Dark End Of The Street

Chapter 34

I figured I could lose them on a back road to Memphis. The old roads and country trails stretched into the northern hills like a million fingers, the highway providing a damned clean shot without the bends and twists of road. Besides, they’d taken my gun and I knew both of them were armed.

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.

“Y ou 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 amp; 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.”

T he 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.

“H ot 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.

Jon slowed, ran the car into neutral, and watched the old Bronco just idling there waiting for them to come and take what was theirs. Travers was in there, just a damned wreck after seeing ole Colonel Jon Burrows. How did he live? Why had he come back?

Damned comeback. ‘Sixty-eight style, motherfucker.

He jammed the car into drive and mashed the pedal.

“Jon!” Perfect yelled. “No, we got ’em. We got ’em.”

I saw him coming and dropped it hard into first gear, hearing my tires spin behind me, and headed right for the grille work on the Taurus. Hard gunning and waiting for him to drop away. My teeth ached they were clamped so hard.

I could see the car getting closer and closer as I headed up to about fifty.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Abby said, softly over the gun of the engine.

I gritted my teeth harder and punched the 302, juicing out every bit of muscle she had down a single rutted road only made for one car.

I could see the boy doing the same. Almost could make out his eyes, maybe ten yards between us, when I broke hard to the right, jumped up on a long embankment, darted around him, and kept on flying by.

I pounded the roof of my truck three times and kept on moving around the curves trying to find my way out.

I was smiling and laughing. Really just relieved as hell, with my damned heart in my throat, as I reached down and pulled Abby back into her seat. I knew they were gone. I was too far ahead and they’d never catch up.

She buckled back in and I took another road.

I’d gone too far. Too many choices for them.

I kept on smiling and laughing, rubbing Abby’s back for reassurance when the ground disappeared from under us.

We must have been going about sixty, no road, just air below, when we came crashing back down.

It was a hard landing. My back exploded with heat, black amoebas crawled over my eyes as my seat belt yanked me back hard.

Then I closed my eyes.

Never more in my life had I wanted to sleep so badly.