Authors: Ace Atkins
I motioned over to a large barn that had once been painted. The doors had been locked with a long two-by-four and then sealed with a chain and lock. Nearby, two black men in dirty undershirts sat on the hood of a shiny red Buick. One played with a pistol while the other cleaned his nails with a pocketknife. The man with a pocketknife wore a pistol sticking out of his trousers.
“How do you know what’s in there?” Sykes said, whispering.
“You want to ask them?” I said.
Black looked at me and then back at Sykes, who was wiping his brow with his painted tie.
“So this is it?” Black said. It was the most he’d spoken since we’d met. The man stood six foot five and must’ve weighed two-fifty. Standing near him was like being under an oak.
I shook my head. “One of a dozen or more,” I said. “They’ve got slots and horse-racing machines and tables tucked away in most of the county.”
Sykes nodded, his Hollywood hair covered in briars. He picked one out and tossed it to the ground.
We followed the dirt road back and then trailed along the fire road back to the jeep. The cicadas this summer buzzed away like screams in the trees, the heat covering our bodies like a thick wool coat.
“I’d be glad to give the governor the same tour,” I said.
Sykes reached for his suit jacket over the back of the seat and slipped back into it. “You really think he’d be surprised?”
ARCH FERRELL LEFT HIS WIFE’S PONTIAC STATION WAGON
at a filling station across the road from the Citizens Bank Building and walked back down Dillingham, back toward the river, keeping a straw hat down in his eyes and not making eye contact with the Guard troops he passed. He walked by the 260 and 261 clubs, the Original Barbecue. From across the road, he could see the weathered and beaten words on the side of a brick building advertising a slave market held on Saturdays that no one had thought to paint over since the Civil War.
Most of the buildings down on this stretch of Phenix City were just old wood-frame clip joints and Bug houses. Some of the joints on this side of town allowed blacks, and Arch passed the men in their out-of-date zoot suits and two-tone nigger shoes and felt dirty just being in their presence when they’d give him a rotten smile and stare. He knew, just fucking knew, that they now recognized him as no better than they were.
Dillingham dipped down at the bridge. Hung onto the riverbank, stuck on the lower level of a storefront, was the Bridge Grocery. He ducked inside the door just as soon as he could. His eyes had to adjust to the light, red bulbs screwed into sockets, making his vision feel like that of an animal. He heard men talking and walked past the horse-racing arcade games and the green felt tables stacked in heaps in the center of the concrete floor. He entered a back room, passing over a creaking wooden floor that almost hung right out over the water, under the level of the bridge. His eyes searched for the part of the floor he’d heard about that could spring loose like that of a stage, rolling a drunk or beaten man out onto the banks, tumbling and rolling and falling out into the Chattahoochee.
Godwin Davis was a portly little man, not even coming up to Arch’s chest. He was bald and fat and had a constant cigar plugged into the side of his mouth. The man had an odor about him, too, of nicotine sweats and vinegar, breath as fetid as moldy cheese.
Arch looked at his own feet, the slotted floor, and stepped around broken poker chips and shards of glass, sandwich wrappers, and empty beer bottles. He was pretty sure the grocery, which hadn’t sold a can of beans since before the war, hadn’t been open since the troops arrived.
Davis grunted something to him, an affirmation maybe, and nodded him into a back room with brighter light, this coming from another red bulb over a little table, where Miss Fannie Belle sat smoking a thin brown cigar and leaning back in a seat. She smiled up at Arch, and Arch looked to Davis, never thinking in a million years that these two could be fifty yards away without trying to kill each other. But allies were tough to find these days, and Arch understood you took what you could get.
“Counselor,” she said. Her red hair had been twisted up into a bun, and she wore big false eyelashes that looked like spider legs. In front of her were a couple rows of cards where he’d interrupted her game of solitaire. On the back of the facedown cards were naked fat women like something from Victorian times. Fannie’s shirt was low-cut, and he could make out a front latch on her pointed black bra.
Godwin Davis clamped the damp cigar in his jaw and closed the door behind him, leaving the two in privacy.
“Telephones make me nervous,” Arch said. He sat and lit a cigarette, his hands shaking as he held the match to the end.
