by Jim Nesbitt
They were standing at the edge of a small patch of corn, back behind the Cantrell homeplace, back where the holler ran quickly to the spine of the ridge. It was summer and the locusts were whirring in the heat. She was home and old enough to ask the questions Lucy and Lane didn’t want to answer.
Harlan had a .45 in his left hand. He racked the slide with a sudden snap of the wrist. Paint cans and milk jugs stood on a rock ledge at the back of the holler. He raised the semi-auto and fired a full clip. Geysers of water shot up from the shattered jugs and cans.
He was a small, wiry man with sandy hair and the sharp jawline, nose and mouth of a mountain grit. He killed gooks in Korea. He once shot a man in Georgia while running ‘shine to Atlanta. Seems there was a slight dispute about sales territory. The man died. Harlan was caught on a later run and did time up in Chillicothe, Ohio, same as Junior Johnson. For the shine. Not the killing.
He ran a poultry farm now. And a piece of a crystal meth lab that floated between here and Cocke County, Tennessee, home of the East Tennessee Gun Syndrome, a certified psycho-social phenomenon, documented by experts who found that the mountain folk of that county would just as soon shoot a man as argue with him.
The boom of the big Colt relaxed him. It cooled the fire that flared in his eyes when he talked about Carla Sue’s dead mama and daddy. Those eyes were the same startled blue as Carla Sue’s. He picked up another clip and handed the pistol and the column of bullets to his niece.
“Bust the rest of ‘em, girl. Go on. That Colt ain’t got more kick than you do.”
She eyed him with a cold look, slapped the clip home and tripped the slide release that racked in the first round. Geysers of water shot up from the rock ledge again. Cans and jugs got scattered, full of jagged holes.
Harlan Cantrell laughed, walked up and hugged his niece.
“This is the boss gun. None better. You got it and you got them. Cold. And ain’t no one knowin’ a slip of a girl like you can handle it. Till you prove ‘em wrong.”
The Colt wasn’t the only thing she learned to handle during summers at the Cantrell homeplace. A cousin, Eldon Cantrell, taught her how to rip through mountain curves in his Olds 442, giving her a taste for vintage GM iron and a touch of the icy speed that Uncle Harlan’s friends cooked up in various hideaways in North Carolina and Tennessee.
Eldon took her on a run to Knoxville on a July night when the thunderheads refused to give up their rain, refused to die and flashed their dry lightning against the tired peaks that crowded the road to town. US 11 E, Bloody 11, killer blacktop for truckers and drunks and people not mindful of its curves and its third lane of speedy passing and occasional suicide.
“Now girl, you’re gonna walk on in that bus station and buy a ticket just like you was takin’ the Greydog someplace.”
“Where?”
“Don’t matter. Here’s a fifty. Just walk up to the window and buy a seat to Nashville. Yeah, that’ll be good. Nashville. There’s one leavin’ at 11. Gives us plenty of time.”
“Why buy a ticket? You just want me to put this suitcase in a locker, right? Why not just do that?”
“These boys are shitsuckers and are likely to have the station covered. They’ll be lookin’ for me. And they’ll be lookin’ for somebody to just walk in and drop somethin’ in a locker. They don’t know you, got no idea who you are. You look like one of those damn UT girls goin’ home to mama. If they got somebody watchin’, he’ll check you out for your looks but won’t think you’re carryin’ anythin’ he’d be interested in.”
Eldon paused to spit tobacco juice into a Dixie cup crammed with a piece of paper towel. He glared at her, his shaggy hair and his heavy-lidded eyes highlighted by the dash lamp. She could feel her pulse quicken, but she liked the small current of fear flowing up from her stomach to her throat. It made her feel sharp and alive, like she was plugged into every circuit offered by the dark world whipping past the window of her cousin’s Olds.
“You unnerstan’ what I’m tellin’ you, girl?”
“It ain’t hard.”
Eldon laughed.
“Naw, it ain’t hard. But you runnin’ a risk. So am I. If ol’ Unc’ found out I was using you for this run, he’d kill me first and cuss me later.”
