South, America

by Rod Davis

  “That he doesn’t have the painting?”

  “That’s his story. And then there’s that business back there on the Natchez Trace. What kind of guy are you?”

  “What business?”

  This time it was in the stomach, leg-kick. Big guy was agile. I collapsed onto my knees. I don’t know how long it was before I could breathe steadily.

  “You might be an okay guy for all I know but that’s not my job to pass that kind of judgment. You follow? Stand up.”

  I did, slowly. I coughed up some blood. My ribs were on fire.

  “You get that painting for me, you and that woman. It’ll save me some extra work and you a lot of pain.”

  “I’m telling you I don’t know.”

  “It’s the only shot you got, Shakespeare.”

  Against the railing again, I was leaning. Or was that how my German grandmother used to talk? “How much time?”

  He thought for a moment. “I’d say 72 hours. That’ll be Thursday. No, wait, I got something in Houston. You get a break. We’ll say Saturday.”

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Seems to me you already are started. So let’s say Saturday. Noon.”

  “High noon?”

  It was a light swat this time, but I got the point.

  I spat out some blood. “How would I get in touch?”

  “That’s the easy part. The hard part is showing up with something.”

  “If I can’t find it?”

  He shrugged. “I just gave you two extra days.”

  “And if I do? Then our business with you is all done. Elle, too.”

  “I could give a shit after that.”

  “You’d let us walk away.”

  “You can walk to China for all I care once I get delivery.”

  I thought on that.

  “What about Trey?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about him.”

  His eyes told me he was telling the truth.

  “Take this.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote a number on it and gave it to me. “Don’t lose it. Call when you have something.”

  “‘Big Red?’ That’s who I ask for?”

  “Ain’t nobody else gonna have that number.”

  “No.”

  “So we’ll have proper introductions later. Have some tea and cookies and all that good shit.”

  “What if I just give it to Trey? He always seems to be able to find me anyway. You can get it from him.”

  The big man’s eyes narrowed. “Under no fucking circumstances. You gonna bring that up again?”

  My head needed to be less foggy. It needed not to be hit again. “Trey who?”

  “I’m going to leave now. You probably ought to get busy.”

  “You’re not giving me much time.”

  “Can’t help you, hoss. Saturday’s a hard date. Noon.”

  “Why not just throw in the weekend?”

  “Weekends are for fishin’, the boss ain’t got anything for me to do. And you know what happens if I do have to work the whole weekend? Having to find you and all that shit ’cause you’re late, when I ought to be down in the Gulf?

  “I have an idea.”

  “Nothing personal. But that’s the way it would have to be.”

  He started to back away, then stopped.

  “Only thing is, back there the other day when you were doing all that fancy work with the shotgun on the Trace. You remember that, no?”

  “I remember.”

  “Those were Barnett’s boys. At least one of ’em was, the brother. The other, Reggie, he’s with us. Works with Barnett off and on, but mostly he’s one of our boys. You can’t just shoot him. We can’t let you. It was pretty impressive, though. They’re pros. You was in the military, maybe?”

  “Army.”

  “Over in Iraq?”

  “Korea, couple of other places. I was out before all that.”

  “Me, too. ’Nam, though. Right at the end. And a little after.”

  He pulled up the right sleeve on his shirt to show me a black horsehead tattoo. First Cav. We exchanged a weird look of recognition that all vets know means something and doesn’t.

  “They won’t let you get away with it, though. Shooting up the help.”

  “I thought you wanted me to find that painting.”

  “Yeah, because that’s the real business. But you know, there’s penalties in this game when you break the rules. You broke some. You sit in the box.”

  This time it was a right fist, hard to the chest, and another to the stomach. I dropped like a sack of cats. It was easier just to lie back on the wooden floor rather than go to all the effort to actually sit up.

  He stood above me. I think he was smiling. “Thing is, nobody likes that little bastard Reggie, that you shot up. Most of us wish you’d blown his head off instead of just making him limp around for a while, whining about how you ambushed him and Delmore, who by the way got a pretty good concussion. We like Delmore, though. Good thing you didn’t shoot him, too.”

  “I thought they were going to kill us.”

  “Hell, you were probably right. That’s how stupid Reggie is. But I’m not.”

  I coughed and raised to one elbow.

  “So that’s the fine for Reggie.”

  He walked to the stairwell and started down. From a few flights below, I heard him call out, “Good luck. I’m counting on you.”

  I lay back, watching the sun brighten the morning and drive away the mist and clouds. I realized there were no mosquitoes up here. That was good. It was all good, wasn’t that the deal? And then the night came, and stars, and sleep.

  It took me a few moments to recognize Lenora’s face, but then I saw Elle’s beside hers, and gradually heard their voices. They were talking about me, but I couldn’t tune in. I blinked a few times and the wooziness dissipated into clarity, the kind that comes when you wake up with a hangover. All the soft light gone harsh. You liked it better where you were. For a fraction of a second, watching the faces over me, taking in my position on the top of a tower overlooking the Mississippi, I had a strange sense that something . . . how to put it? Maybe I liked it? Couldn’t be. I was drunk on pain.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t move him.” It was Elle, bent low over me. Now I was awake, I could see her face, and her eyes. Definitely that girl was in love with me.

