margins. Seemed like equations. Love + Mamma = acceptance/fortune. Acceptance comes with understanding of skills. Gladys’s middle name was L-O-V-E. Love is success.
She tossed the burned book back into the suitcase as if it was still on fire. As if the sickness of the mind that wrote it would somehow contaminate her. But before she could close the top of the suitcase, a little yellowed photograph came flying out. A middle-aged woman with massively huge hair – had to have been a wig – with a bulging throat and pig’s eyes held a small boy.
The boy wore a small T-shirt emblazoned with the face of Elvis wearing a lei. It read, ALOHA! The woman beamed like she was holding the answer to the world’s problems but the little boy had no emotion at all. Black circles under his eyes. His tiny arms as skinny as twigs with malnourishment. On the back, someone (obviously not the book scrawler) had written Patsy Roach with son, Absalom. 1939-1983. House fire.
She heard a key click into a slot, the jiggling of the tumbler, and a hard clack. She closed the suitcase, shoved it under the curtains, and bolted from the room.
She listened at the cracked door as he walked inside.
And for a moment, she thought she heard Jon sniffing the air like an animal hunting for its prey.
She was out of here. She’d find her way back to Memphis tonight if she had to walk the whole way.
Chapter 49
One of the black-faced white boys made a mistake when he grabbed U’s five-hundred-dollar pair of binoculars and tossed them down the hill. The boy, thick-necked with a bristled haircut, then made a crack about the shiny rims on U’s truck. With a snicker, asked how long U had financed his vehicle. U smiled and nodded, giving one of those okay-you-got-me looks, his big hands at his sides. But as he dropped his head, U gave me a wink. So fast they didn’t see it.
His hands flew from his sides and knocked the AK-47 out of the man’s arms. As the other turned, I punched the fucker right in the throat and caught his gun before it crashed to the ground. I turned the gun around and used the muzzle as a handle and the butt for a club. I smacked the guy – a little skinnier than the other, with bad teeth – in the jaw and rammed him hard in the stomach, lucky the gun didn’t crackle to life, but not really caring. My face and ears felt as if they were baking in the sun as I threw the gun over my shoulder and straddled the man, beating the ever-loving shit out of him. I hit him across the temples and directly in the eyes and rammed my fist deep into his gut. He puked blood on himself as I reared back and felt strong hands grabbing my arms and pulling me back.
I clawed at the hands and kept punching that little redneck fucker right in the jaw, seeing Loretta lying on the floor of the bar and those tattered bedroom slippers on JoJo’s feet at the hospital. More hands reached for me and yanked me away. Spit flying from my mouth, yelling words I didn’t feel myself consciously saying. As Bubba and U pulled me away, I kicked the son of a bitch hard in the head.
“Cool it,” U said.
I was breathing so hard I almost choked in air. And as U’s face came back into focus, I bent at the waist as if waking from a strange dream. Bubba patted his strong fingers on my back and smiled at me.
“It’s all right, dude,” he said, in this cracked hoarse whisper. “Dude, it’s all right.”
“Bubba?” I asked. He speaks. The revelation made me almost forget about those stupid rednecks.
As I looked into his face, a white-hot light shined down from the trees and gunshots erupted closer. My body seemed filled with heated blood.
We ran quickly toward U’s truck.
But before we got close, about fifty men slathered in camou face paint, carrying rifles, and driving ATVs blocked our path. I slowed to a jog. I heard Bubba’s labored breath beside me.
The men told us to drop the guns.
We did.
We just stood there, hands on top of our heads, until they jabbed the muzzles of semiautomatic guns into our backs, and marched us down a thin but old path and into the valley.
A n hour later, my knees screamed from standing on them so long. My shoulder, that I’d dislocated for the thirtieth time, ached in its socket so bad that I clenched my teeth in pain. I had my hands laced on top of my head. Bubba’s and U’s had been lashed behind their backs with rope.
The floor was smooth concrete and splatted with the occasional patch of leaking oil. Over our heads stretched a huge arc of corrugated tin forming some kind of large garage with a retractable door big enough for an airplane. The door was open. I could smell the Sons of the South campfires burning and hear gaggles of men talking.
Every time I breathed, the hot air expelled in a cloudy mass.
I looked over at U. He slowly shook his head and kept his eyes focused on the twelve men guarding us. He was watching hard, taking it all in.
I dropped my shoulder an inch. One of the guards screamed for me to raise it back up.
On the other side of me, Bubba had his eyes closed. He was either meditating or sleeping.
Soon another ATV’s engine gunned outside. The sound grew close enough that it rattled the tin above our heads until it pulled inside and shut off the motor.
A dozen or so men formed a line behind the man dismounting from his ride. Short and gray haired. Large, almost comical ears and yellowish eyes. He had an oversized mouth when he smiled, appraising us down on our knees. His hair was cut extremely short with a section on top that struck me as so hard and perfect that it had to be a toupee. His teeth were little, worn-down nubs.
He placed his smallish hands on his waist as he stood in front of me and said: “You with these niggers?”
“Oh, thank God,” I said. “The senator will save us.”
Elias Nix laughed for a moment with me and then kicked out my knees. I landed on my back and then worked my way to a resting position on my elbows.
“They yours?” Nix asked, looking over at U and Bubba.
Some of his group laughed.
He’d left the square headlight of the ATV shining bright in our eyes. I squinted at his face – smooth, thin skin with bluish veins on his cheeks.
I looked over at U but didn’t say anything.
I crept to my knees again, like I was about to get back into the same position, closed my eyes, and waited for Nix to relax. Slowly I opened them, dug in with the balls of my feet, and launched from my knees, grasping for his throat.
I ringed a good grip, feeling the cold, corpselike skin, and yanked him from his feet. The shorter man was level with my eyes. I was throttling even harder when something struck the back of my head and my vision left me for a moment.
I felt a hundred kicks in my side.
U yelled for them to stop.
More yells. Some screams at U to shut up. But they did as he said.
I rolled to my side, coughed several times, and stood as if I were a boxer wavering in the first round. One of Nix’s men, I couldn’t make out his face, pointed a gun into my ear.
“Why are you here?” Nix said, hands behind his back, strutting rooster-proud now. Trying to make up for being the little toy he was.
“You assholes tried to kill one of my friends,” I said, my breath wheezing. “I guess since you killed Bill MacDonald and his wife, you thought y’all were unstoppable.”
“You’re not a friend of Bill’s,” he said. “We’re his friends.”
He said friends as if it had a couple of “e”s in it. Nix jerked his head over at U and Bubba on their knees. “And Lord knows they’re not.”
“Stay out of New Orleans,” I said. “Those people don’t know anything.”
“Son, I haven’t a clue what you’re talkin’ about.”
