Dark End of the Street

I took the Bronco to about seventy, before braking and downshifting, looking for more arteries to get lost. At first, I’d thought about trying to get the attention of the two troopers at the truck stop but didn’t want to risk getting killed while trying to get close.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, wondering how I hadn’t recognized the woman until Abby screamed as we peeled out. That was her. The girl from the Grand. But what bothered me more is that I knew the man, too. As I flew through a small nameless town and turned on to another road, I remembered him.

He’d worked for a California record producer who’d been killed by a friend of mine a few years back. The kid, who’d looked like a waxen replica of Elvis Presley, was supposed to be dead, too. I’d read it in the newspaper. But even with a beard and a few years on him, I recognized the pompadour, glassy eyes, and slack jaw.

Shit, the damned snakes in my head were loose from the box. Being chased by fucking ghosts.

Abby had wedged herself against the roll bar and had the seat belt gripped tight in her hands. She had her eyes closed as we went airborne for a second over a rutted back road and followed the outline of a muddy creek. Tree branches shook over our heads like an old crone’s fingers in the hollow black light that surrounded us.

We whizzed past about six trailers in a little court, found another back dirt road, and slowly drove to a muddy embankment before I stopped the truck. The heat of the engine ticked and burned as I watched Abby. Her fingers became unclenched, reaching down on the floor for the papers that had been scattered.

I took the pile from her but before I could glance through them, the Taurus roared past and I heard the slam of brakes and the deep whine of a transmission reversing.

I opened my lockbox and tossed the papers inside before U-turning, reddish dust twirling behind us, and hitting about sixty down a rutted road to nowhere.

“You can’t drive,” Perfect said. “Hit the accelerator. We’ll never catch ’em. Go. Shit, kid. Go.”

Perfect ran her leg over Jon’s and mashed the damned pedal herself.

“Woman, let go. Woman. Gonna make me have a dang wreck.”

The rented car’s back tires fishtailed behind them on the dirt and rocks as the Bronco dipped around a corner and out of sight.

“Left,” she yelled. “The dust. Follow the dust.”

Jon did and she gritted her teeth watching the red taillights flash before her. They were in some kind of fucking tunnel of trees. Maples. Cottonwoods. Oaks. Colors on fire. Yellows and reds hot as hell against the blackened sky.

“What he got under that hood?” Jon asked himself. “That thing’s been jacked up, I do believe.”

“Catch him,” she said, pulling out the Smith & Wesson and finding two speed rounds in her purse. “This is the place. We’ll shoot both of ’em. Drop both of their bodies where they stand and then make sure that truck can’t be seen from the road. Be spring till someone finds them.”

Jon pushed the accelerator hugging a turn, fishtailing again, a hell of a grin on his face. He gave a rebel yell as they bounced off the ground and landed with a fast, hard thud. At that moment, Perfect knew Jon didn’t care about dying.

She clutched his knee and watched his face flush with excitement.

“Get close,” she said, letting her window down and pointing her gun at the truck. “I got ’em.”

The shots came just as we rambled over a short wooden bridge, bumping and jostling, and turned onto another dirt road that I hoped led back to the highway. I figured we were racing through some kind of state park; every few miles, I saw wooden markers and signs that outlawed hunting. No people. No buildings. Just these smooth dirt roads cut into the Mississippi hill country.

The shots came again.

Two more harsh echoes cracking behind us. I didn’t hear a hit but that didn’t stop me from punching that 302 V-8 hard around the twists and straightaways. I told Abby to get on the floorboard, and she did, with her hands over her ears and her face buried in her knees.

I could see the Taurus in the rearview, the woman aiming a handgun at the back of the truck. As I punched the pedal around another long straight shot, my rear window exploded.

“Shit,” I yelled, mashing the brake and banking the truck hard to the side, praying that we wouldn’t flip.

The road had ended.

Only way back was through the Taurus.

“Hot damn,” Jon yelled, feelin’ the same way as when he won the potato sack race back in Vacation Bible School. He’d won. Just shoot ’em. Let Perfect get them papers and he’d be forty thousand dollars richer. Hot damn. He could finally get that Cadillac for Miss Erdele. Miss Erdele. Mamma. Jon Burrows/Jesse Garon.

It all made sense now. Everything was looping back to his past and his future and the holy numbers that Black Elvis told him about. Said he was born under a moon sign. Moon dance. Moon child. Hell, he was shiftin’ and changin’ like that spotlight that never really disappears from the earth.

“I’m full force,” Jon said.

“What?” she yelled.