i'm at wordpress now

if you are interested in seeing more of my work, including a fabric blog, a food industry rant blog, several fiction blogs, a cancer blog, then please go to my family of blogs at wordpress.

www.fabricart.wordpress.com
www.geneticake.wordpress.com
www.breastcancerblog.wordpress.com

thanks for enjoying my work.

love
jeanne

I hope you enjoyed my novel

I had a lot of fun, and was made quite enraged, writing this novel. It deals with sexism, racism, road rage, revenge, corporate conspiracies to dominate the world, and asks the question: what can one person do about it? The answer isn't politically correct, but I felt much better getting it all down, so it was worth it to me.
If you'd like to read another novel, in progress, about a construction site from hell and the neighborhood residents affected by it, you can find it here. It's got addiction, murder and mayhem, little old ladies and dogs as its theme, and when I have a chance to work on it, I'm happy with the progress. It's a novel approach to novel writing, as it's being written entirely online, with all the notes and research available to you, the reader. It's even got pictures chronicling the construction process.
Enjoy.

splat chapter thirty-five

SPLAT CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The graphic is Sniper Captured in big bold paint-splattered letters. The announcer is a way chipper blonde in a bright red suit. 'Our top story this morning,' she chirped, 'police have arrested the Sniper of Atlanta after a bizarre shootout in North Georgia early this morning.'

The screen shows his photo. 'Elwood Dwayne Collier, fifty-six, head of a multimillion dollar development company, was captured after a struggle with police this morning. His car was discovered by police in a ditch on Brown's Bridge Road in Forsyth County at about one a.m. this morning. Apparently he went off the road after a gunfight with what police are calling an underworld colleague. Police attempting to rescue Collier were fired upon, and returned the fire.'

The screen shows stock footage of a rescue helicopter landing on a hospital helipad. 'The suspect was life flighted to Grady Hospital with multiple gunshot wounds and other serious injuries sustained in the accident. Police found an illegal handgun in the vehicle, alcohol, as well as cocaine and marijuana, bomb making materials, and paint similar to that used by the Sniper in the recent death of his business partner, Jerald Sweat.'

The anchor looks personally relieved that the Sniper has been caught. 'Police are charging Collier with multiple acts of terrorism, as well as the shooting death of his former partner, firearm violations, drug trafficking, DUI, interfering with an officer, assault with a deadly weapon, and resisting arrest. According to police, Collier is said to be well-connected socially and politically, with ties to white supremacist gangs, organized crime, Latin American drug cartels, and,' she looks at the camera significantly, 'he has a history of domestic violence interventions. Police say that when he is out of intensive care, he will undergo drug treatment and psychiatric evaluation before receiving a formal hearing.'

Uncle Daddy grunted in satisfaction and settled further into his chair. Maybe there was hope for Suzie after all.

The same house-in-flames graphic comes up. The graphic hasn't changed in a while because the artist responsible for the Suspicious House Fire series of illustrations has recently been arrested for unpaid taxes.

'In a new development,' the woman says happily, 'police have apprehended the arsonists responsible for the recent fires, including yesterday's apartment fire, which resulted in six deaths, widespread evacuations, and millions of dollars in damage to the CSX railroad terminal.'

She looks gleeful. 'The arsonists told police that they were acting under orders from,' she paused for emphasis, 'developer Elwood Collier and his former business partner Jerald Sweat. The accused arsonists confessed to thirty-two arson attacks in the past six months. Police plan to charge Collier with these crimes as well.'

Uncle Daddy grunted again, and got up to get himself a glass of sweet tea. But there wasn't any, so he got a beer instead.

The graphic changes to black letters that read Fraud. 'Police are also investigating whether other crimes were committed in the redevelopment of that section of Reynoldstown. They are looking into allegations that Collier committed insurance, mortgage, and tax fraud. He is also suspected of attempting to bribe local police and government officials. The GBI has moved to seize his assets pending the outcome of this investigation.' She looks smug. Maybe she'd been hit on by him at some party.

The anchor turns serious now. 'In a sudden reversal of policy, lawmakers say they will be tightening restrictions on the shipping of hazardous waste through populated areas, effective immediately. Restrictions were loosened on the eve of the recent rail yard fire, which is still being investigated by the EPA. This is a bipartisan action sponsored by six members of the legislature, who spent an uncomfortable night with their families in city shelters when their nearby Inman Park neighborhood was evacuated.'

Uncle Daddy sipped his beer as a legislator in a crumpled suit and a loud voice vows to reevaluate conditions in Atlanta's shelters. 'Damn straight,' he muttered, and has another sip.

The graphic shows a traffic jam, the letters read The Big Mess. 'More traffic-related problems in the aftermath of the Big Mess today. The south end of I-285 is still closed while workers remove debris from the roadway.' The screen shows a shot of cranes in the road, hauling off plane bits.

The graphic still reads The Big Mess, but shows a t-shirt inside a red circle with a line through it. 'Police have confiscated 10,000 t-shirts bearing the slogan, I Survived The Big Mess. They say Atlanta's traffic problems are being made worse by the thousands of rubberneckers and tourists who have jammed the roads around the airport trying to get a glimpse of the clean-up efforts. There are reports of whole families traveling from South Carolina and Alabama to view the site of the incident. Police have threatened to arrest sightseers and loiterers.'

The anchor grows somber. 'Airport officials announced probable delays in finishing the long-awaited Fifth Runway. While it may be possible to step up production, they say, the extent of repairs to the future runway surface may endanger their record for being on time and under budget.' She looks at the camera encouragingly. Go team.

The graphic changes to that annoying panda. 'Plans to turn Grant Park into a multi-use development met with opposition from the top today, as the Governor came out in support of keeping it as a public park.'

The Governor appears on screen, looking severe. 'Plans are being redrawn at this time to keep Grant Park out of the hands of unscrupulous developers who are trying to ruin one of Atlanta's beloved features.'

The announcer comes back and smiles. 'New plans include a three-story parking deck, and officials say a small admission fee is being considered to help defray the projected $13 million cost.' She pauses. 'And now, a word from our sponsor.'

An ad comes on. The sound gets louder. Uncle Daddy shifted slightly in his chair. He was feeling a little tired.

The scene opens on the exterior of an upscale suburban McMansion. A team of Mexican gardeners works on the beautifully kept front lawn. We cut to the interior and see a blonde wife in the dining room, dressed in designer casual clothes, arranging schedules and to-do lists. Around her, black maids are hard at work cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, washing the windows. A Chinese cook stirs several pots on the stove and bends over to check something in the oven. Through the bay window overlooking the back yard, we can see a black nanny pushing the children in their swings. Everybody's smiling.

The scene cuts back to the housewife in charge of it all. She says, in honeyed, southern belle tones, 'I used to do all this myself.' She nodded toward the workers.

'I worked my fingers to the bone to keep my family comfortable.' She shows her manicured hands, looking like she's never done a hard day's work in her life.

She sighs and smiles and gestures at the servants. 'I never imagined how easy life could be. Now I have time for all the little things that are so important.'

She rises from her seat and grabs a tennis racquet and a sports bag. 'Like a game with the girls. And lunch at the Club. And after that, my daughter and I are going to the mall.'

She heads for the door. A smiling tuxedoed footman opens it for her. She turns back to the camera and smiles broadly. 'Make all your dreams of luxury come true with certified service personnel.'

The woman steps lightly out to her Escalade on the curb. A servant holds it open for her and bows. She bounces in and pulls away. Her license reads RentaslaveTM and a phone number comes up on the screen beneath it: 1-800-SERVANTS.

The news is back. The graphic reads Wanted in bold black letters over a fuzzy driver's license photograph of a man. 'Police are looking for Nelson Tatum, a forty-two year old white male residing in Douglasville. Police say the suspect is 6'9½'' tall, and weighs 195 pounds. He was last seen in the Riverdale area yesterday. Police consider him armed and dangerous and caution citizens not to attempt to apprehend him themselves, but to call the police immediately.' She looks at the camera with disapproval on her chipper face. 'Nelson Tatum has been linked to Elwood Collier, the alleged Atlanta Sniper, and is said to be the head of the biggest stolen car ring and illegal drug operation in the South.'

Uncle Daddy stirred long enough to see Nelson's picture. A redneck. He closed his eyes.

The graphic changes to flames. It reads Up In Smoke. 'In a related story, the Riverdale auto repair shop where the fugitive worked burned to the ground yesterday evening.' The screen shows footage of a huge fire, completely engulfing the building. Only the sign is undamaged - Stoners Ato Repar, appearing intermittently in the thick black smoke.

'Flames reached one hundred and fifty feet at times. Five fire engines responded to the call, and it took them hours to get the fire out. Police speculate that the fire involved petrochemicals of various kinds, as well as tires and automobile interiors .'

The screen cuts to a picture from a helicopter. It hovers over the highway and pans over to show how close the fire is to evening commuters on Tara Boulevard. The camera zooms closer to show onlookers, the street closed for a block surrounding the building, fire trucks and cops sprawled across the lanes, traffic backed up all the way to I-75. 'Police consider this fire the work of arsonists, and are examining the wreckage for clues.'

