Wicked City

by Ace Atkins

  But the butt got only halfway.

  BILLY PROTECTED HIS HEAD AND WAITED FOR THE BLOW that didn’t come. He peered up to see me catching the gun in the palm of my hand and wrenching it from Bert Fuller. Fuller grinned back at me and spit some tobacco on the asphalt.

  “You want to hand that back, palooka?”

  I smiled back at him and then turned and pitched the gun over the crowd and into the lake. Kids and teenagers stood up on the hill of Idle Hour and looked into the parking lot. Most of the adults still turned away.

  “Shouldn’t have done that.”

  I looked over at Billy, the blood on his face and skinny chest and arms. Fuller shook his head.

  “You know my guns come in a pair.”

  “Just let ’em go, Bert.”

  “Maybe that’s just what I was aimin’ to do before you came up and involved yourself once again in a police matter. For your information, this isn’t some nice little old gal. This is a common whore who was sucking this boy’s peter for a quarter out in the woods. We can’t have something like that with decent people about.”

  “Decent people,” I repeated. “What’s wrong, you didn’t get your cut?”

  “Take it back.”

  I looked down, hands on my hips, and shook my head. “No, I don’t think I will.”

  Fuller put his hand on his remaining gun and walked toward me. “Maybe you were waiting in line to get your damn cock sucked, too.”

  I saw women hustling their children away. A young boy not much older than my own son stared at the scene, his jaw hanging loose. And there it was, better than television, and in live Technicolor: a bloodied girl in panties and ripped shirt, an angry boy with a bloody face, and Deputy Bert Fuller, standing and spitting, hand on his gun, ready to make his order and sense of it all.

  The girl moved to her knees and found purchase against the car, one hand covering the ripped place on the thin shirt, her legs scraped bloody. Her cotton underwear had turned a damp yellow from where she’d urinated while being dragged and beaten.

  “You are the worst kind of coward,” I said. “I know your secret. You hide behind the gun.”

  Fuller nodded with the words and then went for the belt and unlatched it, the leather and gun falling to the asphalt.

  “Come on.”

  “Let them go. I don’t want to fight.”

  “They’re coming with me. And so are you, after I whip your ass.”

  The crowd became a ring, the asphalt the canvas, and my vision shifted from the kids and townspeople, and even the two men in khaki uniforms who stood just on top of the hill but didn’t move.

  I put my hands out, showing my palms, and shook my head and turned my back.

  And that’s when Fuller rushed and tackled me to the ground and pounded into my kidneys with his fat fists. But I was up and standing, with Fuller grasping for his feet and then taking huge, muscled punches toward me that I sidestepped without losing a breath. And more wild punches did not even make a bit of breeze near my ears, as I moved and bobbed and weaved with an instinct that came to me as natural as walking, although I hadn’t practiced the science for more than fifteen years.

  I found my feet and balance and kept my fist raised to my jaw, although Fuller never connected a single punch, finally growing out of breath and red-faced. He jumped on me again and pummeled with his fists, but I wrenched from Fuller’s grasp and moved backward, the ring disappearing now, seeing the faces and people yelling and cheering, and Fuller’s uniform coming undone, his deputy’s star clapping to the ground from his wrinkled, sweaty shirt, the hat laying crown down on the ground. And I moved more, working him into a slow circle, keeping him slow and ragged and awkward and clumsy, as cheers and yells came from more faces perched on the hill. Backs that had turned before now turned and watched us, and I took a breath, feeling all of them behind me and not wanting to, knowing the ease of what I was about to do was not even a task. I sidestepped Fuller and moved him about, setting him in a perfect stance, posing him as a sculptor works his model, and then with Fuller leaned back, hands dropped by his potbelly, I worked three quick punches. One, two, three. Again. One, two, three. Kid Weisz screaming in my ears.