  “Jack. Jack. Can you feel anything broken?” It was Lenora’s voice. “Can you move your feet?”

  I raised a leg and tapped it on the deck. Then, with Elle’s warm breath coursing over my face, I slowly got onto one elbow. I shook my head, which hurt. With her help I scooted back enough to lean against the railing.

  I said, “I think I’m okay,” which is what people always say when they’re not.

  Lenora and Elle continued to inspect me like some kind of specimen.

  “I think nothing’s busted up, especially,” Lenora said.

  Elle touched my face, lightly. “Any of that hurt?”

  I drew back a little. “It stings.”

  “But nothing broken.”

  I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth. Tasted the blood. Looking down, I saw more on my shirt. “I don’t think so.” I touched my nose. I couldn’t feel any crackle. That was lucky. I tried to change my position and winced in pain.

  “It’s my ribs, mostly.”

  Lenora looked at Elle.

  “I got kicked.”

  Elle touched my side. “It’s hard to tell with ribs.”

  They exchanged looks.

  “You didn’t come back home,” Elle said.

  “No.”

  “I had a bad feeling. Lenora and I came out to see where you were. The clerk at the store said they’d seen you come through, then head up to the park. Yo
u know, people here notice everything.”

  I nodded.

  “Then another car behind you.”

  “Yeah.” I moved my body slightly and felt better.

  “Can you get up? We should go to the doctor. We can go to Tula’s after, or we can go into Cleveland.”

  “I think I’m okay. Give me a minute.”

  “It was Trey,” Elle said. Not a question.

  “I don’t think so.” I dabbed at my mouth.

  “We need to get down from here,” Lenora said to Elle. “Before anyone else comes along.”

  “If he can move.”

  “And this,” Lenora said. She held the Glock in one hand. I had forgotten about it. Definitely he was a pro. You don’t handle any more heat than you need for the job.

  “It goes in the back of the car.” I pushed myself up a little more.

  “What happened here?” Lenora said.

  “I don’t know. Things seem to happen without warning lately.”

  I tried to stand.

  “Take my arm,” said Lenora.

  I reached out for it. Then another wave of woozy came in and I may have blacked out. Probably did.

  “You okay, honey?” Lenora asked, her hand wedged up under my arm, strong as a car jack. “Lost you there for a little while.”

  “No. No. I’m okay. It was standing up like that.”

  “Oh, Jack. Damn.” Elle holding me up from the other side.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you get down the stairs?” Lenora asked. She tucked the Glock back into my jeans. It was hot from the sun.

  “I can walk.” I moved forward, holding my hand over the gun so it wouldn’t pop out. The pain that came then was sluggish and sharp, from my abdomen to my rib cage. I felt my chest but nothing seemed sharp or bulging. Maybe it was just a bad bruise. Hell, the guy was a Ph.D. in beatings. A surgeon.

  “Just go slow,” Lenora said.

  When we started, I tried to count each of the wooden planks to help me concentrate, but after the first flight I just focused on one step at a time, not thinking about the bottom. Very Zen of me, I said to myself, which of course it isn’t if you have to say it. And I thought about that, too—anything, really, to make it down. I was sitting cross-legged on a zafu in a monastery in Japan. I was wondering if this was how Mr. Lee had felt when the MPs beat him up. Or before he died. I wasn’t going to die. I was very definite about that. Lenora was in front, Elle a step behind, in case I fell. Twice I almost did.

  When we had cleared the stairs, I looked back up at the tower.

  “Ranger hasn’t come down here, thank God,” Lenora said, escorting me on. “We don’t need a lot of questions.”

  “It’s early and off-season,” Elle said. “He might not even be home.”

  “Let’s put him in my car. You drive his Explorer. Jack, do you have your keys?”

  “In my pocket.”

  Elle dug them out.

  We were at the rear door of the El Dorado, and then the door was open and I was inside. The seats were leather, soft. Lying down seemed the wrong thing to do. Sitting didn’t hurt. I sat.

  Lenora pushed the door shut and went around to get in. I saw Elle get in the Explorer, start it up. Lenora backed out and then we were all on the road heading out of the park. I think I may have dropped off again because the next I knew we were in front of a small brick office building and I was being helped out of the car. It was a little hazy for a few minutes but the doctor, a young black guy, was looking in my eyes and variously poking around and then wrapping a brown bandage around my chest.

  Once again, it was like I was watching this happen to someone else. I remember taking a pill of some sort and thanking the doctor and being led back to the car and then I remember being tucked into bed by the new love of my life, the Black Madonna, the Aphrodite of Pain, the incomparable Helen of the Delta, who ministered to my wounds even in this time of great distress and I’m pretty sure pressed her lips against mine before I was asleep again.

  15

  I woke up that afternoon in the guest bedroom. I did my best to brief Elle and Lenora on what had happened at the viewing tower, as coherently as possible under the Vicodin, and fell back asleep for another hour. My abdomen hadn’t been that sore since I’d broken a rib ten years ago falling off a broken railing at a mean-street South Dallas apartment complex where I was doing a story. Whatever the diagnosis, I knew that it would get worse before it got better.