Uncle Daddy started to snore softly.

The graphic changes to a set of scales. 'In the state legislature today, the Republican majority overwhelmingly made the Democratic party illegal, due to alleged ties with terrorist organizations. Police have started rounding up registered Democrats.'

The screen shows people scraping bumper stickers from their parked cars. 'Police are manning roadblocks to catch suspected Democrats. In a similar move, being a Liberal has now also been declared illegal, but police are unsure how to identify these criminals and are waiting for guidelines.'

Uncle Daddy shifted in his chair to get more comfortable. The snoring stopped, but he slept on, exhausted.

The graphic is a medical caduceus behind bars. 'Doctor Jeremiah Buford, head of HeatHealingTM Technologies and the Jeremiah Buford Clinic for Cancer Solutions, is being charged today with several felony counts of receiving stolen goods, animal abuse, and operating a laboratory without a license.'

The screen shows animals in pitiful condition sitting woefully in their cages. 'Five chimpanzees from our very own Zoo Atlanta were discovered in cages in his basement, most suffering from apparent brain damage, as well as radiation burns to various parts of their bodies. Doctor Buford said in a statement that he was performing tests to assure the safety of his company's product.'

The screen shows a still picture of the doctor, dripping with jewelry. 'Dr. Buford is one of the founders of the Jeremiah Buford Clinic for Cancer Solutions, which has been ordered closed by the FDA pending investigation. According to officials, as head of HeatHealing Technologies, he is faced with serious legal liability due to fatal product defects that they allege he has hidden from federal officials.'

Uncle Daddy slept on.

A new graphic reads Bad Boy. The anchor looks at the camera. A small smile creeps over her features as she tries to remain professional. 'In national news, internationally known televangelist Pat Robertson was arrested for making terroristic threats against whole communities and heads of foreign governments.' The picture is a stock photograph showing his smiling face. He looks deranged. 'Reverend Robertson, who once ran for President of the United States, is being kept in an unknown location, and is being charged with violations of the Patriot Act. No arraignment date has been set. Calls to the Christian Broadcasting Network asking for their response have not been returned.'

Another graphic reads Emerald City scrawled on a bridge with cops scratching their heads above it. 'Another movie fan comes to Atlanta,' the anchor says, smiling happily. 'A graffiti artist tagged,' she emphasizes tagged with her eyebrows, 'a bridge on the Connector late last night, and then escaped capture by police.'

A fuzzy traffic camera photo comes onscreen: Suzie being cool in her black clothes and her backpack, attaching spraycans to her harness. 'Police are searching for this person, who was nearly apprehended in the act of what they're calling terroristic vandalism late last night. Police were alerted by vigilant DOT traffic operators to the attempted vandalism, and rushed to the scene, but the culprit escaped capture, assisted by an accomplice in a getaway tractor trailer that stopped on the highway to pick him up. The two escaped pursuit by both police car and helicopter, and their whereabouts are currently unknown.'

The screen shows a traffic camera picture of Uncle Daddy's truck, its fangs gleaming. 'Police are also looking for the driver of the Kenworth truck that stopped to illegally give aid to the suspected terrorist. Police think the vandal may be a teenager wanted for multiple graffiti crimes in Atlanta. Plans to remove the graffiti are being made, which police say will cause the closure of the northbound Connector for several hours. Graffiti removal will be scheduled for nighttime hours when impact on traffic will be minimized.'

She looks at the camera with a big smile on her face. 'Next up, it's going to be hot enough to fry an egg out there today.'

Uncle Daddy turned in his sleep and started to snore again.

It was getting to be dawn. The birds were louder than the crickets. Suzie was lying in a handy ditch between tracks, in an unknown yard, waiting for another chance to catch a freight train out of town. She was cold in the morning air, wet from the dew, stiff, sore, bruised, tired, and yes, hungry and thirsty. She had no idea where she was. She dozed, her head resting on her bag, hoping for some luck.

And luck was to be had. Suzie happened to be in Tilford Yard, one of the busiest yards in Atlanta. Forty trains a day. Since she didn't know enough to approach a friendly trainman and ask him where there was a train making up, she was going to need crazy luck.

She awoke to the sound of a train pulling out. She looked up and saw a bunch of shadowy figures emerging from the same gully as she was lying in. They gravitated toward the train, spotting a couple of likely cars, and exploded into action.

She watched as they chased a string of cars; a boxcar with its door open, a grain carrier with ladders on the end, a flatbed with a steel structure held upright by clamps. It seemed like a dozen people running for the train. Suzie hurriedly got up and ran to join them. All around her they were jumping on, catching hold of rungs, diving through the boxcar door.

She paced the boxcar and threw her bag inside. It was chest high off the ground and the train was picking up speed. How was she going to get inside? She'd seen several people vaulting into the open car. It looked like it took some serious vertical lift, and she was a shrimp. She felt scared. But she was running alongside the boxcar and it was starting to outrun her. It was now or never.

Several faces watched from the inside. Someone shouted encouragement. She leaped into the car, diving headfirst onto the slippery metal floor. Her hands were grabbing like a gecko's. Her legs were hanging out of the door. She heard someone telling her to keep them straight. She was too afraid of getting caught in the wheels to let them drop, but she could feel herself starting to slip out, her legs sagging. She tried arching her back to bring her legs up, and felt a searing pain as she aggravated the injuries she'd gotten in her fall onto the top of Uncle Daddy's truck.

And then she felt strong hands grabbing her shoulders and pulling her in.

She looked at her benefactor. It was a tall, skinny guy a couple of years older than her, with a warm smile on his face. She arranged herself along the wall in the middle of a crowd of rail kids, marveling at her luck and trying to catch her breath.

'Does anybody know where we're going?' she asked.

The guy who hauled her aboard said, 'We're on the A&WP line to Montgomery and points south.'

She looked at him. He was kind of cute. She noticed his backpack. There were two bullet holes in it. He saw her looking. 'Yard bulls,' he said, and she nodded. 'I'm Maximillian. I'm a poet.'

'Suzie. Uh, I do graffiti.'

He pointed around at the others and introduced them. 'Gracie,' who looked about fifteen, 'she's emancipated from her parents. Gracie nodded. 'Johnny Thunder,' he nodded at an older guy, about forty-five. 'He's up for King of the Hobos this year.' Johnny said Hey and grinned. 'That's Kathleen,' he said, pointing to an old lady. 'She's from Ireland.'

Suzie said, 'My mom lived in Ireland.' Kathleen smiled. 'You got shoes, girl?' Suzie's feet were cut and blackened. The woman fished around in her bag and tossed her a pair of tennis shoes. Suzie choked up.

Maximillian pulled a forty-ounce bottle of beer out of his pack. Suzie wondered how it had managed to remain unbroken. He must have a method. He passed it around and everybody had a swig.

The train passed yards full of rusted out industrial items, ex cars, ex buildings; picked up speed. It swayed pleasantly. The wheels made screeching noises at odd moments. The passengers talked quietly. Suzie looked at Maximillian and wondered if he was as nice as he looked. He looked back, and winked.

The train rode off into the sunrise. The moon set.

* * *

The end

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.

* * *

next, suzie finds peace in the sunrise

splat chapter thirty-three

SPLAT CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Suzie rolled into the sparkly city with a profound sense that she had worn out her welcome. She was jobless, homeless, friendless. She had no business in Atlanta anymore. With Auntie Mae probably dying there was nothing holding her there. In fact, it was dangerous to stick around, having soiled the nest so many times.

She had a deep, uneasy sense of unfulfillment. She felt like she'd been wasting her time. In a shallow examination of her life, she decided she hadn't learned any lessons at all. She was the ultimate loser. Hell, she even ran from a fight with Ed. She berated herself for it. She couldn't even act on her convictions when her life was at stake. She told herself she had to be a soldier, that it was honorable to not flinch. Then she thought of all the teenage boys who played chicken, and how stupid she'd thought they were. Then she thought about her own painful death as a result of some contest of honor. Fuck that, she concluded. She was right to run.

But she was still a loser. She ran from danger on a daily basis. She couldn't stand up to Nelson, she didn't stand up to bullying at work, she never stood up to her roommates. Such a little mousey thing, always trying to please, to be acceptable, to earn just a few brownie points. Always looking for approval. Suzie was tired of this bullshit. Approval was her reason for living? She hocked a loogie out the window. Yuk fu. Not anymore.

The new Suzie was going to be a smarter, harder, more worldly Suzie. Nobody was going fool her anymore. She wouldn't trust nobody. She would keep to herself. She would above all avoid emotional entanglements.

If she believed this for a moment, it was out of willfulness. Suzie fell in love with every man she met; she was curious about every little thing she saw, and every situation she came across. She always spoke to strangers; she always said the wrong thing. She never really knew what she thought about a given subject until the words were out of her mouth and it was too late to take them back.

But she did believe it was time to manifest some change, to bring forth some new version of herself; to grow up a little. She needed to do something she could point to, an icon of her spirit, of her intention. A legacy. A statement.

