Dark End of the Street

by Ace Atkins

  Jon shook his head. Man, his mind sure was hummin’ along tonight. He popped another pill in his mouth, pretendin’ like he was about to cough, and took another drink of his Dr Pepper. He looked over at Miss Perfect who was slunked into the vinyl of the pizza joint’s booth. Bored as hell. Playing with the straw in the daiquiri.

  She wouldn’t be bored when he hopped on stage. She’d see all the people screamin’ and yellin’ and goin’ crazy, like in his mind, and would love him so hard that he’d never be able to crawl out of bed.

  “Has Elvis left the building?” the guy with the bad teeth asked, looking into the crowd.

  Jon jumped onto the old wooden stage and felt that same power that E had. Even disguised in a beard, he felt stares onto his body covered in black leather and his electric sideburns and even on the gold T.C.B. necklace (twenty-four carat) that hung from his neck.

  But the weird thing was that they was kind of laughin’ at him. Thinkin’ he was some kind of freak. That’s all right. That’s the way it worked. There was always the big dumb guy by the jukebox that said E couldn’t sing. One, two. One, two, three.

  He looked down at Miss Perfect and she was mad as a pie-eyed snake. Mad he was makin’ a scene. That people were rememberin’ him. But she didn’t know that’s what he wanted.

  And then it happened. The magic.

  Jon held the fat microphone to his lips and called out that sacred song, so haunting and beautiful that he almost wanted to cry, as the words escaped from his lips:

  Down in Louisiana,

  Where the alligators grow so mean,

  There lives a girl, I swear to the world,

  Makes the alligators seem tame.

  Polk Salad Annie.

  The college kids went wild, man, as he dipped his shoulders and shook all over. Perfect just kept watching, jaw dropped down, and cigarette burning between her cherry-red nails. He sang like E would, right to her. He wanted the holy words to float through the air and into her ears twisting through the miles of veins right to her heart. He wanted to see her wiggle that fine heart-shaped butt and crinkle up that little rabbit nose. Man, he could feel himself heatin’ up singin’ about ole Polk Salad Annie, that woman wild as hell. He started imaginin’ as he was singin’ – beer splatterin’ all around him – that Perfect was like Annie. He imagined her in a bikini made out of animal hide, showin’ off her tight little belly, maybe carryin’ a spear down in the bayou. She’d have a wildcat she kept like a damned pet and she’d scream like hell when Jon made love to her up in the trees and sloshin’ around in the mud.

  “Polk Salad Annie!” Jon sang on the second chorus. “Everybody said it was a shame… that her mamma was workin’ on a chain gang.”

  Jon sang it like Perfect’s mamma was the one who done wrong. And she had. She’d created a woman so damned fine that it was distractin’ to men ’round the world.

  Jon looked over at her and ignored the college girl runnin’ her tongue across her lips or the two women clawin’ at his feet. He just kept singin’ to his woman. His Ann-Margret.

  Ten minutes later, Perfect had Jon by the arm and was leading him back to her car. She may not be an expert on killing people, but she knew they’d been seen way too much tonight. If there was killing to be done, they would do it outside Oxford.

  “That was interesting,” she said, not wanting to tell him that he couldn’t sing a lick and that everyone was laughing at him. She didn’t want to blow the ego thing. She wanted him to think that all those loopy college girls wanted him for his talent, not ’cause he had a bulge the size of Texas in his leather pants.

  After he sang, those girls wouldn’t leave him alone. They kept sending beers over to him, only to be replaced by Dr Peppers. They passed phone numbers like they were thirteen, ignoring Perfect completely, and making obscene eye contact across the room. But the thing that touched Perfect tonight, really made her feel like she had his balls in her handbag, was that not once did his eyes leave her face. Or tits.

  He was droolin’ for her. But they all did. They all did what she wanted.

  She popped the lock on the car door, feeling a little numb after the daiquiris. The drive-in’s parking lot empty and cold. No lights. Paper bags blowing around in the wind.