“But you did it anyway. How come?”
Eldon laughed again.
“Cause I know you like the thrill, girl. Even if you don’t know that yet. And I like to watch you get your blood up.”
She could see his grin, a vee of uneven, stained teeth, washed green by the dashboard light. She cut him off with one of her cold looks.
“I get the ticket. I dump the suitcase in a locker. Then what?”
“You got time to kill. You need to get a paper or get something to eat. You do a doublecheck with a baggage guy or somebody. Say somethin’ like, ‘Do I got enough time to grab a bite to eat before the next Nashville bus leaves?’ They say yes. And you walk out of the station. You come out the front door. Take a left. Take another left at the corner and come down two blocks.”
“Left. Left. Two blocks. Then what?”
“We see a couple boys in a honky-tonk and trade money for that locker key you’ll have in your little hand.”
She nodded and felt the current of fear crank up a few amps. She put her hand on her purse and felt the thick lump of the Colt inside, hammer back, safety on, a round in the chamber -- the only item carried in a stained pouch of leather.
The bus station was on a side street between Henley and Gay. Eldon dropped her off six blocks away, where Cumberland, the main drag through the UT campus, climbed out of the Second Creek valley to the concrete-covered ridgetop of downtown.
The station was spare and grimy -- worn gray linoleum, braces of plastic seats connected by aluminum bars, a single ticket counter and the battered, swinging doors that led to the buses and diesel fumes out back.
A clump of people stood around two vending machines, mulling over their choices of cold sodas, rubbery candy bars and stale crackers. Another clump stood in the middle of a station, a family seeing off their buzz-topped son, looking like a freshly shorn sheep in dull Army fatigues.
An old black woman snored loudly in one row of seats. A thin young man in a brown cowboy hat, faded jean jacket with a fake sheepskin collar and cracked tan boots sat in another row, flipping through a deck of cards, whistling “Dead Flowers.” An older man, paunchy and wearing a greasy L&N Railroad gimme cap, leaned against the wall near the lockers, smoking and reading a newspaper.
“Ticket to Nashville, please.”
“One way or round trip?”
“One way. Got friends bringin’ me back.”
“Hate to lose business from a pretty woman like you.”
She smiled into the smiling face of the ticket clerk, a pudgy man with thick glasses framed in black plastic and a wiry swath of gray hair that swept up from just above his right ear across a shiny bald head.
“Thank you. When does that bus leave?”
“Eleven sharp.”
“Do I have enough time to grab some supper?”
“Sure do. There’s a cafe down on Gay. Around the corner and up three blocks.”
“Now, you’re sure I’ve got enough time?”
“Sugar, I wouldn’t let that bus leave without you.”
“You’re sweet.”
She gave him another smile and walked over to the lockers, punching two quarters in the slot, turning the key and hoisting the suitcase inside. Turning toward the front door, she gave the ticket clerk a wave and walked out.
“You took your sweet time, girl.”
“Didn’t think I was supposed to look like I was in a hurry.”
Eldon fired up the Olds. In 10 minutes, they were at a small, cinderblock bar on Chapman Highway. Dull black paint. A gravel parking lot with a scattering of pickups and Harleys. No name out
front. Just a small, neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign in the window, barely visible to the traffic zipping past.
She followed him inside. Three men rode the bar rail -- jeans, windbreakers, gimme caps and bulk marked them as part of the swing shift at the big chemical plant that semi-regularly spilled acetate into the Tennessee River, making the town smell like a freshly shellacked coffee table.
Two bikers played pool in the back, ducking in and out of the shaded light above the table to make their shots. Behind the stick, a huge blond-bearded man in a black shirt that barely covered his belly dipped glasses into a tub of sudsy water, his thick forearms twined with the tattoos of purple and green snakes.
The ‘tender caught Eldon’s eye and jerked his head toward a door behind and to the right of the pool table. Eldon nodded, turned and pointed to a stool at the short end of the bar, a nook with a good view of the front door and the rest of the bar.
“Sit there. Wait for me.”
