Dirty South

“You just takin’ my place,” Dio says. “You just like me.”

Cash says, “Shut the hell up.” He knock him across the mouth with the butt of his gun. Then you hear him cock the motherfucker and hand it to you.

It feel strong and warm in your hand and don’t take you but two seconds to aim that bitch right at Dio’s heart.

“What’s your name?” you say.

“What?”

“What’s your name?”

JoJo behind him now and he got his hand out. He got his palm out, waiting for you to lay that steel in his hand.

“Shoot him!” Cash yell. “Shoot. Shoot.”

JoJo shake his head on the other side.

“My name is Christian,” he says. “Christian Chase.” His eyes are green but loose and heavy. He don’t show nothin’.

You thumb back the hammer and let it down loose.

You hand that gun to JoJo.

He take it.

Just as you step back, Christian turn and come at Cash with a knife in his hand. He gets that blade right at his face.

But Bronco steps from beside you, grab him at his wrist, and you see the punk drop to his knees and start cryin’ like a bitch. The knife fallin’ out of his hand.

Cash pick up the knife, look at it, and toss it in the water.

He nod at Bronco.

Bronco nod back at him, their shapes gettin’ thrown down on the tops of water in a silver mirror.

A boat pull up beside you and Cash pulls Christian from his feet and throw him in with some of his boys.

“Welcome to the Dirty South, Christian Chase.”

Cash smile at y’all from the other boat, throwing you the keys.

They float off and turn, breaking hard in the middle of the bayou and headin’ back out into Pontchartrain.

JoJo’s hand feel good on your shoulder.

I LOOKED at Teddy frozen in the mud. We didn’t exchange words. His eyes watched something beyond my shoulder, maybe a sound he heard, and wavered deep into the marsh that held him.

“Come on.”

He stretched the gun out from his arm. His eyes reflected a person I’d never met.

“We all go back to mud,” Teddy said, the fat shaking under his chin. Contorting with the emotion in his voice. “My preacher used to tell me and Malcolm that. Told us to be like the mud. That’s what we came from. What we all gonna be.”

I breathed, smelling the putrid smell of animals and plant life rotting around us in a big compost pile. Bile rose in my throat.

I heard boats buzzing and scattering away out in the bayou.

He pulled the gun back into him. An eagle swooped down and then caught a wave of rising air, shooting quickly back up into the blue sky.

Teddy Paris smiled. “Always knew you could take a joke, Travers.”

He slid the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

The hard cracking sound brought a scattering of birds and insects floating off the marsh in a black stream and pinpointed dots that covered the white sun.

I dropped my head, turned, fighting the marsh, and made it halfway back through the grassy tunnel carved by a wild animal.

I crawled to get away from the place I’d seen Teddy slowly disappear into the bayou.

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