Dark End of the Street

by Ace Atkins

  Ransom was gonna take ’em out.

  His boys comin’ from the other bridge started firin’, all heaven and hell started breakin’ loose like that book in the Bible when the dang beast and the four horsemen and all them critters come barkin’ out from the center of the earth.

  All Jon could do is cover his head and start prayin’ to E where he sat with the Lord way up high in a jumpsuit made of gold.

  Ulysses Davis laughed hard from the top of the hill where he’d parked the Expedition. As soon as he saw the crew from the Sons of the South wearing night vision goggles and camouflage, he really started laughing his ass off. He smacked the steering wheel looking through his own binoculars and laughed a little more.

  “You want to see?”

  “Fuck ’em,” I said. “Let ’em play it out.”

  “I tell you, Travers. This was one hell of an idea. What did you tell those boys?”

  “Just told their commander that I knew where to find the folks who’d killed one of their finest men in arms, Bill MacDonald. Said those communists would be here in his state for a drug drop with a local gang of Jamaicans.”

  “Jamaicans?”

  “They needed an additional incentive.”

  U shook his head and put down the binoculars. He took a big swig of water and watched the battle, sparks flashing from the muzzles of the automatic weapons. “Wasn’t that fancy with Beckum? Just told him that I’d sell your old tired ass out for a quarter.”

  “How much, really?”

  “I’m not sayin’. Let’s just say you were on special.”

  We both laughed for a while and then he cranked the car and we started to pull away. For some reason, though, I decided to glance down the hill and maybe catch a bit of that fucker Ransom getting sliced in half. I wanted it. I did. But part of me also felt disgusted for following through on my fantasies. I’d killed those bastards, just as if I’d stalked them and knifed them in the gut.

  We could only pray that the Sons of the South would take a hard hit for wiping them out. U planned on calling the police as soon as we got back on Poplar.

  I couldn’t see much. As U turned the car and started to drive away, I saw more camouflage dudes running through a war that they thought they’d never fight. The chance for an actual mission had to have been irresistible.

  One image did catch me, though. A person that sure as hell didn’t belong in the battle. A young girl was walking through the men – as if she was supernatural and impervious to bullets – head up and hands at her sides. Abby.

  Chapter 61

  U TOLD ME HE’D meet me at the base of the bridge after I grabbed Abby; so I bolted from his truck searching. I tried to keep my footing on the steep weedy hill with my boots while I watched about half of the Humvees load up with soldiers and peel out, high beams scattered under the bridges and over the darkened dirt road. But several others remained, waiting to be loaded with wounded men. Among them, I found Abby again, she was walking, but kind of stumbling, over the broken ground near the place where I’d found Clyde James. A million years ago.

  I ran after her, my Glock tight in my hand. Safety off. Seventeen shots ready to go.

  I called her name.

  She seemed deafened by all the gunfire from a few minutes ago. She stared straight ahead, still wearing my tattered blue jean jacket, looking stubborn and unwavering past a bunch of bodies. One of the dead men raised his head.

  It was Jesse Garon in a white suit with an older man with a beard. The man yelled off something, fired at two of the SOS soldiers, and dropped them both to the ground. The crack of his gun sounded like a breaking whip. After the shots, Garon and the man got to their feet, saw me pointing my gun at them, then looked to the north at a cliff and then south at four more SOS soldiers racing toward them.

  They launched into a run back onto the bridge; Abby didn’t even break stride as I yelled for her.

  She reached down to one of the dead soldiers, grabbed his handgun, and began chasing the man and Garon onto the darkened bridge.

  After waiting for a break in the firing, I ran onto the old bridge. My feet thumping and nearly tripping over the old wooden slats. Brown water swirled several hundred feet below. Cars passed on the new bridge to the south. I could hear their engines buzz and the whoosh of water under me.

  Minutes later, I found Abby.