Her cousin slapped a ten on the bar and flashed his crooked V grin at the ‘tender.
“Bud longneck, Bear. Coffee for the girl. Keep an eye on her for me, son. Them Romeos back there don’t know she’ll bite. Don’t know if they’ve had their shots this year.”
Bear palmed the ten with one hand and pulled and popped the cap off a Budweiser with the other, handing the beaded bottle to Eldon. He waddled down the duckboards to the coffee machine, poured a cup into a thick, white mug and waddled it down to her.
“Anythin’ with this? Cookie, maybe? Milk?”
Bear’s voice was a rumble through layers of phlegm and cigarette tar. He punctuated his question with a hack and a ball of mucous spat sideways into a bar rag.
“Vodka. Rocks. Whatever’s in the well, provided you ain’t pissed in there.”
Eldon laughed.
“Tole you she bit. Now mind your manners Bear, and mind her while I do some bidness.”
“Sounds like a goddam Texan, El. Where’d you get her, anyway? Girl’s got an edge on her. You like to see that.”
“Convent. She’s my personal nun.”
A chuckle rumbled up from underneath Bear’s beard, but got cut off by another hack and another pause to spit into the bar rag. He dropped three ice cubes into a juice glass, poured in a shot of Popov and put it next to her coffee. The ring and pinkie finger on the hand holding the bottle were missing.
Eldon was gone. She heard the door to the back room click shut. She drank a sip of vodka, washing it down with dark, sour coffee. The minutes clicked by. The three chemical workers drained their last drafts, paid up and trailed out the door.
The bikers stayed, racking up another game. Bear started to close up, stacking chairs on tables, dumping ash trays, wiping the bar with the same rag he used for a spitoon. Bear pulled and popped caps off of two longnecks and brought them back to the bikers.
More minutes clicked by. The back door opened on Eldon and a short, stocky man wearing glasses and a black leather jacket with tarnished brass studs, his long greasy black hair pulled back in a ponytail. They walked up to her. The bikers stopped their game to watch.
“Go with this boy and take him to where that little thing we’ve got to trade is.”
She cocked her eyebrow at him.
“Should I ride with him?”
“No, lead him to the spot, give him the item, come on back and finish your coffee.”
Eldon looked at the other man.
“You got twenty minutes from the time she hits the door to check the goods and call your boss with the okay. You don’t want to be late. Your boss don’t want you to be late. We don’t want you to be late.”
Eldon tossed her the key to the Olds. She fired it up and pulled slowly toward the front of the lot, watching Ponytail climb into a gray ‘62 Chevy Apache pickup, bullnosed and decked out with mags and chrome sidepipes. She had no idea what to do, no idea what Eldon had in mind. She rapped the glass pacs twice, chewing the inside of her mouth, wondering what her next move should be. And then she relaxed.
Take him on a wild goose chase, girl. Drive him someplace where he’ll have to cut it close to call on time, then head back to the bar. Simple stuff.
She led Ponytail through the north side of town, out toward the Clinton Highway, letting the Olds unwind for a fast five minute run before ducking onto a deserted sideroad and taking the first fork she could find. Only the pickup’s lights made the same turns.
Her headlights picked up a swath of gravel and a dumpster. She slammed the car into a bootlegger’s turnabout that left her facing the pickup as it whipped past and started a screaching halt in the middle of the road. By the time Ponytail stopped his rig and backed up, she was back on the blacktop, facing the highway, waiting for him to ease alongside, door to door.
Ponytail rolled down his window. Carla Sue pitched the locker key at his face.
“Bus station, bud.”
“Gawdamn bitch, you had this key all the while.”
“You catch on quick. You got twenty minutes. Don’t keep my cousin waitin’.”
She burned rubber and was back in the bar’s gravel lot inside of eight minutes, two minutes sooner than Ponytail could get to the bus station. Eldon was sitting at the bar. The two bikers were still playing pool. Bear was standing across from her cousin, his forearms folded across his bulging belly.
She nodded and Eldon headed back to the rear room. Bear handed her a lukewarm cup of coffee. She pushed it back and ordered another round of Popov on ice. The vodka burned the back of her throat but didn’t cut the pure current of nature’s own speedy chemicals that made her sharp and edgy.
