Wicked City

by Ace Atkins

  “You hit him?”

  “Sure did. That’s when he asked me how long it took to rob Hoyt. But I could tell he didn’t know a thing. He just threw it out at me, waiting to see how I’d react, but I didn’t say nothin’.”

  Fannie turned back over, sitting on her butt and pulling her knees up to her titties. She tucked her sunglasses up on her head and squinted at Reuben. “Did boxing really mess your brain up that bad, sweetie?”

  “What?”

  “Murphy has someone who tipped him off, and if you don’t tell the sonofabitch what you saw in that alley he’s gonna let you deal with Hoyt.”

  “He didn’t mean it. He’d never do that. He was fishing.”

  “How’d you like to make a friendly wager?”

  THE COFFEE WAS ON AND THE KIDS IN BED JUST AS I SAW the big headlights flash into my driveway and cross over the television and shine on the knotty-pine wall. It was election night, and I’d just returned from the sheriff’s office, taking phone calls and later meeting with Hugh Britton and some folks from the RBA. I met Jack out back on my porch as Joyce finished up putting up the leftovers. I’d taken off the suit and wore a gray sweatshirt and workout pants from hitting the heavy bag in four rounds counted off by Thomas on my Bulova after supper. He liked to keep the time on me.

  Just as he stepped inside, I handed Jack the mug of coffee and could tell by his whiskey breath he needed it. He sat on a folding chair at the edge of the deck.

  He shook my hand, “Congratulations, Sheriff.”

  “I was the only one running.”

  “But now it’s official.”

  You could smell the smoldering of burning leaves from my neighbor.

  “I let out those two drunks from the other night,” Black said. “That car was a real mess. I don’t think they’re even gonna have it towed.”

  I drank the coffee. I lit a cigarette.

  There was a harvest moon tonight, and, in the black sky, it looked absolutely huge. One of those times that the moon felt as large as the earth and you could reach out and touch it.

  “I need to tell you something, Lamar.”

  “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  He shook his head. Jack had let his hair grow back like a civilian, and his sideburns had gotten long and dark. He still wore his gray suit and jacket, black tie and shoes, a badge clipped to his belt.

  “You know by the time I jumped at Normandy, I wasn’t scared. We’d been in Italy, and those combat nerves were gone. It’s kind of like getting sex – the first time you do it, you worry about not making a mess.”

  “I bet it’s a little different.”

  “But there was one night in France when the Germans were trapped on each side by some hedgerows. They had to either run through them and get shot down in a big open field or go right for these two big Sherman tanks. Some ran right for the tanks, and, as we followed, we had to step over their bodies. Can you imagine running for a tank? Some of them were dead, flattened like pancakes by the tracks, some of them half dead, crying out in German for their mamas or Hitler or their souls.”

  I drank some coffee.

  “I spent my twentieth birthday at the Bulge,” he said, not touching his coffee yet. The steam rose off the top, the cup still in his hands. His eyes unfocused and clouded. “I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not the sensitive type.”

  “Never figured that, Jack.”

  “Did you know my real name is Rudolph?”

  “I think I saw that somewhere.”

  He kept staring down past Joyce’s little beauty shop toward the creek.

  “My buddies call me Jack ’cause of Black Jack whiskey. As you can tell, I like to drink.”

  “No.”

  “Quit kiddin’ around, boss. You know I was here at Benning? That’s something I never told you. Before the war and when we processed out.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  I waited. Joyce walked out the back door and asked us if we wanted some more coffee, and we both thanked her as she walked back inside, drying her hands on a dish towel.

  “Me and this boy from Erie, Pennsylvania, named Wurst, were good buddies. Been through battle and blood and all that bullshit. About the same age. Too stupid to know what we’d gotten ourselves into but now wanting to live it up. Every day feeling like a goddamn gift.”

  He stood up, his feet unsteady.

  “We were horny as goats and took our pay on a Friday night over to Phenix City.”

  He lit a cigar, one that had already been smoked halfway, and told me the story. They’d come over the river in ’46 and met some girl at Clyde Yarborough’s Café, before he’d opened the Atomic Bomb.