This naturally brought her to thoughts of tagging that bridge. And then it was hardly the work of a moment to persuade herself that she needed to vandalize property, just as it was to persuade herself she had to rid the world of the Ed and Jerry show.

She needed to tag the bridge. It was her moral obligation. Her duty to society. Her duty to her friends. After all, the guys had probly been arrested for tagging. That made them political prisoners of an unjust government. So, in a show of solidarity, she had to vindicate them by carrying on their work the obligation to comment on society, in front of God and everybody.

Not just vandalism. Art.

Not just terrorism. A statement.

Okay, she cautioned herself. This is more bullshit. So how does Surrender Dorothy make a statement about the plight of political prisoners?

Hmmm, she thought. It shows the false values of consumerism, imprisoning us in sparkly dreams of perfection? Prisoners of the glitz?

That's stupid.

It shows how we're all innocents in the hands of forces beyond our control, just trying to get home?

No.

It illustrates the moral, All That Glitters Is Not Gold? Except just two hours up Georgia 400 is Dahlonega? Where all that glitters sure enough is gold?

Now you're back to being stupid.

I give up. The only thing Surrender Dorothy is to illustrate how pretty Atlanta is, how fairy tale it seems from far away. So cute, sitting there in the middle of infinite forest like that. I know; I've got it. it celebrates the fact that Atlanta's the Capital of the South, the place of hopes and dreams, where there's work and a good life, not like the million little munchkin towns everybody came from. It really is the Emerald City.

Why don't you just say why you want to do it?

I just thought it was funny when I saw it next to the Mormon Temple up in DC, and I wanted others to appreciate the joke.

Why didn't you say so?

It was a full moon. Shit always happens on a full moon. This full moon had Suzie talking to herself. She hadn't had much sleep the past couple of nights, and the sleep she'd had was loaded with toxic hazards. She'd been under a lot of strain lately. She wasn't thinking very clearly; she didn't grasp all that was happening in her life, and she was wishing like crazy that she could get out of dealing with it.

The pressure of the full moon was bringing everything to a head. All the problem areas of her life were under attack, and she didn't have fingers enough to plug the leaks. Suzie was on her last nerve.

But she was by God going to do that tag. She drove down to just south of town, and got off at University Avenue. She turned east and explored the industrial neighborhood around the railroad tracks. She could park her car somewhere around there and hike in from the grade crossing at University and Ridge streets. But it would be a long hike.

She turned around and went back under the highway to see what it looked like on the west side. She took her first right, onto Moton, and snaked her way northeast along Roy, West, Fletcher, and finally onto Fortress Avenue, which paralleled the Connector. She was getting good with the dance on the pedals.

It was a very poor section of town: teeny houses with garbage-filled yards, kudzu-eaten houses with boarded windows, burned-out hulks sprayed with gang graffiti. It was in much worse condition than her Reynoldstown ex neighborhood. Used to be.

A little way up Fortress, the houses gave way to vacant lots and a railroad crossing, and then proceeded north across the tracks into an even worse-off neighborhood.

South Yard was massive. It stretched away to the left; trains and tracks as far as the eye could see, a sort of plain of metal and rock in a hilly landscape of trees, poor people's houses, and rusting industrial lots.

However. To the right was the railroad overpass at the Connector, not twenty yards off. The promised land awaited.

Suzie parked her Trooper near a house that looked like it might have occupants, so that nobody would mistake it for an abandoned vehicle, a burned-out version of which was splayed all over the street a little ways up. She changed into black clothes in the back of the truck, gathered up her bag and Jason's gear, and locked the door behind her.

It was after 2:30 in the morning. Did she really want to be wandering around South Atlanta on foot at that time of night? But there wasn't a soul out in that neighborhood; nobody was on the street corner selling crack; there were no cars worth robbing or passers-by to scam. There was no reason why she should be afraid. But she shivered anyway. She realized how much she disliked being by herself.

She walked out onto the bridge. It was an awesome sight. Suzie stared open mouthed at her surroundings. The power of the trains, their giant proportions. Five tracks were a hundred feet across. The view was vast. It was very quiet, and very clear. It dwarfed her.

Atlanta shone from there. You could see everything, Turner Field, all the downtown buildings, straight up Peachtree. All lit up, with fairy lights all around. It was a magic city. It was the Emerald City. New York and DC rolled into one with a touch of Detroit and LA; the spiritual capital of America. The heart. Or maybe just the gut - who's to say?

Suzie stood looking at it and sighed. I love this city. She walked out across to the east edge of the bridge, overhanging the right lanes of the Connector, and thirty to a hundred feet from the gigantic road signs. Nobody from the road could see her there. She had a good look at the elements she had to work with. Iron railing, chain link fence, concrete edge, then nothing until the road, a long way down .

She considered how she was going to proceed, having only theoretical ideas about how to hitch herself to the fence. Another thing she'd never done because the guys wouldn't let her. She could tie the rope at one end, and then get it somehow to the other end of where she wanted to the tag to go, and tie it off there. There would be slack.

Was there anything she could to do take up the slack? She could put a third anchor in the middle, but then she'd have to transfer her lead from one to the other. 'It's easy,' she said, mocking Jason in that nasty way he had of making her feel stupid for asking. 'Just hook this thingie to the other thingie and go.'

She was remembering things she'd managed to worm out of Jason, rudimentary instructions for dealing with fall hazards. Obvious things that might assume subtlety when she was in the middle of a situation.

Like, don't fall. If you fall, don't swing. Keep your balance. And practical advice, like don't tangle your rope. Don't get it knotted up, don't hook your lanyard back onto itself thinking it'll hold. Don't connect your hooks to each other. Don't hook onto anything that could give way.

She continued figuring out the mechanics. All her anchor points were on the inside of the fence, and she needed to run a rope on the outside of the fence to hang down below the bridge surface. That was simple. She could tie one end and stuff the other through a link in the fence.

She had a sudden thought. She'd better have string tied to the end of the rope and attached somewhere so she could retrieve it once she'd climbed the fence. She looked down at the road. A truck and two pickups whizzed by doing 70.

Then there was the fact that the rope would sag in the middle, so she was only going to be able to paint the iron bridge support in the middle part of the rope. So maybe thirty feet. One two three four...sixteen letters and a space. How legible would eighteen inch letters be from 300 yards? Better make it forty feet. That would give her thirty feet of usable rope. So she thought.

She wasn't sure about any of this, especially whether she could safely launch herself off the side of a bridge. If she tied a hundred -foot rope to a fence post or a railing, she could use it to climb over and back. Once she was over she could just climb down and hook her lanyard to the guide rope. Simple.

She tried to remember how Jason said to get into the harness. She looked at it in her hands. It was a jumbled up mess of webbing and buckles. She tried putting the wide loops around her legs and her arms through the narrow loops, but it didn't feel right. She looked at the size of the narrow loops. Grown men put their legs through those things? She stuck her foot through, and scooted the strap up her thigh. It pinched. She pulled the large loops apart and stuck her shoulders through them. But the harness was right up against the bottom of her throat. Maybe she had it on backwards.

She peeled back out of it and turned it around. Better. But it was flopping loosely down off her shoulders, so she had to go around to all the buckles and take close to a foot out of each length. She hadn't realized Jason was that tall. Or she was that short.

Finally she had it on and snug. She stuffed a couple of paintcans into the equipment loops on the harness, and put her cellphone into the pocket of her black jeans.

She put her bag on like a backpack. She attached a lanyard to a loop at the side of her harness.

She picked up the rope and inspected it. Not for frays and stiffness cuz what did she know, but to admire its beautiful purple color.

Suzie stood there coiling the rope and thinking about how to attach to the anchor point. Jason had showed her how to make a figure eight knot once. He was a Boy Scout. She tried to remember.

Suzie ran the end of the rope around the railing, and then whipped it back off. It was rusty, with sharp edges. No. She ran it around the thick fence post instead, made a loop, then wrapped the end around the rope around the post, and tucked it through the loop.

She stood there for several minutes trying to figure out how he'd shown her to make the knot. She'd done it a bunch of times when he first taught her, and she should remember it, but the pattern was gone. She knew she had to loop a loop, though.

She paid out twenty feet, and stuck the rest of the coiled rope into the top of her bag. Oops. She looked at the descent device at her feet. She'd forgotten to thread the rope through her descender before tying it to the fence post. But Jason had shown her a special feature.

She took the descender and swung the side plate open. Inside were little cam rollers zigzagging along its length. She curled the rope up between them like river bends, and pressed it in with her fingers. Then she swung the cover back over it and latched it down. She attached the descender to her harness. She was ready.

Shit. No she wasn't. She'd forgotten the hook. She stamped her feet. This was taking too long. She unhooked from the descender and sped back to the truck, unlocked the back, and retrieved a six foot long metal hook with a short lanyard attached. She ran back with it over her shoulder like a javelin thrower, connected the rope again, attached the lanyard to her harness, and slipped the hook between the straps of her bag. Now she was ready.