  She felt his arms around her waist, a strong scent of leather and sweat. His thick lips against the back of her neck. She felt a shiver down her spine like before her time with Levi. Before sex became something that was done to her.

  A present. He would do. He’d be her present to herself.

  As Jon’s arms wrapped around her, his pelvis rotating against her butt, she said, “Jon, I want you to do something for me.”

  “Yes, Miss Perfect?”

  Miss Perfect done kicked in the door at the Ole Miss Motel surprising the hell out of Jon. All day long she’d been lookin’ at him like he rode the short bus to school, now she was rippin’ that nice Hanes T-shirt his mamma bought for him. Didn’t even close the door, wind and rain just bustin’ through, as she pushed him onto a bed like a dang bearcat.

  Bed was round and red and had this real fancy canopy above it that reminded him of a little merry-go-round. Red lights ran up and around its four posts like blood workin’ in his veins as she crawled on top of his chest and pushed his wrists to the bed. Thought she was gonna tie him up or somethin’, until she reached over, still breathin’ real hard, and punched on this little ole car stereo on the bed. Country music came out from speakers up by a mirror at the top of the canopy as Miss Perfect got off him to close the door.

  Must’ve been all them Dr Peppers makin’ him drunk, cause them little lights flickerin’ around the bed made him feel kind of woozy. He imagined the bed was their own little boat and they’d end up on an island somewhere, where’d she have to dress in animal hides like Polk Salad Annie and shimmy up twisted coconut trees so they could eat.

  Radio kept playin’ all scratchy as she pushed him to one side of the bed and made a face with a pouty lip, like she was all mad at him sittin’ on the bed. Her hair was fine and platinum and her blue eyes as big as quarters. She had a cute little pug nose and thick rubbery lips. Man, she smelled so nice. Made his mouth water.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Perfect, I didn’t mean to do nothin’,” he began.

  Then, dang, she was on him again, straddling him and licking his face and fishin’ her hands down around his pecker. She pulled the rest of his T-shirt off and threw it to the floor. She started lickin’ the tattooed face of E that he had on his bicep and makin’ these little cooin’ sounds.

  Dear E. Felt like he could break wood right about now.

  He took a deep breath of air and reached up under her shirt, her skin as warm as an oven on Christmas, and tried to unlatch the back of her bra. But he couldn’t find the thing and reached around front, ’cause sometimes high-class women got ’em there. But when he got close, she just slapped his hand away and bit his ear. Hard.

  “Dang, what’s goin’ on here? This ain’t fun no more. Miss Perfect, what are you doin’ to me?”

  She rolled him over to the side and yanked open the bedspread. She was breathin’ real hard now, her nostrils flarin’, and sort of shakin’ like she was cold. He couldn’t move, like a damned possum in the road, as she stood and pulled her shirt over her head, motioning with a crooked finger.

  “Take them off,” she said. She had on a real lacy bra with her breasts just spillin’ over the top. Her stomach was tight and hard with a waist that tapered in before rounding out into those beautiful hips.

  “Ma’am?”

  Then she done reached up and got a good chunk of his black hair.

  “Ow!”

  “Take them off! Now.”

  Her breath smelled like old fruit and rubbing alcohol and he realized she was crazy as an old monkey.

  She grabbed for his hands and put them on the top button of her pants. She didn’t have no shirt on and when Jon reached down, staring right into her heavy breasts, he thought he was gonna bust right out his
drawers.

  He tried to be nice as he pulled the pants down to her knees and let her kick out of them. But he was about to lose his mind. She had on white cotton panties with blue flowers.

  “Dear E. Dear E.”

  “Jon! Pay attention.”

  She sat back on the bed, her little toes wigglin’, as she watched his eyes and then lay back flat on the bed.

  “A mirror,” she said. Her tongue fat and heavy with all them daiquiris. “I love mirrors. Jon? Did I tell you that?”

  She starting rolling her panties down her knees, curling into thin strips like biscuit dough, and over her ankles and Jon couldn’t move. He just stared at her beauty. Just beautiful as hell as he listened to her breathin’ and the rain and the thunder.

