Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

Dear E. Felt like he could break wood right about now.

He took a deep breath of air and reached up under her shirt, her skin as warm as an oven on Christmas, and tried to unlatch the back of her bra. But he couldn’t find the thing and reached around front, ’cause sometimes high-class women got ’em there. But when he got close, she just slapped his hand away and bit his ear. Hard.

“Dang, what’s goin’ on here? This ain’t fun no more. Miss Perfect, what are you doin’ to me?”

She rolled him over to the side and yanked open the bedspread. She was breathin’ real hard now, her nostrils flarin’, and sort of shakin’ like she was cold. He couldn’t move, like a damned possum in the road, as she stood and pulled her shirt over her head, motioning with a crooked finger.

“Take them off,” she said. She had on a real lacy bra with her breasts just spillin’ over the top. Her stomach was tight and hard with a waist that tapered in before rounding out into those beautiful hips.

“Ma’am?”

Then she done reached up and got a good chunk of his black hair.

“Ow!”

“Take them off! Now.”

Her breath smelled like old fruit and rubbing alcohol and he realized she was crazy as an old monkey.

She grabbed for his hands and put them on the top button of her pants. She didn’t have no shirt on and when Jon reached down, staring right into her heavy breasts, he thought he was gonna bust right out his drawers.

He tried to be nice as he pulled the pants down to her knees and let her kick out of them. But he was about to lose his mind. She had on white cotton panties with blue flowers.

“Dear E. Dear E.”

“Jon! Pay attention.”

She sat back on the bed, her little toes wigglin’, as she watched his eyes and then lay back flat on the bed.

“A mirror,” she said. Her tongue fat and heavy with all them daiquiris. “I love mirrors. Jon? Did I tell you that?”

She starting rolling her panties down her knees, curling into thin strips like biscuit dough, and over her ankles and Jon couldn’t move. He just stared at her beauty. Just beautiful as hell as he listened to her breathin’ and the rain and the thunder.

“E told this woman in Girls, Girls, Girls that there was somethin’ about a storm. It just made you feel so alive.”

But Miss Perfect wasn’t listenin’. Her eyes had rolled back in her head and she was moanin’ somethin’ terrible.

Miss Perfect finally called him over to the bed and he kicked out of them ole zip boots and leather pants like they was growin’ on him. She was movin’ like a snake in the bed, her hands all over her body and then dippin’ down underneath the covers. Man, he felt like Captain Marvel. Felt like he should say Shazam! and he’d have the power of a hunnerd men.

He jumped a few feet onto the bed, straddlin’ her buck-ass naked. He started kissin’ her beautiful breasts and moving his hand down south. Then she done slapped him so hard his head reeled back.

Damn it.

He pushed her wrists over her head and straddled her waist.

“Listen to me, woman. I don’t know what’s gotten into you. But either you want lovin’ or not. I ain’t never taken no woman in my life, but you’re makin’ my head hurt.”

She got loose from his hands and pulled his head against her breasts, growling like one of them lionesses. She smelled like a patch of flowers from his ole scratch-’n’-sniffs.

He started kissing her breasts again and she held his face in her hands. Real hard like a vise.

“You want to do somethin’ for me, darlin’?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She pushed his head even farther south, dippin’ down where Jon ain’t never been before. He knew all about state laws and things he seen in all them Baptist comic books about hell. But, man, he couldn’t help himself.

He stayed down there as the wind and the rain and black clouds rocked overhead. He’d open his eyes long enough to watch Perfect watchin’ not him, but herself in the mirror. She had her hands on his head and smiled. Smilin’ at herself.

Jon didn’t pay it no mind until a mean old wind beat outside, rain hammerin’ until the lights cut off all over the bed. She was screamin’ in the dark as the wind roared through the open door and she panted and yelled and clawed at his neck. He could feel his hot blood against his skin.

He moved up to get the best lovin’ he’d ever had, but then it happened.

Miss Perfect lay there for a moment makin’ kissing faces to herself up in the ceiling.

Then she done turned over, pulled the sheets close to her body, and started to snore.

Jon got up, biting the hell out of his lip, and looking at all the scrapes and red marks on his stomach. He slammed the door shut and grabbed a pillow for the floor.

AT MIDNIGHT, Abby and I stopped off at a Chevron near downtown and grabbed several packs of beef jerky and bottled waters for Hank. The dog chomped down every damn piece next to the gas station’s air pump. Abby hugged him close while he lapped water from one of my old coffee mugs. Her face brightened as she squeezed the dog so tight that he grunted.

I watched her and smiled, my mind buzzing with everything that I’d learned.

Abby’s father wanted to find Clyde James and had been killed and his daughter kidnapped. Must’ve been a few weeks after Abby’s parents died that a couple of men showed up in New Orleans hassling Loretta. Now there was all this shit about some whacked-out group called Sons of the South.

We drove back to town, wheeling around the Square toward Maggie’s. We stopped at a crosswalk for a moment, Hank panting hard in the truck.

Five young girls about Abby’s age ran past in heavy sweatclothes, laughing. We could hear their yells, giddy from the cold. Rain beaded down my windshield and made funny patterns in the streetlights.

Abby hugged her dog again and watched the girls jog down a hill and out of sight.

I had hoped to put her up with Maggie and take off to Memphis tomorrow. But after the letter, I wasn’t so sure. Sons of the South. I turned off the R. L. Burnside CD and flicked on the radio, finding a station that played old-school soul.

Hank jumped into the backseat.

“Library still open?”

“The bar?”

“The real library,” I said.

“I guess.”

“You want to keep going tonight?”

She nodded. I kept looping around the old courthouse and headed to campus as Abby patted her leg along with a song written decades before she was born.

On the second floor of the Ole Miss library, Abby was at a computer terminal and I was seated beside her. The library silent as hell. Just the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and some guy with a bad cold at the main counter sneezing every five seconds.

The screen got bright as she clicked through SONSSOUTH.COM. Most of what we found was the same old bullshit we’d read in her father’s files. We spent about fifteen minutes looking through pictures of middle-aged white guys going to conventions at airport hotels and scheming to return honor to the South. This was the kind of group that hustled in men too educated to be in militias and too arrogant to see they were doing any harm.

“Where do they keep microfilm?” I asked.

“What do you want?”

I looked at her. “Newspaper articles.”

“You want new ones, right?” she asked.

“Last few years.”

“It’s on computer.”

“Not everything we’re looking for.”

“Watch.”

She took me to an alcove located on the first floor and plugged in Sons of the South into a computer loaded with LexisNexis software. I’d heard of it, but most of my research dealt with musicians from decades ago.