Ace Atkins - Wicked City

“How you gonna do that, Mr. Murphy?”

I looked away. I shrugged and put my hand down on his shoulder. “I guess I’ll figure it out.”

BERT FULLER HAD TOLD EVERYONE THAT HE WAS INNOCENT, but not a damn person would listen. He knew what people had been sayin’ about Arch Ferrell protecting him, but that was the biggest dang lie that had ever been told. Arch Ferrell thought just because he was a college boy, a war hero, and his daddy was a judge, that he couldn’t be soiled. But Judgment Day would be comin’ on that man’s soul, and all the stones he’d been throwin’ wouldn’t protect him a lick. When Phenix came a-tumblin’ down, every finger came pointing at the sheriff and his right-hand man, because that was easy. Those newspapermen couldn’t know what it was like to keep order in a town like Phenix. Sure, he’d kept a little nut away for himself, but he’d deserved it, trying to keep those Machine boys in line. It would take a powerful man to try and walk a mile in his boots.

Fuller finished up adding some clean shirts, blue jeans, and underwear to his old leather suitcase, and tossed in his pearl-handled.357s and his family’s King James Bible. On last thought, he grabbed the framed picture of him with Lash LaRue and buckled it closed. He buttoned his shirt, put on his boots, and tried on his Stetson hat.

It was midnight and time to get the hell out of Dodge. He wasn’t taking the rap for this mess.

Since they’d taken away his squad car, he had his girlfriend from church pick him up at the curb, and just as he got to the door he heard the motor running.

The air was thick with heat and crickets, and he tossed the suitcase into the backseat and sat down. He clutched a silver cross that had belonged to his mother in his gun hand.

“Where to?”

“Atlanta. Get me out of Alabama.”

She turned the car around, the headlights catching the shrubs and dense magnolias around his garage apartment, and she headed north, far away from the two bridges that would be watched by the National Guardsmen. Fuller took off his cowboy hat and rested it on his knee. His girlfriend, Georgia, turned on the radio to a gospel station out of LaGrange, and the good ole-time church music made Bert Fuller know that he’d found a new path.

He figured he’d catch a bus or a plane in Atlanta. When he pulled out the whore money he’d been squirrelin’ away, he figured he could pretty much go where he liked.

“Did you tell anyone?” Georgia asked.

“No. This is between us.”

“Take me with you, Bert.”

“I’ll send for you. I promise. I must go where the Lord takes me.”

“You remember when I told you that I was pregnant?”

“I do.”

“I wasn’t. I just had gas. I’d eaten some bad chicken.”

“Well, that’s good, baby.”

“I’m glad you’ve changed, Bert. You sure aren’t the man I used to know.”

“Thank the Lord,” Bert said and gave a drowsy smile, as they rounded their way by the airport and headed fast up Park Hill, up to Summerville and to Lee County, where they’d head east again. “We have the rest of our life together. I know a little spot just on the other side of the Rio Grande where a white man can live like a king for pennies a day.”

“Mexico?”

“You said it, baby.”

“Are those people Christians?”

“They got more churches in Mexico than in Alabama.”

“That a fact? But they speak Mexican.”

“They speak Spanish.”

“When will you send for me?”

“Just as soon as I get my land,” Bert said and placed his mother’s cross in Georgia’s palm.

“Oh, Bert.”

He affixed the cowboy hat on his head and had a big smile on his face, almost feeling that county line coming up. He tapped the dashboard in time with “I’ll Fly Away” and grinned and grinned. That was until the light grew bright on the highway ahead, and he soon saw the red lights and white lights mix and the squad cars and the jeeps and men holding rifles up in their arms.

Georgia slowed the car, and a guardsman asked her for her license. She reached across Bert into the glove compartment, and Bert looked away even as the deputy crossed a flashlight over his profile.

“Good evenin’, Mr. Fuller,” the young boy said. “We been looking for you.”

Fuller squinted into the flashlight’s beam.

“We got a warrant for your arrest.”

He shook his head and rolled down the window, spitting out on the ground. He breathed some more and then simply said: “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

REUBEN AND JOHNNIE BENEFIELDsat on the farmhouse porch and watched the sun go down through a row of diseased pecans planted before both of them had been born. They drank moonshine from a jelly jar and smoked Chesterfields, Johnnie telling him about what had happened out at the Hill Top and how he’d nearly gotten taken by the Guard. Reuben stood and flicked his cigarette out into the bushes and then sat back down in a rusted porch chair. He looked over at Johnnie, who was leaned back with his old boots on the ledge.

“You sure it was Lamar?”

“Sure,” he said. “I know Lamar Murphy.”

“I’m broke, Johnnie,” Reuben said. “I don’t care much for studying on politics right now.”

“Broke?” Johnnie said, cracking a grin and polishing off a good bit of that old ’shine. “You got to be kiddin’ me.”

“I said I wasn’t gonna touch that money and I ain’t.”

“Well, aren’t you the Boy Scout. A gold star for you, Reuben.”

“We dig it up when it settles.”

“So you got it buried out here?”

“Check all you want. You ain’t gonna find it.”

Johnnie laughed some more. He grinned, smashing a cigarette against the sole of his boot. “Listen, I want you to set up a meeting with Lamar.”

“Who wants to talk?”

“Fannie. Some of the boys.”

“What boys?”

“Mr. Davis and his brother. Red. Papa Clark. Maybe Frog Jones.”

“They ain’t gonna change his mind.”

“You know how much he could get paid for just playin’ stupid?”

“I sparred with that man for nearly five years. That man’s got the hardest head ever put on this God’s earth.”

“You know I had to get rid of the Hudson? Them boys had seen it over at Fannie’s and they know I was there over at Britton’s house. I sold it off to some niggerman over in Loachapoka. He was gonna paint it and cut it down a bit. Said he was gonna sell the engine and paint it gold. Ain’t that just like a nigger? Makes me sad to think about that engine in another body. Rips the heart out of her. But I’ll get another. But, man, oh man, I sure loved my little Hornet.”

“Where’d you get this ’shine?” Reuben asked.

“Moon,” he said. “They still ain’t found his still.”

“They ain’t found a lot of stuff. They rootin’ around all around the county. I heard yesterday they busted in at Papa Clark’s farm and found all those brand-new horse-racing games. I also heard when they come for him, he nearly had a heart attack.”

Johnnie nodded and stood, combing the five long black hairs over his head. He cupped his hand and lit another cigarette. He wore a crisp pink cowboy shirt with a bolo tie.

“When did men start wearing pink shirts?” Reuben asked.

“I seen a magazine where Tony Curtis wears pink.”

“You ain’t exactly Tony Curtis, Johnnie.”

He shrugged and picked his nose, snorting a bit as he did. “You want some more ’shine?”

“No.”

“Listen, don’t get all pissy on me. I told you I’d come through for you and I did. Didn’t I tell you that ole Hoyt and Jimmie didn’t trust banks? Hell, Hoyt made his first dollar in the damn Depression. And I was the one who knowed people who used to work for Mr. Hoyt. That’s how I knew about the kind of safe he’d got and just how to blow that baby open.”