She never noticed the baleful eye of the traffic camera not thirty feet from where she stood. It saw all her preening and prancing and staring open-mouthed at the city lights. It watched her struggle into the harness. It watched her go over the fence.

She scaled the chain link, crawling upwards with hands and feet. She was in black. She had silver spraypaint. She was standing on the outside of a fence off a railroad bridge, holding on to a rope, traffic rumbling below. If that wasn't cool, what was?

Except she was scared shitless and thinking this was the dumbest thing she'd ever done. It was no joke trying to climb a chain link fence in flipflops. All she could think about as she'd crawled over the top was that she could fall at any moment. She spent several humiliating minutes hooking her harness lanyard to the fence at eighteen-inch intervals all the way down. She called herself a few choice names during these moments.

When she got down to the edge of the fence, she squeezed her descender and dropped jerky, short distances to the edge of the concrete lip, her feet swinging as she bounced, the taste of bile in her mouth. Then she grabbed the string tied to the fence and retrieved the guide rope and tied it to the bottom of the fence post. It sagged a lot more than she expected. She hooked her lanyard to the guide rope.

Suzie stabilized herself with a white-knuckled fist around the guide rope, grabbed the hook, and swung closer to reach it under the edge of the metal bridge support. It caught. She swayed. It was kind of scary to be suspended over the highway. It was so far down, and she was so high up, and the traffic was going by so fast. She felt very small. Very vulnerable. Very panicky and short of breath. She started feeling sorry for herself. She felt tears. Enough, she scolded herself angrily. None of that crap, you wimp. You pussy.

It was hard to hold her position without having three hands. Just holding on with the hook in her left hand and painting with her right wasn't going to work. She had to sling her left arm over the guide rope and hold it with her body weight while using the hook. She found this out the hard way; the first time she loosened her grip with the hook, she immediately slid to the middle of the sagging guide rope, and had to haul herself hand over hand back to her position.

Time was passing. She had no idea how much time was passing, but it already felt like she'd been there for hours. There was a little false-dawn lightness on the horizon. Well, she thought, uncomfortably surveying the traffic below, might as well get into it.

She unhooked her spraycan, selected a fat tip for that 6'' sweep, and got started. She was mostly hidden by the exit signs a few yards away. They were massively huge. The signs she always squinted at when she was driving were twenty feet tall. She was glad they were there. They gave her a lot of invisibility until the cars got right underneath them. Then everything came clear - there was the bridge, there was the Emerald City beyond, there was Suzie dangling from ropes. It made her nervous. She was certain each motorist was looking up as they went by directly underneath.

She started to draw. Then she hesitated. She was suddenly struck with the lameness of the words she'd chosen. First, she was stealing from a successful and famous tag that belonged somewhere else. DC taggers resprayed the words Surrender Dorothy every time the DOT took it off, and it had been going on for the past twenty years. It would be disrespect if she just stole it.

So leave them their glory, and make an assertion to top it. Suzie leaned over and carved out a big silver E, as far over to the left as possible. She drew herself close with the hook, bent over, and twisted around to reach out with her spraycan. The letter turned out a little wobbly. But it was big. And clearly it was an E. She went over it again to make it thicker.

Then she moved over slightly, using her right hand to pull herself along, and sliding the hook with her left, sprayed a big M, only deciding at that moment to do all upper case letters. She bobbled over a few inches, and made another big E. It was a nice E, Suzie thought. There was a certain grace in the way she'd drawn the bottom leg. Like it was edging along.

She edged along. She was moving lower with each foot as her weight added to the sag of the amateurishly tied rope. Suzie was spraying level with her knees now. The R wasn't as nice. She wasn't paying enough attention to the zen of writing. She was paying more attention to the ground beneath her, and how often something big and lethal went by at 65 miles an hour.

She moved over and contemplated her work so far. She noticed there were no cars going by at the moment. Silence on the highway, the sounds of crickets and a distant siren. She loved the sound of the crickets. They were all around her, even suspended in the middle of a highway.

She continued, making a big A with a curly bar through it. Cars came by and she lost the sound of the crickets, but the siren kept getting louder.

Over in the state-of-the-art DOT Transportation Management Center, with eight operator consoles and nine 120-inch screens showing a three-by-three grid of traffic cameras, a small group of technicians had stopped monitoring the traffic to stand and watch Suzie clowning around on the bridge. Finally, after all bets were taken, and with a tinge of regret, the operations manager alerted the dispatcher, and the squad car took only a few moments to reach the scene.

Suzie got frightened when she realized the siren was for her. It got louder and louder, and then stopped. Oh shit, she thought, they've got me.

She moved along the rope and kept working, having to reach up slightly to make the next letter. For a moment she forgot which letter it was. It wouldn't be cool to misspell her tag. She hurriedly painted an L.

She moved into position for the next letter, and then stopped to wedge the paintcan between her thighs and grab her cellphone out of her pocket. The leg straps of the harness made this awkward and painful.

She reached up and started painting the D as she hit the button to redial, muddling the upright a little in her haste. She heard voices above her. The cops had spotted her rope.

The phone rang and rang, and finally she got Uncle Daddy's voicemail. Oh no! She waited frantically through the announcement, and blurted out, 'Help, help! Uncle Daddy help me. I'm out tagging a bridge and the cops are after me. I'm stuck on the Pryor Street bridge, and I'm fixing to fall onto the northbound Connector. Oh, please help!'

Then she screamed as her descent rope was tugged violently from above, jerking her upward and whanging her shoulder into the bottom of the concrete edge. The hook was pulled out of her grasp and swung away beneath her, attached to her harness.

She heard the cops calling for backup. They were holding on to her rope. Quickly she paid out some line, grabbed the hook and latched on, and then bent over and scrawled out a C, much looser than the rest of the letters. It was harder to make a round C when she was being snatched at. Suzie heard another siren getting louder and then stopping. Wonderful, she thought, join the party, endanger my life. She resumed practicing her handwriting. The C turned out rather chunky.

She looked up and saw shiny helmets and brims of cop hats above her like petals of a flower, backlit by the orange sodium vapor streetlights. They were hauling her up, hand over hand. She lost the hook again. Swearing viciously, she paid out more rope to keep out of their clutches. It was only a hundred foot rope. She looked up and saw frays appear in the rope as they continued jerking her upwards over the concrete lip. She remembered what Jason had said about avoiding sharp edges.

As they brought her above the fence bottom, she saw their shoes, their pants, and the baleful stare of the traffic camera on the other side of the bridge, pointing out over northbound traffic, and at the moment, capturing her struggling image a jerky who knows how many times a second. Suzie felt sick.

She struggled with the cops. They were trying to haul her up over the side of the bridge, trying to grab her through the fence. She was using her hands and legs like a cat resisting being stuffed into a box. Her guide rope was resisting them, but they didn't realize it. She was being pulled from both sides.

She was a million percent certain she did not want to go up there with them. She said No, with every breath of her being. Rebellion filled her soul. No, you can't. No, I won't let you. No, you are not going to win. She was just one little girl standing up to the way things are. I won't participate in this kind of society, she thought melodramatically, this cruel world. I'd rather drop to my death on the highway.

She hoped it would be a truck that hit her, because then she'd be good and dead and wouldn't feel anything. She pictured an unpleasant alternative: herself hitting the ground, which would almost kill her, but not quite, and then being hit by a speeding car, which would leave her only mostly dead. It would be horrible. The pain, the fear, the broken bones, the splitting headache, the agony of waiting for the ambulance so they could make her well enough to serve time. Oh, God. Anything but that. A good whack from a thirty-ton truck would be a blessing if she managed to live past the drop onto the concrete.

While she was up at the fence, she took the opportunity to hook her descent rope to it with a D-ring, above herself. Maybe it would slow them down. She paid out a bunch more rope and got back to work. She hooked onto the bottom of the bridge, and drew an I. It was a big, flourishy I, the cap rising at the end as she was once again yanked upward.

She didn't mind dying as much as the thought of going through the system. She saw herself in handcuffs in front of a judge. She saw a cell door opening and clanging shut, she saw herself getting lost among thousands of prisoners in colorless suits, shuffling down gray corridors. She saw herself being strapped to a table and sedated for her execution. No, a thousand times No, she'd want to cry out, but she'd only be able to think it loudly as the drugs kicked in.

The cops pulled on her rope again and the movement slammed her head into the cement lip of the bridge. She could a feel a bump starting. It felt like it was bleeding. She started to swing. Her head bounced off the concrete a couple more times.

Hands were reaching down at her through the fence. She bounced and swayed and pried herself away from their grasp. Then her phone popped loose from her pocket. She spared a moment to watch it take forever to reach the pavement and shatter into a thousand pieces. And she still had minutes left on that phone.

She paid out more rope and came down a little to the right of the last letter. Quickly she stabbed out an upright, and then swung her arm up to describe the cap of a T. It was badly ragged. It looked more like an A on its side.

Suzie began to consider her options. She could stay and finish her tag, which who knows they'd probly paint over anyway, or she could try to avoid being sent to jail.

