Dark End of the Street - v4 (17 page)

I whizzed a pebble into the woods and followed Abby into the long building where ragged light caught dust motes in a yellow swath. Down the rows of horses, making brimming sounds with their lips, I heard a woman talking. The air smelled of manure and old leather.

The woman was thin with muscular arms, dark tanned skin, short black hair, and brilliant green eyes. She was a head taller than Abby and wore blue jeans and a gray T-shirt. Ancient brown boots. She had the kind of rapid, quick look that processed your appearance and computed her decision within seconds.

She hugged Abby very tightly.

Abby broke away for a moment and grabbed my hand, pulling me forward. I introduced myself. The woman didn’t say a thing; she looked at me as if I’d just whipped it out and pissed on the stall floors.

“My fly isn’t open? Is it?”

“It better not be,” she said. Sweat stained the front of her T-shirt and a smudge of dirt traced the edge of her jaw. A worn-out pair of Texas show boots, decorated with red roses and cactus, sat by the stall door.

“May I ask what in the fuck a man your age is doing with Abby?”

“She’s helping me with my yard work. Sometimes she plays dominoes with me and feeds my cats.”

Inside, a black quarter horse with a white star shimmied its head from side to side. The woman frowned, strong commalike creases around her mouth.

“What the fuck, Abby?”

“Maggie, calm down. It’s not what you think. He’s helping me.”

“Helping you do what, doll?”

Maggie looked down at my boots and up at my face. I grinned like a giddy criminal in a prison lineup.

“It’s a long story, Maggie. Listen, we really need to talk. Do you know a woman named Ellie?”

“No.”

“Think hard. Said she knows you through her boyfriend. Said y’all had a time at some crawfish boil.”

“I’ve never been to a crawfish boil. That’s for stupid yahoos from Louisiana.”

I smiled. “Exactly.”

“I tried to call,” Abby said.

“Well, sometimes the phone company gets a little pissed when you’re late,” Maggie said.

“You about done ’round here?” Abby asked.

“C’mon,” Maggie said, walking across the smooth brown dirt to the back of the stables. I rested my arms on a battered wood gate and smoothed the white star on the horse’s forehead.

“Nick?” Abby asked.

I turned and she motioned me to follow them. I have to admit I watched the way Maggie walked. Enjoyed it. She sure could wear a pair of jeans. There was something earthy and honest about her. Always had a thing for women who said what was on their minds. Don’t know why. It just seemed like everyone I’d ever really given a damn about could handle herself just as well without me.

“Never told me that she was mean,” I said.

Abby whispered: “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

At the second-to-last stall, Maggie stood back with a wide smile across her lips. Abby turned to the stall and, within a couple of seconds, started crying. I moved closer and saw her arms around the neck of a chestnut-colored horse with a black mane.

Maggie kept smiling until she noticed me again. Her eyes narrowed and she dug her boots into the brown dirt. As she continued to beat me in a staring contest, she said sweetly to Abby, “You want to head over to Taylor? Only thing open on Sunday.”

“That okay, Nick?” Abby said.

Maggie kept staring.

I narrowed my eyes back at her and said, “Love to.”

O
ld Taylor Road stretched out from Oxford like a familiar song. The road bent and twisted over gentle curves framed by barbed-wire fences as a tired sun dipped low through the pines. Cheap student apartments soon became crooked farmhouses and dilapidated trailers. I’d lived near here for two years but hadn’t been out this way. I followed Maggie’s Rabbit convertible until I was sure we were lost. I thought maybe she was playing some kind of joke on me, now with Abby safely riding with her, or was taking me somewhere where we’d meet a few of her redneck cowboy buddies.

But then we arrived in a loose, brittle collection of storefronts and cottages. Blue and orange light scattered through oaks and slid down onto the tin-roofed shotguns. I pulled in front of an old building with a wide, crooked porch that seemed out of a black-and-white photo from the Depression. Three men sat on a two-by-eight stretched over some rusted paint cans. One played Dobro. The other a fat acoustic bass.

“Evenin’,” the Dobro player said.

“Howdy,” I said. I liked saying howdy.

