Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

Ransom quickly grabbed his hand, Jon’s stomach up in his chest, and helped him onto the railroad line.

“Careful, son,” he said. “This bridge was built for the Union Pacific around nineteen-oh-five. Ain’t used to people walkin’ her.”

“How far is that drop?”

Ransom watched his face, the lights of Memphis burning behind them. “Far enough.”

Jon looked up and saw the moonlight hitting the unpainted, rusted metal beams and twisting down in purple rays. The light lay in a million crisscrossed patterns that made his head a little dizzy. He felt like he might throw up. His head racin’ harder than his body. His body was in a low tremor, maybe Ransom didn’t see it.

Ahead, the opening to the bridge on the Tennessee side stood like a big dark mouth. Behind him, Jon couldn’t even see where the bridge ended and Arkansas began.

Ransom yelled over to the old man and the sheriff on the twin bridge. They called back that they hadn’t found nothin’ either.

Jon wondered if E had ever been out here as he tried to keep his body still. He looked at all the old graffiti spellin’ out high school classes from the ‘fifties and ‘sixties and lovers that was probably dead now.

Maybe down on the banks where he’d seen all them bums and street people livin’, E may have taken His girl when He was back at Humes High, before the blue storm that had hit the world.

Jon pulled out the yellow scarf from his pocket and wrapped it around his neck as he stepped from the bridge. His whole body shaking harder, like a demon had stepped into his soul and was dancin’ like there was a party in hell.

He needed to find Black Elvis. He needed somewhere to get washed out for a few days. He stared down at his hand jumpin’ on his thigh like bacon in a skillet.

Jon was about to throw up when he heard a mighty roar.

“Holy shit, get the fuck down!” Ransom yelled, tackling Jon and His holy suit to the ground. Jon reached back for his gun to take Ransom’s life, when he saw what Ransom had seen.

And good Lord, his leg started twitchin’ and his heart beat a million times a second. He was runnin’ another notch higher, runnin’ like someone had kicked up the fuel switch on a minibike. “Dang!”

A dozen of them big Army trucks, big as tanks, with bright white K.C. lights on the roofs, came roaring down the dirt road and cut off Ransom’s other boys. Must’ve been fifteen men scrambling down the red clay hill covered in kudzu carrying machine guns and barkin’ out orders to each other like it was D Day. They shined lights down on where he lay with Ransom.

Jon searched behind him and he saw a narrow little gutter of dirt that had formed from all the rains last month. If he could scoot back just enough, he could get gone. Run all the way across the bridge. He’d be in Vegas before he slowed down.

As much as he wanted Travers laid up in a pine box, this wasn’t his deal.

But as he started to move, he heard bullets raining down from atop of one of them trucks just idling there in the darkness.

“Don’t move, kid,” Ransom said, inching his gun from beneath his belly and taking aim at three men that were walking toward him.

Ransom was gonna take ’em out.

His boys comin’ from the other bridge started firin’, all heaven and hell started breakin’ loose like that book in the Bible when the dang beast and the four horsemen and all them critters come barkin’ out from the center of the earth.

All Jon could do is cover his head and start prayin’ to E where he sat with the Lord way up high in a jumpsuit made of gold.

Ulysses Davis laughed hard from the top of the hill where he’d parked the Expedition. As soon as he saw the crew from the Sons of the South wearing night vision goggles and camouflage, he really started laughing his ass off. He smacked the steering wheel looking through his own binoculars and laughed a little more.

“You want to see?”

“Fuck ’em,” I said. “Let ’em play it out.”

“I tell you, Travers. This was one hell of an idea. What did you tell those boys?”

“Just told their commander that I knew where to find the folks who’d killed one of their finest men in arms, Bill MacDonald. Said those communists would be here in his state for a drug drop with a local gang of Jamaicans.”

“Jamaicans?”

“They needed an additional incentive.”

U shook his head and put down the binoculars. He took a big swig of water and watched the battle, sparks flashing from the muzzles of the automatic weapons. “Wasn’t that fancy with Beckum? Just told him that I’d sell your old tired ass out for a quarter.”

“How much, really?”

“I’m not sayin’. Let’s just say you were on special.”

We both laughed for a while and then he cranked the car and we started to pull away. For some reason, though, I decided to glance down the hill and maybe catch a bit of that fucker Ransom getting sliced in half. I wanted it. I did. But part of me also felt disgusted for following through on my fantasies. I’d killed those bastards, just as if I’d stalked them and knifed them in the gut.

We could only pray that the Sons of the South would take a hard hit for wiping them out. U planned on calling the police as soon as we got back on Poplar.

I couldn’t see much. As U turned the car and started to drive away, I saw more camouflage dudes running through a war that they thought they’d never fight. The chance for an actual mission had to have been irresistible.

One image did catch me, though. A person that sure as hell didn’t belong in the battle. A young girl was walking through the men – as if she was supernatural and impervious to bullets – head up and hands at her sides. Abby.

U TOLD ME HE’D meet me at the base of the bridge after I grabbed Abby; so I bolted from his truck searching. I tried to keep my footing on the steep weedy hill with my boots while I watched about half of the Humvees load up with soldiers and peel out, high beams scattered under the bridges and over the darkened dirt road. But several others remained, waiting to be loaded with wounded men. Among them, I found Abby again, she was walking, but kind of stumbling, over the broken ground near the place where I’d found Clyde James. A million years ago.

I ran after her, my Glock tight in my hand. Safety off. Seventeen shots ready to go.

I called her name.

She seemed deafened by all the gunfire from a few minutes ago. She stared straight ahead, still wearing my tattered blue jean jacket, looking stubborn and unwavering past a bunch of bodies. One of the dead men raised his head.

It was Jesse Garon in a white suit with an older man with a beard. The man yelled off something, fired at two of the SOS soldiers, and dropped them both to the ground. The crack of his gun sounded like a breaking whip. After the shots, Garon and the man got to their feet, saw me pointing my gun at them, then looked to the north at a cliff and then south at four more SOS soldiers racing toward them.

They launched into a run back onto the bridge; Abby didn’t even break stride as I yelled for her.

She reached down to one of the dead soldiers, grabbed his handgun, and began chasing the man and Garon onto the darkened bridge.

After waiting for a break in the firing, I ran onto the old bridge. My feet thumping and nearly tripping over the old wooden slats. Brown water swirled several hundred feet below. Cars passed on the new bridge to the south. I could hear their engines buzz and the whoosh of water under me.

Minutes later, I found Abby.

Running from behind, I grabbed a good chunk of the jean jacket like it was a quarterback’s jersey and pulled her into me. She was so determined to track Garon and the man she hadn’t even heard me follow. Her breath was loose and ragged.