went behind the bar, refreshed her drink, replaced the bottle, circled around and plunked herself back down on her corner stool.

  “Come on, talk to me. She’s still up in the flat, right? Hiding? Sleeping it off?”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Before Josh had a chance to prod her any further, Josh caught the unmistakable wail of a bottleneck slide guitar. The vibrations came through the open doorway and emanated clearly from the tiny stage of the Blues Hall.

  Yet another toast from Ella as she said, “At it again. Dewey in his way, me in mine.”

  Josh cut through the doorway in the hope Dewey could shed some light on this. But one glance at Dewey’s swollen watery-blue eye and the way he was sliding that neck from a bottle of wine on his third finger and Josh knew it was no use.

  “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

  “Long gone,” Dewey sang from his perch atop the tiny stage. “Long gone, ain’t the first time. Long gone, ain’t the last. Long gone, what I mean. Long-gonest gal I ever seen.”

  “Where? How? Why?”

  Pushing even
harder, Josh said, “Who made that mess in there and what happened to you?”

  Instead of answering, Dewey began moving the slide over the frets again, shaking his left hand back and forth, giving it more and more of an eerie moan.

  “Answer me, dammit!”

  “Ooh,” said Dewey, “the boy wants answers he cain’t never understand.”

  Keeping the slide going, still not fretting any of the notes with his fingers, Dewey began pecking away with his right hand. A signal some new deep-country blues was coming to him out of nowhere. From what had just happened to him maybe; or something still haunting him; or some premonition or two.

  “Okay, Dewey, I get it, I get it. I’m not on the same wavelength. Okay, fine. But maybe if you could point me in the right direction.”

  “Well,” said Dewey, giving up on the riff and putting his guitar down. “If that ain’t a fool notion, I don’t know what is.”

  “I am responsible for her, don’t you get it?”

  Wincing, Dewey pulled himself up on his feet, his gimpy leg barely able to hold him still. Hobbling off the stage over to Josh, Dewey fished through the pockets of Josh’s Levi jacket, jerked out a blues harp and said, “Make it cry for me, boy. Then I talk to you ‘bout what all’s hangin’ over this. Fact is, you got no business takin’ up with no girl runnin’ from the hill country. No business stoppin’ her, draggin’ her in here, leavin’ a trail to my doorstep. Makin’ me remember after I was doin’ real good forgettin’. You got no business messin’ with this period.”

  At this point, Dewey began looking past Josh into the shadows of the hall. A feeling of remorse set in as he hobbled back to his chair atop the tiny stage, clutched his guitar, vibrating the bottleneck slide, making the eerie wail more insistent than ever.

  Josh tried to break in, tried to apologize for whatever pain he inadvertently caused, tried to get some clue what happened to Dewey and Alice. But got nowhere.

  His energy flagging after this long workday, he made his way up the fire escape, through Billy’s flat and into Alice’s bedroom. He closed the window, checked the unmade bed and closet and saw that she’d snatched the jacket and cell phone and not much more.

  He left the bedroom, went over to the frig and helped himself to a frosty Corona, drained it and got himself another. Then slumped down on a metal chair in the dinette.

  Disregarding the waning daylight, not even bothering to switch on a lamp, he checked his cell. Still no message. The deal was, though he was traveling in the boonies and probably couldn’t raise a signal strong enough to call her, she was in Memphis and at the first sign of trouble could speed-dial him. Obviously trouble must have come at her so fast she didn’t have time. Besides, in her mind what could “teddy bear” Josh do anyways even if he was close by?

  Getting increasingly down on himself, the beer acting more as a depressant than anything else, it didn’t take much to pick up on what Dewey had been telling him all along:

  “Yeah, you drawn to it, Josh, but that ain’t it. ‘Pack my suitcase, make my getaway . . . pack my suitcase, make my getaway. ‘Cause I got trouble in mind, trouble every day.’ You finally get what I’m sayin’? ‘Trouble in mind’ don’t mean appreciatin’ the blues, wishin’ you was up to it or tryin’ it on for size.”

  Absentmindedly, Josh slipped the blues harp out of his Levi jacket. But no trouble-in-mind wail was forthcoming, not even a copy of a copy.

  For a time he sat there in limbo, pondering, spinning his wheels.

  Then, for no apparent reason, the yellow placemat caught his eye. It hadn’t been touched since early this morning, since Alice formed a triangle of orange swizzle sticks that still looked like crossed swords. “Montecristo,” Josh said to himself, having no idea what she meant. Only serving as a reminder he had a growing set of pointers and couldn’t turn his back on her no matter what.

  He rose up, left the flat, made his way down the fire escape and back into the Blues Hall. Dewey was still on stage but this time he was motionless.

  “What are you going to say when Billy comes in?”

  “’bout what?”

  “Your eye.”

  “It kinda swole up on me.”

  “And your knee?”

