‘Course, Ransom knew who his boy was. He knew that when trouble started comin’ down, when they tried to take down Travers, that Jon was his man. That’s why he called him back. He didn’t want his A-1 rockabilly star locked up in no dang pokey. Jon turned his head and popped a couple more Benzedrine tablets into his mouth.
Felt like he could fly back to Memphis himself. Why wouldn’t Ransom speed up? Why was he goin’ so dang slow?
Hell, he was ready. Now. Jon looked down at his white double-breasted jacket with matching pants and white zip boots. White shirt. Red tie. Cuff links. He’d borrowed the suit and shoes from the Holy area where they stored His things down in this big warehouse by the airport. He hadn’t taken much, just this suit and the black jacket E’d worn on the NBC TV special in ‘sixty-eight. He thought it was appropriate ’cause he was thinkin’ about all them sweet Memories from the last few weeks as he watched the convoy and knawed on his knuckle tryin’ to get his leg to quit shakin’. The past sure made you feel kind of funny in the stomach.
“Kid, this is where it all breaks down,” Ransom said.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve been playin’ this game for thirty years and I want it runnin’ clean by November. You understand?”
Jon nodded. Let’s go. Let’s go. Speed up.
Ransom smiled to himself as he passed over the Tennessee line, just like a man comin’ home from the wilderness to a place he now owned.
M r. Ransom sure didn’t take no mess. As soon as they parked by these two ancient, metal bridges, he pulled out a big ole Colt revolver and tucked a handful of bullets into his black coat. It was dark as a black steer’s ole butt outside and the bridges looked like somethin’ that should’ve been torn down about a hunnerd years ago. They lay loose and rusted and broken ahead of them, stretchin’ over the river all the way to Arkansas. A few of them orange highway lights flashed in the night, warning people not to get too close.
Jon could get close. He had this feelin’ buzzin’ in his head like he wanted to sprint over to Arkansas and back.
Ransom told the two big dudes with pistols to go back down under one of the old bridges and get ready. Them twin bridges just skippin’ over the Mississippi.
The man with withered skin and the sheriff fanned out on the first bridge. The other folks workin’ with them were out there somewhere, hidin’.
Ransom walked ahead, past the orange light, and onto the bridge. Jon followed, the old man walkin’ way too slow. He had to bite the inside of his cheek just to walk in place.
Jon kept the pace and soon his feet made clankin’ sounds on the metal grates. He was just waitin’ for the bridge to break loose and for him to tumble out into the night sky where he’d just keep on flyin’ back home.
He was kind of twichin’ inside when he looked down and saw the big ole river swirlin’ and twistin’ below. Looked like they was up at least two hunnerd feet in the air.
He took a deep breath and walked along the spaced slats where the railroad cars used to run. He kept followin’ Ransom and soon heard him callin’ the other boys on a handheld radio.
Come on. Where were they? “Faster.”
Ransom looked over at him.
“Nothin’,” he said. Gosh dang he wanted to explode inside. His heart felt like it was beatin’ like an egg timer.
About twenty feet away, a red balloon twisted in the wind.
Jon ran over to it but Ransom walked.
Jon stared at the red balloon, waitin’ for it to pop. Or maybe he was gonna pop.
Finally Ransom strolled on over and ripped a card from its string. Just looked like some Christmas card, but Lord it made Ransom mad. He threw it to the ground and spit over the bridge’s railing.
“Come on,” he said. “Someone is playin’ us.”
“Who?”
“Travers’s buddy decided he needed a little cash. He’s smart. He’s runnin’ us around to find out how bad we want it.”
“How much he gettin’?”
“If we find him?”
Jon nodded.
“Zero.”
Jon laughed with him and kept watchin’ Ransom’s craggy face till he ’bout fell down into the river. His foot hit air where a metal grate used to be. His heart picked up a tick and now beat like it wasn’t takin’ no pause. Just a tick, tick, tick.
Ransom quickly grabbed his hand, Jon’s stomach up in his chest, and helped him onto the railroad line.
“Careful, son,” he said. “This bridge was built for the Union Pacific around nineteen-oh-five. Ain’t used to people walkin’ her.”
“How far is that drop?”
Ransom watched his face, the lights of Memphis burning behind them. “Far enough.”
Jon looked up and saw the moonlight hitting the unpainted, rusted metal beams and twisting down in purple rays. The light lay in a million crisscrossed patterns that made his head a little dizzy. He felt like he might throw up. His head racin’ harder than his body. His body was in a low tremor, maybe Ransom didn’t see it.
Ahead, the opening to the bridge on the Tennessee side stood like a big dark mouth. Behind him, Jon couldn’t even see where the bridge ended and Arkansas began.
Ransom yelled over to the old man and the sheriff on the twin bridge. They called back that they hadn’t found nothin’ either.
Jon wondered if E had ever been out here as he tried to keep his body still. He looked at all the old graffiti spellin’ out high school classes from the ‘fifties and ‘sixties and lovers that was probably dead now.
Maybe down on the banks where he’d seen all them bums and street people livin’, E may have taken His girl when He was back at Humes High, before the blue storm that had hit the world.
Jon pulled out the yellow scarf from his pocket and wrapped it around his neck as he stepped from the bridge. His whole body shaking harder, like a demon had stepped into his soul and was dancin’ like there was a party in hell.
He needed to find Black Elvis. He needed somewhere to get washed out for a few days. He stared down at his hand jumpin’ on his thigh like bacon in a skillet.
Jon was about to throw up when he heard a mighty roar.
“Holy shit, get the fuck down!” Ransom yelled, tackling Jon and His holy suit to the ground. Jon reached back for his gun to take Ransom’s life, when he saw what Ransom had seen.
And good Lord, his leg started twitchin’ and his heart beat a million times a second. He was runnin’ another notch higher, runnin’ like someone had kicked up the fuel switch on a minibike. “Dang!”
A dozen of them big Army trucks, big as tanks, with bright white K.C. lights on the roofs, came roaring down the dirt road and cut off Ransom’s other boys. Must’ve been fifteen men scrambling down the red clay hill covered in kudzu carrying machine guns and barkin’ out orders to each other like it was D Day. They shined lights down on where he lay with Ransom.
Jon searched behind him and he saw a narrow little gutter of dirt that had formed from all the rains last month. If he could scoot back just enough, he could get gone. Run all the way across the bridge. He’d be in Vegas before he slowed down.
As much as he wanted Travers laid up in a pine box, this wasn’t his deal.
But as he started to move, he heard bullets raining down from atop of one of them trucks just idling there in the darkness.
“Don’t move, kid,” Ransom said, inching his gun from beneath his belly and taking aim at three men that were walking toward him.
Ransom was gonna take ’em out.
His boys comin’ from the other bridge started firin’, all heaven and hell started breakin’ loose like that book in the Bible when the dang beast and the four horsemen and all them critters come barkin’ out from the center of the earth.
All Jon could do is cover his head and start prayin’ to E where he sat with the Lord way up high in a jumpsuit made of gold.