splat chapter thirty-four

SPLAT CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Suzie landed with a clatter of objects and a ferocious slam onto her back, knocking the wind out of her. The sound of her fall boomed, and the surface beneath her crumpled. She bounced. Her bag cushioned her fall slightly, but there would be telltale bruises later. She lay there, stunned, not breathing, staring into the depths of the night sky. She could see little particles of matter floating in front of her eyes - dust motes in the street lights; stars. She heard crickets.

Someone fired at the truck from above. Oh yeah, cops. They were angry. She heard sirens. With a great staggering breath, with a sharp stab of pain, she rolled over. She groaned; the surface she was on creaked. She rolled again. It hurt all over. She rolled across the knife and grabbed it. Nice knife. Suzie kept rolling until she fell off the side of the trailer.

Uncle Daddy caught her in his arms. Drivers who'd stopped to watch the drama cheered. She hugged him. She cried. He cried. The cops fired another shot. He bundled her in through his door, got in after her, and took off.

He pushed and shoved a path through the cars, and for once they got out of his way. The exit was a thousand feet in front of them. They heard sirens. They left the highway as flashing lights appeared over the hill. The cops were all standing on the other side of the bridge, watching and pointing, calling on their cellphones.

'You hurt, Baby Girl?' he asked as they descended the ramp at Ormond Street and took a curve. Turner Field loomed over them to the north. Uncle Daddy made a quick decision as he rounded the bend, and took a right on Crew Street, denting a light post. He drove down the narrow street behind Hank Aaron Boulevard, which was too well lit for comfort. He turned his truck lights off.

Suzie didn't think she'd broken any bones. She moaned, 'Yeah, I'm okay.'

'My God, Baby Girl, what have you got yourself into?' he asked. She couldn't say right at that moment. 'What the hell were you thinking?'

He passed up the first left, onto east/west running Atlanta Avenue, a nice wide thoroughfare, and he didn't take the next one either: a rickety, hilly little bitty street called Vanira. He went one more street and turned up Haygood, only slightly wider. The back end of his trailer rode up over the curb and gouged out a scrape of dirt as he turned. They crossed Hank Aaron Drive and disappeared into the shadows. They heard sirens.

'Can't you stay out of trouble for one minute?' he demanded. She started sniffling. 'It wouldn't take them long at all to figure out you're the sniper, and then you'd really be in trouble.'

Suzie had to agree. She was stupid. She was achy. It hurt whenever the truck lurched. The houses looked so close. The streets looked so small. Uncle Daddy drove his big rumbling truck through sleeping neighborhoods. He hardly slowed down, he was that confident. Or maybe scared.

At Martin Street he took a left. And ran over the curb. This time he pulled a street sign over. He took a very hard right onto Farrington, and pulled out a stop sign. The trees were overgrown, and jutted out into the street. Cars lined one side. Sometimes he had to choose, sometimes he left a line of trees with the bark scraped off and the lower branches in the road, and still scraped up the cars.

'You really know your side streets,' Suzie said with admiration.

He mumbled. 'Summerhill. I grew up here. This was the first black neighborhood after the slaves were freed. It was all tarpaper shanties and log cabins, but it was property. Folks probly thought as much of their homes as white people over in Inman Park did - the first white neighborhood.'

They scraped by cars and trees and rode up over the curbs. They heard sirens. They heard a helicopter. They saw a flashing beam looking down on Georgia Avenue to their north, the obvious route for a large vehicle escaping pursuit. They must have thought he'd turned left on Hank Aaron. Suzie whispered, 'These are not the droids you're looking for.'

The roads in Summerhill were tiny, and most of them didn't go through. Uncle Daddy had to zigzag, taking a left on Hill Street, then a right on Kendrick, and then a left on Rawlins. Suzie watched as they passed old houses crammed together, all dark; all the paint worn off, the boards dingy, the screens blackened, the porches coming away from the front of the house.

They gingerly crossed Atlanta Avenue going north. It was one of the wide streets the cops would assume they'd taken. She couldn't see the helicopter. As they turned a sharp right onto Ormond, scraping loudly past a phone pole, she saw it loom into sight above Atlanta Avenue, now a block behind. She could feel the whumping of the blades thru the cab of the truck.

Uncle Daddy made a left onto Cherokee and headed to the bridge over I-20. This was the dangerous part. It was wide, it was lit, it was a through street, and it was a block north of the precinct station. From there on, it was all running.

They scurried north along Cherokee, under the trees that still remained on the outer border of the park. Beautiful Grant Park. Suzie gazed at it in admiration. In the moonlight it still looked like 300 acres of 150 year old trees.