She'd planned for this very contingency. Actually, the way the fantasy went, the cops would arrive to block her exit after she'd finished her tag. The plan was simple. Repel down to the road smiling and waving at the cops, scale a wall, and walk off into the surface streets. She'd thought about it in detail, and it had seemed pretty practical. But Suzie was finding out that shit happens. There are always more variables than you can plan for.

The cops were keeping her too busy to paint at the moment, and they'd taken up most of her rope. Now one of them was reaching down a noose thing on a long pole, trying to nab a flailing limb. She threw her spraycan at the other end of the pole, and the rope went away with a yelp. She heard guns cock above her on the bridge; that's how much the cops respected her pitching arm.

She unhooked another paint can and returned grimly to work. They had now drawn her so high above her writing that she was bending over, almost upside down, her hook arm burning with the stretch, reaching out with her can to start the Y. The road surface was over her head. She began to get dizzy. It was hard to breathe. But she soldiered on. The Y turned out squished pretty flat, like a T. She drew a straighter Y on top of it. Now it looked like an F.

She heard a truck horn, faintly, just at the crest of the next hill. The cops were hauling her higher. She turned upside down in the harness and went to correct the Y. It was an efficient, if jagged, Y. Except it was almost a P because they'd pulled her away from the tag and hauled her up to where they could reach her again.

The cops lunged for her, and caught at her heel but lost their grip. They touched her, she thought in panic and revulsion. And fear. She was so vulnerable. She kicked out and spun away from then. She paid out more rope, hooked onto the bridge, and went to finish her letter.

The truck horn was louder. She heard sirens in the distance. She heard the crickets again, and it gave her the confidence to reach right out and redraw the leg of the Y, beautifully straight, thick and expressive. She looked south, and saw a big rig lumbering down the road toward her. It was a beat-up old red Kenworth with fangs painted on the grille. It was hauling a container. Suzie almost let go her spraycan. Uncle Daddy.

He was honking his horn at her, and flashing his lights. He put on his signal, moved over a lane to the right, and began to slow, positioning himself below the bridge. She looked up at the angry red faces of the cops and smiled. But they jerked her upwards again and she banged her shoulder against the concrete.

Uncle Daddy came up underneath her and stopped in the middle of the highway. Not an easy feat with that kind of momentum. His brakes squealed and hissed, his trailer slewed around. You stop 50,000 pounds of trailer on a dime. Four-wheelers honked wildly behind him and made emergency maneuvers.

The cops saw traffic stopping in the road and redoubled their efforts. Suzie was slammed into the concrete, and slammed again, and then hauled up alongside the foot of the bridge. She guessed maybe they wanted to kill her before she could drop to her death. She thought about spraying paint at them as she came up to face level. It would be a bad thing, she reflected. Permanent blindness. She thought for the first time about the consequences of pissing off your captors. She wondered if the traffic camera would catch them beating her up.

Suddenly, she was caught. A hand grabbed her by the hair. She screamed. She kicked, and another hand caught her foot. Her flipflop fell off. Her spraycan went flying. She was caught. She swayed in her harness between the two cops, looking into their triumphant faces.

She jumped and flipped and spasmed trying to get loose, but they had her. If only her hair was shorter, they'd never have gotten a hold on her. Suzie spent time wishing she'd shaved it back when the weather turned hot. Of course, they would have fired her if she'd turned up like that at the Club. Except it would have been fine for working in the kitchen.

She thought of her chef's knife. Cops were climbing on the fence to get to her. She was pinned like a butterfly. She struggled to get to her bag, slung over her shoulders. She shrugged it over to where she could reach the zipper. Which stuck. She screamed in frustration.

The cops were getting closer. That noose-thing was back waving in her face. She batted it away and it did a little parry and then caught her by the wrist. Now she only had her left hand free. And it was under the bag. She reached all the way around the bag and stuffed her hand into the opening she'd made for the tail of the descent rope. The zipper scraped her wrist.

She thought 'Knife' with every shred of her being and reached past the rope to the bottom of the bag. She brushed past a bunch of stuff, and when her hand came to a rest it touched the handle. There is a God.

She pulled out the knife.

Someone cried, 'She's got a weapon!' The cops drew their guns. One of them called for backup. The cop holding her by the hair loosened his grip in surprise.

Suzie pulled her head away and screamed, whirling in the air by her ankle and her wrist. The cops took aim. Swinging dizzily, waving the knife in her free hand, she slashed wildly in the air above her head in the direction of the rope.

The knife found something. She hacked at it in desperation. She felt it catch and pull. She sawed. She was crying now, whimpering and blubbering. The cops were fixing to shoot her and she was going to die and it was all so frustrating because she was stuck, trapped, doomed. And it was all her fault.

One of the strands popped. She kept sawing. The wrist noose pulled her upwards. The rope pulled her upwards. They were drawing her upright against the fence. Her ankle hurt. She looked down at the cop. 'Would you mind loosening up just a little?' she asked through her tears. He looked sorry to be hurting her, and tightened his grip some more.

Another strand popped. The rope started unwinding. She started to sag against them. She felt a surge of hope. Then the rope broke. Suzie let out a roar and shoved against the fence with all her might. She broke free of their grasps and dove, seeing their faces as she arched away. They looked disappointed. She heard somebody calling for more backup.

Suzie dropped like a stone. She was staring at the dark sky, falling backwards with a knife in her left hand, the noose thing on her right, and the hook beneath her. She let go the knife, and it fell alongside her. They all rotated together.

* * *

next, suzie bounces

splat chapter thirty-two

Suzie drove around, doing some thinking. She didn't pay attention to where she was going. She just drove. She didn't notice the landscape features, she didn't see the endless strip malls and fast food joints and gas stations. The only thing she noticed was how close the car was to conking out.

What Kind Of Fool Do You Think I Am? A tune she and her dad used to listen to went through her head. Everything Nelson had ever told her had been a lie. He loved her, that was a lie. It was special between them. He never got hard for anybody else like he did for her.

He'd been sleeping around the whole time. She should have known he wouldn't go as long as they had without sex. She expected every minute that he would tell her he had to see her, he had to have it, he couldn't bear to be without her, he needed to show her how much he loved her. They hadn't had sex in months, and it was because he was too tired from fucking other girls and couldn't get it up for her.

She felt her love for him like a boulder on a bungee cord. It plunged out of sight, then came snapping back up, just out of reach. But it was just a rock, what should she care?

Then why did she love him? She knew he was a shit, but he did something to her heart. Whenever they touched, a feeling like she was home came over her, and she felt an outpouring of love for him, a real soul connection. It frightened her. It scared him too; he said so when they kind of talked about it once. When she brought it up.

She thought on a practical level for awhile. She knew they were never going to live together, in the back of her head. But he was the best prospect she had, so she continued her feeble attempts to manipulate him into marriage. He would never be the best provider, but he was the one who made her feel the best, feel the most intense. The one she needed to have in her arms.

Hell, he was probably a terrible provider. Always buying and selling dope, always high. Thank God he didn't drink. There was that problem with crank he used to have. But he said he'd been clean for months, and she believe him.

She found herself driving east. Farms and pine trees and rolling hills. When she got to Madison, she turned north.

Suzie drove some more, suffering from her hangover. Everything irritated her; everything was too much. The heat was scalding. Dehydration parched her skin; she sweated dried salt. Her mouth sucked humidity out of the air. Her hands were shaky. She felt nauseous. She needed to sleep. She wasn't thinking clearly.

She fantasized about how she could help him if they were living together. Help him start his own business, give him a nice hot dinner and rub his shoulders when he came home, make love twice a day. He'd be less tense, less harried. If he worked for himself he could just work when he felt like it, and relax the rest of the time. They'd be happy all the time.

Suzie didn't have a whole lot of practical experience of life. She had a bunch of romantic ideas about how relationships were supposed to work. She'd picked up a mess of fancy notions from TV, like for example that the lot of the working class was amusing, and everyone partied a lot and shared lots of love. It was all good. After all, nobody in the sitcoms cursed the government, or got put in jail on a bad rap, or complained of being exploited by Wal-Mart. She took it for granted that life was supposed to be like that. But recent events had proved that life was entirely different from anything she'd seen on TV.

Okay, so she was finding that her hopes for a life with Nelson were a little immature. So fine, Nelson's out. He wasn't worth much anyway. So what that she loved him with all her heart? If she simply stayed away from him, then she wouldn't feel that soul thing that happened between them, and she wouldn't miss him. It sounded like a good plan to her. And, truthfully, for Suzie, Out Of Sight Out Of Mind has always won out over Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder.

She saw a dead deer on the road in front of her. Aw. Her heart bled for Bambi. As she got closer, she saw that it was a dog. Probly ran away from home and was out sniffing around for females. Dumb dog. As she passed it, she saw it was a truck tire peeled from a passing eighteen-wheeler. She called Uncle Daddy again, but there was no response.

But now what? No home. No boyfriend. No job. Which would she miss the most? Hmmm. None of the choices were stellar. If you asked her, she wouldn't have a good thing to say about any of them. Living in the apartments with the lost boys was ratty and dungeonlike, and they always made her feel small. The job was hell, with heaven just out of reach in the kitchen. The boyfriend. Cocksucker.