  The two, the cross, connected with the head, spewing a plug of tobacco from Fuller’s mouth, and the three, the hook, connected with sinew and bone of the ribs and I felt the crack and compression up through my knuckles. Fuller lost his balance, his eyes wide in surprise as his body failed him, and he teetered backward, falling toward Moon Lake and onto his back, rolling and rolling down a hill of stone and scree, coming to rest in a defeated heap as, up on the hill, people pointed at him as they would a circus oddity. I knew what would bother Fuller most was the laughter, the laughter coming from grown men and women, not just the awkward, bloody humor of it all, but like a great rush of wind coming through in gigantic release.

  I felt hands on my back and words in my ears. But I walked through them and reached down for the girl, unbuttoning my shirt and handing it to her. I stood there in my undershirt and turned to Reuben’s boy, asking him if he needed a ride home. But he didn’t answer. He just nodded over and over, too shaken to talk, and grabbed Lorelei’s hand and disappeared into the crowd.

  When I returned to the blanket, Joyce held Thomas up in her arms and to her chest and she paced. Anne looked to me and then back to her mother. I looked to my wife and she just shook her head. “They wanted to go see the show,” she said. “But I kept them here. Right here on this damn blanket.”

  “What was it?” Anne asked.

  I got down on my knee and pretended to pull a quarter from her ear.

  “I haven’t fallen for that one for five years, Dad.”

  I shrugged, hearing the sounds of sirens in the distance.

  Two men approached from the lakeshore and walked toward us. One was Jack Black, the big soldier who reminded me of a professional wrestler.

  Joyce handed me some ice wrapped in a towel and I placed it over my knuckles.

  “I could’ve sworn I saw you watching up on the hill, Major Black.”

  Black crossed his arms over his massive chest and smiled: “You must be mistaken. We’re just here to restore order.”

  “What do you call that?” I said. “Pretty stupid, huh?”

  “I’d call it a hell of a start, chief.”

  ARCH LIT HIS NINETEENTH CIGARETTE OF THE NIGHT, BORROWING a second pack from one of Bernard Sykes’s young prosecutors, who hovered in the room like it was a stag party, and sank back into the uncomfortable chair, answering more questions. A negro man in whites brought another pot of coffee up to the suite of the Ralston Hotel, and Arch drank another cup and answered the questions with a firm yes or no, trying not to elaborate any more than was necessary. Sykes paced the room. They’d been there all day and night, and Arch had lost track of the time hours and hours ago, and the little man at the desk would peck away on his little machine, taking down every word they said.

  “Can I please go? This doesn’t have a thing to do with that grand jury mess.”

  “As I’ve said to you, Mr. Ferrell, you will be taken to Birmingham in the morning to answer to your charges of vote fraud. But I’m afraid this is all the same mess.”

  “That’s a lie and could be considered slander.”

  “How’s your headache?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Do you need more coffee?”

  “No, I don’t need any more goddamn coffee. And my drinking is my own goddamn business. There was no call to have those boys come in and bust in on me like I was a common criminal.”

  “Would you please continue about the morning of June eighteenth?”

  Arch’s head fell into his hand and he squeezed his temples with his fingers. “Like I’ve said, I got up and took my daughter’s puppy out. Do you want to know how many times it shit?”

  “If you think it would help,” Sykes said.

  “Twice. I’ll collect the evidence for you.”

  “Then what?�
�

  “I ate breakfast. Bacon and eggs. Grits, too. Then I walked my property. I thought about maybe doing some yard work. My garden needed to be cultivated and weeded.”

  “Don’t you work on Fridays?”

  “No, I had the day off. I hadn’t had much sleep. Maybe three hours all week.”

  “Why didn’t you sleep?”

  “You wouldn’t sleep either if you had crusading idiots out there calling you the brains behind the Phenix City Machine.”

  “Are you?”

  “As I told the press, I think that’s giving my brains too much credit.”

  “Did you work in your garden?”

  “No, I wasn’t feeling well. This man came over who wanted to buy some timber. His name’s Perdue. Don’t ask me his first name ’cause I don’t recall. He owns a sawmill somewhere around here, and I put my boots on and walked my land showing him what could be thinned.”

