Alabama Noir Read online

Ray doesn't even act like he hears. We out the door, and me and DC go back down the hill. We're headed back to Ray's girl's place, back to chill and catch a buzz, hanging, maybe Ray and Yo knock it in the next room and me and DC turn up the tunes loud 'fore my own stick gets hard just listening. Whatever it takes to chill Ray down.

  "Hold up," Ray says.

  "What?" DC says. "What you wanna go hustle Ol' Skunk for?"

  "I'm goin' back to Yolanda's house," I say, heading to that big bottle of cognac mostly full we left sitting on YoGirl's table.

  But Ray don't move. "You wi' me or not?" He's serious. Not the same Ray played tight end last year Friday nights hoping somebody see his excellent shit and give him a ticket out.

  DC done had enough. "Look, man, whatever shit you in, count me out." He starts on up the hill toward the cognac.

  "Don't work that way," Ray call to him. "If I go down, all go down."

  DC starts back down the hill. Me and DC are all ears.

  "Won't waste me first," Ray says.

  And then we see the scam. Ray don't pay up, his friends and fam be the first to get whacked. And he ain't got no family 'cept his mama that nobody know of. That's the money-man's way to let folks know the money-man means business. Dead dude can't pay like a scared dude can. A scared dude is what you call motivated.

  So me and DC follow Ray through the edge the woods by the road, Ray walking like a ghost he's so quiet, me and DC stepping on sticks and dry-ass leaves and all kinda shit making racket. When we see the sheriff deputy car hid behind brush down low on the side road, Ray motions us to get down and we squat there till the gray daylight is enough for the sheriff deputy to think night is over and he takes his dumb-ass self back to his office. Sheriff deputy thinks he knows what's going on. Sheriff deputy don't know squat.

  Ray starts up the willow path just like Skunk says not to do unless we wanna die, and we're right behind. Light's coming fast now. Before we know it, we're standing on the edge of this big-ass rock, looking way down on Buzzard Creek below. Real name is Cypress Creek, runs right into the Tennessee River, but we all call it Buzzard Creek since the old garbage dump and the new garbage dump both right on the creek so that on and off you can see fifty or more buzzards in the trees here, right here at this rock where the trail ends. Me and DC looking at each other, studying what's next. Ray sits down in the beat-down dead yellow grass under a big pine. I sit down myself and lean up 'gainst the pine. When my eyes shut, my head spins, so I open them quick-like again.

  "What we looking for?" I ask. I'm thinking: kilos, cash money. Maybe ice, Oxy.

  Ray's not saying nothing for a minute. Then: "Maybe we lookin' for the shit got ripped off me. Or maybe we lookin' for cash-money."

  DC's making water off the rock edge, seeing how far he can shoot his stream in the creek way down below. He's looking around, looking across the creek, looking up in the air, as he makes water. "What's that?" he asks.

  "What's what?" I ask.

  "That," he says, and points up in the pine tree.

  So that's how me and Ray and DC come to be hunkered down behind some needle-ass-stabbing green bush on the coldest day of the year, feet numb, snot running out my nose, hungover, waiting to kill somebody I ain't never seen before when they come back to get their black L.L.Bean backpack stacked full of hundred-dollar bills. Ray had taken it down, looked at it, then grabbed the black plastic rope and pulled it back up there, back up in that tall ol' pine tree.

  First off, Ray says it could be a trap by the police trying to sucker some poor unsuspectings like us to take the money so's they would have somebody to put in jail and make the police look good, pretend like they're making the world safe. Nothing in the world makes rich folk feel better than to read in the paper that people like me/Ray/DC been caught doing some something and headed for jail. Even if it's something made up, like DC's uncle that paid his child support but they claim it ain't been paid and he's got no paper says he did pay it so he's back in jail. Always some piece of paper, somewhere, with words saying you messed up. Ray says it's all fixed, it's all a trap.

  Then, after 'bout an hour of talking that shit, Ray up and changes his mind and says, "Maybe this is the money due to me, the money made off what got stole from me. Maybe I'm the rightful owner of this money."

  "One thing for sure," says DC, "you not the one throwed that prep-ass backpack up in that pine tree with that rope tied to it. Whoever did that, they comin' back for it."

  Even Ray can't deny that. "This is life or death. Our life or death. We have to watch who comes back for this." He starts coughing like he's about to cough out a lung.

