Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

“I need five minutes.”

“I need to be left alone.”

I didn’t move. I watched him slump into a well-worn seat surrounded by opened cans of cheap beer and packs of saltine crackers and Vienna sausages.

He didn’t look back. Only spoke: “You playin’ with some mighty powerful people, son. And I don’t think you’ve brought enough chips to the game.”

I opened my mouth to speak. But he was done. His eyes had glazed back over reflecting with the colorful lights playing on the screen before him and living with the decayed memories of a life he’d known a long time ago.

I planned on coming back with the file. Fuck him, I thought. I could break him down. Shit, probably only needed some decent food and a six-pack. But as U and I walked out the open door, I saw a basket hanging from the wall. A familiar logo stuffed among the bills caught my attention.

A Confederate flag. Three strong stamped letters: SOS.

HIDDEN PLANS, SECRET AGENDAS. All kinds of things that Jon didn’t care squat about. He’d driven back to Tunica last night, kind of liked livin’ in that penthouse that Mr. Ransom set up. People even brought him some tinfoil to cover up the windows so he could sleep till noon. He’d prefer to sleep through the day, though. That way the sunlight wouldn’t taint his soul, he thought, stiffenin’ the jacket of his denim suit and loosenin’ the yellow scarf around his neck. Dang thing still smelled like magnolias. Ain’t that funny?

He danced a little ole move on the elevator he’d learned from Elvis: That’s the Way It Is, and ended the dance in a karate down-block. “Kiya,” he yelled as the door opened to the lobby and he almost near knocked an ole woman in her snout.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. He hustled by her, slippin’ another Benzedrine onto his tongue, feelin’ the medicine dissolve. He rubbed his hands together like he was gonna be eatin’ a big feast as he stepped into the wide parking lot lookin’ for Ransom’s sweet ride.

In the cold, he slipped into the man’s truck, adjusted his gold metal shades, and slunked down into his seat. His legs jumpin’ and quiverin’ off the floor. He plunked another stick of gum into his mouth as Ransom wheeled out onto Highway 61 and headed back to Tunica proper. But before they hit the little ole brick town, he ducked onto a rutted road into Nigraville.

Dang. People was livin’ out here in some kind of wildness. Houses slapped together out of rotten wood and old tin. Parts of trailers and shacks mashed together like somethin’ out of his aunt’s National Geographic magazines. One house was even built around an old car like that was some kind of bedroom. Made the place where he’d grown up in Hollywood seem like the Peabody.

All the shacks sank beneath the level of the road in these little gulleys. Smoke and small fires from oil drums kicked up into the cold, ole gray day. Gray and brown. Nothin’ else. Streams of smoke seeped out of the back of hot-rodded nigra rides.

Jon nodded. Yeah, he understood. “In the Ghetto.” He hummed the song a little bit.

“You all right?” Ransom asked. “Seem a little jumpy.”

“Just a mite excited.”

“You seen the papers?”

“Don’t believe in ’em.”

“Said they found Miss Perfect at Libertyland,” Ransom said. “That where you left her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s a public place, kid.”

“Said make it random.”

Ransom didn’t seem too pleased with the words comin’ from him, so Jon added a bit. “She was given’ me T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Ma’ boy. Ma’ boy. Was she ever.”

“What about leavin’ prints?”

“Don’t have none,” Jon said. “I don’t exist.”

Ransom didn’t say nothin’ as they rounded a corner onto a one-lane road and stopped in front a long green shack with a screened-in porch. A skinny black man that Jon had seen with Ransom at the casino was cooking out on a pit made from an oil drum. Guess that’s what all these people were doin’, livin’ off the casinos.

Man gave a toothless smile as they passed.

Jon followed Ransom into the porch where he saw a white man, lookin’ young and kind of muscled, in a tan sheriff’s outfit. At first Jon thought about boltin’ for the front door but eased back a bit when he seen the man give Ransom a real good handshake.

“Jon, this is Sheriff Beckum. Wanted y’all to talk.”

Jon took a seat in an old schoolhouse chair. Orange plastic and dirty as hell.

“Everything goin’ ‘right?” Beckum asked.

“Up twelve points in the polls,” he said. “And that’s in Nashville.”

“I guess ole Tunica was just too small for you,” Beckum said. The sheriff sat in an old chair, too. But his was wood and looked like it’d been sittin’ around since the beginning of time. He took a cigar from Ransom and lit it with a lot of satisfaction.

Ransom didn’t offer Jon nothin’.

Dang sittin’ down was about to drive Jon crazy. His leg felt like it was gonna explode. He had so much energy. So much dang vitamins in his system that he wanted to jump through that ole rusted screen and fly to the moon.

“Jon, you listenin’?” Ransom asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Go ahead.”

“I said when Travers was up here last, he came with a black fella,” Beckum said. “Some bondsman, bounty hunter type named Davis.”

The sheriff started laughin’ up a mess when he said it. Thought it was funny that a nigra could ever work as such. Jon didn’t think that was funny. Black Elvis was one of the finest men he’d ever known.

“Travers will be with him,” Ransom said. “Can you do it, Jon?”

Jon smelled the magnolias on his scarf again. He felt a stirring down between his legs.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“All three this time. The black man, Travers, and the girl.”

Jon nodded and kept chewing on his gum, thinkin’ about the sweetness of it all.

Ransom laughed and punched Beckum in the shoulder. “He likes ’em sweet and young.”

At that, Jon stood and walked back outside. His mind and legs just atinglin’ and buzzin’. Memphis was waitin’.

THE ELECTION SURROUNDED us. Everywhere U and I drove, we saw huge posters, cardboard signs, and billboards for Elias “Honor for Our State” Nix and Jude “Commitment to Our Future” Russell. The election was next week and all the white noise of signs and radio ads and television interviews made my head throb and my eyes feel raw. I kept thinking about the night before and those crazed rednecks at the compound, that rebel flag waving obscenely by Nix’s true office, and the men who’d wanted to kill us. I wondered how a man with such a polluted mind could’ve ever reached such a level. I couldn’t even contemplate that he was being seriously considered for such an important office. Then, I remembered Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and Trent Lott.

U turned on Riverside Drive and wound up a twisting hill to the Bluffs overlooking the city. I remembered from my history classes how the early frontiersmen and Indians used the Bluffs for protection against flooding and attacks, even recalling how the French governor of Louisiana had tried to overrun the Chickasaw back in the seventeen hundreds and had his ass handed to him.

As U drove closer to the address we had for Bobby Lee Cook, my stomach twisted and my head pounded more, knowing the only one who could help us hated me beyond words.

“Remind me to stop pissing off people,” I said, watching the front of his truck hugging the road, passing million-dollar houses with wrought-iron security gates.

“It’s a talent,” U said. “You’re too good at it.”

At the peak of the Bluffs, U pulled in front of a Mediterranean Revival number with lots of stucco and a red barrel-tiled roof. Two vans and Cook’s Cadillac was parked outside. U pulled in, close to the front door, and shut off his engine.