One block down, I park in front of a vacant lot void of spillover light from street lamps and kill the engine. One more hit and the blow clears my head, amplifies minutes giving way to seconds yelling TICK!-TICK!-TICK! while sweat runs down my nose and onto the hardware as I re-check their loads by feel in the darkness.
Ready-the.45 in my hand, the.357 backup strapped to my ankle. Jaw clamped shut, teeth ready to crack and implications leapfrogging in my head as I open the car door, knowing I’ve got this one last chance to stop, call it in and do this on the level.
My feet hit the ground and I’m running across the street, sprinting and tripping my way through a backyard overgrown with crabgrass clumps and scruffy orange trees. Limbs slap my face, scrape my arms. The gun is light in my hand and those scenarios and implications are winding on a closed circuit.
Knowing.
I’ve got one last chance to make this right.
Friday, May 1st, 1977. A seven-hour trip would put us in Atlanta, Georgia, Audrey’s hometown. Friends. Family. Home-cooked meals. I got off early on a Wednesday and we would leave that same day.
Audrey met me at the front door, almond-shaped eyes like green pools of water and a smile on her face, the first one I’d noticed in months.
Me, making up lost time: We made love before leaving and she cried in my arms.
Me, making up lies: “Things will change, baby. I promise."
Humping it over chain-link fences, my heart working like a piston in a top fuel sled. Trash cans bang together as feral cats squeal and dance across their metal lids. A backyard dog goes stone batshit.
A kid’s voice from somewhere behind me says, “Who dat?”
A mother responds: “You’s don’t be worrying about who’s out there. You’s just get yo black ass inside and shut dat window!”
One more backyard, one more fence and I’ve reached the bungalow, sucking air while staring at a back door painted red. I feel like a sinner entering hell for the first and last time.
I steady my breathing and ask God if He’s listening.
He doesn’t answer.
I take the silence as approval and kick the door off its fucking hinges.
I was inside paying for gas and buying Audrey a Dr. Pepper when I heard the spattering of shots fired. AK-47 on full auto. I sprinted outside. A blue Chevy Impala with dirt-covered plates laid rubber out into 34th Street traffic. People scrambling and screaming, horns blowing.
Dead in my tracks.
Her blood sprayed onto the passenger side window.
On my knees in a lake of shattered glass, holding her in my arms.
Her blood sprayed everywhere.
Sightline. On a gold velour couch sits a fat-ass Blood with a lopsided fro and wearing a red shirt the size of a tent. He’s eating ice cream from the container. Next to him sprawls a rail-thin and shirtless white boy with blue tattoos on his forearms. Lightning bolts. They’re hittin’. They’re buzzin’. The glass-topped coffee table in front of them is stacked with dope and guns. The air inside smells stale, dead.
Chaos as I cross the kitchen into the front room. Music blaring and lava lamps burning low buffer the two stunned faces with glassy jaundiced eyes. Tunnel vision as the.45 spits-two in the face, and the juiced-up cracker’s shaved head snaps back, a bloody halo spattering on the white wall behind him like a repulsive modern art masterpiece. I want to linger. I want to ask him why.
Ears ringing as I take another step.
Fat Albert’s stuck in the couch, trembling and struggling to get on his feet. Garbled sounds are coming from his mouth. He takes two in the chest with a jerk. He coughs up a glob of blood into his ice cream before falling sideways into his partner’s lap with a confused and questioning look on his bulging face.
Head spinning, blood pounding.
Thinking is a liability. I forego the temptation as I haul ass through an open bedroom door to my left,.45 leveled in front of me and jumping headlong into the kind of nightmare I foolishly believed could exist only for me.
I don’t want to see her like this.
I don’t want to see Jenny Hughes laid bare and tied to the bed with the soiled white sheets turned cherry beneath her. I don’t want to see her soaking wet hair, dark and stringy while sticking to her face and mouth. I don’t want to see the yellowing bruises on the soft alabaster skin of her thrashing arms and legs.
I only want to fall away; for a minute, a day.
A goddamn lifetime.
Strobes of light begin pulsating in my head and the dizziness is back along with a nauseous clarity. The bright-as-day room. The bed. The cheap, walnut-veneered chest of drawers with the busted mirror shoved against a jizz-stained eggshell-white wall. The girl and the empty bottles of codeine-laden cough syrup they’ve forced down her throat.
Me.
Everyone and everything is in their place, but only the sight of him has stopped my world from spinning out of control on its greased-up axis.
And he’s straight zoned.
Big Stud Blood’s in his birthday suit, holding a twelve-gauge pump and fumbling with fat red shells. His feet are moving like he’s standing on burning hot coals and he’s not even paying attention to what’s in front of him-because with his posse out front no one should’ve ever made it this far.
His eyes find me, blink once, twice and then go “OH MY GOD!” wide.
I knew the reasons why, knew the potential implications. The kickbacks. The shakedowns. The time away from Audrey spent living another life, making the excuse that I was owed the money I took. Like a rodent, I’d taken the cheddar from their hands and then tried to turn full circle on the very men who paid me to keep my mouth shut. I was naïve. I thought I could walk away from the game without consequence.
I thought the badge meant I was untouchable.
Scared-another strange face and the girl is screaming bloody fucking murder. I put one in Stud’s thigh. He drops. He cries. Arterial damage and a bloody geyser erupts.
Move-
My pocketknife slices through the ropes. She rolls up in a ball, covering herself down there. My hand on her shoulder and Jenny balls up tighter. She’s so small.
Move-
The brother on the floor yells. I wipe and toss the.45, retrieve the.357 from my ankle and put one in his gut. Lungs push rotten air out through his mouth and into my face. I gag. I aim for his nappy head. The girl whimpers and I see Jenny Hughes’s future as a funneling black whirlpool and my mind screams: Let him fucking bleed!
I don’t take the next shot.
I’ll let him fucking bleed.
Move-
I clean and drop the.357. I wrap the girl in blood-stained sheets, throw her over my shoulder and head straight for the front door, slipping and sliding while making tracks through the puddle of human fluids and melted ice cream before being thrust out into the sultry night.
Booking for my car straight down the middle of Preston Street, the 'Cuda sitting a million miles away. Lungs burning. Legs giving out. Neighborhood porch lights click on and hidden faces appear in doorways, but nobody says a threatening word and no one tries to stop me.
Running on fumes and I’m a million fucking miles away.
I’m at the passenger side door, a stitch like a blade in my side. I stash Jenny, start my ride and stomp the gas. Tires burn, smoke and then grab hold of the pavement. The steering wheel goes loose in my hand as the front end kisses the ground goodbye and I’m flying.