tossing him into a table piled high with okra. The okra scattered and an old woman with blue hair shrieked. A black woman with two kids pushed her cart away like she was escaping a nasty plague and an elderly man with no teeth wearing checked pants and a Bart Simpson T-shirt yelled, “Fight. It’s a fight! Fight.”
Cook, his feet dangling to the linoleum floor, grinned at me and for a moment I thought it was over, but he lunged, tackling me at the waist and driving me toward a pile of Georgia peaches. I felt my back smoosh into the pile and could smell the broken sweetness across it.
I quickly grabbed Cook into a headlock. Mother was strong, I thought, and I held his head tight in the crook of my arm before Cook punched me between the legs.
I fell to my knees, pain shooting through my entire body. I felt like I might vomit right there. Cook was laughing and walking away as I gathered my strength and rushed him and wrapped my right arm across his throat. I pushed Cook facefirst into a mound of tomatoes. The wet red mess covered his face and T-shirt like blood.
But damn if he wasn’t smiling with red teeth as he picked up a handful of red goop, walked over to me, and rubbed it down the front of my white T-shirt.
I smiled over at the old man in the cartoon T-shirt and took a step back to grab a handful of muscadines.
I gripped the back of Cook’s neck and force-fed him a mouthful.
That’s when the shitstorm really started.
Cook punched me hard in the ear. I could hear a pop and the air went suddenly electric around me as I connected my two knuckles with Cook’s nose. Blood squirted over his shirt and oozed down his lip. He made several jabs to my head and tried to kick out my knees.
Man knew how to fight.
But he was older and slower and I punched him in the ear, took hold of his arms, and threw him into the sweet potatoes. Cook rolled out onto the other side of the bins where plums dropped to the floor in heavy thuds.
A man in a green vest, who looked to be the manager, ran out and starting yelling that he’d called the police.
Cook didn’t seem to hear him. He ran toward me, his eyes squinted and his fists face-high. He jabbed again, connecting once with my rib. I could feel the air rush from me as I made a jab to the left and punched Cook hard in the mouth.
“He’s alive,” I said, gasping for air. “He’s alive and you’re protecting him.”
Cook made a grunt, his face turning purple, and made another run. He tackled me again at the waist, but this time he didn’t have the energy to push me back.
I grabbed him at the scruff of his leathery neck and tossed him five yards away, his butt skidding on the floor covered in mushed tomatoes and muscodines.
The Muzak still played overhead through the odd silence that buzzed in my right ear. The manager held up a mop in his hand like it was a sword and he was fending off a pair of wild lions.
“Y’all stay right where you are,” the manager said, his swooped comb-over sticking up like a rooster’s.
Cook staggered to his feet, walked over to the man, and pulled out his wallet. He counted out four bills and jogged away. With my ear still ringing and my breath labored, I followed.
The parking lot shone with a patch of sunlight striking the pavement, steam rising in a low fog. I pulled a piece of tomato off my shirt and looked through the lot for the Cadillac.
I caught a quick glimpse of the hood as it fishtailed out to Madison, the tires squealing on wet asphalt.
I wanted to get back in my Bronco and haul ass back to the Peabody. I could just hear Randy’s voice when he heard one of his professors had been arrested for a scuffle at a damned Piggly Wiggly.
But instead, I walked back up the stairs to the hidden cemetery and sat on the crooked grave of Daniel Harklecade. I smoked a Marlboro, studied the piles of garbage and makeshift beds, and watched a couple of homeless men as they ate cans of beans in the far corner of the lot.
I didn’t hear a siren as the dark storm clouds swirled by in broken patterns. A slab of yellow light still beamed on the store.
The men didn’t seem to notice me. Maybe I was so silent, so lithe, that they didn’t feel my presence.
“Hey, cap’n,” a craggy white man in a plaid hat finally yelled. His teeth were the color of old coffee. Beans dripped down off his chin.
“Sir?” I called back.
“Me and my buddy was wonderin’ if you gonna sleep here? ’Cause if you is, it’s gonna mean that we’s maybe have to move on. You don’t look real friendly.”
I started another cigarette and peered back down on the lot, a stiff fall wind scattering oak leaves on the graves.
“Cap’n?”
“Yes?” I said, watching the cigarette burn between my fingers and feeling my labored breathing.
“You want some beans?”
“No, thanks.”
“We ain’t shittin’ on your relatives or nothin’,” the other man said, pulling off an old brogan and smelling it.
“Nope.” I took a few breaths and pulled some tomatoes off my boot. “Hey man, you guys don’t happen to know a man named Clyde James?”
“Yeah, we know a Clyde. Sleep here sometime.”
“He’ll be back?”
“Prolly down with Wordie,” one said.
“Who’s Wordie?”
“Some woman who kiss his ass,” the man said, smelling his shoe again.
I took a final puff of the cigarette and pulled some soggy peach off my jacket. The man kept muttering, “She only like him ’cause she think he used to be somebody famous.”
I smiled.
“You know where she lives?”
“Down in Dixie somewhere. You know, Dixie Homes. Where the po’ folks stay.”
Chapter 10
When Abby was eight years old, she used to sneak into the woods behind her parents’ house in Oxford to make forts from small trees like the Indians once did. She’d read somewhere in a child’s science book about how some tribe up north would bend little trees to the ground to make an arc. The Indians would then make a shell by covering the tree with more leafy branches to protect themselves from the wind and rain. When Abby made her little fort, she always chose the most remote location on her parents’ land. She didn’t want Maggie to find her, or her parents, or anyone. Inside, she’d kept simple things: an old broom to smooth the dirt floor, a few My Little Ponys, and her favorite book, Where the Wild Things Are.
Mostly she’d just hidden from everyone, beneath the branches listening to the birds and the rustle of squirrels, believing the animals would keep her secret. No one would know where she was. Abby was invisible and that had given her peace.
On the road with Ellie, Abby wondered if she’d ever know that same peace again as lightning cracked a veined pattern across the flat sky of northern Mississippi. Ellie sped through back hamlets to Oxford skirting the highway around Holly Springs. The leather of Ellie’s car smelled fresh and new, and the hot coffee they bought at the truck stop made her think of home.
She took a deep breath and watched the weathered barns, trailer homes, and convenience stores whip by the car window. Her eyes felt heavy and she hugged her arms across her chest. Ellie was still rambling on about her latest boyfriend and some new restaurant on the Square that served crepes with strawberries. Abby wasn’t listening and didn’t really care. She was going home. She was leaving the woods.