  I let him catch his breath. "And when we see 'em?" I ask.

  "Then we find out if they on the up-and-up. See if it's one dude or a crew. My guess is one dude. Alone. Us three find out easy from one dude what we need to know. That cash money gonna be ours. Pay off the money-man and let the rest sit around just waitin' till the time is right. Then we invest. In product."

  DC speaks up: "Somebody talks. Somebody gonna know it's us. Then payback come knockin'."

  Ray laughs. Then he's quiet, talking low: "Nobody will be in no shape to talk."

  "But Ol' Skunk's the one told us to come here. Ol' Skunk knows," DC says.

  Ray looks at me and DC and raises up his left eyebrow and I know he means Skunk, too, will be in no shape to talk when Ray finishes with him.

  I feel sick enough to puke, and DC don't look no better. Ray's eyes are leaking water. And when Ray's feeling sick, he only gets meaner.

  Then Ray starts in on the money: "How much you think is in that pack?"

  We take turns guessing just before we take turns telling what all we gonna do and buy with all that money. I think: Ray's gonna tell how he will be the man for Yo, provide for her and all. But all he says is: Yo's just a trick and he's gonna leave her ass, maybe go to LA where he's got cousins. Take me and DC with him. "We gonna make so much money scammin'," he says, "that this money in this pack will look like chump change."

  The sun is full up now, not that we can see it. The gray just got lighter is all. "Lord," DC says, "I'm tired. I'm past tired. Exhausted."

  I, too, feel like sleeping. Just too cold and hungry and in pain.

  Ray is coughing more, seems to be comin' down with a bad cough.

  The air feels warmer now, but the wind when it kicks up cuts like a knife. My belly growls loud as a man talking, and I could use something to drink. DC looks sleepy. A squirrel rustles the dry grass and leaves, and Ray jerks, like he's scared by the racket. He smiles a mean rusty saw-blade smile.

  "I'm hungry," DC whines too loud.

  Ray's face is dark.

  "How you sure somebody gonna come?" DC asks.

  Ray looks like he wants to waste DC now.

  Finally DC says he's cold and hungry and can't sit out under no bush with stickers on it no more.

  "What we need," Ray whispers, "is somethin' to eat and drink, somethin' to warm us up." Only his mouth is smiling. Eyes not smiling. Then he says to me, "Get down to the creek and follow it back to Yolanda. Can't use no path. And don't let nobody see you. Bring back some good stuff."

  "What if somebody comes while I'm gone?"

  "Me and DC handle it." Still, just his mouth smiling.

  So I pick my way down the hill, almost falling it's so steep, and walk alongside the creek, under the bridge, back up to where I know good the way up the hill to find Yo's place. I knock and knock before she comes to the door. She's sleepy-eyed in a big soft pink thing wrapped around her, nothing under that, far as I can tell. Just the pink thing wrapped around Yo's smooth skin. She's sweet like a sleeping baby, her voice tiny.

  "Where's Ray?" she asks.

  I come in and tell her no more than she makes me tell. She's been with Ray long enough to know better than to ask too much. I go in Yo's kitchen and start looking in the fridge and in the cabinets. "Ray needs this," I say, grabbing a plastic bag and throwing shit in it like crackers, cheese, meat.

&nbs
p; She sits down in a raggedy-ass chair and puts her head in her hands. When she looks up at me, one big tear rolls down her cheek.

  "He's in trouble?" she asks in that tiny voice.

  "Naw," I say, "we just hungry."

  "So why did he not come himself?"

  "He's busy. Comin' by later. Just to see you." And no sooner I say it I know it's a lie. Soon as that money is Ray's and he thinks nobody can trace him, he leaves town and never sees Yo again. Truth is, Ray's not taking me or DC to LA either. Then who is left around for the money-man to whack? Everbody—Yo, police, everbody—will think me and DC are responsible for whatever's stole, whoever's dead. And we'll be too dead to stand up for ourself.

