Blacktop Wasteland

by S. A. Cosby

  Beauregard felt the truck make contact with Ronnie’s body. It was like hitting a good-sized buck. He put the truck in neutral and shut off the engine. He grabbed his gun and climbed out. Standing by the truck he heard moaning coming from the west. Beauregard walked through the brittle stalks dried almost to dust from weeks without rain.

  Ronnie was lying on his back with his legs twisted into odd angles. Even in the dark, Beauregard could see his jeans were stained. Fluids were leaking out of Ronnie Sessions at an alarming rate. He was trying to scuttle backwards but his arms failed him. Beauregard let the gun dangle at his side. He wiped his nose with the back of his free hand. His own blood looked like oil on his skin.

  “Ah Jesus, Bug, I fucked up. I know it. I’m sorry. I think I done broke my legs,” Ronnie said. His salt-and-pepper goatee was stained burgundy by the blood bubbling out of his mouth.

  “No, you didn’t. I broke your legs. And you’re not sorry. You just sorry I caught up with you,” Beauregard said.

  Ronnie took several deep breaths. “I am, Bug. About the job, Kelvin, everything.”

  Beauregard stepped on Ronnie’s shin and let his full weight press down on the shattered bone. A strange sound came out of Ronnie. It was half scream, half strangled groan.

  “You don’t get to say his name. Are you sorry about my son too? They came to my house, Ronnie. My little boy is laying in a hospital bed fighting for his life. You sorry about that too?” Beauregard said. Ronnie’s eyes rolled back in their sockets then focused on Beauregard. Beauregard dropped to his knees beside Ronnie’s body. “You just couldn’t stick to the fucking plan, could you?”

  “I couldn’t go back to being poor white trash, Bug. I could take being trash. I just couldn’t stand being poor again,” Ronnie said.

  Beauregard shook his head slowly.

  “Where’s the van, Ronnie?”

  A thought sliced through the fog of pain clouding Ronnie’s brain.

  “You found Reggie, huh? Did you kill him, Bug? He didn’t know what I was gonna do. Did you kill my brother, Bug?” Ronnie asked.

  Beauregard didn’t say anything. All Ronnie could hear was his own labored breathing. Ronnie blinked his eyes hard three or four times. Tears ran away from the corners of his eyes and sluiced through his crow’s feet.

  “The van, Ronnie.”

  “Hey, Bug? Fuck you.”

  Beauregard shot Ronnie in the left knee. Ronnie opened his mouth wide in a rictus of agony. Beauregard got to his feet.

  “That was for Kelvin.”

  Beauregard shot Ronnie in the other kneecap. Ronnie vomited, choked on it and vomited again. Beauregard pushed Ronnie’s head to the left with his foot to clear his airway. He didn’t want him to pass out.

  “That was for Darren,” Beauregard said. “I’m gonna ask you again. Where’s the van, Ronnie?”

  Ronnie craned his neck to meet Beauregard’s gaze. “Why should I tell you, Bug? Ain’t ya gonna kill me?” he rasped.

  “I can hurt you a lot more before that happens,” Beauregard said.

  Ronnie closed his eyes. Beauregard could see movement behind his lids like he had entered a REM state. Moments ticked by as Beauregard waited for him to answer.

  “I don’t have time for this, Ronnie,” Beauregard said. He stepped on Ronnie’s right knee and ground his heel into the bullet wound just above his patella. Ronnie screeched and sat straight up at the waist like a vampire in a coffin. He pawed at Beauregard’s thighs. Beauregard kneed him in the face. Ronnie fell back onto the dirt with his arms outstretched. His fingertips brushed against a few downed cornstalks. When his eyes opened Beauregard could see there was no more fight left in him.

  “It’s down at my granddad’s old place. Crab Thicket Road. Bank owns it, but nobody wants to live out there in the middle of no-fucking-where,” Ronnie wheezed. “Jesus, it’s a fucked-up world, ain’t it, Bug?” he croaked. Blood was flowing freely from his mouth now.

  Beauregard turned his head and spit out a globule of blood and saliva. He put his foot on Ronnie’s chest and aimed at his head.