Then Uncle Daddy had to get his truck around a narrow bit lined with shops on Cherokee, then across the I-20 bridge, then a right turn onto Woodward, just one block shy of Memorial, and a left on Park, one shy of Boul. And then the really dangerous part. The intersection of Memorial and Boulevard, a major junction of surface streets, where cars and trucks and police cars drove by all night long.

They could no longer hear the helicopter. Uncle Daddy turned right onto Memorial, running up over the side of the curb, and went down the hill to the light at Boulevard. He had to wait for the light. Suzie kept looking at the sky. The light changed, Uncle Daddy turned left, and they cruised down Boulevard approaching the entrance to the CSX Intermodal terminal. They went around a bend. There were the Fulton Cotton Mill lofts on the right. There was the terminal entrance down a ways to the left.

But the terminal had been closed for 36 hours. There were trucks lined up on the entrance ramp, lined up in the turn lane into the terminal, and lined up with their right wheels up on the sidewalk behind that, all waiting to be processed. Uncle Daddy couldn't get past the line of trucks. He had no choice but to pull in. Two more trucks coming from I-20 pulled in behind him. He was blocked.

After being closed all day and the night before, the terminal was now reopen. Uncle Daddy had been waiting around at home, and came to get in line when he got the call. That's why Suzie got voicemail: he was on the phone.

A cop with flashing lights sped past them. She ducked down. Uncle Daddy started to complain that she was giving him a heart attack.

Suzie started scratching a batch of poison ivy that was coming up on her legs. 'I'm sorry for getting the cops in your business, Uncle Daddy. It's not a terrorist den, I swear.'

'Hush. I knew that all along, Honey. I've been down back to see your place. Remember I helped you put up the swing?' She didn't remember. She'd always wondered how she got the rope up into the branches.

'How's Auntie Mae? Did you find out anything from the doctors yet?'

'No, Baby. They said they'd moved her to a recovery center, but wouldn't tell me where, and I've got to go talk to the doctor about it in person. So I don't really know how she is.'

'I'm so worried about her. What if something went wrong with her operation? Why haven't we heard anything at all?'

'Patience, Baby Girl. She's got to be all right. They would have called me if she weren't.'

'But complications. Maybe they're afraid to tell you.'

Uncle Daddy remarked quietly, 'Your mom died of complications, you know.'

Suzie stopped breathing. She didn't know. She'd never heard the details.

'Your Mom had a heart attack while she was under the anesthetic.' Oh. She felt blank. He continued, 'They were doing an emergency cesarean. You had your cord around your neck and your daddy said you were awfully blue.'

Anesthetic. Suzie shivered. She started to cry softly. Uncle Daddy reached over and hugged her to his chest. She felt like a rag doll. She hadn't showered for days, but Uncle Daddy wouldn't care.

'Your Auntie Mae wanted me to give you something from your mamma,' he said gently.

Suzie sighed. 'Keep it for me, Uncle Daddy, I can't take anything with me. I'll just lose it.' Then she remembered, and dug around in her bag for Auntie Mae's Bible.

The sat there in silence for a moment, looking at the cover. 'She's not getting any better, you know,' he remarked.

Another cop went by.

Uncle Daddy made up his mind. Suzie felt him change, and sat up to look at him. 'I'm going to dump this load, Baby Girl, and then you and me are going to head on down to Florida for awhile. I've got some good buddies down in Holiday, near Clearwater. We can hole up there and stay out of sight until this all dies down.'

She thought about it. She could go to community college, or get her CDL, or get another job as a waitress. 'But you can't leave Auntie Mae,' she objected.

He nodded. 'I know I can't. I'm just going to drop you down there and come back here until she's fit to travel.' He sighed. 'Then I thought we might as well retire and enjoy life while we can.'

She thought of fleeing to Florida. The cops'd have them before they got to Macon. 'I can't let you do that, Uncle Daddy,' she said. 'It's too dangerous, and you haven't done anything.' she thought a moment. 'You'd spend your life in jail if they caught you. Aiding and abetting a terrorist.' She started sniffling again. 'I'm a big girl now. I'll manage.'

'No,' he said strongly. 'I won't let you do it alone.'

She tried to reason with him. 'Auntie Mae needs you.' She put her hand on the door handle.

It was too much for him. He needed Auntie Mae, and the thought of her in the hospital made him realize he couldn't leave Atlanta for any length of time, not even to try and rescue Suzie. He was defeated. They sat there in silence while another cop whizzed by. They heard the helicopter again, getting closer.

'Uncle Daddy, I've got to go,' she said.

'But where are you going?'

'I've got a plan. I'll be okay. I'll give you a call in a couple of days to find out how y'all are doing.'

He pulled out his wallet and gave her all the money he had. Suzie saw a twenty and a few ones and started to object, but he thrust it into her hands. 'Better hurry, now,' he said gruffly. Suzie gave him a big, deep hug, and was out of the truck before either of them could start crying.

