by Ace Atkins
Back in the bedroom, she opened the drawers in a long chest. Nothing. Not even lint. She looked under the bed and in the nightstand. Some stray socks and a book on numerology and sexual positions. But tucked behind a long row of curtains, standing on its side, sat a little Captain America suitcase. Something seriously made for an eight year old. It had been buckled tight, its plastic hide ragged and worn at the edges. She pulled it up to a coffee table, loose beams of sunlight breaking through the blowing curtains, opened it, and rifled through.
Inside: four pairs of dark-indigo unfaded Levis, five white T-shirts (crisp and ironed), four pairs of tube socks, a couple leather wristbands, a couple Polaroid shots of a naked woman with dark hair and long legs in a shower stall (on the back, words written in German), a couple more Captain America comics, Vitalis hair oil, a dozen identical postcards of Graceland, a beat-up cassette of Elvis: Live at Madison Square Garden, and a full bottle of Hai Karate cologne.
She thought she’d unearthed about every weird object that li’l ole boy could have until she found a purple Crown Royal bag under the Vitalis. Inside the bag, she discovered three books tucked away like holy texts. Elvis, by Jerry Hopkins; Elvis, What Happened?, by Red and Sonny West; and The Private Elvis, by May Mann. Each of the books had been charred at the edges and broke off in blackened pieces when she touched the ragged pages. Almost every line underlined in blue or red ink with paragraph sections in yellow highlighter.
It was Gladys who inspired him and encouraged him when the going was so brutal, so rough, when he was disclaimed, when he was ridiculed. It was Mama who made him believe that he could be a great star! Those people making fun of him, yelling and jeering and calling him “Elvis the Pelvis,” resounding in his ear into nightmares, would go, his mother reaffirmed. They would accept him, once they understood what he was really doing.
The paragraph from the Mann book was highlighted with yellow and had scrawled third-grade writing in the margins. Seemed like equations. Love + Mamma = acceptance/fortune. Acceptance comes with understanding of skills. Gladys’s middle name was L-O-V-E. Love is success.
She tossed the burned book back into the suitcase as if it was still on fire. As if the sickness of the mind that wrote it would somehow contaminate her. But before she could close the top of the suitcase, a little yellowed photograph came flying out. A middle-aged woman with massively huge hair — had to have been a wig — with a bulging throat and pig’s eyes held a small boy.
The boy wore a small T-shirt emblazoned with the face of Elvis wearing a lei. It read, ALOHA! The woman beamed like she was holding the answer to the world’s problems but the little boy had no emotion at all. Black circles under his eyes. His tiny arms as skinny as twigs with malnourishment. On the back, someone (obviously not the book scrawler) had written Patsy Roach with son, Absalom. 1939–1983. House fire.
She heard a key click into a slot, the jiggling of the tumbler, and a hard clack. She closed the suitcase, shoved it under the curtains, and bolted from the room.
She listened at the cracked door as he walked inside.
And for a moment, she thought she heard Jon sniffing the air like an animal hunting for its prey.
She was out of here. She’d find her way back to Memphis tonight if she had to walk the whole way.
Chapter 49
ONE OF THE black-faced white boys made a mistake when he grabbed U’s five-hundred-dollar pair of binoculars and tossed them down the hill. The boy, thick-necked with a bristled haircut, then made a crack about the shiny rims on U’s truck. With a snicker, asked how long U had financed his vehicle. U smiled and nodded, giving one of those okay-you-got-me looks, his big hands at his sides. But as he dropped his head, U gave me a wink. So fast they didn’t see it.
His hands flew from his sides and knocked the AK-47 out of the man’s arms. As the other turned, I punched the fucker right in the throat and caught his gun before it crashed to the ground. I turned the gun around and used the muzzle as a handle and the butt for a club. I smacked the guy — a little skinnier than the other, with bad teeth — in the jaw and rammed him hard in the stomach, lucky the gun didn’t crackle to life, but not really caring. My face and ears felt as if they were baking in the sun as I threw the gun over my shoulder and straddled the man, beating the ever-loving shit out of him. I hit him across the temples and directly in the eyes and rammed my fist deep into his gut. He puked blood on himself as I reared back and felt strong hands grabbing my arms and pulling me back.
