From the first, Darlene fit me snug. My hands circled her waist. My fingers touched and made me wonder how there was room in there for her vital organs. I’d listen to her heart beat steady under her sugar tit. Her lungs would rise and lift me with her breath. I’d sink my face in her soft hair when I needed a place to hide. I called her my treasure—not out loud, cause I don’t wanna sound dumb.
I loved when she put her skull on the flat of my belly. Hair the color of a raven’s wing spread out. She warmed my loins with her heat. Traced the dark of my nipple with her finger and stirred the hairs on my chest, going down, down, down. I wanted Darlene touching me. Her touch made the hurt go away.
Petey Pryor owns the Midnight Club and don’t loan Darlene out after I claimed her for my own. He gets moonshine from me so he knows to play it smart. I stopped going inside the club when I tagged her. Couldn’t stand the smells and sweat pressing on her space. Knew it was her job to get the customers dancing and thirsty and bothered. I got my kicks knowing she excited them hungry bastards, then all they got was frustrated with a hard-on. She was eye candy. She was mine. Till she won’t.
Billy rattles on in that whiny voice I can’t stand. “…gotta control your temper. We can’t keep doing this kinda stuff. The law’s already looking…”
I don’t listen. I think on that day when I knew Darlene won’t different from other lying whores. I tried to keep the light in that girl’s eyes. Give her every dollar I got hold of. Give her everything she wanted. I give more, she took more, and then she stopped giving altogether. A smell filled up that red room that won’t mine. Darlene’s skin turned oily.
Darlene got what she had coming.
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Billy and me are deep in the holler now. With my free hand, I grab hold of saplings and rocks. Jesus, I’m weak, and wonder if I’m sick for real. The sweat stink on me is as bad as the rotten-egg smell.
“Roy, you hear me? Let’s stop for a bit.”
I stop cause I’m tired, not cause Billy said to. I wedge our burden between rocks so it don’t get away. I light up a cigarette and take a deep drag. Billy’s hat sets too low to read his face.
My troubles started back with that baby growing inside Sadie Blue when all I wanted was to mess with Billy and the boys. Told em I could get Sadie if I wanted her. They don’t believe me so I proved em wrong. Billy was sick sweet on that girl, moon-eyed, tongue-tied. I edged in for the hell of it. She played hard to get, made me take her on, and that part was fun.
Truth is, Billy don’t deserve a sweet piece like Sadie. The wimp never said a word when I nailed her. Not a word when she got pregnant. Then I messed up bad having her one more time, feeling a tiny kick, and doing something stupid. I did like showing that wedding license to Billy, Pooter, and Earl. They bout shit a brick. All of em was in love with Sadie for a spell.
It won’t all bad at the start. I don’t tell the boys at the start Sadie Blue’s pure, like you don’t see in this world. She said, “Roy, you gonna be a good daddy to our baby. You gonna take care of us?”
I don’t say.
There was a patch of time when I think bout a little boy looking like me, looking up to me, and following after me. I smile for no good reason. Then I know I’d ruin it. What the hell do I know bout good daddies or walking straight lines?
When Sadie gave her sweetness to what’s growing inside her and let me be myself again, I do what I do. I beat her. I tomcat with Darlene. Then I beat on Sadie again cause I can. She lost my baby. For the hell of it, I sent a bunch of hard-assed moonshine men after that stupid Jerome Biddle fella to teach him a lesson. Now this thing with Darlene gone flat.
I need to turn my bad luck around.
I finish my cigarette and stand. Billy whines, “Ain’t this a good enough place? What dang fool’s gonna come this far to look for trouble?”
I don’t answer. I stand and pick up the package, and Billy does, too. I gotta be real picky with this one. Everybody knows Darlene and me been together these weeks, so when she don’t come back, they gonna study on me.
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Truth is, the law’s been gunning for me for a long time. I gotta be careful not to call attention to myself. Don’t fight less I got to. Don’t speed cept on back roads. Billy does most of the moonshine deliveries now. Without Darlene’s body, the law’s gonna have a hard time getting me for murder. That’s what hey bus corpses means—you gotta have a body to prove somebody’s dead. Without one, the law gets to scratch its ass in puzzlement and gotta let me walk.
Sheriff Loyal Sykes, stuffed like a sausage in that gray uniform of his, with his spit-polished shoes and slick shaved face, wants me to slip up bad. When he sees me drive down the road and pass his cop car, he chews extra hard on the end of his toothpick and works his jaw. He slides down his black sunglasses on his long nose and stares at me. Swivels his buzzed head like a owl and watches me mosey on by, him frustrated.
We got a chicken game going on for years, him and me. I aim never to drop my guard and lose. I’m too restless a soul to live behind bars.
Sheriff Sykes put me in jail once to make the point he could—it was a lucky break for him that don’t happen again. Being sixteen back then, I might have been too high and mighty to get behind the wheel of Boomer’s 1940 Ford used for moonshine deliveries, but I won’t admit it to nobody that day nor since.
Under the hood, that car had a Lincoln engine, a flathead V-eight out of a ambulance, with twice the power of any sheriff’s car. Boomer had outfitted it with a extra gas tank to hold the shine. Extra stiff springs and two shocks in the front carried the extra weight. You could put a hundred and thirty gallons of likker in that car, and it would sit smack level with the road. Billy still talks bout that car today and me going full on. I set speed records in the dark I never could claim in daylight.
I can still feel the fine tune of that fifteen-inch black steering wheel in my hands and the rumble under the gas pedal. That big sloped trunk was sexy as shit. I blackened the wide whitewalls so they don’t shine in the dark. Dulled the chrome on the flashy grill and bumpers, too. I thought I knowed it all.
Sheriff Sykes and me was opposites. He followed the straight line happy as a coonhound, and I felt strangled by the straight line. He hated my guts. Back then, Loyal Sykes was a greenhorn deputy like I was a greenhorn runner. He wanted to make a name for his self early on, and he got word of a likker delivery and me part of the deal. Here we was, two hard heads who wanted to make our mark that night, but don’t know what’s gonna happen.
I did my homework. I studied the delivery route for two solid days cause it crossed two county lines. Knew every dip, curve, and straightaway. Knew the shortcuts I’d use if there was roadblocks. Ate a light supper so nerves didn’t upset my constitution. Don’t drink much the hours before so I won’t need a piss along the way and lose focus.