Ace Atkins - Wicked City

Reuben reached under his seat for the bottle of the homemade liquor Fuller had brought along and, after taking a long pull, passed it on to the assistant sheriff. Fuller smacked his lips and said: “That could peel the paint on a barn door.”

“Or make you blind.”

“Pussy will make you blind, too.”

“I’m worn out.”

“Naw, you ain’t,” Fuller said, slowing and turning down an unmarked dirt road and under a tunnel of pecans growing along a slatted fence. They passed a burned-out car and another stretch of plowed-under land and then took another turn, the headlights cutting through the darkness on a moonless night like going into a long, endless cave.

“You know what ole Hank used to say about the moon.”

“What’s that?”

“Said the moon was hiding on account of its sadness. How’d that man think of that?”

“He was a drunk.”

“He was one of the best friends I ever had and the best goddamn singer that ever came out of the state of Alabama,” Reuben said when Fuller stopped the car and turned off the ignition, the words coming out louder in the quiet than he’d intended than over the motor.

“When did you meet him?”

“After the war, when I got home. He’d just been fired off WSFA and needed someone to drive him. Keep him sober for singin’ at all them roadhouses.”

“And they hired you.”

“His mamma did.”

“Well, his mamma didn’t have sense at all.”

“He could write songs from picking the words out of the air.”

They followed a path to an old unpainted house situated next to a small, two-acre pond. Reuben turned up the liquor, damn near finishing the bottle, and watched as the moon reappeared from outside a cloud just like Hank had always said. A broken-slatted pier walked out into the water maybe six feet.

“I want you to listen to me,” Bert Fuller said. Tonight, he’d dressed in blue jeans and his usual boots with a white snap-button shirt and matching hat. If he didn’t know better, Bert Fuller sure looked like one of the good guys. And Reuben smiled at the thought.

“What are you laughing at?”

A bass flopped to catch a bug in the pond. Reuben turned to look at it.

“Listen,” Fuller said. “Cliff’s done got him this Mexican gal that you won’t believe. I know you was always sayin’ how you like those little Filipino women. The Mexes ain’t a hell of a lot different. All that talk about their pussies smellin’ like tacos is a bunch of trash. This gal has golden skin and big old brown eyes, titties the size of watermelons. Man, I just could bury my pecker between them.”

“What’s that mean to me?”

“It means I’ll let you have her after I fuck her. But I ain’t goin’ after you.”

“Bert.” Reuben laid his hand on Fuller’s shoulder. It was embroidered with lassos and bucking horses. “You sure are good to me.”

Reuben followed him inside Cliff’s Fish Camp, and in the elongated, camp-style room was a roundup of most the Machine, minus Shepherd and Matthews and a few others. Most of them were bit-part players who’d come out of the hills to run ’shine or come from Nevada or Atlantic City to deal cards or work on slots. There were the locals, too. Godwin Davis and Red Cook, the Youngblood brothers, Slim Howard, Papa Clark, Jap Sneed, and Frog Jones. And at the end of the table was the Queen herself, Fannie Belle, and she pulled Fuller in close.

Since Shepherd and Matthews had gone into semi-retirement, Fannie had snatched up most of the PC action, including some business down in the Florida Panhandle. She’d partnered with Cliff Entrekin in the fish camp and worked the needle-and-pill racket with some buck-toothed flunkies who worked out of back alleys and barns. Some say she got a big cut of the sale of whore’s babies, too, with Dr. Floyd. But to Reuben, she’d always be that tired, big-titty, redheaded B-girl who used to work at his club, writing letters to her twenty husbands who sent her checks monthly.

He had to admit she had a hell of a scam, getting some horny Army boy to marry her and then getting the dumb, pussy-struck sonofabitch to head overseas. Reuben used to call Fannie the Queen of Hearts.

Fannie laughed some more with Fuller, her teeth bright and big, and Fuller probably telling some dirty joke he read in the back of a comic book. Then her face retreated into a half smile and she wrapped an arm around his fattened stomach, whispering into his ear, and Reuben wondered what the hell you had to whisper about in this world.

Fuller stepped back from the whispering and nodded. The top of Fannie’s red hair caught in the light like a red flame. They both stood and motioned for Reuben to follow them.

A strand of bare bulbs had been strung over the camp tables, and the men and whores talked as if this was a big, old family function with half-eaten plates of catfish and hush puppies before them. Ole Moon sat in a corner, away from the whores in their kimonos and housecoats, working on probably his fifth plate, wiping the grease from the whole bone fish across his overalls.

Outside, Fannie walked them over to a beaten-up old Nash and popped the trunk. She reached inside for a flashlight by the wheel well and pulled back a knitted blanket. She shined a beam onto two wooden boxes.

Fuller opened one and gave a short little laugh.

“So easy even you two jackoffs could do it,” Fannie said.

“Good God Almighty,” Reuben said. “What’s this shit for?”

“I don’t want to fuck up a perfectly good manicure.”

“You always were particular with your hands,” Reuben said.

Fannie clawed at Reuben’s face, but he quickly sidestepped and told her to calm her ass down. She walked back into the night on wobbly high heels, and both the men stood there looking down at the two boxes.

Fuller gave a low whistle and walked back into the fish camp. Reuben peeked back inside the box, looked at all those sticks of dynamite, shook his head, and closed the trunk.

He sat down on the edge of a slatted porch and stayed there for a while and watched the loopy motion of bats gobbling up the night insects. He lit a cigarette and thought about what he’d just seen and how he always found himself taking the high dive into a tub of shit.

When he turned, he saw a woman had joined him. She told him in a broken accent he was a handsome man.

“Sometimes it’s just a burden, darling.”

She smiled, a little cleft in her chin about right for his thumb, and he decided to turn and kiss her. Most people minded kissing whores, but Reuben had never had any trouble with it.

She reached between his legs and felt for him. Reuben didn’t seem to mind or notice, still watching the loopy flights of the bats in the purple evening.

“No?” she asked. Her eyes were brown and big as half-dollars.

He turned to her, her black-and-red kimono half open and showing part of an ample brown breast.

“You wouldn’t happen to be from old Mexico?”

She nodded.

Reuben grinned, turned, and looked through the door, not seeing Fuller but Frog Jones, with his trademark fatty throat, clog-dancing on top of a picnic table, a bottle of beer in his hand.

“Well, come on, then,” Reuben said. “What the hell we waiting for?”

THE NEXT MORNING,Arch Ferrell woke as if he’d died. He sat up in bed, feeling his heart had just again started to beat, and tried to breathe. As he sat awake, the shadowed men stood before him, craning their necks, studying him as one would an insect, faceless, one poking a shadow rifle close to his feet. Arch pulled his toes back toward himself, only getting in some air as the men joined up together and marched into his shallow closet, single file and as one. Arch got to his feet and felt for the closed doors and opened them, running his hands over his sport coats and ties and pressed pleated trousers all arranged together in neat rows. By now, Madeline had turned on the bedside lamp and stared at him, wiggling with some difficulty in her pregnancy to sit against the headboard.