Dixie

It was the last time she wouldn't be noticed that day.  Walking alone down the rural two lane blacktop.  A sweat licked stack of curves swishing to hell and back in her cutoff shorts.  She crossed the familiar railroad tracks that sliced along the kudzu choked bluff and made her way down into the valley of the Delta.

Up ahead at a tangled crossroads, a rickety juke joint called The Crooked Letter was fighting like hell to keep from caving in on itself.  In its gravel lot, a lemon yellow 1970 Ford Torino Cobra glimmered in the stinging, July sun… oddly out of place next to such a shit heap.  That’s new, she thought as she circled the car before heading inside, where she was most definitely about to be noticed.

It was a large, open room with a bar running the length of the right wall and round heavy tables scattered lazily about.  A wobbly ceiling fan was doing nothing more than pushing dust to the edges of the room.  Moist globs of red faced men in dingy overalls sat around, swapping half-drunk stories, mopping their brows with soggy handkerchiefs, and playing dominos.  But they all stopped the minute she walked in.  Their eyes licking her up and down as she sashayed past them to the bar.

A tattooed ex-con named Joe Cook was toweling pint glasses behind the bar, and he smiled at her lustfully as she mounted her favorite stool.  

“Hey, miss thing.  Usual?” he said.

“Please.”

He pulled a Ghost River Gold from the dying cooler, popped the top, and slid it across the bar to her.  As she cooled herself off by rolling the sweaty bottle against her neck, he stole glances at her cleavage.  What a goddamn fox, he thought, like Daisy Duke and Ann Margret had a lesbian love baby.

“Hot out there, ain’t it?” he said.

“I’m melting by the minute.”

Pinching a quarter from his pocket, he waved it under her nose, coaxing out a frisky smile.  She was familiar with this game.  

“Today’s the day,” he said.

“Why do you do this to yourself?”

He stared into her eyes, forehead wrinkled with determination, trying to divine something.  Something crucial.  Finally his face went slack as he declared,

“Natalie?”

“Nope,” she replied defiantly.

“Shit.”

Peeling herself off the stool, she plucked the coin from his hand and scraped it down the length of the bar toward the juke box.  After the push of a pair of buttons, “Come to Mama” by Ann Peebles filled the room, and she strutted with the rhythm back to her stool.

“What’s the story with that car out front?” she asked after a sip of beer.

“That’s Scarlett,” he answered with a wry smile, then hopefully asking, “Scarlett?”

“Not even close.”

“Damn.”

“She yours?”

“Only lady in my life… ‘sides you.”

“What happened to your truck?”

“Oh, that hunk of turd?  That just got me here to there without raising any red flags.”

“Red flags?” she asked.

“You know the expression, ‘make an honest buck?’”

She nodded before he continued, “Never been my particular brand of whiskey.”

“Secret hot rod, dirty money, and a whiskey reference in the same breath… You a bootlegger or something?”

“Honey, that shit’s deader than Elvis.  Don’t nobody bootleg no more.”

Her face scrunched in thought, as if wondering what he could possibly mean.  Then he confessed, “Getaway driving.”

“Stickups?” she asked, “Like banks and things?”

“Sometimes.”

She let out a slow whistle while he gave her a big, dumb grin.  “I got something on the horizon, matter of fact,” he added, “...so if you know anybody in the market to buy a bar…”

That was the moment the flirty nymph disappeared, a faint rage burning far away in her eyes, which he misread as disappointment.

“Don’t look so sad.  You ain’t gonna miss me half as much as I’d want you to.”

“Who’s gonna keep me in quarters?”

“I’ll make sure the new owner puts out a donation jar,” he answered, stepping to the other end of the bar to refill a beer for one of the pot bellied rednecks who had gone dry.

If he had something lined up, that could only mean one thing, she thought as she drained the last of her Ghost River and slapped a ten on the bar.  

“Another round?” he asked, walking back over.

“Naw,” she answered coolly, “I better get a wiggle on.”

Dripping off her stool, she headed for the door, the bloated yokels leering at her slinking curves the whole way.

“If I don’t see you again,” Cook called after her, “I gotta know your name.”

She spun back just before the door and leveled him with a look that could have fried an egg… saying,

“Oh, you’ll see me again, sugar.  And that hot rod of yours… keep it ‘tween the ditches.”

And with that, she was gone, the whole damn building exhaling finally.

Lord.

Have.

Mercy.

Cook would see her again, sooner than he knew.  Later that night, after hoisting all the chairs up on the tables and sweeping, he killed the lights and stepped out to lock up.  Cicadas howling from the country darkness as he crunched across the lot toward his Torino, keys jangling in his hand.

The car roared beneath him and then purred as he squinted out into the shadows... at something… waiting… motionless… outlined only by a sliver of moonlight.

What the fuck?

He reached down by his knee and plucked the headlights plunger on the dash, flooding the lot with xenon blue.  And there she was, shapely in all black with a fistful of pistol.  Her eyes full of death as she leveled the gun and took aim.

Holy shit.

It thundered to life in her grip, clouding the windshield in bloody spiderwebs.  Cook jolting with each blast until finally slumping over the wheel of the puttering Torino.
"My name," she finally confessed to the dead man, "is Dixie."