  “The world’s fine, Ronnie. It’s us that’s fucked up,” he said.

  * * *

  Beauregard got back to the salvage yard around midnight. Boonie’s truck was still there when he pulled up to the office. Boonie met him as he climbed out of the wrecker. He stood in front of the office door with his hands on his hips as Beauregard pulled a green tarp out of the truck. It tumbled to the ground with an audible thump.

  “You find out where the van is?” Boonie asked.

  “Yeah,” Beauregard said.

  Boonie sighed and tugged at his hat.

  “We can put him in the Cavalier with his brother. In an hour, they won’t be nothing but a big-ass paperweight,” Boonie said. He squinted and studied Beauregard’s face. He gestured to the busted headlight and the cornstalks stuck in the grill.

  “Looks like he didn’t give it up easy.”

  Beauregard caught a glimpse of himself in the driver’s-side window.

  “I’m glad he didn’t,” he said.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “That’ll be $87.50, ma’am,” Lazy said. He slid two cartons of Marlboro Reds across the counter. The old woman set the bag with her oxygen tank in it on the counter. She pulled a hundred out of the pocket of her yellow polyester pants and handed it to Lazy. As he was counting out her change, he heard a shrill whistle echoing from his office. He handed Mrs. Jackson her change and went into the back office.

  The burner phone was ringing and vibrating on his desk.

  “Hello?”

  “You want the platinum? I got it. You come on down here. Just you and the boy with the scars and somebody to drive the van. It’s a little after two. I figure y’all can make it down here by five. After five, I drive the whole fucking thing into a lake,” a voice said.

  “Is this the missing Mr. Beauregard? I thought Ronnie had this phone.”

  “He don’t need it no more. I’ll text you the address,” Beauregard said.

  Lazy chuckled. “Beau, I don’t think you get how this works. You don’t give me orders. You don’t tell me where to go or what to do. I do the telling, son. If I say bring me the van, you bring me the goddamn van. If I tell you to eat a shit sandwich, you eat the goddamn shit sandwich and ask for a glass of piss to wash it down. That’s how things work around here,” he said. He heard Beauregard breathing on the other end of the line.

  “I don’t think you understand. You need this more than I do. And trust me, Lazy, you don’t want me coming up that way. You sent men to my house. Threatened my wife. They shot my baby boy. We meeting someplace neutral so we can be quits with this. I come there and I’m likely to kill everything I see. You want the address or not?” Beauregard said.

  Lazy squeezed the phone. “Fine. Send it on, boy. We’ll have a little conversation when I see you,” he said.

  “Five o’clock,” Beauregard said. The line went dead.

  Lazy watched a narrow crack slither across the screen on his phone as he gripped it tight.

  * * *

  Beauregard closed the flip phone and set it on Boonie’s desk.

  “He going for it?” Boonie asked.

  “He ain’t got no choice. Shade is kicking his ass. He lost the jewelry store. He needs this,” Beauregard said.

  “You think this gonna work?” Boonie asked. Beauregard rubbed his wide hands on his thighs. His legs were still sore from the fall. The pain made him wince but it also made him feel sharp.

  “I gotta make it work,” Beauregard said.

  He got up out of his chair. Boonie rose as well. He slipped from behind his desk and stood in front of Beauregard. A second passed, then another and another. The moment stretched on and on until it collapsed under the weight of its own tension. Boonie threw his arms around the bigger man and squeezed him tight. Beauregard squeezed him right back.

  “It’s alright. Everything’s gonna be alright,” Boonie said.

  “No matter wh
at happens you make sure Kia and Ariel and the boys get what I left ’em,” Beauregard murmured againt Boonie’s cheek.

  “Don’t you worry about that. Go handle your business, boy,” Boonie said.

  He let go of Beauregard, stepped back and rubbed his eyes. Beauregard nodded then headed for the door. He opened it and paused for a moment. The afternoon sun carved an elongated shadow around him.

  “I loved my Daddy. But you was a better father to me than he ever could have been,” he said. He stepped through the open door and closed it behind him.

  * * *

  Beauregard went to the hospital after he left Boonie’s. He headed straight for the ICU department. A tall, gaunt nurse with her chestnut brown hair pulled back into a severe bun was standing at the nurses’ station.