That reminded her of her feelings toward Ed. And Jerry. Her head started to pound. All men can't be like that. Why couldn't she find one she could stand?

Like her dad. Brave, strong and true. Her heart filled with love, a layer of harsh longing in the middle. He left her. She was all alone. She couldn't get his approval any more. And she so needed his approval.

He loved her no matter what she did, made light of even her worst faults. Honored her as a human being and a good girl, even when she wasn't. Made excuses for her stupid mistakes. He would have let her get away with murder if she'd wanted to go that far. But she always did what was right because she knew he'd be proud of her, and she always asked herself what he would think of whatever she'd done.

Would he be proud of her now? Having killed one. Wanting to kill another. Wanting to blow up Nelson's shop with him in it. Wanting to take a machine gun into the Club. These thoughts made her pause. Those were terroristic acts she was fantasizing. And that's not how a reasonable adult is supposed to behave. Even though most humans entertain murderous thoughts on a daily basis. It's just that you're not supposed to act on them. But she had. She'd killed Jerry. And she wanted very badly to kill Ed.

She'd have killed Hitler if given the chance. Wouldn't anybody? How about if you were around in those days? If you were, say an Allied spy, holed up across the street from where Hitler had a cozy thing going with a party wife? Wouldn't you fire if you had a clear shot? Knowing what that maniac was doing to the world? Wouldn't you be morally obligated to assassinate him? Wouldn't history justify you? I'm certain Pat Robertson would think so.

She came to a light just turning red, pulled the gearshift to neutral, then fluttered the gas and braked to a halt. It went to stall, but she gave it more gas, then it roared, so she let off the gas, then it started to stall again. She had to concentrating on zenning exactly the right pressure at exactly the right time until the light changed.

Suzie wondered, Am I bad? I probly should get some type of therapy. But no anti-depressants, she decided. Remember, speed kills.

She found she'd driven clear over to Athens, so she turned west, and because she wasn't thinking, she decided she would cut cross-country toward Atlanta instead of taking US 78, the main back road. She was tired of traffic.

Hours later she found herself in Morrow, well south of town. At least she knew how to get home from there. She came up Georgia 54 - Jonesboro Road - and bypassed the highway until she got to Lakewood, where she figured she might as well get on the Connector and finish her trip sooner. She was heading home. Such as it was.

Traffic was moving well. She passed one overpass after another, all of which could turn out to be the bridge she put her tag on. But each one had something wrong with it. One bridge was too visible to escape notice. One was too dimly lit. One vista showed Atlanta far away and small. One bridge showed Atlanta close up, but off to the side of the road. None of them were just right. The railroad bridge just before Pryor Street was still her best candidate.

She slowed down as she reached it and took in all the details. It had a big huge traffic sign in front of it, which marred the view of her proposed tag, but would protect her from notice from oncoming traffic. The bridge had an iron fence on the inside, a chain-link fence next to it on the outside, then a cement lip feet high, a maybe four foot recess and then eight feet of iron wall, rusty black, empty. And a twenty foot drop. She imagined it all in a flash of creative projection . I can do this, she thought, crossing her fingers for luck.

The on-ramp to I-20 East was fucked up from all the traffic still being rerouted from the south end of the Perimeter. So she got off at Turner Field and went home through Grant Park again. One of the original neighborhoods of post-Reconstruction Atlanta. Hundred-year-old Craftsman and Queen Anne houses. Wide porches, high ceilings, large rooms, stained glass, ancient trees, large yards. Renovated. Graceful, gentrified, intown living at its finest.

She took Boulevard north to Edgewood and tried to cut east through Inman Park, but the road was barricaded at Euclid. So she cut a little south to DeKalb Avenue to parallel the tracks, but they wouldn't even let her on the street. So she went over to cut south under the train tracks by the Krog Street tunnel, but it was closed and barricaded as well. So she went back to Boulevard and took it south to Memorial, and went east that way. Traffic was backed up when she got to Monroe, but at least it was moving, so she turned left and got in line, and eventually came upon a barricade.

It was at Wylie Street, right at the edge of her neighborhood. Cops were standing around directing traffic away from the area. Suzie parked the Trooper and got out to ask when they were going to start letting people back in.

They told her that the whole area was under an evacuation order. Reynoldstown, Cabbagetown, Little Five Points, Inman Park. Even the new shopping center. The CSX terminal was shut down. That meant no eastbound or westbound trains through Atlanta until further notice.

'Are you a resident?' the cop asked her, looming over her.

'Yes, I live in the apartments on Seaboard.'

The cop looked twice at her and backed off slightly. 'Wow. Were you there?' She nodded. 'You should go to the hospital, let them check you out. The whole area's a disaster zone, and especially that part. There's nothing to go back to.'

'I just wanted to see it,' she explained.

He took pity on her. 'We might let people in tomorrow or the next day,' he told her, though in fact it would be a week. 'They're still decontaminating.'

She considered walking in. They can't patrol all the backyards between here and my house, she thought. Then she thought about the toxic waste. And what did she want to see a burned out shell for? It would just make her headache worse.

Suzie went and got in the Trooper and tried to start it. The starter went rinna rinna for awhile, then caught. And the engine died immediately. Suzie concentrated on getting it to start again, one foot on the brake, the other on the gas.

She looked around when the car started up, triumphant. She wish people could appreciate what kind of skill it took to drive Nelson's car. Then she saw Ed the developer standing at the blockade, talking to the cops. He'd pulled his Mercedes up right next to hers, and she hadn't noticed. She could see the fake can of lubricant in the back.

Ed wanted to go into the area, and they were giving him the same story they gave her. She could hear him arguing with them, wanting them to make an exception for him. 'I've got a right to be in there,' he insisted. 'I have to see what kind of damage was done to my property. And my insurance people are on their way.'

The cops weren't impressed. Suzie wanted to yell out that he was the ultimate reason the place was being quarantined. But she held her tongue. Her head hurt too much to yell. And they weren't impressed with her, either.

Ed was still trying to get them to let him in. They asked if he was a resident, and he answered, 'Well, in a manner of speaking.' He spread his hands out to indicate the neighborhood. 'This is all mine now,' he said proudly. 'I bought it all up right before this happened, and I'm concerned for my investment.'

The cops seemed slightly more impressed. It was obvious to them that someone had been buying up the neighborhood. Ed pointed, indicating the new Edgewood shopping center down the hill. 'Yessir,' he insisted, 'part two of the long-awaited Southeast Atlanta renaissance. We're fixing to turn this area into a city within a city just as soon as we can get it cleared out.' He leaned over confidentially and said, loud enough for Suzie to hear, 'My job's a lot simpler with this little fire here. It's better to just let it burn and then call in the bulldozers.' The developer looked around and saw Suzie, but didn't recognize her.

She scoffed, What, if I'm not wearing a tux I'm invisible? She revved up the engine so it wouldn't stall, and pulled out fast, full of hate. Bastard, she thought. You're next.

But she didn't turn back and try to tail him. She drove on, instead, not ready to take action. As the minutes passed, she began to regret leaving the scene. She wished she'd caught the bastard out right there, followed him down Wylie as he tried to get in the back way. She could have gotten him back in those side streets, maybe stopping to tell him she knew a secret entrance, leading him in, and pushing his face into spilled nuclear waste.

She pictured him face down in a glowing green ditch. Pig. It really bugged her that he hadn't recognized her. He looked right at her, and never even noticed her. Of course, she was pretty filthy. Maybe he could smell her from there. Who would look at her, as bedraggled as she was?

She drove back down Moreland the other way, and stopped at Uncle Daddy's house. The car was there, the truck was gone. Nobody answered the door. Nobody answered the phone.

So Suzie put ten bucks in the tank and went for another lost drive. It was afternoon was all she knew. Or late morning. She drove south on Moreland past Intrenchment Creek. Across the still-closed 285 in the southeast part of town. Past Fort Gillem. South to Morrow, to Stockbridge. Far. Where the roads lead away from the city instead of toward it. Way down in the country. Suzie drove until she got lost, and then kept driving. Then she turned around and made her way back to town, still in the grip of her hangover, and feeling really sorry for messing her life up so badly.

She was just passing Confederate Avenue when Alex's phone rang. It was Uncle Daddy. She felt so relieved she started to cry. Her head pounded. 'Oh, Uncle Daddy,' she sobbed.

'It's all right, Baby Girl. It's all going to be okay.'

'But where have you been?' she whined. 'I've been trying to call you for days .'

'I left it my cellphone in the truck. I've been using your Auntie Mae's car recently. I haven't been home much, I guess.' He sounded depressed.

'I didn't have your cellphone number,' she sniffled. 'How's Auntie Mae?'

'The news isn't good, Honey. They're going to have to operate.'

'What is it?'

'Breast cancer.'

Suzie felt her heart break. 'Oh no. How is she taking it?'

'How does she ever take anything? She's cool as a cucumber, reading her Bible and saying nothing. She's a rock. I'm so worried about her.'

