Leavin' Trunk Blues (38 page)

His hands tore for Nick’s face.

Nick broke free from his grasp and kicked Stagger Lee in the head with his good leg. Stagger Lee lunged for Nick and gripped his neck, locking with all his strength. Nick felt the blood rush to his face as he slashed with the knife into Stagger Lee’s arm.

He made a deep stab to Stagger Lee’s shoulder. Another giant howl and Nick was free. He rolled off the gravel to his feet.

Nick pushed Stagger Lee as if he were a quarterback, ramming his head up into the huge black man’s chest and knocking him to the ground. Nick reached down and yanked his knife free and kicked Stagger Lee in the head.

A long stretch of railcars passed. Somehow Jimmy had crawled onto the one where Stagger Lee had hidden. The train whistle blew. The old diesel engines hummed as Jimmy stretched out a hand to Nick. “C’mon!,” Jimmy yelled, the rusted boxcar moving along.

He soon disappeared as the train rolled. Nick hobbled for Jimmy, tripping hard and cutting his hands on the sharp rocks. He tripped again, trying to run for the open car and Jimmy’s hand.

His heart thudded in his ears. His leg screamed with pain as he found a foothold and pulled his body into the car.

Nick rolled onto the rusted floor, his vision blurred, trying to catch a decent breath. Jimmy lay next to him, holding his chest.

Nick closed the bloody knife and stuffed it back into his boot. The train creaked and moaned underneath him. He was about to help Jimmy when he saw a thick hand covered in blood wrap around the door.

Stagger Lee’s bald head appeared.

His eyes bloodshot and teeth clenched as he groaned. It was as if he was trying to lift up the car. He groaned again, hooking a foot on the floor. Nick punched him in the face as Stagger Lee tried to bite his hand. Nick kicked at his head and Stagger Lee lifted his mammoth weight into the rolling car. A perfect moon shone above him before the shadow of the Roosevelt Bridge closed over them. When they passed through, Stagger Lee raised to his full height and smiled.

And then Nick heard the shots.

Three. Rapid. The sound blasting through metal walls as if they were in a steel drum. As the shots cracked off the metal of the freight car, Nick opened his eyes to see Stagger Lee waver and lose his balance. His eyes wide in disbelief as he fell backward and disappeared into a black gaping hole.

Jimmy sat against the far wall with Nick’s 9 mm in his hands. The train picked up speed, a whistle blew, and Nick felt the blackness sweep over his mind as he drifted far away.

Late Christmas Eve, the snow felt like feathers on Kate’s eyelashes as she walked the Maxwell Street Market. Banners flapped on streetlights illuminating the scattering snow. The vendors were gone. Some had left broken crates and trampled boxes. Newspapers rolled down the vacant street and a few junk cars rambled by as she walked across Roosevelt Street.

A cab chugged heat from its tailpipe waiting for her return.

She’d spent the morning at the State’s Attorney’s Office and the rest of the day at the
Tribune
writing her story. She had to handle the studio tape part carefully so she wouldn’t get sued, but still, the story fleshed out into something great with earlier notes from Florida and Dirty Jimmy. Should be plastered on 1-A across the city tomorrow.

She felt good until she returned back to her apartment, picked up Bud from her neighbor, and checked her messages. Two from Richard, who said something about wanting to fly up and talk through things. But none from Nick.

She called the Palmer House and Doyle, but nothing.

Kate told the taxi driver to go ahead as she walked to the White Palace Grill. The tri-corner diner’s wrap-around sign advertised breakfast, lunch, and dinner 24 hours, and a Polish sausage dinner for $2.50. A Middle Eastern man in a hooded sweatshirt had his arms wrapped around a bloody steak. An old red-headed waitress refilled his coffee cup. A plastic Christmas tree blinked its lights by a green metal register with thick push buttons.

“Merry Christmas,” the redhead called out.

“Hey,” Kate said, pulling off her gloves and ordering a cup of coffee. She sank her head into her hands and listened to Elvis singing “Blue Christmas.” There were few places lonelier than a diner on Christmas Eve. There was a deep melancholy for those who worked that night or who had no family. For some, this was as good as it gets.

