Dark End of the Street

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I lost my mother when I was in college and had to drop out for a year. Didn’t understand how I could ever make it without her. But you do. You will.”

His brown eyes softened and he squeezed her even tighter.

“Y’all be careful out there,” he said.

I said we would and walked out of the hunting lodge and back to the Gray Ghost, to head back up Highway 61 to Memphis. Abby was quiet after we left. She just stared into the long gray curtains of rain and the red taillights stretching far in front of us. In the corner of my eye, I saw her pulling the sweatshirt over her hands like mittens as my radio played an old Peetie Wheetstraw tune.

“Nick?” she asked. “Would they help us if we found more papers of my daddy’s?”

Chapter 33

PERFECT SNAPPED HER CELL PHONE shut and told Jon that Ransom had finally given the word. She immediately started thinking of ways they’d take Travers and the girl, most of her plans with her distracting the hell out of Travers while Jon shoved a gun in his face. She could play the sex kitten, the confused tourist, or maybe the victim. Maybe she’d teach Jon about the big game: wife beater. That wasn’t too bad. She could scream and yell while Jon grabbed her by the front of her blouse letting everyone know she’d screwed another man. Shit, the part was made for that jealous country boy and she knew Travers would jump up, wherever he was, and try to help out.

But, then again, what if other people were around and tried to stop Jon, too? They could have some serious monkey in their works. No, it had to be simple. Separation of li’l Miss Abby and Travers would be the key. And it all depended on where they stopped and how many people were around.

Perfect looked over at her partner while the Taurus kept on swallowing up Highway 61 blacktop heading north. He was still talking. Not to her, more to himself. All about Elvis and how he felt he was just like Jesus and how she should start off seeing some movie called King Creole because the later movies only made sense to the devout.

Lord, that boy was wired today. He’d downed a bottle full of white pills and had been talking a whole mess since they left Clarksdale. He was funny like that. Silent as ole Lurch, then little Chatty Cathy all the way north. He was talkin’ about his mamma and some big motorcycle he bought and then about going to some crappy amusement park in Memphis called Libertyland.

“Thought you said your mamma left you for a while?”

“I never said that.”

“You said she spent some time in Canada and that a woman named Erdele looked out for you.” She never forgot a word that was spoken to her. Sometimes she wished she could.

“My mamma never left me,” he said, drumming his fingers on his knee. “My mamma would never leave me. You heard me wrong is all.”

“When did you lose your virginity, Jon?”

“Miss Perfect, why you ask questions like that?” he asked, slipping his metal sunglasses back on. “You like to shock me with that kind of talk? Don’t you? You think you gonna make me embarrassed, woman?” He began playing with some gold rings on his fingers. “I had my first when I was nine years old.”

“That’s impossible.”

“That’s the truth. She was fifteen.”

“Can you handle a woman?”

“You’ll never know.”

“Oh, Jon,” she said, her eyes keeping on the road as she ran her fingers over his chin. “You want to find out? Here.”

She placed his hand on her knee.

“You keep going till you get scared,” she said. “I’ll put my hand on yours. It’s called chicken.”

“I know what it’s called,” he said, curling his lip.

“We gonna shoot ’em?” she asked, moving her hand an inch to his thigh.

“Yeah, I’m gonna use this ole forty-five, same kind that E had with Him when He visited the President,” he said, moving about the same. “When the President made Him a federal agent so He could fight crime. What you got?”

She moved a little more, raking her nails against his tight jeans. “Me? Oh, just a Smith & Wesson that an old boyfriend gave me. Poor bastard. Somebody threw an electric fan into his bubble bath.”

He moved up thigh-meets-crotch level. She could feel his hand trembling and vibrating. She liked it. Good humming in that hot blood. She moved her hand to the same spot on him. Damn.

“I once killed a man with three feet of twenty-pound-test fishing line.”

“Once shot a man in his…” She moved her hand all the way getting a good piece of Jon’s ole boy.

“Dang!” he shouted. “Watch the road.”

She swerved back into the right lane, barely missing a semi that roared past her. She smiled, checking out her eyeliner in the rearview and puckering her lips. Nice job. Black outlined to make them seem more full. “I won.”

I peered over at Abby to see if she’d noticed we’d cut across from Highway 61 and finally curved back onto 78 heading to the truck stop she’d told me about, but she was sleeping. Lips slightly parted. Hands tucked between her head and the door. I turned down the heat in my truck and lowered the stereo, just hearing the steady bump of my big tires on that straight shot to Memphis.