  “What about the rest of the day?”

  “I returned home and, I don’t know, just read the paper. I fell asleep in my chair.”

  “Why did you go back to the courthouse, sir?”

  “I went back because I had a mess of paperwork. I needed a day off. But, hell, when you’re the solicitor you work all the goddamn time. Can I please get some more cigarettes in here?”

  Sykes nodded to another attorney and the attorney set a pack of Camels before Arch. Arch looked up at the boy, who smiled, and Arch gave him an eat-shit grin, popping the cigarette into his mouth. After a few moments of Arch sitting there looking at Sykes, Sykes leaned in with a Zippo and lit the cigarette.

  “Hell, I got it,” Arch said, and Sykes pulled the hard flame away with half the cigarette gone.

  “What time did you arrive at your office?”

  “About eight. Maybe a little after. I can only guess. Jesus Christ, I never figured on this.”

  “What work did you do?”

  “First, I went to the post office across the street to get my mail, and then I unlocked the courthouse. I walked upstairs and bought a Coke. I read through my mail and drank the Coke. I tried to call your fucking boss, Si Garrett.”

  “I’ve heard you state that you spoke to Mr. Garrett. Is that not true?”

  “Would you please shut the hell up and let me finish my goddamn story?”

  Sykes breathed in deep and looked up to a couple other prosecutors. He took another breath. “Please continue.”

  “His wife said he was in Birmingham. So I called the operator and told her to check around for the attorney general at the better hotels in town. She finally called back around nine and connected me to the Redmont.”

  “How long did you talk to Mr. Garrett?”

  “Twenty minutes or so.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “I don’t believe that information is pertinent to this investigation.”

  “Did anyone see you come and go from the courthouse?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When did you leave the courthouse?”

  “Shortly after hanging up the phone. All telephone tolls will verify the call. And then I collected paperwork and drove home.”

  “Is this when you learned of Mr. Patterson’s death?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see Mr. Patterson on June the eighteenth at any time?”

  “No.”

  “Would you tell me how you learned of his death?”

  “I stopped off right by my house for a beer at Huckaby’s grocery. I was so tired from the week and the lies in the newspaper that I asked for a second, and I had just punched the top on the can when this boy from down the road ran in the store yelling that Mr. Patterson had been shot. Then Mr. Huckaby’s wife ran in the store and said she’d seen it on the television.”

  Sykes watched Arch’s face, but Arch didn’t flinch as he reached for another cigarette from the pack. Sykes leaned in with the lighter, faster this time, and caught the cigarette.

  “I drove on home, told my wife, and tried to reach Sheriff Matthews and Governor Persons. But all lines were busy. Then Mr. Garrett called and wanted to know what was going on in Phenix City, and, I had to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure.”

  Sykes didn’t say a word.

  “And that’s when I returned to the courthouse and saw the whole scene down by the Elite, and I walked down there and saw the blood and learned the horrible news.” Arch leaned back and watched the smoke coming from his mouth and through his fingers and up toward the ceiling, scattering in a ceiling fan. He looked toward Sykes, but his eyes were on the suite’s window, watching nothing. “The whole thing was just awful. Mr. Patterson’s blood on the sidewalk where children could see it, and the first thing I thought about was his family. How do you tell a good family that their husband and daddy is dead?”

  Sykes reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small notepad, flipping through several pages. He finally looked up with his eyes and said, “This little ledger was in Si Garrett’s briefcase. Does this look like your handwriting?”

  9

  REUBEN WALKED BACK through the kitchen screen door carrying a sack of groceries, a carton of Lucky Strikes, and a bottle of Miller beer. His eyes were bloodshot, and his skin glowed with a pasty whiteness, slick from the alcohol, as he slipped by Billy and landed everything on the old wooden counter. Billy had some trinkets he’d found out by the creek laid out on the table, some arrowheads, pieces of old china, a rusted horse bridle, and when the beer landed they all rattled on the planks.