  But I needed to get up and made myself put my feet on the floor. That’s when I realized they had taken off my clothes and all I was wearing were my blue boxers. I’m sure it was a very compelling sight. I felt the bandage along my rib cage and saw how my stomach and sides were red and raw. I already knew my face was swollen. But I didn’t think I’d lost any teeth.

  “We cut off your shirt. We couldn’t get your arms up. The jeans were pretty easy.”

  Elle glanced at her cousin, who smiled like a teenager who’d just pantsed a boy. “How do you feel now?”

  “My mouth is full of cotton and my body got hit by a truck. Otherwise good. What time is it?”

  “Five, nearly.”

  I thought that through and realized the drugginess was going to be with me longer than I wanted.

  “Did we go to a doctor?”

  “Doctor Porter. He’s Tula’s ob/gyn.”

  “He did all this?”

  Artula bent down to look into my eyes. “How many of me do you see?”

  “How many of you are there?”

  She looked at Elle. “I’ve seen worse. Byron took a few falls working construction time to time.”

  “He’ll be fine.” It was Lenora.

  “Jack,” said Elle, “can you stand?”

  “I think so.” I pushed myself upright. A little dizzy but not that bad.

  “I’ll get some coffee,” Artula said.

  Elle helped me get stable. She brushed my swollen cheeks with her index finger, the way you’d put the final touch on a fine piece of crystal. “I was so scared for you.”

  “I think that guy, Big Red, wasn’t going to hurt me much more than he did. Which was enough.”

  I touched my ribs.

  “Doctor Porter said he didn’t think they’re broken. More like deep bruising. We have to see if you cough up any blood in the next 24 hours. Your nose was broken, though. He popped it back. You’re not supposed to touch it.”

  Which I did, immediately.

  “Jack.”

  “Damn.”

  “It could have been a lot worse.”

  “Yeah.”

  I pressed my fingers against my chest again. I figured the doc was right.

  They helped me get into the living room and to the La-Z-Boy. Artula brought coffee and I drank most of it right away. Then she brought over some water and I drank a lot of that, too.

  “How much did I tell you?”

  “I think we got it,” Elle said, sitting near me on the couch. “The Big Red guy wants the painting. Just like everyone else in the world.”

  “By Saturday noon.”

  “You said.”

  “It wasn’t Trey’s buddies this time.”

  “No.”

  I looked into her brown eyes. “This guy was mafia.”

  “That’s who Trey owes money to. He has a gambling jones.”

  “Big one. Young Henry talked about it,” Lenora said.

  I leaned back. “So that’s where we are.” I looked across the room. Funny, the meds, how they created a calmness in the eye of the storm that allowed you to consider just how much shit was flying around you and how much you needed to duck it but allowed you just that fine frame of clarity to consider it all very objectively.

  “There’s more,” Elle said.

  She looked at Lenora again. “You were
mumbling a lot after we got you off the tower, about having no time and the Saturday thing and so my aunt decided I needed to know some things. So she told me.”

  “I was going to tell you anyway,” Lenora began, “but now, even on some of what I’m not sure of, I know it’s better that you know . . . than that you don’t.”

  “I’d always rather know.”

  “You would. Others, sometimes they don’t. In my experience, sometimes it’s not always for the best, knowing all that truth.”

  Elle got up and sat on the arm of my chair, stroked me softly on the back of my neck. “Tell him. It’s okay.”

  Lenora took Elle’s place on the couch. She seemed to be studying me to see if I was alert. “I already told you Terrell Henry went down to New Orleans to meet Trey. We talked about that.”

  “I remember. I’m okay.”

  “But I know why. Now.”

  Elle was smiling at me. A sad smile. Only the drugs kept me from thinking of it as heartbreaking. Though it was.

  “This gets back into the family, and it’s hard for Elle. Hard to hear the second time just as much as the first.”

  I tried to get her to look at me, but she wouldn’t. Kept stroking my neck, as though I were a baby.

  “The painting,” Lenora continued, “Henry had it all right. Took it from Trey’s place in Birmingham. It never was in Oxford.”

  “We know that. Just tell him.”

  Lenora pursed her lips.

  “It’s okay,” Elle said. “Jack, you need to know this.”

  Lenora swallowed. Her eyes darted to a corner of the room and then back, like she had made a decision. “They had had a big fight, Trey and Terrell. But not about the painting so much. It was mostly about her.”

  Elle stopped stroking but took my hand in hers.

  “A long time ago, this was all different around here,” Lenora said, her hands clenched in her lap. “Not so many people, and not so many kinds. Black folks, mainly, and the whites who owned most everything. Then the black folks started getting some education, traveled a little, came back, got into some business. That’s what Elle’s daddy did, and her mama, too. They were unusual people in Mississippi, or Alabama, where they started out. They were noticed. The white folks took to them and saw them as kind of, I don’t know, civilizing influences on us Negroes, they said in those days. I don’t use the other word.”