The clack and scatter of pool balls set her teeth on edge. The minutes no longer clicked, they crawled. She pictured Eldon sitting in the back room, across from some greasy biker, grinning his vee grin, talking grit to the man in loud, friendly tones, hand resting near the butt of the Smith & Wesson .357 stuffed down the front of his pants.
A ringing phone made her jump. Bear picked up, listened, grunted a response and hung up. He nodded to one of the bikers. The biker walked to the rear door and rapped twice. Eldon opened the door, carrying a small canvas gym bag and grinning his grin.
An older man, tall, rail thin and with a gray pompadour that made him look like Porter Wagoner’s daddy, stood in the door. A nod from him. A biker moved toward Eldon with a pool cue in hand, butt first.
She stood up and started to yell, but her cousin saw her move before she could speak, spun on his heel while pulling his pistol and jammed the barrel into the biker’s gut. She heard the sharp click of a pulled back hammer.
“You ‘bout dead real fast if you don’t back off.”
Bear pulled a sawed-off pump shotgun from under the bar, swinging it up, jacking a round home and leveling it toward Eldon’s head in a smooth, fast arc.
The Colt was in her hand. She was screaming Eldon’s name as she blew chunks out of Bear’s back and head, screaming to hear her own voice over the roar of the semi-auto, screaming to bleed off some of the current that threatened to spike through the top of her head.
Her screams shot into the sudden silence of an emptied clip. She saw smoke rolling out of the open breech of her gun. She smelled burnt powder. She saw Bear’s body jammed against the duckboards and the back of the bar. Eldon stood in the middle of the bar, his pistol leveled at Porter’s daddy.
“You fuckers picked the wrong folks to diddle with. Here’s how things are gonna go. Little sister here is gonna get my car. She’s gonna pull it to the door. She’s gonna honk twice. If she don’t honk, I’m gonna empty this damn pistol in your face. You got all this?”
Porter’s daddy, his face spotted with blood and brains, nodded.
“Girl, pick up your spent brass, reload and get the car.”
She pocketed eight empty shells and straightened up to change clips. She slipped the catch off the slide, heard it snap f
orward and centered the sights on the forehead of Porter’s daddy.
“Mister, you tried to kill my cousin. I can’t allow that.”
One shot gave Porter’s daddy a third eye and knocked his body into the rear room.
“Goddamit, why’d you waste him?”
She cut him off with a look. Eldon cussed under his breath. He was facing the bikers.
“You boys got enough juice to deal with this?”
“Naw, man. We’re just hired muscle.”
“Bullshit. Tell you what you better do if you don’t want my folks comin’ down here to kill your sorry asses. You boys better torch this joint and get gone.”
The two bikers looked at each other.
“This ain’t no game, boys. I’m pullin’ the plug wires on your bikes. When I see flames comin’ out of this joint, you’ll see those wires again.”
From the window of the Olds, Carla Sue watched the flames rise up behind the neon Pabst sign. She watched Eldon pitch the plug wires and felt herself pushed into her seat as he quickly pulled away.
“You done fine, girl. Saved your cousin’s ass, that’s for sure. Now we got to go deal with Unc’.”
“He’ll know about this.”
“Kinda hard to hide it -- you just blew away the boss of one of his prime retail outlets. That old man was a shit to deal with and would cut you in a minute, but he did move some product.”
“That man tried to kill you.”
“Wrong. Bear did that. And you got Bear. If it’d a stopped there, all we’d have to deal with is Unc’ being cross-eyed about me dragging you along to a killin’. But you killed Mac Bodine, a prime shitbird for sure, but someone ol’ Unc’ was fond of.”
“Fond of? Fond of?”
Carla Sue couldn’t stand it. She thought her head was about to explode again. Bad enough she could still hear the gunfire and feel the phantom buck of the Colt in her hand. Now she had to put up with this macho horseshit about two old brigands who loved each other so much they had to try to kill each other regularly to prove it.