  “E told this woman in Girls, Girls, Girls that there was somethin’ about a storm. It just made you feel so alive.”

  But Miss Perfect wasn’t listenin’. Her eyes had rolled back in her head and she was moanin’ somethin’ terrible.

  Miss Perfect finally called him over to the bed and he kicked out of them ole zip boots and leather pants like they was growin’ on him. She was movin’ like a snake in the bed, her hands all over her body and then dippin’ down underneath the covers. Man, he felt like Captain Marvel. Felt like he should say Shazam! and he’d have the power of a hunnerd men.

  He jumped a few feet onto the bed, straddlin’ her buck-ass naked. He started kissin’ her beautiful breasts and moving his hand down south. Then she done slapped him so hard his head reeled back.

  Damn it.

  He pushed her wrists over her head and straddled her waist.

  “Listen to me, woman. I don’t know what’s gotten into you. But either you want lovin’ or not. I ain’t never taken no woman in my life, but you’re makin’ my head hurt.”

  She got loose from his hands and pulled his head against her breasts, growling like one of them lionesses. She smelled like a patch of flowers from his ole scratch-’n’-sniffs.

  He started kissing her breasts again and she held his face in her hands. Real hard like a vise.

  “You want to do somethin’ for me, darlin’?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She pushed his head even farther south, dippin’ down where Jon ain’t never been before. He knew all about state laws and things he seen in all them Baptist comic books about hell. But, man, he couldn’t help himself.

  He stayed down there as the wind and the rain and black clouds rocked overhead. He’d open his eyes long enough to watch Perfect watchin’ not him, but herself in the mirror. She had her hands on his head and smiled. Smilin’ at herself.

  Jon didn’t pay it no mind until a mean old wind beat outside, rain hammerin’ until the lights cut off all over the bed. She was screamin’ in the dark as the wind roared through the open door and she panted and yelled and clawed at his neck. He could feel his hot blood against his skin.

  He moved up to get the best lovin’ he’d ever had, but then it happened.

  Miss Perfect lay there for a moment makin’ kissing faces to herself up in the ceiling.

  Then she done turned over, pulled the sheets close to her body, and started to snore.

  Jon got up, biting the hell out of his lip, and looking at all the scrapes and red marks on his stomach. He slammed the door shut and grabbed a pillow for the floor.

  Chapter 27

  AT MIDNIGHT, Abby and I stopped off at a Chevron near downtown and grabbed several packs of beef jerky and bottled waters for Hank. The dog chomped down every damn piece next to the gas station’s air pump. Abby hugged him close while he lapped water from one of my old coffee mugs. Her face brightened as she squeezed the dog so tight that he grunted.

  I watched her and smiled, my mind buzzing with everything that I’d learned.

  Abby’s father wanted to find Clyde James and had been killed and his daughter kidnapped. Must’ve been a few weeks after Abby’s parents died that a couple of men showed up in New Orleans hassling Loretta. Now there was all this shit about some whacked-out group called Sons of the South.

  We drove back to town, wheeling around the Square toward Maggie’s. We stopped at a crosswalk for a moment, Hank panting hard in the truck.

  Five young girls about Abby’s age ran past in heavy sweatclothes, laughing. We could hear their yells, giddy from the cold. Rain beaded down my windshield and made funny patterns in the streetlights.

  Abby hugged her dog again and watched the girls jog down a hill and out of sight.

  I had hoped to put her up with Maggie and take off to Memphis tomorrow. But after the letter, I wasn’t so sure. Sons of the South. I turned off the R. L. Burnside CD and flicked on the radio, finding a station that played old-school soul.

  Hank jumped into the backseat.

  “Library still open?”

  “The bar?”

  “The real library,” I said.

  “I guess.”

  “You want to keep going tonight?”

  She nodded. I kept looping around the old courthouse and headed to campus as Abby patted her leg along with a song written decades before she was born.

  On the second floor of the Ole Miss library, Abby was at a computer terminal and I was seated beside her. The library silent as hell. Just the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and some guy with a bad cold at the main counter sneezing every five seconds.

