Dark End of the Street

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“No, really. Your forehead is all swollen. You look like that kid from that movie. You know, where he wants to drive motorcycles across Africa and Sam Elliot is his adopted dad?”

“Mask. And thanks again.”

“No problem,” she said, and smiled.

“That’s the second truck I’ve killed in as many years.”

“What happened to the other one?”

“Some old man I’d been tracking paid a couple of Haitian guys to ram me. Broke my arm. I guess I’m lucky tonight. Just broke my head.”

“You look terrible.”

“You said.”

“So what do we do now?”

The waitress walked over and plunked down the check in front of me. Kind of surly about it. One of those you-cheap-bastard-for-not-ordering-a-thing looks. She had, honest to God, two gold teeth, a tattoo of Jim Morrison on her neck, and a nose ring. This was Mississippi, not Los Angeles. Everything was a mess. Cable television had fed us into a blender that made social clusterfuck cocktails from pop culture.

She chewed gum. Stared for a second, gold teeth bright as hell, and walked away.

“Peace,” I said to myself.

“So?” Abby asked.

“I called U.”

“What did he say?”

“He made fun of me.”

She looked concerned.

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s what we do to each other. One time this little sawed-off halfback cut-blocked me while I was rushing a quarterback.” I smiled at her. “Just a footnote, I’m not going to talk football with you a bunch. Who gives a shit, right? Just about U. Anyway, this little sawed-off dude cut me at the knees and really made me twirl in the air. Quarterback ran around my end for a TD. U bent over, offered his hand, just smiling and laughing like hell, and said, ‘Man, I never knew you could fly, Travers.’ “

I laughed, pain shooting through my head, and dropped the iced napkin to the floor. “Shit.”

Abby grabbed my hand. “You all right?”

I nodded. The world stopped spinning. For a second.

“He also thought it was pretty damned funny that I’d drive the old Ghost into a hole. Why did I tell him? A hole.”

Abby watched me.

“He’ll be here soon and we’ll go back to Memphis.”

“And then what?”

I watched the road waiting for my friend. Nowhere, Mississippi. For some reason I thought about one of my favorite lines from The Magnificent Seven.

“You hear what the man said right after he jumped from the twenty-story building?”

She shook her head, eating her cheeseburger. Dirt all in her matted hair and in loose clumps over her shirt.

I smiled at her. “So far so good.”

Chapter 37

WHEN WE GOT BACK to Memphis, U had a big surprise for me. He had me kind of wondering anyway; I thought he’d at least ask Abby and me to stay with him at his place in Midtown. But when he didn’t, looping back to the Peabody after getting my head checked at some doc-in-the-box, I should’ve figured he was up to something.

Man, we looked terrible walking into the hotel lobby, some kind of convention just breaking up around the bar. The Peabody was all dark wood and marble, brass rails and oriental carpets. The smell of aged whiskey and the gentle notes of a jazz piano. The kind of place that made you feel you had a couple more zeros in your bank account. The hotel had given lodging to Faulkner and Robert E. Lee, and local legend says the Delta begins right in its lobby and stretches out to Vicksburg. Still, most tourists just remember their mascot ducks that paddle around in the fountain all day before returning to their rooftop roost.

But the ducks were long gone by the time we got back. It was late, approaching midnight, when we tracked mud over those oriental carpets looking for a place to fall asleep. U’s truck would’ve done nicely.

But instead of heading with us to the front desk, U stopped cold and pointed to a couch in the center of the lobby. I could barely make out who was waiting for us. I mean, it was a convention of real jackasses. Laughing at bad jokes. Drinking that free company alcohol. A couple slow dancing without music.

But then she turned around.

Loretta.

Dressed in a floor-length black suede coat, a black turtleneck sweater dress, and tall black boots. She was smoking; Loretta hadn’t smoked for two decades.

Suddenly, I felt like I was about ten and my mother had come down the street to make me come home for dinner. My face and neck heated with embarrassment.

“Said not to tell you,” U said.

“Thanks.”

This was all I needed, Loretta coming up to check on me. She did the same damn thing when the Saints threw me off the team and about everyone I knew had quit me. My girlfriend at the time was sleeping her way through New Orleans social hounds and I had gotten myself into an intimate relationship with bottles of Jack and Beam.

Loretta found me at this biker bar by the Riverbend puking in some bushes. She didn’t say a word but grabbed my ass, stuck me in the back of JoJo’s El Dorado, and drove me back to my warehouse. Never did ask how she knew I was there.

“What, you ain’t happy to see me?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am,” I said. My head beginning to throb. “Where’s JoJo?”