Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

I gripped the back of Cook’s neck and force-fed him a mouthful.

That’s when the shitstorm really started.

Cook punched me hard in the ear. I could hear a pop and the air went suddenly electric around me as I connected my two knuckles with Cook’s nose. Blood squirted over his shirt and oozed down his lip. He made several jabs to my head and tried to kick out my knees.

Man knew how to fight.

But he was older and slower and I punched him in the ear, took hold of his arms, and threw him into the sweet potatoes. Cook rolled out onto the other side of the bins where plums dropped to the floor in heavy thuds.

A man in a green vest, who looked to be the manager, ran out and starting yelling that he’d called the police.

Cook didn’t seem to hear him. He ran toward me, his eyes squinted and his fists face-high. He jabbed again, connecting once with my rib. I could feel the air rush from me as I made a jab to the left and punched Cook hard in the mouth.

“He’s alive,” I said, gasping for air. “He’s alive and you’re protecting him.”

Cook made a grunt, his face turning purple, and made another run. He tackled me again at the waist, but this time he didn’t have the energy to push me back.

I grabbed him at the scruff of his leathery neck and tossed him five yards away, his butt skidding on the floor covered in mushed tomatoes and muscodines.

The Muzak still played overhead through the odd silence that buzzed in my right ear. The manager held up a mop in his hand like it was a sword and he was fending off a pair of wild lions.

“Y’all stay right where you are,” the manager said, his swooped comb-over sticking up like a rooster’s.

Cook staggered to his feet, walked over to the man, and pulled out his wallet. He counted out four bills and jogged away. With my ear still ringing and my breath labored, I followed.

The parking lot shone with a patch of sunlight striking the pavement, steam rising in a low fog. I pulled a piece of tomato off my shirt and looked through the lot for the Cadillac.

I caught a quick glimpse of the hood as it fishtailed out to Madison, the tires squealing on wet asphalt.

I wanted to get back in my Bronco and haul ass back to the Peabody. I could just hear Randy’s voice when he heard one of his professors had been arrested for a scuffle at a damned Piggly Wiggly.

But instead, I walked back up the stairs to the hidden cemetery and sat on the crooked grave of Daniel Harklecade. I smoked a Marlboro, studied the piles of garbage and makeshift beds, and watched a couple of homeless men as they ate cans of beans in the far corner of the lot.

I didn’t hear a siren as the dark storm clouds swirled by in broken patterns. A slab of yellow light still beamed on the store.

The men didn’t seem to notice me. Maybe I was so silent, so lithe, that they didn’t feel my presence.

“Hey, cap’n,” a craggy white man in a plaid hat finally yelled. His teeth were the color of old coffee. Beans dripped down off his chin.

“Sir?” I called back.

“Me and my buddy was wonderin’ if you gonna sleep here? ’Cause if you is, it’s gonna mean that we’s maybe have to move on. You don’t look real friendly.”

I started another cigarette and peered back down on the lot, a stiff fall wind scattering oak leaves on the graves.

“Cap’n?”

“Yes?” I said, watching the cigarette burn between my fingers and feeling my labored breathing.

“You want some beans?”

“No, thanks.”

“We ain’t shittin’ on your relatives or nothin’,” the other man said, pulling off an old brogan and smelling it.

“Nope.” I took a few breaths and pulled some tomatoes off my boot. “Hey man, you guys don’t happen to know a man named Clyde James?”

“Yeah, we know a Clyde. Sleep here sometime.”

“He’ll be back?”

“Prolly down with Wordie,” one said.

“Who’s Wordie?”

“Some woman who kiss his ass,” the man said, smelling his shoe again.

I took a final puff of the cigarette and pulled some soggy peach off my jacket. The man kept muttering, “She only like him ’cause she think he used to be somebody famous.”

I smiled.

“You know where she lives?”

“Down in Dixie somewhere. You know, Dixie Homes. Where the po’ folks stay.”

WHEN ABBY WAS eight years old, she used to sneak into the woods behind her parents’ house in Oxford to make forts from small trees like the Indians once did. She’d read somewhere in a child’s science book about how some tribe up north would bend little trees to the ground to make an arc. The Indians would then make a shell by covering the tree with more leafy branches to protect themselves from the wind and rain. When Abby made her little fort, she always chose the most remote location on her parents’ land. She didn’t want Maggie to find her, or her parents, or anyone. Inside, she’d kept simple things: an old broom to smooth the dirt floor, a few My Little Ponys, and her favorite book, Where the Wild Things Are.

Mostly she’d just hidden from everyone, beneath the branches listening to the birds and the rustle of squirrels, believing the animals would keep her secret. No one would know where she was. Abby was invisible and that had given her peace.

On the road with Ellie, Abby wondered if she’d ever know that same peace again as lightning cracked a veined pattern across the flat sky of northern Mississippi. Ellie sped through back hamlets to Oxford skirting the highway around Holly Springs. The leather of Ellie’s car smelled fresh and new, and the hot coffee they bought at the truck stop made her think of home.

She took a deep breath and watched the weathered barns, trailer homes, and convenience stores whip by the car window. Her eyes felt heavy and she hugged her arms across her chest. Ellie was still rambling on about her latest boyfriend and some new restaurant on the Square that served crepes with strawberries. Abby wasn’t listening and didn’t really care. She was going home. She was leaving the woods.

“Son of a bitch,” Ellie yelled, thumping the wheel of her car. “We’re going to have to stop in a minute. I’m out of gas and about to pee in my pants.”

The blacktop loped into a sharp curve before stretching into a brief straightaway and then cutting through a red mud hill. Ellie flicked on the stereo and started singing along with some old song about “boots made for walkin’.”

“ ‘One of these days, these boots are gonna walk all over you,’ “ Ellie sang, beating out the fuzzy guitar on the wheel.

Abby tore open a Butterfinger she’d bought at the truck stop, tried to ignore the music, and said, “You still in school?”

“Yep,” Ellie said. “You ever hear of a professional student?”

Abby nodded, taking a small bite. Orange crumbs dropping into her lap while Ellie punched the car up to about seventy.

Abby’s fingers clawed into the leather of the seats. White lights in the buildings shot by almost as if they were in a dark tunnel. Rain splattered her windshield and in the headlights the highway asphalt looked like glass.

“So you met Maggie through your boyfriend?”

“Yep.”

“Who is that?”

“Jamie Jensen.”

“Don’t know him.”

“He was a backup quarterback a couple years back, now he’s a bouncer at the High Point.”

Abby laughed. “For Raven?”

Ellie nodded in the passing light of the road and mashed the accelerator up to eighty-five. Everyone knew Raven “Son” Waltz. At twenty-eight, he was the biggest dope supplier for most of Oxford and north Mississippi. Kid had black eyes and dirty fingernails and ran this cinder block roadhouse at the county line where you could drink on Sunday.