  Running from behind, I grabbed a good chunk of the jean jacket like it was a quarterback’s jersey and pulled her into me. She was so determined to track Garon and the man she hadn’t even heard me follow. Her breath was loose and ragged.

  She grunted and fought, but I twisted her close, trying to catch my breath, and at the same time hug her. She continued to wriggle and hit and finally I had to pin her arms to her sides and said, “Slow. We got ’em. Slow.”

  She slowed the wriggling, didn’t hit me again, and her eyes began to register a little less wild light through her scattered blond hair. To the north, the humpbacks of the Hernando-Desoto Bridge burned in broken patterns of small white lights.

  As her breathing slowed, I tried to take the gun from her hand.

  But she fought back.

  She stepped away and pointed the barrel at me. I raised my hands.

  Over her shoulder, I saw lights moving closer to us from the Arkansas side. I thought it might be a train, but the rotted planks underneath my feet made me change my mind.

  It was a truck. U’s truck.

  I recognized the familiar pattern of the Expedition’s headlights and the solid familiar clack of his door closing. He was walking to us.

  I could make out his hulking shape moving close and felt a bit of relief.

  Then I heard a groan and rumble and my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach as I saw that big truck drop from sight. A horrible groan of metal and the snapping of brittle wood. The truck was swallowed up in a huge black hole.

  A mammoth splash of water erupted from under us.

  Then it was silent for several seconds. A biting wind gnawed at my fingers resting on the rusted metal of the bridge. Wind whipped off the river and made a howling house as it flew through the crevices of metal.

  I saw the cab of the truck, floating like a huge bubble, drift past and then dip, roll, and disappear into the bottom of the river.

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see anything. Dust had kicked up from the broken bridge.

  But then I saw U walking toward us, through the moonlight and dust, a look on his face that was pissed off as hell. A look, for once, I was glad to see.

  “Goddamn it!” he yelled to me.

  “You see them?” I shouted back.

  “Must’ve dropped over the side before they got over water.”

  Abby aimed the gun at U.

  “Abby,” I said, reaching around her body to hold her arms down. “It’s fine. It’s U.”

  “I heard him on the phone,” she said, holding on to the gun. “He made a deal with Ransom.”

  U swaggered to a stop ahead of us. She looked up at him, eyes determined as hell, as I tried to pull the gun away.

  “It was planned, Abby. We’re playing Ransom.”

  She looked at me.

  Then back at U.

  Her body grew slack, the gun dropped to her side, and I slowly let my arms go from around her body. She looked up at the crooked rusted supports of the bridge.

  “C’mon, Abby,” U said. “Let’s go home.”

  “Where, U?” she said, not moving. Abby looked like she wanted to hit something.

  Toward the Arkansas line, I saw a shapeless form emerge from the darkness that had swallowed U’s truck.

  “Stay here,” I said. I gripped her arms pretty damned tight to get her attention. “Stay put.”

  She nodded.

  U branched off on the south edge and I took the north. More shapes were moving.

  As soon as I walked to the big hole in the bridge, the shape had disappeared. I aimed my gun at one of the steel supports. I knew I’d seen a person moving but
I thought maybe he’d fallen back through the hole. Made me uneasy as hell even being close to its rough form and the shadowed, black water moving below.

  I walked backward and saw Jesse Garon scaling up one of the supports, trying to hide. Son of a bitch.

  I ran over to follow him but then I heard a scream from Abby.

  I couldn’t see her as I ran back to where we’d parted. The light was much better facing the Tennessee entrance and I knew she had to be hidden behind one of the beams.

  I slowed my walk, trying to recall where I’d heard the scream.

  I kept my eyes focused for any slight movement behind each rusted cove.

  I walked. Slow. I pointed my gun and nearly fired at some birds nesting in some rafters above. They flew away in a peppered pattern in the dull glow of Memphis lights.

  Then I heard the click of a gun.

  Abby had the bearded man in a headlock. She had her pistol pointed at his head. She’d been screaming out of anger as she held his head tight into the crook of her elbow.