  “Excuse me, what room is Darren Montage in?” he asked.

  The nurse looked up from her clipboard. Her light green eyes were hard. “Only immediate family can see him, sir.”

  “I’m … I’m his father.”

  “Oh, I see. He’s in room 245. He can only have visitors for fifteen minutes,” she said. She returned to her clipboard.

  Beauregard entered the room like the floor was made of lava. The pungent, antiseptic odor of the hospital was even more concentrated in the ICU. It was like the whole area was dipped in Lysol.

  Darren was lying on his back in the middle of the bed. The head of the bed was slightly elevated, letting the overhead lights illuminate his face. It gave him an otherworldly countenance. Beauregard knew he was small. The last time they had taken him to the doctor for a checkup they said he was a bit undersized for his age. In the middle of the hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and machines, he looked positively miniscule. Like one of his action figures. Beauregard approached the bed. He took his son’s impossibly tiny hand. It was cool to the touch. The machines beeped and hissed like some Rube Goldberg contraption.

  “I never wanted any of this for you. Or your brother or your sister. But I brought it to you. Somebody else might have pulled the trigger, but I did this. I gotta own that. I hope someday you’ll know how sorry I am. No matter how things go today, I don’t think I’m ever going to see you again, Stink. So, I wanna tell you I love you. A father who really loves his children doesn’t do anything to hurt them. He doesn’t put them in harm’s way. Not on purpose. He ain’t an outlaw or a gangsta. It done took me a long time to realize that,” Beauregard said.

  He leaned over the railing and kissed Darren on his forehead.

  “I’m never gonna hurt y’all again,” he said.

  * * *

  Ariel was trying on sunglasses when her phone rang. She checked it, didn’t recognize the number and hit end. It rang again a few seconds later. It was the same number. She groaned and answered it this time.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey,” Beauregard said.

  “Hey. You get a new phone?” she asked.

  “Yeah. What you doing?”

  “Me and Rip at the mall. What’s up?”

  “Uh, nothing really. You ain’t spending that money, are you?” Beauregard asked.

  “No. Me and Rip just hanging out. We both off.”

  “Oh. Well, I just wanted to tell you something.”

  “Tell me what?”

  Beauregard waved a fly out of his face. The van didn’t have any AC anymore, so he had both windows open.

  “I love you.”

  Beauregard heard the indiscernible din of disembodied voices on the phone. The aural flotsam and jetsam of a large American mall. The cacophony of hundreds of footsteps. Everything but his daughter’s voice.

  “I … I love you too, Daddy,” she said finally.

  “I gotta go, baby,” Beauregard said.

  “Okay,” Ariel said.

  The line went dead.

  Beauregard put the phone in his pocket. He climbed out of the van cradling the double-barrel shotgun in the crook of his arm. Fluffy cumulus clouds rolled across the sky, obscuring the late afternoon sun. He walked to the front of the van and leaned against the hood as he watched a long black car wind its way down Crab Thicket Road.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Caddy came to a stop fifteen feet in front of Beauregard. It idled under the setting sun like some predatory beast growling at its prey. The passenger door opened, and Billy climbed out. Both rear doors opened next. Lazy and a man Beauregard didn’t recognize got out and stood beside the car. Lazy was wearing a light tan golf shirt and white pants. His wild hair looked like a woodland creature had made a nest in it. He was grinning at Beauregard. He started to walk forward but Beauregard pointed a shotgun at him.

  “That’s far enough,” he said.

  “Well here we are, Bug. This supposed to be a showdown? Like in—”

  Beauregard cut him off. “No. No, it’s not. It’s just me giving you what’s yours and you leaving me and mine alone.”

  Lazy let his tongue slide over his lips.

  “Where’s Ronnie and Reggie, Beauregard?” Lazy asked.

  “Nowhere you gotta worry about,” Beauregard said.

  “Now see, if that’s how you treat your partners, how can I trust you? How do I know you ain’t replaced all the platinum with aluminum foil?” Lazy asked.

  “Come take a look. Just move slow,” Beauregard said.