  I grab the cognac off the table, pull out the cork, and take a big two-gulp swallow that burns like fire. Yo is still sitting at the table when I go into the bathroom and sit the cognac on the sink and close the door and put up the seat to be nice-like. I'm feeling gray and dirty, and I smell my own self. I'm not looking in the mirror because there's nothing there I want to see. That ol' cognac bottle sits on the sink, right below the medicine shelf, so when I zip up, I open up that mirror door and look inside. Cough stuff, rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, a bottle of stuff YoGirl takes off her fake nails with, deodorant. Usual stuff. I'm just standing there with both hands on the sink, leaning and thinking, when it comes to me. I take the cork out the cognac, drink down a whole bunch more, and then I take the top off the rubbing alcohol and pour some in that cognac bottle. Then I take the cough stuff bottle, open it up, pour some of it down the sink to make room, and then pour some of that nasty-smelling nail-remover shit in there with the cough stuff.

  I shake it all up real good.

  When I come back out, I can see more of Yo's tears streaking down her face. I hold up the bottle of cough stuff. "I'm takin' this to Ray," I say.

  "He sick?" she asks in that sweet little voice.

  "Naw. Just coughing a little," I say. Then I find in the fridge a blue Pepsi can for DC. Me and DC go way back to when we played Little League down at McFarland Bottoms, then middle school, then high school. Him pitcher, me catcher, but we could only do that when the rich coach's own son got too tired to pitch. When I get back to that pine tree and hand DC that blue Pepsi can and look him in the eye a certain way, I tell you this much: he'll know just what I mean. If DC don't see me drink no cognac, he won't be drinking no cognac neither. We read each other minds, me and DC. That's my plan. First get Ray to drink a bunch of that cough stuff that probably tastes like poison anyway. When he says it tastes bad, I'll tell him he must be coming down with a cold, and that's when I hand him the bottle and tell him the best thing to do for a cold is to drink a big swig of cognac. Soon after that, he'll be so sick we'll have to take him to the hospital. He'll be safe there. And me and DC can figure out what to do.

  I didn't even know I'd warmed up at YoGirl's till I hit the outside again and the cold air slaps my face still too numb from cognac to hurt too bad. Air racing around with what my grandma call hominy snow in it, like little-bitty sleet but not enough to stick or pile up white on the ground. Bits of hominy snow caught in the dead leaves my boots push around trying not to fall down in the creek on the way back. Dead leaves covering the rocks make me stumble once and make a big racket, but I slow down and wait and listen. Sky still gray and the wind slows down. Creek runs slow, just a tinkle. Everything nice and quiet. I pick my way soft-like back to DC and Ray. Maybe the man has done come back for his prep-ass pack and is lying there dead, Ray and DC gone already. God knows what I'll be walking up on, so I think I'd best be easing up that hill, one step, another step. I take so long and am so careful the wind starts back up, rattling all the dead leaves again, so I get off the trail and walk below the big rock DC pissed off of before. Then I start crawling up the side the hill, hanging that plastic bag on one wrist. When I get near the top, I look up and it is still there, that black backpack up in the tree, so I ease on up, thinking Ray and DC are still squatted back behind that prickly bush.

  But what I see: DC lying there in a lump behind the prickly bush, not looking like he's asleep but something worse, one leg twisted up under him. A cold clear feeling runs through me like I'm in a bad dream and I'm just now waking up to something worse. The backpack man has done sneaked up, I'm thinking. The backpack man might be two men. Somebody sure laid DC out like this.

  I throw down the plastic bag and head to DC as quick as I can. I need to straighten him out, see if he's still breathing, thinking I myself might be jumped any second, when Ray scares the shit out me, runs up from where the trail starts.

  "What happened?" I ask.

  "DC fell. Hit his head. I went lookin' for you."

  About this time I see a big rock in Ray's hand. I look down and feel the lump on the side of DC's head and too much blood. When I start to move DC, blood is all under him. Then Ray comes at me. My head goes boom and my neck cracks, and I fall down hard over DC.

  I try to get up and my head gets whacked again. I try to get up but my arms and legs are not doing what I say. My head hurts hot like part of it's gone. I'm trying to tell my hand to feel my head but mostly my arm goes limp. I pass out and then a loud noise wakes me up and I know again that I'm lying on DC, which don't seem right. Something tells me DC is dead and then me too if I can't drag my ass up from here. But I can't even pick my head up. My one eye is open, though. My one eye is seeing it all.

  Ol' Skunk standing by Ray, and Ray down on the ground. Half of Ray's head gone. Skunk holding a pistol like it's a snake. Skunk looking over to me.