  I lowered my gun.

  She screwed the muzzle tighter into his ear. He was an older man, rough skin and black eyes. He wore an intensity on his face like this was a moment he’d relived a thousand times and would escape once again.

  “Abby, I got him.”

  “It’s him,” she said. “It’s Ransom.”

  U jogged from across the bridge. He slowed when he saw Abby. I wanted so badly for her to shoot Ransom. I wanted it to happen but the words coming out of my mouth pleaded for her to be calm.

  “Let U have him.” I wasn’t making sense to myself.

  She kept pushing him back to the Tennessee side of the bridge until Ransom tripped over a railroad tie. The light and shadows broke about every few feet over my face until we found her half covered in darkness, a foot on Ransom’s throat.

  She had the gun pointed at his head.

  Ransom laughed and tried to move out from underneath her. “Your daddy just laid there, beggin’ while we shot him. Genetics is a funny thing. You ain’t got it in you either.”

  “Abby, leave him,” I said.

  He pulled free, stood, and dusted his coat. More a gesture of power than trying to get clean. He didn’t even look in our direction, trying to make himself believe we’d follow Abby’s lead.

  He said: “Y’all take care.”

  I was getting ready to pull the trigger when the gun fired in Abby’s hand and Ransom stumbled back, finally falling to his knees.

  As he felt for the blood rushing from his heart, he wore an expression of someone caught in another’s nightmare.

  He seemed to be thinking as he lay in shock, This wasn’t the way it was supposed to turn out.

  The shot didn’t even faze U, who broke apart from us and ran back to where his truck had disappeared.

  We jogged together, almost as if training camp were last summer, and I heard him talking shit the same as he’d done back then. But this time it wasn’t about his coaches or his first wife. He was mad at me. “Who is gonna pay for that, Travers? And, damn, you know I can’t take your car. It’s more of a piece of shit than it’s ever been.”

  He stopped, winded, and looked up into the slatted high beams. About thirty feet up, we saw Garon holding on to a crosswalk. He smiled down to us and waved.

  U said: “Had a CD changer in the back.”

  I gripped the steel beams and found a foothold in crisscrossed slats held in place by rusted rivets. The wind cut into my ear canals and made sharp, whistling sounds.

  “Don’t even,” U said.

  I found another foothold.

  And another.

  “Crazy motherfucker,” was the last thing I heard before I got higher into the bridge’s supports and about ten feet away from Garon.

  He kept smiling down at me the whole time. Each step I made, each foothold, I got more angry. I couldn’t stop seeing Loretta lying there. I couldn’t stop thinking about JoJo’s bar and my life and suddenly I felt like I was at the edge of this cliff. Jon was there. Standing. Looking down at me.

  I gripped tight onto the crossbeam where he stood.

  My stomach swayed when I stupidly glanced down at the swirling water below us, hundreds of feet. Freezing wind clawing at my fingers, making it tough to get a grip.

  Garon didn’t move. Didn’t try to knock me off the ridge.

  He stood on a crosswalk fashioned from three beams. Enough to walk. Keep your balance without tumbling off. As I walked toward him, he aimed a gun at my chest.

  I couldn’t breathe and the wind cutting into my ears made me feel like I was bleeding.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Again.

  Click.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” I said. I was out of breath. I wanted to kill him. “Why’d you come back? After everything in New Orleans. Why’d you come back for me?”

  He mumbled something.

  “What?” I yelled.

  “You killed me.”

  He wore an ill-fitting white suit with a yellow scarf around his neck. His face was reddened and chafed and his sideburns were bushy and uneven. He had a face pockmarked with acne scars and his eyes showed the distracted glassy look of someone truly mentally ill. It was the same with Clyde.

  “Stay there,” I said.

  He shook, his whole body convulsing like an electric current was shooting through him. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. “Evil and lives,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Evil and lives,” he said, laughing. “It never really ends. We’re all just on a train bound for Tulsa.”