  “But this girl, they called her Barbara LeMay, wasn’t a girl at all. Turned out her name was really Ed, and he had a pecker bigger than a horse. My buddy started to raise some hell with Yarborough and Yarborough threatened him. When I stepped up, that mush-mouthed freak about split my skull with the butt of a 12-gauge. It all ended up in a slugfest with Yarborough and this other hood. This boy had a hell of a punch, but we just about had ’em when Yarborough shot Wurst in the head and me in the chest.”

  Black loosened his tie and pulled down the collar of his dress shirt, showing a patchwork of skin grafts and scars across his upper chest.

  “What about Wurst?”

  Black shook his head. “They tossed us both into the river.” He paused a moment. “I made it out.”

  “And Ferrell never prosecuted, of course.”

  “He called it abnormal behavior to solicit a man. You know the Army came over and did an investigation? They never did find Wurst’s body. I was in the hospital for about six months.”

  I could see only the glowing red tip of the cigar, smelling the tobacco mix with the fall leaves smoldering up into the white of the moon.

  “You know the other man with Yarborough?”

  He nodded.

  “It was your friend Reuben.”

  “You sure?”

  “You don’t forget a night like that, boss. You watch out for him. He’s the same as the rest of ’em.”

  REUBEN SAT AT THE BEATEN KITCHEN TABLE CLEANING A gun with a dirty red rag, the potbellied stove giving off a dull, warm heat. And it felt good, as he sat in his union suit, unshaven, cleaning and working the cylinders in a little.22 pistol that he hadn’t owned but two hours. He had some of Moon’s fresh ’shine in a jelly jar, and he’d already smoked the last of the cigarettes he’d gotten in jail. He felt hollow, and his hands shook as he loaded in the little skinny bullets, and he took another drink just as Billy walked in and saw two T-bone steaks thawing on the counter, a couple of baked potatoes already in the stove.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m goin’ out.”

  “Ain’t you got school?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “What you seein’?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What you seein’? I figured you goin’ to see a movie.”

  “I’m goin’ to shoot some pool.”

  “You need to stay out of those pool halls. Ain’t nothin’ in them but trouble. They’ll pick your pocket dry.”

  Reuben stood and wavered for a moment, and he thought about the stories he’d heard about Moon’s special ’shine and how he’d used formaldehyde and embalming fluid to give that corn liquor a special kick. A few years ago, a damn raccoon had been tempted by that sweet mash and crawled in the still, only to become part of the ’shine himself.

  “You can’t even stand up.”

  “Hell you say. I’m just hungry. Go ahead and put them steaks on the skillet. I got some sauce, too. Some of that A.1. you like from over at Mr. Hoyt’s place.”

  Billy just stood there staring at him, his skinny arms crossed over his body. And there was something different about him, a little shadow above his lip, some grease in his hair.

  “You look like a damn punk,” R
euben said.

  “I learn from the best.”

  “I didn’t have a thing to do with that whore. Don’t you go blaming me on that.”

  “Those are your people, aren’t they? Johnnie and Bert Fuller. That fat-ass moonshiner. They’re all your buddies.”

  “They didn’t have anything to do with it either.”

  Reuben breathed, tried to catch an air of dignity, righting his shoulders, and then crossing over to set the black iron skillet he got from his mama on the stove, putting those T-bones on in with a hiss. He didn’t say anything, just tried to keep his eyes open, that ’shine filling his veins and making him feel hot. When the steaks got nice and pink, not frozen but good and bloody, he cracked some eggs next to them and the whole thing smelled so good he almost forgot about Billy.

  But Billy was still there, the little Emerson radio in the kitchen catching “Louisiana Hayride” with Hank Snow, and Reuben’s mind coming back to having that pride of driving ole Hank Williams around and how, even though he wasn’t a hero, just being a part of the show made him feel alive and important.

  Before he knew it, old Snow was playing that “Long Gone Lonesome Blues.” And Reuben sang along with it, his mind back on Shreveport on a hot summer night where girls in white cotton dresses and suntans smelled like flowers just picked off a thorny bush.

