Ace Atkins - Dark End of the Street

She grunted and fought, but I twisted her close, trying to catch my breath, and at the same time hug her. She continued to wriggle and hit and finally I had to pin her arms to her sides and said, “Slow. We got ’em. Slow.”

She slowed the wriggling, didn’t hit me again, and her eyes began to register a little less wild light through her scattered blond hair. To the north, the humpbacks of the Hernando-Desoto Bridge burned in broken patterns of small white lights.

As her breathing slowed, I tried to take the gun from her hand.

But she fought back.

She stepped away and pointed the barrel at me. I raised my hands.

Over her shoulder, I saw lights moving closer to us from the Arkansas side. I thought it might be a train, but the rotted planks underneath my feet made me change my mind.

It was a truck. U’s truck.

I recognized the familiar pattern of the Expedition’s headlights and the solid familiar clack of his door closing. He was walking to us.

I could make out his hulking shape moving close and felt a bit of relief.

Then I heard a groan and rumble and my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach as I saw that big truck drop from sight. A horrible groan of metal and the snapping of brittle wood. The truck was swallowed up in a huge black hole.

A mammoth splash of water erupted from under us.

Then it was silent for several seconds. A biting wind gnawed at my fingers resting on the rusted metal of the bridge. Wind whipped off the river and made a howling house as it flew through the crevices of metal.

I saw the cab of the truck, floating like a huge bubble, drift past and then dip, roll, and disappear into the bottom of the river.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see anything. Dust had kicked up from the broken bridge.

But then I saw U walking toward us, through the moonlight and dust, a look on his face that was pissed off as hell. A look, for once, I was glad to see.

“Goddamn it!” he yelled to me.

“You see them?” I shouted back.

“Must’ve dropped over the side before they got over water.”

Abby aimed the gun at U.

“Abby,” I said, reaching around her body to hold her arms down. “It’s fine. It’s U.”

“I heard him on the phone,” she said, holding on to the gun. “He made a deal with Ransom.”

U swaggered to a stop ahead of us. She looked up at him, eyes determined as hell, as I tried to pull the gun away.

“It was planned, Abby. We’re playing Ransom.”

She looked at me.

Then back at U.

Her body grew slack, the gun dropped to her side, and I slowly let my arms go from around her body. She looked up at the crooked rusted supports of the bridge.

“C’mon, Abby,” U said. “Let’s go home.”

“Where, U?” she said, not moving. Abby looked like she wanted to hit something.

Toward the Arkansas line, I saw a shapeless form emerge from the darkness that had swallowed U’s truck.

“Stay here,” I said. I gripped her arms pretty damned tight to get her attention. “Stay put.”

She nodded.

U branched off on the south edge and I took the north. More shapes were moving.

As soon as I walked to the big hole in the bridge, the shape had disappeared. I aimed my gun at one of the steel supports. I knew I’d seen a person moving but I thought maybe he’d fallen back through the hole. Made me uneasy as hell even being close to its rough form and the shadowed, black water moving below.

I walked backward and saw Jesse Garon scaling up one of the supports, trying to hide. Son of a bitch.

I ran over to follow him but then I heard a scream from Abby.

I couldn’t see her as I ran back to where we’d parted. The light was much better facing the Tennessee entrance and I knew she had to be hidden behind one of the beams.

I slowed my walk, trying to recall where I’d heard the scream.

I kept my eyes focused for any slight movement behind each rusted cove.

I walked. Slow. I pointed my gun and nearly fired at some birds nesting in some rafters above. They flew away in a peppered pattern in the dull glow of Memphis lights.

Then I heard the click of a gun.

Abby had the bearded man in a headlock. She had her pistol pointed at his head. She’d been screaming out of anger as she held his head tight into the crook of her elbow.

I lowered my gun.

She screwed the muzzle tighter into his ear. He was an older man, rough skin and black eyes. He wore an intensity on his face like this was a moment he’d relived a thousand times and would escape once again.

“Abby, I got him.”

“It’s him,” she said. “It’s Ransom.”

U jogged from across the bridge. He slowed when he saw Abby. I wanted so badly for her to shoot Ransom. I wanted it to happen but the words coming out of my mouth pleaded for her to be calm.

“Let U have him.” I wasn’t making sense to myself.

She kept pushing him back to the Tennessee side of the bridge until Ransom tripped over a railroad tie. The light and shadows broke about every few feet over my face until we found her half covered in darkness, a foot on Ransom’s throat.

She had the gun pointed at his head.

Ransom laughed and tried to move out from underneath her. “Your daddy just laid there, beggin’ while we shot him. Genetics is a funny thing. You ain’t got it in you either.”

“Abby, leave him,” I said.

He pulled free, stood, and dusted his coat. More a gesture of power than trying to get clean. He didn’t even look in our direction, trying to make himself believe we’d follow Abby’s lead.

He said: “Y’all take care.”

I was getting ready to pull the trigger when the gun fired in Abby’s hand and Ransom stumbled back, finally falling to his knees.

As he felt for the blood rushing from his heart, he wore an expression of someone caught in another’s nightmare.

He seemed to be thinking as he lay in shock, This wasn’t the way it was supposed to turn out.

The shot didn’t even faze U, who broke apart from us and ran back to where his truck had disappeared.

We jogged together, almost as if training camp were last summer, and I heard him talking shit the same as he’d done back then. But this time it wasn’t about his coaches or his first wife. He was mad at me. “Who is gonna pay for that, Travers? And, damn, you know I can’t take your car. It’s more of a piece of shit than it’s ever been.”

He stopped, winded, and looked up into the slatted high beams. About thirty feet up, we saw Garon holding on to a crosswalk. He smiled down to us and waved.

U said: “Had a CD changer in the back.”

I gripped the steel beams and found a foothold in crisscrossed slats held in place by rusted rivets. The wind cut into my ear canals and made sharp, whistling sounds.

“Don’t even,” U said.

I found another foothold.

And another.

“Crazy motherfucker,” was the last thing I heard before I got higher into the bridge’s supports and about ten feet away from Garon.

He kept smiling down at me the whole time. Each step I made, each foothold, I got more angry. I couldn’t stop seeing Loretta lying there. I couldn’t stop thinking about JoJo’s bar and my life and suddenly I felt like I was at the edge of this cliff. Jon was there. Standing. Looking down at me.

I gripped tight onto the crossbeam where he stood.

My stomach swayed when I stupidly glanced down at the swirling water below us, hundreds of feet. Freezing wind clawing at my fingers, making it tough to get a grip.

Garon didn’t move. Didn’t try to knock me off the ridge.

He stood on a crosswalk fashioned from three beams. Enough to walk. Keep your balance without tumbling off. As I walked toward him, he aimed a gun at my chest.