Kate felt her shoulders shake and watched her tears drop onto the paper placemat. She covered her mouth with a napkin. She remembered a few years ago spending Christmas with Nick, Loretta, and JoJo at the Jacksons’ townhouse on Royal. The smell of Loretta’s spicy jambalaya filled with red and green pepper and WWOZ on their old console stereo. Nick and JoJo had sat on that crooked balcony smoking and talking about music.

After dinner, she’d walked hand and hand with him back through the French Quarter. Christmas lights blinking from the old rusted balconies with the sound of soft music playing high above the dead streets. They walked over a barren Canal Street and back to the warehouse on Julia and made love in a pile of blankets and pillows beneath his industrial windows. Their bodies were coated with sweat and their chests heaved with breath as the sound of Mississippi tugboats and stray horns floated through the Warehouse District.

Kate rubbed her fingers over her face and took in a deep breath. The Middle Eastern man put his hand on her shoulder and asked if she was all right. She said she was and ran the napkin over her cheeks. Through the glass sheets that wrapped the diner, she watched the snow softly fall in the streetlamp’s glow. She took a sip of the burnt coffee.

“Been a hell of a night,” the waitress said.

“Yeah.”

“I never seen the market so busy, then all those cops came and it’s just been a mess.”

“Cops?” Kate asked. “What happened?”

“Oh, you know. Chicago. Somebody was shooting down by the railroad yard or something like that. Well, you know how it is.”

At the paper, she’d been so into her story, she hadn’t heard a word.

Kate stood and tossed a couple dollars on the table.

“When did the police leave?”

“A few hours ago,” the waitress said. “After they found that dead guy … real Merry Christmas, ain’t it.”

The rolling and tumbling of the train threw Nick in and out of dreams. He dreamed of riding the cold waves, his view half above the blackness of Lake Michigan. He struggled to reach a green luminescent glow in the center of the lake. When he reached the glow, he saw it surrounded a bloated man in a pinstriped suit. Suddenly, a wave rocked and broke over the body and he saw another face appear. It was Ruby. But as he struggled to catch her, black water circled her face and she disappeared. As she slipped under, a million battered suitcases shot from the water like torpedoes.

Nick struggled with the hand on his shoulder. He pushed it away and scrunched up his body on the cold ground. They pulled at him and he felt the hand try for him again.

“Nick?” the voice called.

Nick scrunched his eyes tight.

“Nick?”

As he rolled, a pain ripped through his thigh and his eyes opened. Jimmy Scott looked down at him in the darkness and shook him again.

“Fever got you, man,” he said. “Got to keep awake, man. C’mon. Wake up.”

Jimmy pushed a plastic flask to his lips and Nick took a drink of whiskey. Nick coughed and some poured off his chin. He closed his eyes and opened them again. His leg felt heavy and hot. A red bandanna twisted tight over the wound.

“Thanks, man,” Nick said. “Where are we?”

“Don’t know,” Jimmy said, smiling. His face looked gray and parched like a road map as the moonlight shone though the sliding door. They weren’t moving.

Nick had never been colder in his life.

“Chicago?”

“I know we ain’t in Chicago.”

Nick unwrapped the bandanna and ripped open the hole in his jeans and thermal underwear. The wound had clotted with a purple halo surrounding it. Didn’t feel too nasty. Nick could move his lower leg, which was a good sign.

Nick borrowed the whiskey from Jimmy, poured some on the bandanna, and cleaned the wound. He took his Tom Mix knife and cut the tail from his flannel shirt and wrapped his leg.

“Help me up,” Nick said, holding out his hand.

“Don’t know if I can,” Jimmy said.

Nick looked at him and Jimmy pulled open his jacket to show a bright splash of blood in his stomach. He coughed a horrendous, guttural sound. “Got me deep, man. Got me deep.”