  “Why’d he fire you?”

  “Who?”

  “Hank Williams.”

  “He didn’t fire me. Hell, he died.”

  Reuben stuck a fork in the steak and flipped it and a hard-fried egg – more hard than he liked it – up on a plate and set it before Billy, asking him if he wanted some of those Mexican beans that his mama liked.

  “No, sir.”

  “No, sir? A steak dinner sure can get some respect in this house.”

  “Whose gun is that?”

  “Mine.”

  “Not one I ever seen.”

  “I got a lot of guns.”

  “Thought the Guard took most of them.”

  “The ones they could find.”

  “What’re you gonna do with that one?”

  “Would you just eat your supper and go on?”

  They ate, and the damn silence was so intense you could hear every scrape of the fork and grunted chew and labored breath. But then Reuben had to stop, and he walked over to the big farm sink and stuck his head under the pump, dousing his face with the cold water.

  He took a good portion of the liquor inside of him and then walked back to his bedroom, his steak left half-eaten. The eggs not touched.

  When he came back, he was dressed in blue jeans and red-and-green boots, the ones with a cactus on the shaft. He’d shaved and he’d combed his hair back with some pomade, and, with his sleepy eyes, he looked down at Billy, scooping up the gun and tucking it inside his front pocket.

  “You do me a favor?”

  His boy looked at him.

  “Get out of this place. Get as far as you can from this farm because it will spoil your soul.”

  “I like it here.”

  “You ain’t too bright. And you stay away from Lamar Murphy. I know what you told him.”

  Billy pushed the steak dinner away and looked up at his father and shook his head. “You are one sorry, worthless bastard.”

  Reuben took a breath, wavered on his feet, and walked, every step of those big boots making his boy flinch just a little bit more. He breathed hard, keeping it in like you would a lungful from a Lucky, and he raised the back of his hand, but he shook and held it there, watching the boy duck, placing his hands over his head, waiting for it and, somehow in a strange way, seeming to want it. He wanted Reuben to beat the hell out of him.

  Reuben leaned down and kissed the boy on his head, tasting the pomade and smelling the strange odor of the kid, a man’s sweat. It was all so damn unfamiliar.

  Before he left, he told the boy what to do if he didn’t come back by daybreak. Get away from Phenix City and Russell County and the ghosts of dead men who would wake you in your sleep, second-guessing your every move.

  REUBEN PARKED BEHIND A USED-CAR LOT ON CRAWFORD, close enough to Slocumb’s filling station that he could hear the sound of the air-hose bell every time a new customer drove in. His Buick looked fine among the other cars for sale, sitting there on the main commercial drag of PC, under the streetlights and colored flags that beat in the fall wind. He hadn’t noticed how his hands stuck to the wheel, even with the ignition off, till he tried to light a cigarette, his hands unsteady and sloppy, and his eyes dead and straight when he looked back at himself, the sleepy-eyed Mitchum in the mirror.

  He left his hat on the backseat and made his way to the little woods behind the filling station, taking a worn trail whose meaning wasn’t lost on him, rounding a little powdery curl, hearing the tinkling of some wind chimes from the brick house in the clearing.

  He squatted there and waited, trying to steady himself. Calm, or maybe forgive himself for what he was about to do. He kept thinking about Billy, wanting to walk away from this hell-soaked fire of a life after the war with something for him instead of some rotten barns and dead fruit trees.

  Lamar’s heavy bag rocked back and forth on thick chains.

  JOYCE AND I SWITCHED BETWEEN PABST BLUE RIBBON Bouts, watching a replay of a Pete Rademacher fight, and Down You Go, with Phil Rizzuto and Boris Karloff trying to guess a secret word or phrase some housewife had sent in to make five dollars. Of course, if you stumped the panel, you got twenty-five bucks. I was beating Joyce, recognizing damn near every one – of course it wasn’t hard to get ahead of Frankenstein himself – and repeating as she would say the wrong word, “Down you go.” I was feeling pretty good and cocky as I walked back to check on the children, the night routine going like clockwork, Thomas already in bed pretending he was asleep and Anne taking a bath.