“Nervous as a cat,” Fannie said and smiled. She had a thin scar on her lower right jaw and an oblong scar in the center of her forehead that stayed white against fair, sun-flushed skin. She wore a pink, fitted shirt — like one made for a little boy — and skinny black britches of some sort that matched that pointed black bra.
“I hear a click. A double click at home. They’re listening to me. You know that sound? When you ring off, but they’re still there and don’t know you’re still there? I’d watch your phones, too. Don’t trust anyone.”
“Didn’t see you at the fights,” Fannie said, starting up her game of solitaire again and flipping over cards with a quick snap of fingers with long red nails. “That’s a first. You know, I used to date a fighter. They called him the Canvas Cannibal. Ain’t that a riot?”
She looked up over the cards with her slow, lazy eyes and drowsy smile, but Arch didn’t smile back. The smile only made him more nervous.
“I want order restored, Fannie,” he said, blowing smoke up into the ceiling. He alternated softly pounding his fist and tapping the table with his fingers. “I want my town back under control. I want men in Montgomery to quit fucking with this town like a political poker chip.”
Fannie smiled more, and he couldn’t goddamn well tell if she was agreeing with him or the cards. But then he knew it was the cards as she picked them all up — finished with the game — and shuffled the naked ladies into a neat pile.
Arch gritted his teeth and slouched back into the chair, his arm hanging loose at his sides.
“You’re the only one who understands,” Arch said. “You hear me? You’ve sunk too much into Phenix. You know we got to have order. You think Hoyt and Jimmie care anymore? They’re too old. They don’t understand what all this means or are just too stupid to care. Listen to me. This is a battle. A fucking battle.” Arch leaned over the small square table and made an invisible line with his index finger. “Lines have been drawn, but now these RBA men and Pat’s son are hiding under the governor’s skirt. They don’t want to come out and fight fair.”
Fannie shook her head and shrugged. She plucked at her pink top with the tips of her taloned fingers. “Boy, it’s hot.”
“Are you listening?”
She stopped plucking and placed the cards back into the pack. She looked over the table at Arch and said: “Next year, they’ll be just a memory.”
“I don’t have till fucking next year,” Arch said, pointing at Fannie with the end of his cigarette. “They’re gunning for me. This crazy Guard general and this man Sykes. They want to make a statement. They will remove me from office and they want me for Pat’s murder. They need someone and they want me. They’re gonna fuck this scapegoat silly.”
Elbows in all four corners of the table had worn the green top white. Fannie ran her hand over the smooth spots, keeping the little brown cigar in the corner of her mouth. She pulled it out, examined the tip, and then tucked it back into her molars like a man.
“Tell me this,” she said. “Where were you?”
“When?”
“When Patterson was killed.”
“You know where I was.”
“Hell, I know. Talking to Silas Garrett on the telephone at the exact fucking minute the trigger was pulled. Damn convenient, Arch.”
“I wouldn’t doubt Si Garrett’s word if I were you.” Arch’s hand found a spot on the table, his smooth, worn place, and rubbed it, working his fingers in and out of the bleached color, studying the design like an ancient map. “He’s a fine man. What about you, Fannie?”
Fannie pulled the cigar from her red lips and just stared at him, reeking of perfume.
“People say someone hired a button man from out of state. Chicago. Las Vegas. Or Miami. Don’t you have a place down in Miami?”
She leaned back into the creaking chair, studied Arch’s face, and set her feet on top of the table. She unbuttoned a single button and used the material of her shirt to fan herself, giving Arch a better view of the black lace.
Arch wiped his brow and returned the stare. Fannie Belle laughed. The red light was giving him a headache, making him feel like they were underwater.
“People are talking,” Arch said. “People are lying. These men, these men who don’t know and understand Phenix City, are listening. They don’t care about what’s true. People look at me different. They stare. Niggers on the street look at me like I’m some kind of joke. They used to get off the goddamn sidewalk and let me pass.”
Her cigar smoke floated up and burned into the low light of the single bulb. She shook her head and looked at Arch. “Since when do you care what niggers think?”
Arch stood and began to pace. He had sweated deep into his dress shirt and his back felt wet. “Did I tell you my wife is seven months pregnant? We need control.”
“You don’t need to tell me what we need,” she said. “Everyone is squirming and squealing like a nest of rats.”