I clawed at the hands and kept punching that little redneck fucker right in the jaw, seeing Loretta lying on the floor of the bar and those tattered bedroom slippers on JoJo’s feet at the hospital. More hands reached for me and yanked me away. Spit flying from my mouth, yelling words I didn’t feel myself consciously saying. As Bubba and U pulled me away, I kicked the son of a bitch hard in the head.
“Cool it,” U said.
I was breathing so hard I almost choked in air. And as U’s face came back into focus, I bent at the waist as if waking from a strange dream. Bubba patted his strong fingers on my back and smiled at me.
“It’s all right, dude,” he said, in this cracked hoarse whisper. “Dude, it’s all right.”
“Bubba?” I asked. He speaks. The revelation made me almost forget about those stupid rednecks.
As I looked into his face, a white-hot light shined down from the trees and gunshots erupted closer. My body seemed filled with heated blood.
We ran quickly toward U’s truck.
But before we got close, about fifty men slathered in camou face paint, carrying rifles, and driving ATVs blocked our path. I slowed to a jog. I heard Bubba’s labored breath beside me.
The men told us to drop the guns.
We did.
We just stood there, hands on top of our heads, until they jabbed the muzzles of semiautomatic guns into our backs, and marched us down a thin but old path and into the valley.
An hour later, my knees screamed from standing on them so long. My shoulder, that I’d dislocated for the thirtieth time, ached in its socket so bad that I clenched my teeth in pain. I had my hands laced on top of my head. Bubba’s and U’s had been lashed behind their backs with rope.
The floor was smooth concrete and splatted with the occasional patch of leaking oil. Over our heads stretched a huge arc of corrugated tin forming some kind of large garage with a retractable door big enough for an airplane. The door was open. I could smell the Sons of the South campfires burning and hear gaggles of men talking.
Every time I breathed, the hot air expelled in a cloudy mass.
I looked over at U. He slowly shook his head and kept his eyes focused on the twelve men guarding us. He was watching hard, taking it all in.
I dropped my shoulder an inch. One of the guards screamed for me to raise it back up.
On the other side of me, Bubba had his eyes closed. He was either meditating or sleeping.
Soon another ATV’s engine gunned outside. The sound grew close enough that it rattled the tin above our heads until it pulled inside and shut off the motor.
A dozen or so men formed a line behind the man dismounting from his ride. Short and gray haired. Large, almost comical ears and yellowish eyes. He had an oversized mouth when he smiled, appraising us down on our knees. His hair was cut extremely short with a section on top that struck me as so hard and perfect that it had to be a toupee. His teeth were little, worn-down nubs.
He placed his smallish hands on his waist as he stood in front of me and said: “You with these niggers?”
“Oh, thank God,” I said. “The senator will save us.”
Elias Nix laughed for a moment with me and then kicked out my knees. I landed on my back and then worked my way to a resting position on my elbows.
“They yours?” Nix asked, looking over at U and Bubba.
Some of his group laughed.
He’d left the square headlight of the ATV shining bright in our eyes. I squinted at his face — smooth, thin skin with blu
ish veins on his cheeks.
I looked over at U but didn’t say anything.
I crept to my knees again, like I was about to get back into the same position, closed my eyes, and waited for Nix to relax. Slowly I opened them, dug in with the balls of my feet, and launched from my knees, grasping for his throat.
I ringed a good grip, feeling the cold, corpselike skin, and yanked him from his feet. The shorter man was level with my eyes. I was throttling even harder when something struck the back of my head and my vision left me for a moment.
I felt a hundred kicks in my side.
U yelled for them to stop.
More yells. Some screams at U to shut up. But they did as he said.
I rolled to my side, coughed several times, and stood as if I were a boxer wavering in the first round. One of Nix’s men, I couldn’t make out his face, pointed a gun into my ear.