Inside, we took a seat at a heavy wood table covered in a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. Maggie brought in a six-pack from a cooler in her car and pulled off two cans. Slivers of ice fell off the aluminum.

“Maggie,” Abby said.

“Oh, well.” She pulled off another beer and placed it in the center of the table. “Sorry.”

The ceiling was wood and sagged along ancient slats. Floor was wood, too, scuffed as smooth as glass. Graffiti covered the walls and gallons of pepper sauce, quarts of cayenne pepper, and fat industrial jars of mayonnaise filled a stocking shelf.

Men in overalls. Women with two-hundred-dollar snakeskin purses. Gray-headed farmers and frat boys. Place was packed.

“Abby said you’re going to help her,” Maggie said, popping the top of her beer.

“I’ll try. Mainly I just want to make sure she’s safe.”

“She’s safe,” Maggie said. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke across the table. Muddled static of conversations filled the room.

“You don’t have to impress me,” I said. “You’re tough. I get the idea.”

“She doesn’t need any more help. You’ve done what you needed to. You brought her back to me. Thanks. I’ll buy you dinner. You drink that can of beer, have a good meal, and then head out. All right?”

Abby closed her eyes and mashed her fingers into her temples.

Maggie didn’t say a word for about thirty seconds. A waitress came over and we all ordered the same thing, catfish with pecan rice. I finished the beer and tried another smile on Maggie. It was a good one, too, the kind that made women cling to my back.

“You have something on your shirt,” she said.

I wiped some hot sauce from my T-shirt pocket.

“To the left,” she said.

I wiped away some more dried remnants of red pepper sauce I’d used at breakfast.

“Messy eater,” I said.

“No kidding. I’m sure all the women are impressed.”

“You’d be surprised.” I turned up my nose. “Do I still smell manure?”

Abby spoke up: “Am I not here? Both of you shut the hell up.”

Both doors were open and a breeze washed through the room as if coming from a machine.

“Maggie,” Abby said. “Yesterday morning I went back to Oxford for some of Daddy’s papers and some woman followed me. She pretended like she was a friend of yours and took me to this old gas station where these men grabbed me and took me to a casino in Tunica. I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to worry you, but, Jesus, sometimes you can be so fucking hard on people.”

Abby didn’t seem like the girl who said fuck a lot and the word seemed a hell of a lot dirtier and hard coming out of her mouth. Just kind of hung there for a moment.

“So who is he? You really meet him in Memphis?”

“No, he helped me back at the casino. He killed a man trying to make sure I was safe.”

“God,” Maggie said, stubbing out her cigarette and looking at my face again.

T
he bluegrass band began to play outside and we walked to the porch to finish our peach cobbler. I balanced the cobbler and a coffee in my arms and took a seat between Abby and Maggie on the two-by-eight bench. The band had moved onto the back of a ‘fifties pickup and was picking out a combination of songs. “You Are My Sunshine” to “You Don’t Miss Your Water.”

Lately, it seemed that fun had to be engineered. I saw it all across the Quarter, bars that packaged phony Cajun and New Orleans culture in easy, digestible bites. There was something solid about wondering if you’d make it back from a night at the old Tips or playing a game of chance by leaving your car parked near the Rivershack. Now, we had House of Blues and the new Tips and daiquiri stands that had taken over smoke-filled piano bars unchanged since the ‘forties. I would’ve never guessed I would have ended up having a hell of a time with Abby and her surly cousin. But I did. Never plan a thing. A sure route to enjoyment.

Abby stirred melted ice cream around the last peaches and Maggie pulled out another cigarette. She had on those scuffed show boots and a clean white T-shirt that advertised Stetson hats.

The T-shirt was tight. Her breath didn’t stink.

When the band hit the last note of the William Bell song, Abby put down the cobbler, her eyes staring straight ahead. She hiked the elastic band of her sweatpants leg up to her knee and rubbed the tiny red bumps that had formed on her calf. Maggie picked up our bowls and walked back inside, the screen door banging the frame behind her.

Abby kept staring into the darkness.

“I want to go with you,” she said. “I want to help.”

“Let’s go down to the police station and we’ll talk about getting you some protection. I have to head back to Memphis.”