  “Dampness and the haints. It’s all cause of the haints.”

  Dewey had told him once that down in the Delta the haints would get you unless you hung a dozen bottles from a tree that would clink in the wind and shoo the haints away. He also told him that the haints had it in for him no matter how many bottles he hung up there.

  “It wasn’t the haints, Dewey, so quit jerking me around.”

  “Don’t you sass me like you got some rights, like you know what you talking about. What you doing back down here anyways?”

  “Guess.”

  Ignoring him, Dewey got off the stage and hobbled through the doorway into the bar, Josh tailing right behind, Ella still on her perch apparently not having moved a muscle.

  “Tell me,” said Josh, following Dewey into the café. “Didn’t you like her? Beneath the attitude, I mean? Didn’t you see how scared she was? Couldn’t you tell she was on the run from something way too big for her? So big she couldn’t even remember?”

  Pausing at the edge of the pantry, Dewey said, “Hey, you so all-fired to do some good. Clean up that mess while I whip up some gumbo. Do it before Billy comes bustin’ in and we ain’t never gonna hear the end of it.”

  “You’re wrong, Dewey. It’s hanging over me too. . And the way things are going, it’s spilling all over.”

  “Let it ride, boy. Hear me now. Just you back off, pick up the pieces and let it ride.”

  Giving up on Dewey and realizing the last thing anybody needed was to throw Billy into the mix, Josh went back into the bar. He got out a broom and dust pan and started cleaning up the peanuts, crushed shells and broken glass. He righted the overturned tables and returned the silver bowl to its usual spot.

  As he bent down and gathered up the cutouts, discarded layout and a pair of scissors, Ella said, “Don’t tell me. You are now up for homemaker of the year.”

  Paying her no mind, Josh tossed the pieces on top of the tables.

  “Which reminds me,” said Ella. “Your mom called earlier. I told her, yes, her brother Billy and I were still a very bad influence. But despite that and your disheveled new look, you are and will always remain untainted.”

  Separating the cutouts and placing them in some semblance of order, Josh said, “Thanks for selling me short.”

  “Don’t mention it. Oh, and one more thing,” Ella went on. “Only a few minutes ago, got another call. A guy said, ‘Any damage done?’ And that was it.”

  “A few-words kind of guy?”

  “Three words, slowly spaced out, flat southern drawl.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “No problem. Nothing we can’t handle. Long as your crazed Ole Miss fan stays back in them thar hills.”

  “White straggly hair? Lopsided grin?”

  “Amazing,” said Ella, moving behind the bar and discarding her drink. “What do they call that? Telepathy? Is that the word or have they come up with something new?”

  “And what was this man of few words’ response?”

  “Nothing. He hung up.”

  “So what happened here? Dewey won’t tell me a thing and all I’ve got from you is snide little hints.”

  Thinking it over, Ella removed the remaining shards from the gay-nineties photo and the photo itself. Scouring around, peeling off a Happy-hour self-sticking label, she applied it to the back of the photo so that, from a distance, the slash wasn’t too noticeable. She slid the photo in place, gave up on the companion mirror and returned the gay-nineties memorabilia to its prominent position above the liquor display.

  “Okay, Ella,” said Josh, “we’ll play it your way. I assume Darryl roughed-up Dewey over some issue.”

  “Oh, the backwoods bozo has got a name. Darryl is it? How nice.”

  “Then took it ou
t on the photo.”

  “But hold on. Maybe it’s not the backwoods that got to him. Maybe it’s too many cowboy flicks.”

  To demonstrate, with that jaded glint in her eye, Ella skirted the bar till she was confronting the photo head on. Then, hands by her hips, she said, “Call it.”

  “Get serious, will you?”

  “Come on, pal, you wanted to know. I’m showing you.”

  Humoring her, Josh said, “Okay, Ella. Draw.”

  Instead of slapping her hips, she reached behind her back and shot her right arm forward. “Fastest switchblade in the west.” Blowing on the fantasy knife and pocketing it, she went into Billy’s office, returned with a couple of glue sticks, plucked up the scissors, leaned over one of the tables and started patching up the layout as Josh stepped aside.

  “All right, I’m starting to get the picture. But what’s the problem between him and Dewey? What would cause him to drive all the way up here and then spook Alice?”

  “You tell me and we’ll both know.”

  Josh eased over to the streaked front window. He peered out through the misting rain onto the empty street; the storefronts with their striped red, green and orange awnings bare and shadowy under the intermittent streetlights. “What did you tell him about Alice?”

  “Nothing much except she has a directional problem. Takes off from Aunt Ada Mae heading for home. Makes a 180 in Kentucky thanks to you and does a stopover here. Splits again because he went after Dewey and then went after her. Got a mouth on her, which is obvious, and a blank spot in her brain.”

  “Went after her but lost her in the shuffle.”

  “Bingo. Which only added to his lovely temperament.”