“Why are you here?” Nix said, hands behind his back, strutting rooster-proud now. Trying to make up for being the little toy he was.
“You assholes tried to kill one of my friends,” I said, my breath wheezing. “I guess since you killed Bill MacDonald and his wife, you thought y’all were unstoppable.”
“You’re not a friend of Bill’s,” he said. “We’re his friends.”
He said friends as if it had a couple of “e”s in it. Nix jerked his head over at U and Bubba on their knees. “And Lord knows they’re not.”
“Stay out of New Orleans,” I said. “Those people don’t know anything.”
“Son, I haven’t a clue what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Your friends down in Tunica killed the MacDonalds and then sent some assholes to work my friends.” I didn’t want to say their names. I thought by uttering the words in this place I would pollute their dignity.
Nix let out a long laugh. His breath, clouded and foggy, obscured his face. I couldn’t quite make it out anymore. The yellow eyes. Grayed toupee. Nothing was clear anymore.
“Now you’re making sense,” he said, whistling and pointing to a herd of men at the back. Several ATVs, thick tires coated in mud, kicked to life buzzing away into the night. “Son, you boys are so dang thick in a world of shit that you’re drownin’ in it. Little advice: Let the big dogs handle the war.”
I looked at him. Still everything was cloudy and hidden in the lights. I squinted harder.
Two men stood behind U and Bubba and quickly brandished a pair of Bowie knives. I yelled to them but as I did, I could see their hands were already free.
They’d been cut loose.
My friends stood.
“Y’all have ten seconds to get out of my world,” Nix said.
U led the way and Bubba and I followed past the buzz-cut boys, mouths pocketed full of Redman and Kodiak, and onto the same path we’d followed before. We were just walking pretty damned fast, but picked up the pace when automatic weapons sounded from down in the valley.
As we got close to the truck, Bubba’s big ass passed both of us as if he were chomping for the finish line. We all jumped inside and U cranked his Expedition.
As he spun away, I heard Bubba screaming in that same low hoarse whisper. He was yelling with volume set at two.
“Goddamn, I’m hit, they shot me right in the ass,” he croaked. “Y’all get me to a hospital, I’m bleedin’ to death. They got me. They got me with them machine guns.”
U didn’t look back for several miles. He only stopped for a second before we turned onto another highway heading south to Memphis.
He turned on an overhead light, crawled halfway over the seat, looking for the wound.
Bubba yelped.
“Damn, Bubba,” U said, laughing as the truck idled. “That sure was a mean-ass tree.” He showed me the broken-off end of a stick and shook his head as we headed south again. “That tree just jumped up and bit him in the ass.”
The laughter came again in waves. I must’ve laughed for five miles.
“Y’all be quiet,” Bubba croaked, again. “Ain’t funny.”
But soon the laughter spilled back into silence and we were left with the feeling of failure. Even though I knew it would’ve been pretty damned stupid to have stayed, I felt like I’d failed Loretta. I had come to face Elias Nix and left with my tail between my ass.
“Those assholes could’ve killed us,” U said.
“But they didn’t,” I said.
“Ain’t ’cause they’re good people.”
I could feel U’s eyes watching me as I continued to stare out into the darkness and passing signs along the highway. He turned on some jazz and we entered a section of road jammed up with construction and soon I couldn’t see anything around us but flashing yellow signs and orange barrels. U checked in his rearview mirror again as we slowed and waited for a semi to merge.
I watched him as he turned the wheel hard and passed on a closed section of highway before darting in front of the semi.
U punched the accelerator up to eighty and with the windows down I felt like I could breathe again. My blood pressure had slowed and my head no longer buzzed like it had been filled with hornets.
He asked: “Why would them boys want some broken-down soul singer?”
“The only man who can answer that question checked out some time ago,” I said. I didn’t talk for a while, thinking of our meeting with Clyde James. Then I said: “But we could try again.”
Memphis shined loose, bright, and broken before us.