She shook her head and bit the edge of her lip. “You promised.”

“I promised to find your cousin and make sure you were safe.”

“You need me,” she said.

Maggie came back and took a seat, resting her back against the worn wall. She cracked open a fourth beer she’d gotten from somebody inside, and nodded along with the music. The Dobro and the mandolin melted into the crisp fall night, their notes twisting and falling with a sweetness of old memories. The music reminded me of times I’d failed to recognize as being the best I’d ever known.

I looked over at Abby. She’d had on the same old sweatpants for two days and they were stretched like socks over her running shoes. The knees had already become balled and dirty.

“Abby?” Maggie asked, blowing out some smoke. “Been picking up your folks’ mail and found something kind of strange. Letter from Memphis to your daddy. Did he always work with private investigators?”

“I guess.” I watched her as she wrapped herself tighter in my jean jacket.

I placed the cup of coffee by my feet and stared in each direction at the two women.

“Your daddy’s secretary gave it to me and said it was personal,” Maggie said. “Maybe you should take a look.”

MAGGIE LIVED JUST a few miles from Taylor, at the end of a twisting dirt road lined with mounds of kudzu and honeysuckle vines. The house was white and old, an elongated box made of clapboard and tin, with fat Christmas lights dangling from the roof. Outside, thickets of rosebushes grew near short rows of corn and tomatoes, now withered and brown. A laundry line hung loose to the side of the house filled with flowered cotton dresses and extremely short pairs of pants.

“You live with a midget?” I asked after we parked and walked through the chilled fall night. The stars above were bright and crisp but a biting wind had kicked up and I saw a dark cloud curtain headed east.

“A son,” Maggie said in the darkness. “You know those little things that men help create but often leave?”

“I ain’t got no kids,” I mumbled, following her. We stepped into a wide wood-paneled room that smelled like burnt Italian food. It was dimly lit with a television flashing a Chevy truck commercial.

A little boy with inky-black hair lay on a tattered couch, a coloring book loose in his hands. An older black woman came out from the kitchen wiping her hands with a rag and exchanged a few words with Maggie before disappearing out a side door.

I stood, afraid to wake the kid.

The floor was buckled linoleum and dotted with broken trucks and headless plastic heroes. She’d lined the walls with frames filled with photos too personal to have been bought. Black-and-whites of headstones and old people on porches and brilliant white suns setting low across cotton fields.

“Yours?” I asked.

She nodded and handed Abby a Golden Flake potato chip box filled with mail. Maggie picked up the boy, slack but grumbling, and left the room. Abby dropped the box onto the old sofa and I took a seat by her.

The woman had been watching Leno and I quickly flipped the channels to Letterman with a heavy remote. The sofa was thick with animal hair. Above the mantel gazed a mounted deer head.

Abby flipped through several letters, mailers, and magazines. I noticed a couple. Southern Living. Soldier of Fortune.

She stared at the outside of one envelope longer than the others and then quickly tore into it. She read it for a few moments. Her lips slightly parted and she used her right hand to brush the hair from her face onto the back of her ear. She tucked her legs up under her, shook her head, and then handed the letter to me.

The letterhead was, like Maggie said, from a private investigator in Memphis named Art Copeland. He wrote pretty simply that he intended to keep the deposit that Bill MacDonald had given him. He said he’d exhausted his search through Social Security, criminal, and Department of Motor Vehicles records. Still, he could not find out more about the man Abby’s father wanted.

I’m sorry but there is no record of Clyde James since 1974.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Holy shit,” Abby said.

T
he rain hit us as soon as we reached this wide-porched white house on the outskirts of Oxford. Man, it felt like it had been raining since I arrived in Memphis and I just wished it would stop for a few minutes. I was tired of being wet and cold and having to change clothes about every hour. Somehow, the rain felt different here as we ran to the house. Felt much colder and more brittle, little tiny needles angled at my face.

We clamored up onto the porch filled with dead plants in mossy terra-cotta pots. Abby walked ahead of me, pulling out a key from her balled fist.

Crime-scene tape covered the back entrance and it looked like someone had tried to lock up the house. A padlock had been ripped from the frame and it sat dangling and useless.