Dark End of the Street

“May I ask what in the fuck a man your age is doing with Abby?”

“She’s helping me with my yard work. Sometimes she plays dominoes with me and feeds my cats.”

Inside, a black quarter horse with a white star shimmied its head from side to side. The woman frowned, strong commalike creases around her mouth.

“What the fuck, Abby?”

“Maggie, calm down. It’s not what you think. He’s helping me.”

“Helping you do what, doll?”

Maggie looked down at my boots and up at my face. I grinned like a giddy criminal in a prison lineup.

“It’s a long story, Maggie. Listen, we really need to talk. Do you know a woman named Ellie?”

“No.”

“Think hard. Said she knows you through her boyfriend. Said y’all had a time at some crawfish boil.”

“I’ve never been to a crawfish boil. That’s for stupid yahoos from Louisiana.”

I smiled. “Exactly.”

“I tried to call,” Abby said.

“Well, sometimes the phone company gets a little pissed when you’re late,” Maggie said.

“You about done ’round here?” Abby asked.

“C’mon,” Maggie said, walking across the smooth brown dirt to the back of the stables. I rested my arms on a battered wood gate and smoothed the white star on the horse’s forehead.

“Nick?” Abby asked.

I turned and she motioned me to follow them. I have to admit I watched the way Maggie walked. Enjoyed it. She sure could wear a pair of jeans. There was something earthy and honest about her. Always had a thing for women who said what was on their minds. Don’t know why. It just seemed like everyone I’d ever really given a damn about could handle herself just as well without me.

“Never told me that she was mean,” I said.

Abby whispered: “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

At the second-to-last stall, Maggie stood back with a wide smile across her lips. Abby turned to the stall and, within a couple of seconds, started crying. I moved closer and saw her arms around the neck of a chestnut-colored horse with a black mane.

Maggie kept smiling until she noticed me again. Her eyes narrowed and she dug her boots into the brown dirt. As she continued to beat me in a staring contest, she said sweetly to Abby, “You want to head over to Taylor? Only thing open on Sunday.”

“That okay, Nick?” Abby said.

Maggie kept staring.

I narrowed my eyes back at her and said, “Love to.”

Old Taylor Road stretched out from Oxford like a familiar song. The road bent and twisted over gentle curves framed by barbed-wire fences as a tired sun dipped low through the pines. Cheap student apartments soon became crooked farmhouses and dilapidated trailers. I’d lived near here for two years but hadn’t been out this way. I followed Maggie’s Rabbit convertible until I was sure we were lost. I thought maybe she was playing some kind of joke on me, now with Abby safely riding with her, or was taking me somewhere where we’d meet a few of her redneck cowboy buddies.

But then we arrived in a loose, brittle collection of storefronts and cottages. Blue and orange light scattered through oaks and slid down onto the tin-roofed shotguns. I pulled in front of an old building with a wide, crooked porch that seemed out of a black-and-white photo from the Depression. Three men sat on a two-by-eight stretched over some rusted paint cans. One played Dobro. The other a fat acoustic bass.

“Evenin’,” the Dobro player said.

“Howdy,” I said. I liked saying howdy.

Inside, we took a seat at a heavy wood table covered in a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. Maggie brought in a six-pack from a cooler in her car and pulled off two cans. Slivers of ice fell off the aluminum.

“Maggie,” Abby said.

“Oh, well.” She pulled off another beer and placed it in the center of the table. “Sorry.”

The ceiling was wood and sagged along ancient slats. Floor was wood, too, scuffed as smooth as glass. Graffiti covered the walls and gallons of pepper sauce, quarts of cayenne pepper, and fat industrial jars of mayonnaise filled a stocking shelf.

Men in overalls. Women with two-hundred-dollar snakeskin purses. Gray-headed farmers and frat boys. Place was packed.

“Abby said you’re going to help her,” Maggie said, popping the top of her beer.

“I’ll try. Mainly I just want to make sure she’s safe.”

“She’s safe,” Maggie said. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke across the table. Muddled static of conversations filled the room.

“You don’t have to impress me,” I said. “You’re tough. I get the idea.”

“She doesn’t need any more help. You’ve done what you needed to. You brought her back to me. Thanks. I’ll buy you dinner. You drink that can of beer, have a good meal, and then head out. All right?”

Abby closed her eyes and mashed her fingers into her temples.

Maggie didn’t say a word for about thirty seconds. A waitress came over and we all ordered the same thing, catfish with pecan rice. I finished the beer and tried another smile on Maggie. It was a good one, too, the kind that made women cling to my back.

“You have something on your shirt,” she said.

I wiped some hot sauce from my T-shirt pocket.

“To the left,” she said.