Chapter 50
DIDN’T TAKE BUT about two seconds for Perfect Leigh to spot a man in the first floor of the casino, not bad-looking, either, in kind of a bland-businessman way, and get that ride to Memphis. The man was even up about five hundred bucks at the blackjack table, but left it all just for a chance to take Perfect for a spin in his Lexus. He was nice and clean, thirtyish with a couple kids and a wife that didn’t like sex anymore, and even opened the door for Perfect when they got back to Midtown. She gave him a phony phone number, said she couldn’t wait to see him again, and walked the next two blocks to her real apartment.
Now, thank the Lord, she was drawing a bath while she lit a dozen or so colored candles around the big claw-foot tub. Get Tunica out of her mind.
Perfect removed her favorite plush terry-cloth robe and slid into the warm, soapy water. She wanted to lie in this tub till all of Levi Ransom had been soaked away. Then she’d drain the murky fluids that had filled her, towel off, and clean the tub with Clorox.
Only then could she become someone else and forget about this whole damned mess. Just like when she was a teenager and pretended that winning those god-awful pageants was such a wonderful thing, back when she had to grin so hard her gums and lips hurt. Grin till her mother had grabbed the trophy and they were headed back to Coahoma County.
That fat woman would do anything to have her doll win. She’d coat her in that pancake makeup and foul-smelling Wal-Mart perfume she bought by the gallon and just hug and hug her like a prized pet. The thing that Perfect couldn’t understand, she thought as she ran more hot water into the tub, was why her mother had to cheat. Just like Ransom, she had to know they’d won even before she’d taped her daughter’s boobs together or watched her perform the Nancy Sinatra baton routine.
Perfect closed her eyes, submerged her head for a moment, nothing but the darkness and candles in the room, that terrific soapy water flowing, swooshing inside her. She ducked under, bubbles pouring through her ears, water flowing into her nose. She let out a long breath, screaming into the water.
After the bath, she lay naked on her huge red couch watching her legs in the seven antique mirrors that hung along the wall by the television and in a little mirrored jewel box she’d picked up in New Orleans. Mirrors everywhere. Gold. Silver. Antique. Some still in boxes. Sterling silver hand mirrors and ones with beveled edges and maybe thirty compacts she’d collected since she was sixteen, in a little basket on the coffee table.
She yawned and stretched, feeling with delight her rib cage and firm ass.
She saw the shifting figure of a man in black. Had to have crawled up three stories to reach her. Perfect had a gun in her bedroom and a set of steak knives in the kitchen. She slowly let her bare toes touch the carpet; she didn’t want him to think she knew.
But he saw her. He was watching her with those damned black-ringed eyes.
Jon had dropped to his knees in the cold onto a big pile of leaves that had fallen from a nearby oak. He had on this sad face. Humble as hell and holding some more of those nasty grocery-store flowers.
She shook her head and started to drop the blinds over the window. Her heart ramming against her rib cage.
The window exploded with glass.
A large pot filled with a dead palm tree cracked and scattered dirt all over her floor. She scrambled to her bedroom but only got halfway when he jumped her from behind and started prying her mouth open. He stuffed a handful of pills deep down into her mouth, so far that she started gagging, while he rubbed her throat making her swallow.
He pushed her wrists to the hard wooden floor and stuck a knee into her stomach. He lay his head across her bare breasts, like a child would, listening to her heart. She couldn’t move with his sinewy weight holding her. “We just stay here,” he whispered. All right? Then I got somewhere special we can go. It’s a real happy place.”
“I’ll cut your fucking nuts off,” Perfect Leigh said, slurring her words and walkin’ crooked toward the exit of Libertyland as an orange-black sky twisted overhead. “I want to scream but it makes me sick. I’m not feeling well.”
The little white lights on the trees had just flickered on at dusk. Families pushed strollers and carried huge teddy bears and hustlin’ young black kids in Grizzlies jerseys and gold bracelets prowled nearby. The air smelled like popcorn and hotdogs with an edge of baby powder.