Ace Atkins - Infamous

“I cleared out the snakes yesterday,” the boy said, his mouth opening wide, showing teeth that now in memory seemed a great deal like old Ed Weatherford’s, and maybe that’s why the detective had some familiarity to her.

She’d eaten lunch with her parents after the service, and while they’d gone to nap in the front bedroom she’d snuck out a back door and down a long dirt road for a mile or so, following a trail of barbed wire to where it had been cut to a path leading to a shaded forest filled with ancient oaks and hickory trees. The creek breaking into a sandy bend in a wide cut from her neighbor’s pasture.

The redheaded boy was there, still dressed in the mail-order suit, tie in his pocket and shoes knotted and hung on the root of a tree that grew straight out over the water. He played with a stick in the sand but smiled when he heard her swat away the limbs, leaves crunching underfoot.

“There better not be no snakes.”

“I swear on it.”

“And you try any funny business, boy, and I’ll scream my head off.”

“I swear.”

She walked down a smooth path, the trees giving the whole bend a nice stretch of cover like the top of a green circus tent. And she’d taken off her shoes and pulled her dress up to her knees, wading into the coolness of the creek that dipped over a rocky edge, flowing into a wide swimming hole that she’d been coming to since she could recall. The coldness of the water choked her breath, as she found the other side and took a seat beside the boy on a fallen oak.

He offered her another cigarette. And they sat there and smoked until the cigarettes were done. He just stood and walked down to the creek edge and began to take off his suit, hanging it beside his shoes just as natural as if he was in his own bedroom.

She knew her face must’ve turned red as she quickly turned away, eyeing his pale white hide from between her laced fingers, watching him toe at the water with his ole peter pointing up high and crooked as a wild divining rod searching for a well. He was skinny like a mongrel dog-she recalled that-and his ribs and stick-figure arms somewhat comical.

He immersed himself, spitting a fountain of water, and splashed and paddled around a bit, before calling her “a scaredy ole chicken,” and she told him to shut his damn mouth, with a sly little grin.

“You turn around and close your eyes,” she said. “And count to ten. I see you peeking, and I’m going to go straight home.”

“I swear on it.”

“I wish you’d say something else. The more you say that, the less I believe you.”

He paddled away and started to count to fifty. Dumb ole Cleo Brooks began to unbutton the front of her dress, getting down to her bloomers, and pretty soon those were heaped up on a hot rock, and she jumped on in the swimming hole, feeling that coolness around her, the relaxing sound of the creek bubbling over that sandy bend.

The boy paddled toward her.

She paddled away.

He got close, and she turned her naked butt to him.

She found herself in a little rocky elbow hidden under a jutting mossy boulder. The sunlight broke and scattered like ticker tape above her, and she reached up with her long, skinny arms to hold on to the rock’s point, shaking her head and telling that boy he better find his own real estate, mister.

“Scaredy-cat.”

“I ain’t scared of you.”

“How come you’re shaking?”

“I ain’t shaking.”

“Scaredy-cat.”

“I ain’t scared.”

He paddled to where he could stand and moved close, his long fingers reaching for her boobies like a fella trying to test the ripeness of fruit.

“Hey,” she said.

“That’s okay, sugarpie.”

“That ain’t how you touch a woman.”

“You ain’t no woman,” he said. “You’re a girl. And my brother tole me that a girl gets real excited when you touch her parts.”

“Cut it out.”

“Hold on, sugarpie.”

“See how you like it,” she said, laughing, and reached out and grabbed his pecker like she was trying for first prize in a tug-of-war, and the boy’s eyes got real big, and he toppled over into the water, and stupid old Cleo Brooks didn’t run but had to be bold and not a scaredy-cat and found herself on top of the boulder without a stitch, sunning herself from where the light broke out and warmed the stone. She rested on her elbows and closed her eyes, and figured that boy would run off with his sore pecker in his hand, but instead when she blinked in the dimming sun-thinking maybe a cloud had passed-she saw him standing over her, dripping and smiling, kneeling down and grabbing for her ankles.

“Close your eyes, sugarpie.”

“I ain’t your sugarpie,” she said, but let him lay flat on top of her and kiss her hard on the mouth, feeling for his crooked ole pecker and mumbling things he’d probably learned in romance stories from his mama’s ragged copies of Cosmopolitan . When he called her “darling” and “my love,” she snickered, and, boy, that’s when he took the chance and stuck it on in, and said, “If you don’t breathe, you won’t have a baby. It’s true.”

And so Cleo Brooks took a big breath, closed her eyes, and puffed out her cheeks, as the preacher’s son rode her like he was high on an old-fashioned bicycle going down a rocky path.

The whole meeting on the rock didn’t take ten seconds.

When he finished, her not feeling a thing, he crawled off her and walked over to his clothes and got dressed. Not looking at her till he knotted his tie tight at the throat. He tossed down a crumpled dollar she knew he’d stolen from the collection plate.

He shook his head and sat, saying, “You tricked me. You got the devil in you. Like all women. You tricked me.”

And that was the story that all Saltillo and part of Tupelo heard as her little white belly had grown large and she’d stood before his father on the front steps of the church, the preacher not willing to dirty the sanctuary with the likes of a tricky little girl like Cleo Brooks.

She had a daughter. The dumb boy went off to Bible college.

When Ora said let’s pack up and leave Mississippi, Kathryn didn’t hesitate. They bundled up the baby, packed two suitcases, and got on the train to Memphis and then onto Fort Worth. She took on the name Kathryn after a fancy woman who used to tip big at the Bon-Ton after a manicure.

Kathryn finished the cigarette on blind Ma Coleman’s porch, letting the wind take the ash and scatter it everywhere. She thought about how things mighta been different if she could have stayed in Saltillo, but none of the paths seemed that appealing to her.

She spotted the truck from a ways off, coming down the dirt road, kicking up the grit and the dust, and she stood from the wooden steps and walked blind, shielding the sun with her hand over her eyes until the truck stopped down by that beaten mailbox and out walked George R. Kelly, lugging two suitcases, his fine hat crushed and crooked on his head and sweat rings around his neck and dress shirt.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, walking. “Son of a bitch.”

Kathryn walked to meet him, not caring if her bare feet tore on the gravel, and stepped halfway up the road. “Where you been, you dumb ape?”

“You’re sore at me? If that doesn’t beat all.”

“Yeah, I’m sore. Took you long enough.”

“You and Louise took the car and ten thousand dollars.”

“I told you I’d be here.”

“You’re sore.”

“I’m sore.”

George let out all his breath, slipping his hat down over his eyes. He shook his head like she was the one who’d gone plain nuts.

“We got to bury the loot.”

“Grandma won’t be too pleased.”

“Grandma doesn’t have to know,” he said. “She’s blind.”