'How are you doing, Uncle Daddy?'

'Oh, I'm alright, Baby Girl, bless your heart. It's just a little sudden, that's all. Listen, I'm heading down to Macon right now with a load, but I'll be back around here late tonight. Call me anytime, you have my number now. Say, why don't you come around tomorrow morning late, and we'll go get some breakfast at the Waffle House?'

'Awful House,' she responded automatically. It used to be a game between them.

He chuckled. 'That sound okay? Fine.'

'I'm going to go see Auntie Mae.'

'Give her my love.'

She choked up. 'I love you, Uncle Daddy.'

'I love you too, Suzie Q.'

She went off to see Auntie Mae, parking on another street among several abandoned heaps. Nelson's car fit right in.

Auntie Mae was no longer in her hospital room craning her neck to watch TV or lying back reading her Bible. The nurse couldn't tell her where she was. Suzie still couldn't prove she was next of kin, and the nurse wasn't saying nothing. Heartless bitch.

Suzie wouldn't accept that Auntie Mae was just gone, and went barging into the room to make sure. There was another old black lady there, craning her neck to watch TV. Suzie looked at her, and then noticed Auntie Mae's Bible sitting on top of the air conditioning unit. 'Is that yours?' she asked the old lady. The woman shook her head. Suzie dashed over to the window to retrieve it. 'It's my Auntie's,' she explained, tucking it into her bag and walking out.

Her heart was sore thinking about Auntie Mae. Cancer. An operation. They were going to knock her out, and anything could happen to her when she was under the anesthesia. She could have a heart attack on the operating table, or in recovery. She could have a stroke, an allergy to the anesthetic, she could be given too strong a dose. The surgeon could leave medical instruments inside of her. She could be riddled with disease they wouldn't know about until they went in. Shit like that happens all the time in hospitals.

She called Uncle Daddy immediately, full of fear, and told him of Auntie Mae's disappearance. It was news to him. He said he'd call the hospital and then call her right back to tell her what was going on. He was already on the road, but he had all the numbers.

Suzie drove away from the hospital, afraid she'd never see Auntie Mae again. She flashed back on her dream vision of herself, attached to tubes and pumps, hallucinating a life while being pegged to a bed. The thought of Auntie Mae as helpless as that brought tears up and closed her throat, and then Suzie was driving down Boulevard sobbing, She had to pull into a parking lot, and then crossed her arms over the steering wheel and put her head down, bawling. She had such a headache.

When her tears ran out, she drove over to the Home Depot parking lot on Ponce and took a nap, curled up in the dusty Trooper under a scrubby parking lot tree, her hips on the driver's seat, her shoulders in the passenger seat, her middle suspended over the gearshift and console. She sobbed little baby sobs in her sleep.

When she woke up, the sun was below the houses bordering the shopping center, and her hangover had gone. She found the thought of food intriguing once again. So she counted her money, and then walked through the parking lot over to Eats a few feet up Ponce, deliberately violating the signs that said, Parking For Customers Of This Center Only Or We'll Boot Your Ass. She got the vegetable plate; a buck an item. Nothing better for replenishing those electrolytes than collard greens, cornbread, beans and rice, and sweet tea.

She sat in the crowded restaurant ignoring the people and trying to concentrate on flipping through a copy of Creative Loafing while she ate. There was a story about the new development planned for Reynoldstown. Her neighborhood. She found herself staring at the same artist's rendering Ed had shown her. There was her name above some shop. Like she would fall for that. What an asshole.

She sat there mopping up the juice from the greens with her cornbread. She thought about the Ed and Jerry show. Sexist, racist, selfish, conniving, murderous, mean ugly stupid bastards. Jerry was dead, and that must be a blow to the forces behind the new slavery laws. She felt righteous for a moment. But Atlanta was going to become a McDonald's kind of place if Ed continued unchecked. She realized that she had unfinished business. As Jerry went, so should go his best friend and co-conspirator.

She thought of how she felt when she shot Jerry. She'd had no question. It had been an instinct. Even questioning herself now, she immediately stopped and thought, No. It had to be done. She got the same response when she questioned her wish to kill the developer. He's a monster.

A news truck drove by. She thought how she could go home and catch the early news because she wasn't working at the Club any more. This made her think about how she couldn't watch the news because her house was burned down. And now she was jobless, homeless, illegal, a wanted fugitive, an outlaw. And it was all Ed's fault.

She drove over to Ansley Park and parked across the street from the Club's main entrance, waiting for him to finish his dinner. She wondered who he was mistreating tonight. She was very happy not to be going inside the iron gates to serve Atlanta's elite any more.

She called Uncle Daddy to find out what they'd said at the hospital. He'd had long phone conversations with various officials, and had been cut off several times going out of cellphone range, but he understood that they moved her to a new rehabilitation center to perform her operation this afternoon, and he would know more tomorrow.

'Rehab center?'

'Some cancer place. It's just opened up. Some new technology they're going to use on her.'

Suzie shouted, 'No! Uncle Daddy, you can't let them do it. It's untested. It's dangerous.'

'Baby Girl, the doctors wouldn't do anything that's not safe for Auntie Mae.'

'Yes they would! They're just waiting for the chance.'

'Honey, you need to calm down.'

'But I'm serious.'

'I know you are. I know you're scared. And I am, too. But we're in the doctors' hands now, and with the grace of God your Auntie Mae will be fine. She's already had her operation by now. Try not to worry.'

Suzie sat there and worried for several hours. Auntie Mae with a microwave pointed at her chest. Auntie Mae cooked from the inside out. Auntie Mae's swollen, staring eyes with her hair frizzed out like a maxi-afro.

She saw Ed's car come weaving down the drive at some point past eleven. The loss of his favorite waitress and his best friend hadn't made for drastic changes in his social habits. He cruised toward Piedmont and headed up toward Buckhead.

Suzie started the engine after a few seconds, and followed him out of the Club. She kept behind him, playing three-pedal twister trying to keep the car from stalling whenever they came to a light.

Stopped at Piedmont Circle, she had her right foot turned sideways, working the gas and the brake in turn while easing the clutch in and out of gear, cursing the broken emergency brake. He took a left and got onto Buford Highway heading north.

She followed him to Sidney Marcus, going fast. She applied the brakes as she came up to the light. The pedal squished down toward the floor without slowing her Trooper. Suzie shoved down on the brake. Nothing. She mashed the brake harder, but still nothing happened. The back of Ed's car was alarmingly close. In desperation, Suzie stood on the brake, her head pressing against the roof, pulling back on the wheel with both hands as hard as she could.

The car came to an agonizing halt a single coat of paint from his bumper. Suzie was sweating out of every pore, and she could feel her entire head and shoulders red and swollen with effort. She started breathing again and sat back down, unclenching her hands. After stopping the car with pure willpower, keeping the engine from dying was simple.

The light changed, and her feet danced a little letting the clutch out. She went slowly over the hill, pumping the brakes. The pedal firmed up and the brakes stopped the car just fine, now. An intermittent problem. Nelson didn't tell her the brakes had air in the line. Was he trying to kill her or did he think she liked these little challenges? She felt the sweat turning cold on her skin. Her breathing slowly returned to normal.

She actually liked driving the Trooper. It was high, and the engine was a real workhorse. Nothing automatic, nothing complicated. No frills at all. That's the way she liked her cars. Maybe she would keep it. It would need cleaning up, though. Maybe she could fit the back out as a sleeper and go to Florida for the winter. Say, Boca Raton, where you can live well under a bridge, and still send postcards home. Having A Wonderful Time.

The Trooper's interior was really filthy. The more she thought about having a mechanic's car, the more her enthusiasm dampened. Nobody drives as broken-down a car as a mechanic. It wouldn't get her halfway to Valdosta.

Ed turned right onto Georgia 400, and they were off. She was right behind him the whole way, and he never noticed. He took it up to 80 and hardly slowed at all going through the cruise lane, leaving Suzie screaming in fury as she stopped her car at the tollbooth.

Suzie got the Trooper into fifth gear and floored the gas. Soon she was going 90, and he was nowhere to be seen. The Trooper didn't really like going that fast. It hiccoughed and spat, and the wheel shimmied horribly when she tried to push it any faster. She sat on the edge of her seat, her hair whipping around her head, her short legs stretched to mash the pedal down, all her energy focused on catching up to the evil developer.

She noticed all the traffic cameras, one every few hundred feet, some of them peering down through the windshield at her lap, her face. Were they all recording, all the time? Maybe she should put the wig and glasses on. She drove as fast as she could, peering ahead for tail lights. She wondered how far he was going, which exit he'd most likely get off on. Roswell, Alpharetta, Cumming?

The road was empty. Every mile or so she passed a car plodding home at 65. Every five minutes, a car passed her like she was standing still. Georgia 400 is a drag strip. Cars routinely run it up to 175 and over when nobody's looking. And the cops never look.

She passed the exit for Roswell, and Holcomb Bridge Road. She still couldn't see him, but had to choose. She kept going. It was agonizing to know that he might be turning into his driveway in Country Club of the South while she was still speeding down the highway.

