Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

Getting a gun in the face was a lot worse than some jackass trying to be rude.

Cook had worked with Clyde James in 1968 and was rumored to have claimed the body. He had every answer I needed. So I’d wait it out and harass the son of a bitch until he told me what he knew. Loretta deserved that.

My gaze turned to a high pile of rusted cars in a nearby auto salvage yard and across the highway was a church built in a defunct stand-alone bank. IS THE DEVIL GETTIN’ YOU DOWN? its small billboard read.

I answered under my breath: “Bet your ass.”

I cracked the window to blow out smoke from my Marlboro Light. I’d just started re-examining the spot of hair on my cheek when I saw a purple Cadillac – looked to be brand-new with shiny chrome rims and whitewalls – pull from behind the Golden Lotus and turn north toward the airport. I cranked the Bronco and followed.

I could see the top of Cook’s gray spiky head through his rear window as he took Airways Boulevard north for what seemed like forever past fast-food franchises and pawnshops until the road turned into East Parkway. He cut west by Overton Park on Poplar then down Evergreen to Madison.

The whole way I watched Cook playing with his hair and performing neck exercises by pushing his head against his palm. Cook was so busy working himself out that he didn’t notice the gunmetal-gray truck following his ugly-ass purple Cadillac across Midtown Memphis.

I just smiled – a wad of Bazooka now working in my back teeth – when he made a left turn into a Piggly Wiggly. Maybe I’d grab Cook in the frozen-food aisle and lock him inside a freezer until he gave it up.

I pulled into a parking space as Cook parked, got out, and strolled past the entrance to the grocery store – PORK TENDERLOINS $1.49 A POUND/SIX PACK OF DR PEPPER $1.99 painted across its plate glass windows. Cook kept walking beside a high brick wall and around a corner.

I decided to cut him off and drove back behind the store into an alley where men unloaded tractor trailers. I slowly pushed the brake, the Bronco’s engine growling under the hood, and stuck the truck into neutral, gassing the motor, scanning the loading dock and back street. A couple of butchers in white shirts splattered with blood hung their legs off the dock and puffed on cigarettes. A homeless man pushed a shopping cart full of tin cans toward a Dumpster.

Maybe Cook had spotted me, doubled back, and was spinning away in the Cadillac right now. Shit.

As I turned the corner, rain splattering harder on my windshield, I caught a glimpse of Cook walking down a stairwell from an elevated brick enclosure next to the grocery store. He held a newspaper over his head and ran in a fast jog down to the store, where he ducked inside out of the rain.

I revved the motor again and wheeled toward the stairwell. I got out and bounded up the steps to a grassy hill. The hill looked as if it had once been part of a great mound cut away for the construction of the Piggly Wiggly.

I followed a narrow entranceway cut into a wall wrapping a large square of earth. Looked almost as if it had once been some type of garden. The ground was uneven and covered in grass. Old brown cords, tattered blue jeans, a single mattress, and numerous empty Miller and Colt 45 beer bottles were strewn on the ground. I almost tripped over a foam plate of molded chicken covered in maggots as rain beat into my eyes.

Thunder cracked in the distance.

I’d been in homeless camps before but couldn’t quite figure out the purpose of the dirty garden until I saw the marble slab. DRURY LYON BETTIS – AUGUST 21, 1814, TO AUGUST 9, 1854. More toppled headstones and marble slabs were hidden among the heaps of trash.

Several plastic lighters lay upon a cracked slab in the far corner. I kicked away a dirty sheet that obscured its purpose. DANIEL HARKLECADE – JANUARY 15, 1803, TO APRIL 5, 1845.

The man had been buried beneath a quiet oak tree more than 150 years ago. Now he was spending time with crack addicts and the city’s unwanted. I dropped to my knee and began clearing away the dirty bottles, cans, and a stray boot. I used the leg from a pair of discarded jeans to clean off the mud.

I scanned the uneven ground again, unsure what I wanted to find. I backed out of the cemetery surrounded by concertina wire and gang graffiti and walked into the Piggly Wiggly searching for Cook.

I found him in the fruits-and-vegetables section feeling up a softball-sized tomato and admiring his reflection in a long silver mirror that wrapped a far wall. The air was cold against my wet face. I stood next to him and picked up another tomato.

“You might need two,” I said. “Yours looks a little small.”

Cook looked over at me with lazy eyes, his wet gray hair metallic and false in the harsh fluorescent light. His jaw muscles twitched and I could see his hand wrap tighter around the tomato.

“Look, man, just help me out,” I said.

Cook nodded and walked over to a huge pyramid of rattlesnake watermelons. He was trying to be cool, ignore me as if I were of no more importance than an unwanted itch. He even whistled along to some Muzak version of “LaBamba.” I followed him, my hands in my Levi’s jacket, and smiled.

“You tell me where he died and when and I’ll leave.”

Cook pulled out his pair of yuppie glasses and slipped them over his nose. He inspected a fat green watermelon and tucked it under his left arm. He was quiet for a moment and then ushered me close with a head movement.

I moved closer. He smelled like a wet dog. His breath of dead fish.

He whispered, “If you don’t get the fuck out of my face in five seconds, I’m going to make a fuckin’ hat out of your ass.”

I smiled back.

“My ass would make a terrible hat.”

“Then I’d get the fuck out of here.”

“What’s your problem?” I asked. “I told you, I’m a friend of Loretta Jackson. I’m sure you fucked her out of plenty of money back then, too, so why don’t you-?”

“I treated her with respect, you little shit. Don’t you even mention her name to me.”

“She’s my friend.”

Cook snorted out a laugh.

“Clyde isn’t dead. Is he?”

“Hell, yes, he’s dead.”

“Did you see him?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Cook shoved the watermelon at my stomach like a medicine ball and tried to hook me with his left fist. As the watermelon splattered in a red mess on the floor, I ducked the punch and gripped the front of Cook’s shirt, tossing him into a table piled high with okra. The okra scattered and an old woman with blue hair shrieked. A black woman with two kids pushed her cart away like she was escaping a nasty plague and an elderly man with no teeth wearing checked pants and a Bart Simpson T-shirt yelled, “Fight. It’s a fight! Fight.”

Cook, his feet dangling to the linoleum floor, grinned at me and for a moment I thought it was over, but he lunged, tackling me at the waist and driving me toward a pile of Georgia peaches. I felt my back smoosh into the pile and could smell the broken sweetness across it.

I quickly grabbed Cook into a headlock. Mother was strong, I thought, and I held his head tight in the crook of my arm before Cook punched me between the legs.

I fell to my knees, pain shooting through my entire body. I felt like I might vomit right there. Cook was laughing and walking away as I gathered my strength and rushed him and wrapped my right arm across his throat. I pushed Cook facefirst into a mound of tomatoes. The wet red mess covered his face and T-shirt like blood.

But damn if he wasn’t smiling with red teeth as he picked up a handful of red goop, walked over to me, and rubbed it down the front of my white T-shirt.

I smiled over at the old man in the cartoon T-shirt and took a step back to grab a handful of muscadines.