  “Where the hell you been?” he asked.

  “I’ve been here.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since two days ago.”

  “Where were you before that?”

  Billy shrugged. “With Mario.”

  “You know that kid’s Italian.”

  “I do.”

  He nodded and leaned back against the stove. He reached for a box of kitchen matches and lit a cigarette. “Mario, huh?” He squinted those droopy, sad eyes at Billy and said: “I heard you’d shacked up with some whore.”

  The words sank like a knife in the gut, and Billy stood and scraped the trinkets he’d collected back into a Hav-a-Tampa cigar box filled with more arrowheads, old bullets, and cracked pieces of china. Last year, he’d found an old bayonet from the Civil War out by the well.

  “I don’t want you going around her again. Bert Fuller is one mean sonofabitch. He’d just soon kill you as look at you.”

  Billy walked by him and went to his room, locking the door. He had an old baseball mitt under his bed, and as he sat down on his bunk he fired the ball into the sweet pocket over and over until he heard Reuben try the handle. Then Reuben started to bang hard and tell him to open up or he was going to whip his ass, which Billy knew was a goddamn lie.

  He stood and unlatched the door and sat back down on the metal bed. The wallpaper was pink and flowered, and drooped and peeled from the summer heat. He looked at his father and waved a fly away from his face.

  “Who’s the girl?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  Billy could smell his breath. It was sharp and smelled like gin and cigarettes, and as he took another sip of beer he tousled his son’s hair – like he did when he didn’t want to talk but only to let him know he was still a kid – and left his room with the door wide open.

  Billy stayed there for a while, dropping the mitt and examining the arrowheads and rusted old bits. He studied their grooves and points and thought about them being buried down in the mud for so damn long, and wondered what else was hidden by the creek.

  He fell asleep like that until the shadows crept up on the walls and it became a late-summer night and he could hear the whistles and cracks from the back field. At first, he thought Reuben was firing his gun, or someone had come for him. He thought a lot about Johnnie Benefield coming over, and knew if he saw him that he wanted to kill that bastard. Billy thought of the ways. With a rusty knife and with a gun. He thought a lot about knocking Johnnie in
the head and old crotch with a Louisville Slugger.

  But as he pulled away the sad, yellowed curtains of their old house, he spotted Reuben deep in a cornfield that he hadn’t planted since his father died. He sat on his ass, a hunched figure like a sullen statue, and Billy walked outside, catching some fresh air from the boxed heat.

  There was a sizzle and some sparks and a loud whistle and boom. He saw Reuben smoke and stumble from where he sat and affix another bottle rocket into the empty Miller beer.

  “Where you get those?” Billy asked behind him.

  “Some lady give ’em to me.”

  He stood behind his father, looking at his back, the two-tone blue-and-black shirt and wide stance of his legs and cowboy boots. His hair was oiled and pomaded like boys in high school, and although Billy couldn’t see his face he watched as smoke leaked up above Reuben’s head. Then Reuben reached over and touched his cigarette to another bottle rocket.

  One started to fizz and smoke without ever leaving the beer bottle, and Reuben laughed and tripped on one knee before pushing Billy a good three feet away as it hissed and burned out. A dud.

  “Well, goddamn.”

  “I didn’t mean nothin’ about being gone,” Billy said.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “I ain’t gonna beat you or nothin’. I ever lay one hand on you? Hell, no, I haven’t. I’ve had enough goddamn beatings from my daddy for ten generations. I ever tell you about this strop he had called the licorice stick?”

  “Yes, sir.” Billy had seen the rotting, hard piece of leather hanging from a rusted nail in the smokehouse. He’d never understood why his father kept it there like some kind of trophy.

  “I think the sonofabitch enjoyed it. Use to take me and my brother to the shed out yonder.”

  “What’d you get at the store?”

  “Be careful with those whores,” he said, ignoring the question and getting to his feet, dusting the dirt off his legs. “You know when I was your age, I was so horny I would’ve screwed a snake.”

  Billy didn’t say anything.