  “Check it out, Burning Man. See if we all gonna go home happy,” Lazy said. Beauregard kept the shotgun trained on Billy as he walked backwards. Billy followed him at a relatively safe distance until they reached the back door of the van. Beauregard gestured toward the door with the shotgun. Billy gripped the handle, then looked back at Beauregard, whose slick brown face was unreadable. Billy opened the door while simultaneously jumping backwards.

  “You can’t blame me for being jumpy,” he said. Beauregard didn’t acknowledge him. He poked his head around the swinging door. There in the back of the van was a pallet of metal coils five or six levels high. Billy closed the door and walked back to the Caddy. Beauregard followed him, listening to their feet crunch on the dry dead grass. Sweat was pouring down his face but he didn’t dare wipe his eyes.

  “Well, what you say, Burning Man?” Lazy asked.

  “It’s in there,” he said.

  “The keys are in the van,” Beauregard said as he began to back away.

  “Hold on. I can’t just put a member of my family in that van on your word,” Lazy said.

  “What you saying?” Beauregard asked.

  “I’m saying why don’t you start the van up for us? Make sure this ain’t like the beginning of Casino,” Lazy said.

  Beauregard didn’t move.

  “Or do you have a little surprise fixed up for us in there, Beauregard?” Lazy asked. A few crows cawed as they flew overhead. The clouds had parted and now the full fury of the sun was bearing down on them.

  “Fine,” he said. He used one hand to reach through the driver’s window and cranked the motor. It came to life with a cough and a sputter, but it finally caught and turned over. It idled as rough as a rock polisher.

  “Shit, is it gonna make it down the lane?” Billy asked.

  “It’ll make it just fine,” Beauregard said.

  “Alright then. Sal, go on get in and follow us back home,” Lazy said.

  Beauregard stepped back and to the left. The man Beauregard didn’t recognize was wearing a white wife beater and blue jeans at least one size too small. He climbed in the van. “This got AC?” he asked in a squeaky tin whistle voice.

  “No,” Beauregard said.

  Lazy appraised him with his hands on his hips.

  “You know this ain’t over, right? We gonna see you soon, son,” Lazy said. He winked at Beauregard.

  “You wanna come for me, then come on. This…” He nodded at the van. “Is so that you leave my family out of it. What we got going on is between you and me. Don’t worry, I’ll be around. But I think you gonna have your hands full with Mr. Shade and his folks for a while,” Beauregard said.

  “I just
might. Don’t worry, though, we ain’t gonna forget about you,” Lazy said. He got back in the car. Billy used his thumb and forefinger to make a shooting motion toward Beauregard as he climbed back in the passenger seat. The driver put the car in gear. He backed up into a clutch of honeysuckle, then turned around and headed down the driveway. Sal followed them. They crept through the brush and over the potholes at a snail’s pace.

  Lazy pulled out his cell phone.

  “When he leaves, follow him. Then grab him and bring him and his family to the store. We gonna make this last over a three-day weekend. Don’t fuck around with this boy. Go in there with guns blazing. Don’t let him get the drop on you,” Lazy said. He ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket.

  “You want us to give them some backup?” Billy asked.

  “No. We need to get this van back. I got some bills I gotta pay and I want you with me,” Lazy said.

  “You sure they can handle it?” Billy asked.

  “They better,” Lazy said. He sat back and gazed at the cedar trees that lined the driveway. Billy turned on the radio. He kept spinning the dial until he found a country song. Not that slick Nashville shit but a real country song with some steel guitars and a whiskey-soaked melody.

  * * *

  Beauregard watched them ease their way down the lane. The setting sun bathed the vehicles in a soft magenta hue. He pulled out a cell phone and brought up the number to the burner Lazy had given Ronnie. He was a practical man not overly enamored with irony. That being said, he thought it was kind of fitting he’d used that phone as the trigger for the bomb.

  He’d never made a bomb before, but it wasn’t that difficult. In a way, it was like the ignition system in a car. He’d called Madness and received an over-the-phone tutorial. After a quick ride to the hardware store and some experimentation, it was ready. The convoy reached the end of the driveway and paused.