  Then another voice. Right behind me. "Come on over here, Edsel, and put that pistol in this white boy's hand here. This boy ought to knowed not to hang out with these others."

  My one eye sees a shiny deputy boot toe-tap my hand, showing Skunk where to put it.

  "Use this," the voice behind me says. Voice throws a white rag over to Skunk. "Wipe it clean."

  The white rag and pistol now in Skunk's hand. White top of Skunk's head in my face when he bends down.

  And then I'm light and free. Rising in the air, slow. Like I'm caught in some cold rising breeze. First I'm circling low just looking around, looking down at myself on the ground on top of DC, watching the sheriff deputy reach a hand down to his pocket, take out his radio, hear him say, "Derrick, you my backup, ain't you?" before he says, "Well, get your ass on up here then."

  And Ol' Skunk edging down the creek bank, whispering to himself, whispering low but I hear him. I hear it all now, from the loud right on down to the tiny sound every ripple in the creek makes. I hear Skunk whispering stuff makes no sense, like another language, and then: Don't mess wi' me. Don't mess wi' me. Don't mess wi' me. I'm OG. OG. I seen they kind. I seen they kind.

  And then I'm higher and higher, higher and higher, watching Ol' Skunk's white head-top moving down the creek, crossing the footbridge, heading back to the Hollywood, hominy snow falling harder and hitting all the dry leaves, sounding loud now, flakes getting bigger and fluffy, and then me higher still, like a balloon somebody let go of, rising in the open sky where the flakes are falling thick now, sky soft and full of it. I look down and there the creek flows into the Tennessee River, and there are the miles and miles of cotton fields out Gunwaleford Road all frozen but with raggedy cotton lint like more snow. Higher still now, soft snow, flakes like cotton. Till the whole world's looking exactly like nothing at all but white.

  DEEPWATER, DARK HORIZONS

  by Suzanne Hudson

  Fish River

  Gary Wright, in his expert, know-it-all way, insisted that what was happening on Turkey Branch was a crime. "A goddamned crime, you stubborn old coot. You can get fined for it. I've done googled it. The county site says five hundred dollars a day for every day you let them turds roll down in the branch yonder." The man jabbed his pointer finger with every few syllables.

  Yoder Everett ran his fingers through thinning hair, hair that had once upon a time been a thick home to the ladies' painted fingernails that
combed through it, now gone limp and thin as he traversed his sixties, alone but for this one pathetic friend. "You're always so goddamned sure of yourself, Gary."

  It had finally come to a head, after months of back and forth, after Gary first noticed the oozing fissures in the grass, soil becoming a sloosh of fetid, foul stink. Yoder, tight with a dollar and loath to spend from the thousands he had hoarded over the years, managed to deny, pretend, and scoff his way out of taking any action, until Gary drilled down into something like research. Any fool could find out what was what, it seemed, on the Internet.

  Now the two men stood beneath one of the massive live oaks that thrust their mossy arms to the summer sky across Yoder's six acres of waterfront on a branch of the Fish River, studying the patch of yard gone to shit swamp. When breezes lifted, along with the undeniable stench, a chorus of clatters and clacks and tinklings and knockings rose and fell from the scores of wind chimes hanging from branches, from hooks on porches, from posts on the wharf and the pier, from the trash-can corral Gary had built to keep away the raccoons, armadillos, and possums. Gary was handy that way.

  The noisy mobiles, though, were all fashioned by Yoder's own hands, inspired by a fragmenting mind, that willy-nilly mishmash of chimes, along with paintings on plywood, palettes of muddy browns, reds, oranges; even murals painted onto the asbestos-shingled sides of his river house. His gnarled but nimble fingers strung together the cacophonous orchestra of objects tied onto lengths of fishing lines, knotted through the boards of driftwood or stripped sapling limbs or guitar necks or whatever, from which the lines dangled. He used all sorts of materials too, for the chimes themselves: old costume jewelry, a deconstructed clarinet, wooden kitchenware, beer cans, women's stilettos, anything at all. "I make art out of junk," he liked to boast. "I'm environmentally friendly that way."

  But here was Gary Wright's dumb ass claiming Yoder was a major polluter, right up there with the goddam BP criminals who had ruined the gulf this past spring. Now into full-bore summer, the beaches from NOLA to Apalachicola were so gummed up with the crude that business owners along the coast were yelling bloody murder.