Nick used the edge of the door to pull himself to his feet. His leg screamed as he clenched his teeth and pulled the door wider. A field of yellowed weeds stretched for miles around him. Snow lightly covered the brown earth.

“I’ll be right back,” Nick said.

“Don’t be gone too long,” Jimmy said. “This guy ain’t gonna be no good company.”

Nick hobbled over and looked down at a twisted heap in a red- and-white suit. It smelled of human waste and alcohol. Dried blood covered the fake fur of a Santa’s suit.

“You know you goin’ to hell when you kill Santy Claus.”

“I think Stagger Lee was already in line,” Nick said.

Nick kicked the body farther into the corner and exposed a brown leather doctor’s bag. He picked up the heavy bag and dragged it back into the light. In the thick moonlight, he pried open the flap and looked inside.

Packs and packs of crisp green paper bundles.

“What is it?” Jimmy asked.

“Stagger Lee left us a present.”

--

Nick walked the barren tracks searching for someone to help. Where the engine had left ten cars, still coupled but alone, there was a small wooden shed and a long dirt road leading through snow-covered trees. Their leafless branches looked like the bony fingers of a skeleton.

Nick tried the shed door but it was locked.

He tossed a rock into the window and the glass shattered.

Nick used his arms to lift his bad leg into the room, sat on a low file cabinet, and dragged his good leg though the window.

He rested for a moment.

A metal desk filled most of the room with bulletin boards hanging on the plywood walls. A water cooler sat frozen in the corner, a big bubble spread wide in the center of the ice. Nick sat in the chair by the desk and tried the phone. No dial tone. He checked the plug and hit the hang-up switch several times. Still dead.

He rummaged through the drawers for anything they could use for warmth. He found some musty moving blankets and a pack of kitchen matches. He opened the door and walked by the shed, pulling off pieces of dry, brittle wood. He wrapped the wood and matches in the blankets and limped back to the railcar.

Jimmy sagged against the far wall, his breaths coming in quick, smoky gasps. His face looked gray as he coughed into his glove. Nick plunked down the blanket and wood and pulled himself into the car. He unwrapped the blanket, spread it around Jimmy’s lower legs, and struck a match.

The wood caught in a sudden burst of flame.

The corner smelled of the dead man, and Nick grabbed the body and tossed the limp weight outside. A trail of blood followed.

“Glad you got rid of him,” Jimmy said. “Ain’t no good for talkin’.”

He hacked again into his hand.

The smoke drifted up into the ceiling as Jimmy and Nick huddled by the fire on the floor. Nick wrapped himself in the other packing blanket and poked at the small fire with his boot.

“Wish we had somethin’ to eat,” Jimmy said weakly.

“Hey now, ain’t no room service in the woods.”

Jimmy laughed.

“I remember sometimes we wouldn’t eat fer days then end up in a little place like this,” Jimmy said. “We’d find some farmhouse and get some hog parts from a farmer. Maybe a foot or a snout. Some ole guy always had a pot. We’d get that pot goin’, put that pig foot in there, and man, would it smell good.”

“One foot?”

“All we needed,” Jimmy said, his mind decades back. “Some ole guy have a potato, another a carrot. You get some salt, maybe dig up some roots and grass. That way that stew would grow. You’d keep watchin’ the stew and say you got to add somethin’ if you want some. So them hobos would find all sorts of things in their bags. One time this guy gave me an onion like he found a chunka gold.”

“I’ll get you a whole pig when we get back to Chicago.”

“I ain’t goin’ back,” Jimmy said.

“C’mon now, we’ll be back. Just need to warm ourselves a little bit, then I’ll go for some help.”

“You go on,” Jimmy said as the fire crackled and popped by his foot.

“No way.”

“You do me a last favor?”

“Anything.”

Jimmy reached with a shaky hand into his coat for his harp. He pulled out a worn Hohner Marine Band. A thumb-size dent in the tarnished silver metal with the paint on the reed starting to flake. Jimmy pressed it into Nick’s hand and closed his fingers around it.

Nick shook his head.

“Tell me more about that pig foot soup,” Nick said. “What can I bring?”