  All of sudden, he rushed me and I dropped to my knees, getting a firm grip on the walk. Size wasn’t a factor up here.

  As I hung on, he kept going.

  He didn’t want to kill me at all.

  I watched him sail over the edge of the bridge, his arms outstretched like he was in flight with his legs pinned together, until he disappeared hundreds of feet below into the Mississippi.

  Chapter 62

  IT WAS THANKSGIVING, one of those worn, gray days when all you wanted to do was lie inside and eat and watch parades and footballs games. Maybe nap a little bit. Abby hated that feeling. She hated being sluggish and full and lazy, so she begged Maggie to take her down Old Taylor Road to the stables and get their horses out for a run. Abby brought Hank along for the ride in Maggie’s beat-up Rabbit and soon they had the horses saddled up and began beating a fine path beside a nameless creek, dodging tree branches and jostling along until the horses’ breath made foggy patterns in the dark mist.

  The air smelled of barbecue fires and moldy leaves as she kicked her horse in the side for a good run in an open clearing of high, yellow grass that had once been a cotton field. Abby’s horse jumped ahead of Maggie and she laughed and yelled as they got closer and closer back to another clearing up on a hill dotted with rolls of hay leading to an old house and then back to the stables.

  She hadn’t told Maggie yet about buying the land, the stables, and the horses. She wasn’t sure how her cousin would take it. She’d think it was charity, giving her a job and a business to run. But since Abby had sold her parents’ house and planned on traveling awhile, she got a little scared. She needed a place of her own.

  They both slowed to a gallop, Abby tucking her beaten suede boots tight into the stirrups and ducking beneath the hardened fingers of a bare oak and the long, dying strands of a willow.

  Hank ran ahead of them and quickly disappeared after sniffing out a rabbit. The path widened for a moment, by a pool of stagnant green water littered with cypress stumps and a few dead birds. Abby reigned in her horse and jostled down the other way, passing the ruins of an old house some said belonged to a Confederate captain. Her father always used to say that the Yankees burned down the house and killed the man’s family. Said when the man walked back from Georgia, he found everything he’d built destroyed.

  There was only a stone floor and a chimney, a bas
e really, but Abby had always thought it would be fine place to build a house someday.

  “What do you think?” she asked Maggie.

  “Fine,” she said. “I don’t know if the Johnsons would ever sell it, though.”

  “They would,” Abby said, looking down the last bit of path into the clearing and the stables. Her last day in Oxford before driving up to Memphis for her flight. “I mean, they did.”

  Maggie shook her head and steadied her horse’s feet. “That wasn’t necessary.”

  “Will you take care of it?” she asked, taking off her straw cowboy hat and fingering away her loose hair.

  Maggie nodded that she would. And that was it. No fight. No more talking. Not even an explanation of how it would all work out. They’d been friends since Abby was born and it wasn’t necessary.

  “You heard from Nick?” Maggie asked. Her sharp green eyes looking exotic and bright against her dark skin and hair.

  “Only took you two hours to ask today.”

  “Well?”

  “He’s back in New Orleans. Called me yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “Said he was going to finish some book he’d been working on about a blues singer. Said it helped having something to keep his mind off things.”

  “He can keep his mind on me.”

  Abby laughed.

  “He’ll come around,” Maggie said, smiling and putting a hand on her very round denimed hip. “They always do.”

  Abby trotted her horse into the stable. The wood there was ancient, been there since the turn of the century, and had the same coloring of driftwood. She unbuckled the saddle and, despite the cold, removed a sweaty blanket from the animal’s back.

  After Abby finished putting away the saddle and rig, Maggie tossed her a pitchfork.

  “Nothin’s changed,” Maggie said.

  Abby smiled and said, “Nothin’.”

  She worked for a while cleaning out the stable, until the sky grew darker and they both knew that the families back at Maggie’s house would wonder where they went. Nothing had changed. Maggie was sixteen and Abby was ten.