Ace Atkins - Dirty South

He had the hammer thumbed back on his.357 Magnum. His eyes and face were dead. No light, no feeling. His black skin slick with sweat. He aimed the barrel toward me and said in his deep voice, “Sit your ass down till we find a good and dark place to kill you.”

CASH HUGS THAT COAST of Pontchartrain, that mean ole humpbacked levee running for miles out on-shore. Look like the spiny back of a dragon blockin’ you from seein’ anything off the lake. The sky is so pink and gray. These big-ass long clouds that crack and stretch like broken slabs of concrete in the early day. The sun just a slice of orange over that long, green levee, colorin’ these old fishin’ shacks on tall crooked wooden legs that stretch out long and crippled. Some of them is just legs now, weather and time and shit bleachin’ all that wood away.

Cash slow his purple boat, his right hand on that wheel that look like a racecar. He open up his C-phone and start talkin’. He yellin’ into it, tellin’ them to “Work ’em. Work ’em.”

He flick it shut and turn to JoJo. “My boys seen ’em. They was right down by the causeway and must’ve got scared. They’s runnin’ ’em back toward us. Both my boats like two pit bulls.”

JoJo smiled. “Hot damn,” he said. But then he stopped smilin’ when Cash turn the boat toward the bridges headin’ out of the city. “They see Nick?”

Cash shook his head. “Just Teddy and some other brother.”

“That brother is Dio,” you say.

“What?” Cash says, wealth flashin’ in his mouth. He starts to laugh.

“Dio ain’t dead,” you say. “Some rich motherfuckers over in Metairie made him up. He ain’t neva real.”

“What you mean, not real?” Cash asks, lookin’ back. Real concerned now.

“I said that nigga weren’t eva real,” you say. “This boy Christian just actin’ thugged up. They weren’t his rhymes, man. He stole them off a dead man he knew in Angola and then made his own self disappear. They schemed all them lost records and shit.”

Cash shook his head. “That the boy on the boat?”

“Yeah.”

“He got to win the Academy Award,” he say. “I even heard folks out in Calliope say they his people.”

Bronco reach into a duffel bag and hands JoJo a long, black pistol.

“Teddy know about this?” Cash ask.

You say he did.

“Lord help ’em both,” Cash say. “You gonna kill ’em, old man?”

“I kill anyone gets in my way.”

“You with him, Tavarius?” Cash ask.

“All the way.”

“Y’all just thugs and don’t even know it.”

Cash lay down the throttle and that long green levee break behind you. Y’all runnin’ down a long old railroad bridge crossin’ the water.

“The Trestle,” JoJo says, to no one in particular.

CHRISTIAN STEERED the boat while Teddy tied Trey’s body with thick white rope and wrapped the cord of a ship radio around his neck, letting the heavy transmitter fall to his chest. He duct-taped a big red fire extinguisher to his dead body and pulled the cover of a black pillowcase over his head.

“Goddamn, he wouldn’t quit lookin’ at me,” Teddy said. “You like that, Malcolm?” He started to laugh. “You like that?”

“Yeah, Teddy,” Christian said. “Good boy.”

I held my place on a backseat, rolling and rocking with the boat. My entire body smeared with my own blood and vomit. Dark maroon stains across my palms.

“Teddy, you remember that time you won the Atlanta game? You scooped up the ball and ran in for a touchdown. We went down to that bar in the Quarter and later on you danced on a table with that midget. You remember that? Man, we had a good time.”

I smiled up at him.

He tilted his head at me. His eyes narrowing. “You ain’t nothin’.”

“I’m your friend. It’s Nick.”

“Nick?”

He smiled for a moment, eyes softening.

His shape darkened as we headed for the long train bridge – Christian squeezing through the narrow opening – sewing our way under two more long bridges of the old highway and then the interstate twisting north. He smiled as the day softened all pink and gold all the way to the Gulf. Christian running us close to the shore and cursing God for only finding marsh.

We slowed to a chug as he looked for solid ground.

I held out my hand to Teddy.

The smile shut off.

“It’s all gone too far,” he said.

We were on the far edge of Orleans Parish, the edge of the Bayou Sauvage.

I could smell the foulness of the bayou rot as we moved away from the lake and deeper into the high grass. I’d hunted around here sometime back with JoJo, a place called Blind Lagoon.

I heard the scream of a nutria in the slate-gray-and-pink morning. The swamp rat’s bloated body swimming in the high grass, slabs of yellow and brown teeth like a prehistoric animal. Red eyes watching us in the fresh light.

Dawn was here.

Dead cypress silhouetted the landscape like amputated appendages.

As Christian slowly moved into the marsh, engine revving and stopping, revving and stopping, I saw an eagle turn in the sky and hang there for a moment, just riding in the wind that moved him.

“AIN’T NOBODY GOING to get through that mess,” JoJo say, lookin’ into that smelly-ass swamp. Cash keep the boat back a ways from where Teddy stand on the Scarab. You once wanted that boat but now you want to drill holes in it and watch it sink way down deep into all that brown-green ooze you passin’ through.

You hear the crack of a gun. A bullet spiderwebs the window on Cash’s boat.

JoJo pushes you down. Cash yells.

“He’s dead,” he says. “I should’ve killed that fat son of a bitch when I got the chance. Goddamn. Shootin’ my boat. Man.”

He reaches for a big-ass.44 he got kept in a little cover by the steering wheel. “Yeah, that’s right.” He revs the motor and drifts closer. “Come on, motherfucker. Cash here to play.”

Bronco inches down on the side of the boat, his gun aimin’ right toward the Scarab.

Y’all drift.

The sound of the cars on the bridges fade away. All you see now is high grass and these tall things that look like bamboo. Ducks. Big funny-lookin’ pelicans and shit. The high grass parts and you see an alligator.

You fall down on your face tryin’ to get to a corner. It’s green and scaly with a knotty back swimmin’ away from the boat.

JoJo look at you and kind of laugh. “Bronco? Guess Tavarius don’t like gators any better than you.”

“I make that motherfucker into a pair of boots.”

Cash squeeze off a couple shots and you hear Teddy’s boat shoot out, engine revvin’ real hard. Cash slam down that throttle and y’all ride, beatin’ through the tall grass and sendin’ up muck, like some kind of green-ass milk shake, splatterin’ behind you.

“Got him,” Cash say, laughing. “We got him.”

Teddy’s boat revving real hard. Smoke shootin’ from the engine, whining almost like a scream, but not moving.

CHRISTIAN TRIED to reverse the boat and then run her forward. But nothing would get him untangled from the high grass and mud that clogged the propellers of the engine. I looked back and saw JoJo with Cash in this big, purple Cigarette boat and then Bronco and ALIAS. My eyes wavered and I bent at the waist for a few more dry heaves.

Christian turned to me, seeing the smile form on my face, and plodded back, knocking me in the chest with his fist. I tumbled back into the water, twirling in the bayou, feet sucking deep into the muck, and finally finding the way to air. I swallowed in light and oxygen, brushing reeds away from my face.