  The screen got bright as she clicked through SONSSOUTH.COM. Most of what we found was the same old bullshit we’d read in her father’s files. We spent about fifteen minutes looking through pictures of middle-aged white guys going to conventions at airport hotels and scheming to return honor to the South. This was the kind of group that hustled in men too educated to be in militias and too arrogant to see they were doing any harm.

  “Where do they keep microfilm?” I asked.

  “What do you want?”

  I looked at her. “Newspaper articles.”

  “You want new ones, right?” she asked.

  “Last few years.”

  “It’s on computer.”

  “Not everything we’re looking for.”

  “Watch.”

  She took me to an alcove located on the first floor and plugged in Sons of the South into a computer loaded with LexisNexis software. I’d heard of it, but most of my research dealt with musicians from decades ago.

  Abby was really good. She clicked the hell out of the computer and brought up a dozen articles. Most were from the Commercial-Appeal but there were several in The Tennesseean.

  She scrolled through the first few. Most seemed to be quoting a spokesperson for the group about their stance on keeping the Mississippi state flag with its embedded icon of the Confederacy.

  This group loved that debate. And so did Mississippi; they kept the flag. It made me think about U telling me about his days playing football at Ole Miss and watching a bunch of spoiled white boys wave the flag every time he made a tackle.

  He loved it so much that when the Kappa Alpha fraternity had their Old South parade, U stood on a street corner and burned the rebel flag. He didn’t tell me, but I don’t think anyone fucked with a man who could bench 485 pounds and practiced martial arts every day.

  I laughed to myself and Abby kept scrolling.

  There were a couple of editorials about how the Sons of the South were a bunch of privileged white men who wanted to play war games without really getting dirty. One columnist did a satirical piece about how the South should rise again and talked about the attributes of becoming a slave.

  The columnist was black.

  “Go on,” I said.

  Abby clicked but before the story disappeared she saw something at the end of the piece that caught her attention.

  “Wait,” she said. She clicked back and read through it, her nose inches away from the screen.

  “What?”

  “That man he’s talking about. That state senator, Elias Nix?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was one of my father’s best fri
ends. They went to school together or something. I’ve met him a few times. He was at their funeral.”

  We read through a few more pieces on the group. Said they had a military compound in Jackson but their spokesman denied it. Once again, the spokesman said they were only community leaders interested in advancing Southern ways of life.

  I had a pen in my mouth and had chewed the end off. I felt the ink on my tongue and spit into a trashcan.

  “Your mouth’s blue,” she said.

  “On my face?” I asked, rubbing my fingers over my lips.

  “Nope.”

  “Good.”

  “You have a girlfriend, Nick?”

  “Why? You like old men?”

  “First off, you’re not old. You’re, like what, forty? Anyway, I was talking about Maggie. She likes you.”

  “Shucks.” I wasn’t forty. Yet.

  “I can tell,” Abby said. Her cheeks pinched tight as she smiled with her brown eyes.

  “Is that why she grunts at me?”

  “I think.”

  “Well, I kind of have that department covered.”

  “You married?”

  “Scroll down,” I said.

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “But your girlfriend wants to,” Abby said, her face glowing in the light from the monitor.

  “Wait, can you pull up only ‘Elias Nix’ and ‘senator’?”

  She nodded and the screen flashed with hundreds of hits.”

  “How ’bout ‘Nix,’ ‘senator,’ and ‘gambling’?”

  She tapped it in the prompt.

  Two hits.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Kate.”

  “You love her?”

  “What is this, junior high?”

  Abby laughed and socked me on the shoulder.

  I smiled. “She lives in Chicago and we recently learned that’s a long way from New Orleans.”

  “Your mouth is still blue.”

  I spit again into the trashcan.

  When I looked back at the computer screen, Abby was scrolling down a story – Nix was running for governor in November. Shit, I knew I’d seen the damned name. His face was plastered all over Memphis, but it was so late and I’d been so into Clyde James that I wasn’t thinking. Besides, I rarely paid attention. Louisiana politics were so bad that I usually slept in on election day.