Ace Atkins - Infamous

The two doors toward the front porch were shut, but Jones tried one, lightly letting it swing open with the natural lean of the house to find a baby’s high chair and a metal bed. The dead cornfield became the wavy lines in his drawing, the mineral well a well-defined X, and now the southeast room. The high chair. The shaving mirror on a travel trunk.

He walked farther into the shack and noted a kitchen to the northwest, and the northeast corner filled with a handmade bench and an old organ with sheet music to an old Fatty Arbuckle picture.

He turned back to the porch, walking soft in his boots, the screen door squaring up a big Texas sky, bright blue with heat, and not a cloud for shade. He saw Weatherford’s back and his hatless, balding crown. The detective continued to launch seeds into the dusty ground while Jones tried the other door to his right. As it opened, he found the teenage girl sitting atop a bare mattress, her gingham dress pulled astride of her fat, round bosom. Both mother and child turned to the old man, the child going back to the nourishment, but the mother had the look of a coyote, her eyes not leaving Jones until the old door, fashioned of square-headed nails and boards, closed with a final, hard click.

Jones returned to the porch as Armon rounded the corner, coming from the hogpen.

“Our thanks for the watermelon,” Jones said.

“I’ll tell Boss you come callin’,” Armon said, shaking the men’s hands before scratching his pecker and looking up high at the sun, as if either one could tell time, and giving an expression like he wished it would get on and set. “Gosh dang, it’s gettin’ hotter than nickel pussy.”

GEORGE STARTED ACTING STRANGE, STRANGER THAN NORMAL, the minute they got back to the Hotel Cleveland. He’d read off the front page of the Plain-Dealer , folded it crisply in half, and said, “Let’s get packin’, Kit.” Just like that. Didn’t explain a thing; just “get packin’ ” at four a.m., after three nightclubs, two cabarets, and one speakeasy. Both of them half in the bag, stumbling and fumbling, and George telling her to lay off when she pinched his ass in front of that sour-faced doorman as that little tan coupe was wheeled around from the garage. So she finally asked, “What gives?” and George told her about the goddamn wire story about a couple of Kid Cann’s Jews getting pinched by the G in Saint Paul.

“Did they say it was Urschel money?”

“What did I say?”

“Why didn’t you tell me back at the hotel?”

“Because that woulda started a discussion, and I ain’t in no mood for discussin’.”

“George, you are whiskey mean. You can drink beer all night, but the minute you touch the liquor-”

“Go suck an egg.”

They were on Highway 20, halfway to Toledo, before she spoke again, the bumpy road and headlights shooting into nothing but ribbons of road, making her sleepy.

“I got to use the can.”

“Piss in a bottle,” he said.

“It doesn’t function that way, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Ah.”

“Why are you sore?”

“Those Jews didn’t have the money two days before they got sloppy and started to show off.”

“How’d they get pinched?”

“How else? Turned in by some lousy bank manager.”

“You said the Kid was smart and that he knew people, and no one would be the wiser. You said-”

“I know what I said, ’cause I’m the one who said it.”

Hessville. Woodville. Lemoyne.

The bastard drove straight on into the town of Assumption, this being about the time he needed to take a leak, and wheeled on into a roadside gas station and told the grease monkey to fill her up. The monkey unlatched the hood and flipped her open to check the oil, whispering and whoo-wheeing, until Kit got out and found the can herself.

“She sure is cherry,” the monkey said. “Her engine ain’t even broke in yet.”

“And my husband wants to trade her already.”

“Come again?”

“He wants to trade her.”

“Whatsthematta with him?”

“You name it, brother.”

They were back on Highway 20. Fayette. Pioneer. Columbia.

And then it was WELCOME TO INDIANA.

“I’m hungry.”

“Well, you should’ve grabbed a pig’s foot at the filling station.”

“You should go into radio.”

“Come again?”

“You should go into radio.”

“How’s that?”

“ ’ Cause you’re a goddamn comedian.”

Toast, eggs, and hash in Angola, staring out at signs south to Waterloo.

“Waterloo?”

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“It’s where Napoleon got his ass kicked.”

She shrugged, and took some more cream in her coffee.

“You wouldn’t know that, ’cause you never went past the eighth grade.”

“Are you gonna sing me the Central High fight song?”

“I was big man on campus there.”

“Rah-rah.’ ”

“What’s eating you?”

George had a hard time getting settled into the new, smaller car, and about every other mile or so he’d have to tell her about it. Saying they should’ve never gotten rid of that big beauty and how they wouldn’t be having to go through all this mess in Chicago if she hadn’t been the one to go show up some salesman’s wife.

She crossed her arms across her chest.

“This is no fun at all.”

“I didn’t promise a rose-strewn path, sweetheart.”

“But if we got the money, you said we’d enjoy it. I ain’t had one enjoyable night since we left Saint Paul.”

“You were having fun last night.”

“Pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over, you mug.”

And George slowed somewhere on Highway 20 in old Iowa, where the corn seemed to grow straighter and greener. And Kathryn held on to the Cadillac frame and stepped out on the running board, where she puked her goddamn guts out. George had a good guffaw at that, and she crossed her arms over her chest again and then leaned into the window frame, the sweet morning heat lifting the matted hair off her face, and she looked at all that goddamn corn, all those silos and cows. And, goddamn, she wanted to be back in the city again, at a proper hotel.

“I’m callin’ Louise.”

“Why don’t you just take out an ad? Or call up J. Edgar Hoover himself?”

“I’m callin’ Louise and have her meet us in Chicago.”

“You won’t call no one, not even your damn mother, till I say so.”

“Louise is fun. You can stay at the hotel and listen to Buck Rogers on the can. Me and Lou. We know how to have fun.”

“She’s a rotten whore. She’s worse than a man.”

“No woman is worse than a man.”

“Bullshit.”

There was that rotten, goddamn silence in the Cadillac till they turned up north and could smell Lake Michigan from the open windows and finally caught a big break of solid, civilized road. George pulled off and let the top down, and they saw they were only fifty miles from the city.

“I’m calling her.”

“Do it, and I’ll break your hand.”

“You wouldn’t lay a finger.”

George rolled up his sleeves to the elbow and plucked a Camel into his mouth. He fished into the back for his matches, but Kathryn took a long breath and reached into her little jeweled purse for a lighter. “You always lose ’em, George. I don’t think, since I’ve known you, you have ever been able to keep a book of matches.”

“How we met.”

And there it was, a lousy smile on her face. She leaned back into the big, plush seat and stared at the wide, open blue sky. “Yes, George. How we met.”

There were people playing in the sand and sailboats way out in the lake. And she had George stop long before they ever reached the city. She pulled off her thigh-highs and tossed them away, running into the sand and touching her feet to the water. George followed, lace-up two-tone shoes in his right hand, smoking and sullen, and found a spot to park his ass. He watched some kids playing on a rickety boat and tossed the cigarette away.