She looked up and down the street. Big rigs lined Boulevard. The terminal was just up the hill, but she couldn't just walk in. Oakland Cemetery was to the right, and ran up against the railyard. She eyed the stone wall. It was too high to climb, but Uncle Daddy could boost her over. Then she spotted some bushes, and ran for them.

It's possible to climb the bushes commonly known as redtips, but only if you weigh less than 60 pounds. However, they grow twenty to thirty feet high, and they're really good cover. Nobody could see Suzie once she squeaked between them and the wall. Climbing was another matter. Every branch she put her foot on broke. Suzie ended up, scraped and scratched, pulling herself up along the trunks and rolling over the top of the wall. She landed in soft, wet grass. Her poison ivy itched like crazy.

It was still dark, but it must have been around 4:30, and dawn was coming. She hurried along the wall to the back of the railyard, ducking down whenever she saw the helicopter scanning the ground. Her path ran up a hill and through the potter's field, with nothing to hide. A wall separated her from the trains and the tracks, a million railroad cars, just waiting to shelter her.

She got to the corner of the cemetery and found an iron fence, chained shut. So she climbed it, and found herself right next to an empty railroad track with dry grass in the middle. The next track had a train parked on it. And the next one. And the next.

Suzie had no idea how to catch a train.

She climbed between two cars, scrabbling over with her heart in her mouth, afraid that the train would suddenly move and crush her. She walked along between two trains, ready to duck underneath one if she should see somebody. But she was alone. All the action was going on in the main part of the yard, where trucks were being checked in, offloaded using a big huge crane, and lifted onto piggyback train gondolas.

She kept between trains and slowly made her way down the tracks in the direction of her old apartment. She thought maybe the edge of the yard would be a good place to catch a train pulling out. Activity was going on all around her. She kept hearing beep beep beep, getting closer and closer. Metal would scrape metal, then very loud bumps. She didn't know what was making the noise. The trains around her were still, unmoving, dark. She slowly passed the unseen beeping object. The tracks began to come together. And then it was down to just a couple of tracks rolling out toward Decatur.

She passed under the Marta station walkway and came across her old apartment. It made her very sad to see it, all collapsed in on itself, blackened by the fire, acres of rubble and burned out cars. It was eerily silent. She wondered why she'd come here to see it. It wasn't because she could actually catch a train there. No trains had rolled through since she'd been on the tracks. She came this way so she could see the wreck of her life. So she could really understand that there was no way to go back. No place for her here.

She returned the way she had come. For a few hundred yards there was no cover, and she had to walk as if she were invisible, dressed in black, with a black bag on her shoulders, her white skin glowing in the pre-dawn light. All she had was her bag. Her Dad's picture was still in one piece, with blue purple streaks on it where it got wet during the hurricane. She had her Superman t-shirt. She had her chef's knife and a pocket full of money. And she was alone in the world. She started to sniffle again.

She snuck back through the parked trains. This time she spotted the source of the beeping. It was a guy in a big old rolling crane, busy moving from one flatbed to another, lifting hundred-ton containers and loading them onto the car. She made her way past it in a hurry, having to duck underneath and scramble over cars like playing russian roulette. She was really nervous. If she were caught it would mean another charge added to the list. They'd never let her out of jail.

She continued walking along the tracks toward Downtown, sneaking between trains. She was leaving the yard. It was beginning to get light in the east, for real this time. She could hear the birds waking up. Maybe she was in the wrong place. Maybe there were no trains she could actually catch in this yard. She wasn't going to be able to find shelter on a piggyback car with 53-foot trailers stacked on top of each other, and that's all this terminal seemed to have. She walked faster.

She heard the rails singing, and looked behind her. A train had finished being loaded and was pulling out, going slow. She ducked under a car until the engine had passed, and then looked for some way to get on. Some of the cars had short sections of railing on them, so she ran over to one and paced it, trying to work her courage up.

She stretched her hand out to the highest rung she could reach and grabbed hold. Her feet were yanked out from under her, and she scrambled aboard and ducked down to make herself small in case she passed an alert train man. The train continued moving slowly into town. Suzie wondered where it would take her.

Not far, apparently. The train took her to the west side of Atlanta, and stopped. She got off and looked around. It was a huge rail yard. Thousands of cars, dozens of tracks. It was getting light. Suzie found a ditch and made herself comfortable.

It took several hours for Uncle Daddy to discharge his load at the terminal and get home. The cops never found him, but he was going to have to get those fangs off his grill right away. He worried about Suzie and his wife most of the time he's sat there waiting. Now, getting home, he would normally go to sleep, but it was getting light, and he decided to stay up and go to the hospital first thing and find Mae. So he sat down in front of the TV set and turned on the morning news.

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next, suzie finds peace in the sunrise