She checked the gas. A little under a quarter tank. Good. She kept her speed up as high as she could, but she still didn't see him. She got to the Alpharetta exits. How far ahead could he be? Did he already get off? It was driving her nuts. She felt as if a part of herself were getting off at each exit, scattering her attention along the road behind her.

Either he was already at home in darkest Alpharetta having a good long piss in the bathroom, or he was heading for Cumming, the back side of Lake Lanier. A house on the lake and boating around drunk on the weekends would suit him fine. Forsyth County's reputation for racism, too. Cumming, then. She kept going. She was getting low on gas.

The road got very lonely. The spy cameras ended at Windward Parkway, above Alpharetta, and after that there was nothing, just Suzie in Nelson's rickety dusty deathtrap, passing black pine trees and glowing black hills. The wind blew her hair all over. It got into her eyes. She could hear a succession of crickets. After awhile it sounded like one giant cricket keeping pace with her car. She began to get sleepy. She kept driving.

She passed the exits for Cumming and was heading north toward Dahlonega. There was still nobody on the road. She felt sure she had missed him. He must be home in bed by now. She prepared to take the next exit and turn around, her mouth full of bitter disappointment. Then she saw lights way ahead. It was a car getting over from the passing lane to take the next exit. Her heart rose into her mouth with excitement. There is a God.

He got off on exit seventeen, forty miles from Atlanta. She was right behind him, trying to decide what to do. He turned right, and sped on down the road into the darkness. Suzie pulled out and steadily gained speed. Two miles down the road, he turned right again. Suzie caught a glimpse of the sign as she skittered around the corner. Brown's Bridge Road. Then she had a discussion with herself about top-heavy vehicles and sharp turns, after which she pulled out her gun and loaded it with paintballs. She put it on her lap and covered it with her wig-and-cellphone assembly.

They were on a two-lane, unlit country road, going up steep hills and down steep hills, around bends and across intersections as fast as possible. Ed was a practiced drunk; he hardly weaved at all. They crossed a branch of Lake Lanier over a low bridge. Pretty. Sparkly black water, black pines. Suzie was following him, right on his bumper, trying to make up her mind whether to get behind him and ram him, or get beside him and push him off the road.

Wondering why she bothered when he hadn't recognized her before, she put on her wig and pushed her hair up into it. Then she spent a minute fumbling unsuccessfully for the scarf to tie down the whipping strands. They were leaving whip marks on her cheeks.

Blonde nylon hair went up her nose. She started sneezing. She looked at the dashboard and noticed again that she was low on gas.

He was weaving a little more now. Probly getting sleepy, she thought. Maybe she wouldn't have to shoot him at all. He drifted into the left lane and slowed down as they were going up a hill. Suzie felt like she'd won a battle without fighting. She came up alongside his car, suddenly infected with pity in case he was falling asleep and fixing to drive off the road.

Ed rolled his passenger side window down and shot at Suzie's car with a nine millimeter Baretta. Suzie screamed with fright. The bullet went wild. He shot again, and it grazed the roof. He shot again, and it hit the door post. She slammed on the brakes and dropped behind him. He slowed.

Ed was trying to kill her. This realization hit Suzie like a face full of cold water. He didn't know who she was; she was just some woman driving down the road, and he took offense and started shooting at her. Suzie's fury was matched only by her incredulity. How dare he? She grabbed her paintgun and sped to catch up with him.

She got the corner of his windshield with a psychotic yellow paintball. He squeezed off another shot at her hood. She was scared to death he was going to hit her, or she was going to lose control of the car. He kept shooting at her, and it was all she could do to keep driving and try to shoot back.

Now it felt like there was something wrong with the steering. A bushing, maybe. The car felt like it was stuck in mud - veering and threatening to turn over going uphill, the engine threatening to stall going downhill.

They were staggering down the road together, trying to kill each other. Suzie kept even with him and pumped off ten shots, covering the inside of his windshield, the dashboard, his seat. She reloaded in her lap and resumed shooting. She was aiming straight at his heart. A few balls fell into his lap and exploded. She could tell it hurt, even at her gun's puny speed. He yelled 'Ow' every time she hit his inner thigh. So she shifted her aim gladly. And miraculously, her aim improved. He stopped firing and covered his nuts with his gun hand.

Then she ran out of paintballs. He was quick to notice, uncovered his balls, and started shooting again. The next bullet went through her wig. She felt it hiss and smelled burning nylon. She snatched it off. That was too close. She started to panic, afraid for her life.

In an act of desperate frustration, she tossed the gun through his window, hoping to hit him, or deflect his aim, and maybe give her a chance to get away. She didn't throw it very hard, and the wind cut down on its speed, but as a flying object, it did pretty well, because it slewed around and whacked him upside the head with the barrel, which had the most heft of any part of the paintgun.

The blow didn't hurt him, but it made him mad, and he turned his full attention to her. His left arm was holding the wheel. It jerked as he swing toward her, his face purple and puffed out with anger, his eyes barely visible as cold, void-like black holes. Even with eight to ten feet between them, he was still trying to suck her in and drain the life out of her.

He was aiming at her now, not her car. It had become purposeful aiming, calm zenlike aiming. She could tell he was going to hit her the next time he fired a shot. She felt like prey.

Ed could no longer see through his windshield for all the paint, so he kept sticking his head out the driver's side window to see the road, and sticking his head back in and cranking it around to aim at her. His next shot went through Suzie's door.

She looked down to see something whiz by her knees as the door panel buckled and the rolled-down window shattered inside the door. She took her foot off the gas and slowed out of range while she thought about it.

She was stuck on the road with a drunken fool who had a gun and was out to kill her. And she was completely unarmed. If she turned the car around he'd be right behind her.

He stopped a few hundred yards up the road. Suzie had slowed and was preparing to turn and run away, amazed at her luck. But then she saw him turn around. Suddenly he darted forward, shooting out his driver's side window as he came. Suzie realized that she was going to die. He either didn't care if he was injured, or was convinced his Mercedes would survive a head-on that would flatten her Trooper.

She had never liked to play chicken. But when there was no choice, you pick what they give you. She was fixing to go up in flames or down in history. 'Want to play chicken?' She screamed, letting out the clutch and gunning it. 'I'll show you chicken.'

The two cars closed fast, aimed directly at each other. Ed was in the middle of the road and stayed there as they got closer and closer. He had the momentum, the purpose, the drive, the horsepower, the balls, the ammo. Suzie was only going along with it, hoping at every moment for a reprieve.

She was scared to death. She could see the whites of his eyes, green in the dashboard glare. He was right in front of her. Suzie veered at the last minute toward the ditch on her side of the road.

And then a miracle happened.

She felt the wind whump her as the developer's car flew by. She felt her right wheels flop down into the grassy margin toward the ditch. The car rattled violently. The wheel jerked out of her hand.

She lost control for a long moment as the Trooper decided whether to go straight or fall over on its side into the ditch. Finally she wrenched it back onto the pavement and slowed, gasping for breath, still praying.

She looked for Ed in her mirrors. She couldn't see him. Maybe he'd just kept going and was out of sight over the hill. Maybe he'd be waiting for her on the other side. Maybe she should just keep going in the other direction, or turn into the next driveway and shut off her lights and hide until dawn.

The road behind her stayed dark. She went halfway up the hill, stopped, and did a three-point turn in the road. Five hundred yards down the hill, Suzie noticed a trail of black screech marks in the road, leading into a ditch on the other side of the road. The tire marks were steaming. She slowed her car and peered out the passenger side window. There, ten feet down an embankment, upside down, was Ed's Mercedes, its wheels spinning.

She might have stopped. She probably should have stopped. But she was afraid. He might be conscious. He might still shoot at her. She didn't want to die. She looked at her dashboard, distracted by the gas pump light. The gauge was below empty. How far was she from civilization, anyway?

She looked back at Ed's car. There was no movement. It was quiet except for broken car sounds and crickets. His lights were still on, shining through the steam into the woods. She hoped he was wearing his seatbelt.

She put the car in gear and drove on. She didn't care about killing Ed anymore. She was satisfied to have immobilized him. Now he couldn't follow her. She was safe.

The nearest gas station was near Georgia 400, miles back the way she'd come. She got to the pump just as the Trooper was starting to sputter, and put her last five dollars into the tank. The gauge barely moved. She looked up to see cops going by in the direction she'd just come, driving purposefully.

She felt bathed in relief. Her spine tingled and her stomach fluttered. Her heart felt light, her shoulders straightened. She took a deep breath. Ah, ozone. Suzie thought about moving to the country, where it smelled like pine and you could see the stars.

She got back in the Trooper and headed back to Atlanta. All the way back, she thanked her guardian angels for the many miracles she'd been blessed with.

What miracle had occurred to save Suzie's ass? She'd thrown her wig at Ed as they'd passed each other. It hit him in the face, and the cellphone whacked him in the nose. He thought it was an animal and went apeshit.

* * *

next, suzie does something brave