She stopped his pacing cold with a quick motion of her left hand holding him between his legs. Arch looked at her and blinked several times as if trying to right his vision.
“Hoyt and Jimmie have grown fat and lazy and are useless in this war,” Arch said. “I’ve heard they’ve thrown in the towel and gone with Pat’s son.”
“War?” she said, still holding him at his crotch. “Goddamn. All the Guard can do is walk the streets and pose for pictures. Have you seen one clip joint shut down? Get yourself together, Arch, and go take a fucking bath. I’m handling this now.”
“You need help.”
She kneaded him with one hand and pulled the cigar from her mouth with the other. She held him tight in her grip, and, as she smoked, Arch tilted his head, amazed at the way she could take care of two things with such little effort.
“I’ve got help.”
“Fuller ain’t enough,” Arch said.
She unzipped his fly and reached in and touched him through his drawers. Arch closed his eyes. But just as quickly, she let go and pulled the cigar from her mouth and crushed it into the ashtray. She stood and put her hand on Arch’s shoulder.
The cigar smoldered in the cut glass.
“I’m not talkin’ about Fuller,” Fannie said, a smile slicing up to her pointed ears in the red light. “I’m talking about sending a mess of messages Western Union. You understand, don’t you? I know you do, Arch. Because you’re a goddamn American hero.”
BERT FULLER PUNCHED ON HIS HEADLIGHTS WHEN THEY
hit Crawford Road, and they drove away from Phenix City and out toward Seale and into the country. Reuben reclined in the patrol car’s seat while Fuller made some calls on his radio to the sheriff’s office and then hung up the microphone.
“Where we headed?” Reuben asked, arm hanging out the window. The wind seemed hotter than the air when they were parked.
“Cliff’s.”
“I don’t want to go to Cliff’s.”
“I wasn’t asking you.”
They passed groupings of ragged shanties on eroded pieces of land and long stretches of cotton just planted. A few of the farmers had roadside stands that were closed up for the night but still advertised with hand-painted signs for corn, field peas, squash, and boiled peanuts, even though corn and peas wouldn’t be in for some time.
Reuben reached under his seat for the bottle of the homemade liquor Fuller had brought along and, after taking a long pull, passed it on to the assistant sheriff. Fuller smacked his lips and said: “That could peel the paint on a barn door.”
“Or make you blind.”
“Pussy will make you blind, too.”
“I’m worn out.”
“Naw, you ain’t,” Fuller said, slowing and turning down an unmarked dirt road and under a tunnel of pecans growing along a slatted fence. They passed a burned-out car and another stretch of plowed-under land and then took another turn, the headlights cutting through the darkness on a moonless night like going into a long, endless cave.
“You know what ole Hank used to say about the moon.”
“What’s that?”
“Said the moon was hiding on account of its sadness. How’d that man think of that?”
“He was a drunk.”
“He was one of the best friends I ever had and the best goddamn singer that ever came out of the state of Alabama,” Reuben said when Fuller stopped the car and turned off the ignition, the words coming out louder in the quiet than he’d intended than over the motor.
“When did you meet him?”
“After the war, when I got home. He’d just been fired off WSFA and needed someone to drive him. Keep him sober for singin’ at all them roadhouses.”
“And they hired you.”
“His mamma did.”
“Well, his mamma didn’t have sense at all.”
“He could write songs from picking the words out of the air.”
They followed a path to an old unpainted house situated next to a small, two-acre pond. Reuben turned up the liquor, damn near finishing the bottle, and watched as the moon reappeared from outside a cloud just like Hank had always said. A broken-slatted pier walked out into the water maybe six feet.
“I want you to listen to me,” Bert Fuller said. Tonight, he’d dressed in blue jeans and his usual boots with a white snap-button shirt and matching hat. If he didn’t know better, Bert Fuller sure looked like one of the good guys. And Reuben smiled at the thought.
“What are you laughing at?”
A bass flopped to catch a bug in the pond. Reuben turned to look at it.
“Listen,” Fuller said. “Cliff’s done got him this Mexican gal that you won’t believe. I know you was always sayin’ how you like those little Filipino women. The Mexes ain’t a hell of a lot different. All that talk about their pussies smellin’ like tacos is a bunch of trash. This gal has golden skin and big old brown eyes, titties the size of watermelons. Man, I just could bury my pecker between them.”