Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

Jon watched them park underneath one of them big ole overhangs for semis. Travers started smokin’ and pumpin’ gas like an idiot and the little blond girl, cute as all get out, walked on into the place like she was in a heck of hurry. Probably had to pee.

Peein’ and Coca-Cola. That’s what these places should advertise. That’s what people wanted. Jon reached in to the backseat for his Resistol hat and pulled it low over his eyes.

“You goin’ in?” Miss Perfect asked.

He nodded.

“Watch her. She’s a tricky little bitch.”

“What you gonna do?”

“Distract your boy here,” she said. “Let you get where you need with the girl. We can do it at that pump if we have to. Get them in the car. We’ll handcuff both of ’em and keep ’em in back.”

Jon jumped out and walked through a mess of puddles into the long shot of bright lights and rows and mesh hats and cowboy boots. The girl was walkin’ back to the bathroom, near an old arcade. Jon jingled the change in his pocket and muttered to himself, “Let’s play.”

Iwas almost done filling up the Gray Ghost when I noticed this blond woman in an uncomfortably tight pink sweater and jeans with tall stiletto heels. I was sure she was a professional. If not a hooker, maybe a dancer who specialized in brass poles. The woman kept walking toward me. Really nice smile. Blue eyes. Her hair in blond curly locks. Beauty mark on her cheek.

I checked her out; I like to look at women.

I kept smoking my cigarette and instantly found myself kind of posing. Chest out. Cigarette dangling. You know, the whole Marlboro Man thing.

“Hey,” she said, toying with her little finger in her mouth.

“Hey,” I said, coughing and dropping the cigarette onto my new T-shirt. “Shit,” I broke from my pose, brushed off the burning ashes, and quickly crushed the cigarette with my boot.

“That’s stupid,” she said.

“I try to keep the sparks away from the gas.”

“Knew a man who died like that,” she said, squinting her eyes looking into mine.

“I’ll be more careful,” I said, glancing at the asphalt for any gas leaks.

“Sometimes just a little spark can lead to an explosion,” she said. She rested her forearms on the gas pump, price spinning higher, and looking at me. Her eyes were an unnatural blue. Beautiful, but a color not found in nature.

“I’ve heard of such things.”

She sighed and licked her lips.

“Where you from?”

I pointed south.

“Where you headed?”

I pointed north. I wasn’t being coy. I really had a hard time speaking.

“You don’t like bullshit, do you?” she said, motioning for me. “So, let me tell you a secret.”

Jon liked games. Mostly pinball. Games that weren’t too complicated, like video stuff with trucks or guns or fast cars. He didn’t like games that made you add things or play out some kind of strategy. He just liked kickin’ the ole horse in the side, mashin’ the pedal to the floor, and seein’ what it meant to be balls to the wall.

Real life wasn’t a dumb-ass game of Battleship. Real life was takin’ chances and playin’ out the consequences. You just hit it hard and things would shake out.

He stuck a quarter into Police Trainer and watched the screen explode into different ranks. He chose captain. He could be a captain. Captain. Captain America.

He aimed the gun and fired off a shot, feeling his real gun, that.45, poking him in the ribs. He pointed the plastic pistol at little balls flippin’ up in the air and cracked them in half like eggs. Kept on shootin’ as he watched the girl walk toward the bathroom and stop by some lockers.

She pulled out a key and cranked open a small compartment.

More eggs exploded for points, bells went off for passing the test, and the screen exploded into another game. This time people popped out on the screen. Good people and bad. But sometimes Jon found it hard to tell the difference. Little old woman with groceries. Scruffy guy with a sawed-off. Who could hurt you more? Who’d take you in when it was all over?

He shot everyone in sight. Shootin’ up the score and bringin’ it on back down.

The girl walked past him, a bunch of thick files in her hands, and back to the front of the truck stop.

He stopped shootin’, let the gun dangle from his finger, and tucked it back it into the slot like he was one of them ole time Japanese swordsmen.

Perfect made her voice get warm inside her lungs and blew it all out in a steady stream of breath and words. She rubbed her lips against Travers’s ear and said, “Don’t you ever fuck with me again.”

He took a step back as if seeing her for the first time while the portico lights came on and shone on rainbowed pools of oily water. She turned as he stared and saw Abby walking from the truck stop toward the Bronco.

Perfect, backing away from Travers and the pumps, pulled out the gun.

Jon was following and made a quick cut to the Taurus. She could see Jon’s hand already tucked into his leather jacket. He was chewing gum like a madman as he crawled in, started the car, and looped back to the pumps.

She didn’t say a word as she spun around and pointed the gun into his scruffy, ugly face.

Jon ran the car hard for about fifteen yards, braked, and jumped out. He leveled his gun at Travers as she went for the girl. “She’s got it,” he said. “She left it in the lockers.”

Travers put up his hands.

Abby had locked the Bronco’s door. Screaming and yelling, Perfect rammed the gun against the windows but nothing happened except a hard knock.

Perfect kept banging the shit out of the glass and yelling for that little bitch to open the fucking door. She was frantic and for the first time in about two years felt like she was really losing her shit. Her face heated up and she just wanted to tear into her with her long red nails.

Teach her something.

Jon didn’t speak as he moved slowly to Travers, Perfect watching while she tried to catch her breath, and pulled a big handgun from Travers’s jacket.

Travers just stared at Jon and clenched his right hand that stayed pointed in the air. His boots were submerged in the oily puddles and he held his face as if he were absolutely freezing. Like his feet were stuck in blocks of ice.

She waited for Jon to say something about revenge or the Bible or Elvis or announce to Travers he was back to punch out his lights. But he didn’t.

Instead, he breathed and looked around him as if this were some kind of holy fucking moment. That he wanted to soak in everything he saw.

The air smelled like burned bacon and diesel fumes.

“Open the door,” she said. Lightly tapping this time. Barrel pointing to the girl behind the glass.

Travers shook his head.

“What do you mean? No? Jon, shoot the bastard.”

Jon cocked back the hammer, gun outstretched in his hands. But instead of pulling the fucking trigger, he let the gun drop onto his finger and tucked it inside the leather jacket.

She followed his eyes to the lot where two state trooper cars had parked near the restaurant. One patted his belly and laughed while the other double-checked locking his door. They started to walk on inside.

When she turned back, Travers was watching Jon and stepping backward to the Bronco.

The locks went up. He opened the door, scooted inside, and started the engine.

Then it was Perfect and Jon’s turn to feel that oily ice up to their knees as Travers pulled out and took a left over the highway bridge. Damned if he didn’t miss the on-ramp and kept speeding down some winding country road. Shit. He’d lose them. A million country roads on this side of the state line.

Jon jumped back in the running car and tossed her Travers’s heavy gun. She liked the weight of it in her hands as Jon opened the windows and cranked the stereo.