  When I knocked on the bathroom door, I heard her splash around and ask to please give her some privacy. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  I went back to the kitchen to make another pot of coffee, looking up at the clock, knowing Jack should be over anytime. I landed back in the easy chair watching the nightly news out of Atlanta, Phenix City finally not being featured every night as a “Sin Den” and just plain “wicked.” I caught the weather, colder nights ahead, and leaned back into my chair, dozing a bit, smelling the coffee, Joyce coming in once before I fell asleep, saying “Down he goes” back to me and me hearing it and smiling with closed eyes… never hearing the back door click open.

  SINCE HE’D BEEN BACK FROM PANAMA CITY, REUBEN HAD gotten to know Lamar’s routine, watching it and studying on it. Lamar hadn’t changed a damn bit, always getting to the gym at the same time, always folding his trunks the same way, and the same religious wrapping of his knuckles through the center of his hands. Reuben looked down at his watch, knowing that big gorilla deputy wouldn’t be over for another twenty minutes and that the children would be in bed. He couldn’t and wouldn’t harm a child or a woman – that was a line he would never cross – and he waited there, watching Joyce turn out the light in the bedroom and the gray-white flicker of the television box in their family room. And he took a breath and moved forward, his gait strong and controlled, moving across the backyard and by Joyce’s beauty shop, trying to think of Lamar as an opponent or the way he felt about a Jap – nothing at all – and he knew it would be over in minutes and Phenix would be gone and in his rearview.

  Billy could have something. Reuben wouldn’t need forgiveness. His goddamn scorecard was already so punched full of holes that even Jesus Christ himself wouldn’t cut a loser like him a break. Lamar had taken the first shot and it had been a sucker punch, and when you sucker punched a man the comeback would be tenfold. Reuben told himself things like that, trying to think about the killing as a strategy. He lifted up the lock on the screen door with a pocketknife and turned the knob in the kitchen, smelling coffee, hearing the slurp of it perking, and as he turned he saw Lamar sprawled out and repeated the word palooka in his mind
. Lamar being a big, bald, laid-out palooka, looking like he’d just hit the canvas and gone to bed.

  It would be easier like this. He’d never even have to look him in the eye.

  Reuben moved for him, the moonshine making his skin glow, his face sweat, smelling the way you only did when you were fearful, like a skunk. His own odor making him catch some bile in his throat. Some reason, thinking about that crazy old Kid Weisz and what he would think about this final bout between his two boys, but telling himself the Kid would understand. He’d understand what it meant to be neutered by someone, to be cheated, to be lied to. Lamar Murphy was a coward, and if it wasn’t Reuben it would be Johnnie Benefield. And Johnnie didn’t have the goddamn right.

  He had the right to take the lights of the big palooka, snoring it up in the chair. So comfortable in the chair, with the knitted armrests and the little silver picture frames and the china settings hung on a wall. He moved into the family room and nearly tripped over his feet, Lamar grumbling and shuffling. The television talking about the Auburn University Tigers taking on Georgia Tech this weekend and hearing Coach Jordan’s voice sounding like that of God, saying that “the boys needed to take apart the offensive machine” and that “they’d shown some real spunk in drills and to expect a real contest in Atlanta.”

  Reuben froze. He staggered again and moved backward, no longer thinking but moving backward, feeling his stomach lock up and feeling that steak and eggs and ole Moon’s formaldehyde whiskey. It was the thought of the formaldehyde and stiff dead people and blood that made him rush for the closest door and bust on in through it and stick his head right in the commode and puke his ever-living guts out.

  He heard a girl scream and scream and he looked over at Anne – a girl he’d first seen at no more than knee-high when he got back from the Pacific, about a million years ago – and she screamed and kicked herself back into the corner of the tub, Reuben ignoring her until the big shadow appeared in the doorway, looking down on him – without fear or pity – but Lamar with that curious look on his face as he pointed an Army-issue.45 down at the man in the toilet.