Dark End of the Street

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.