out of the way.
^/ji^j Vft Remus brought her coffee before she could even pick up the menu. She studied
plastic-covered writing with difficulty, the words tangling like fishing line on the shore of
Lake Algae, as the rich folks in Davidson called the pond at Griffith and Main Streets,
where her daddy had taken her fishing a few times. This was before she got older and
Mom was working in housekeeping at the Best Western.
Daddy was a truck driver for Southeastern, and kept erratic hours. Mom wasn’t always
home when her husband rolled in from a long trip.
In the mind of Cravon Jones, his three daughters belonged to him, and how he chose to
express affection was his business and his right.
There was no question he was partial to Addie, who was named after his wife’s mother,
who he hated. Addie was blond and pretty from the day she was born, a special child
who loved to cuddle with her daddy, and with whom her mother did not bond or get
along. Mrs. Jones was tired
of coming home to a drunk, disgusting, stinking man, who slapped her around, shoved, and on one occasion broke her nose and jaw. The daughters, understandably, were drawn
to him out of fear.
Addie reached her eleventh year, and Daddy crawled in bed with her one night. He
smelled like sour sweat and booze as he pressed his hard thing against her, and then
drove it in while blood soaked sheets and her silent tears flowed. Addie’s sisters were in
the same room and heard all of it. No one spoke of the event or acknowledged that it was
real, and Mrs. Jones remained selectively ignorant. But she knew damn well, and Addie
could tell by her mother’s eyes, increased drinking, and growing indifference toward
Addie. This went on until Addie turned fourteen and ran away one night while Mrs. Jones
was working and Daddy was on the road somewhere. Addie got as far as Winston-
Salem, where she met the first man who ever took care of her.
There had been many since, giving her cain and crack, cigarettes, fried chicken, whatever
she wanted. She was twenty-three when she stumbled off the Greyhound in Charlotte
some months back. Addie didn’t remember it much, seemed like last she recalled she was
in Atlanta, getting high with some rich dude who drove a Lexus and paid an extra twenty
dollars to urinate in her face. She could take anything as long as she wasn’t present, and
the only turnstile to that painless place was drugs. Sea, her last and final man, beat her
with a coathanger because she had cramps and couldn’t make any money one night. She
ran off for the countless time in her life, headed to Charlotte because she knew where it
was, and it was all she could afford after grabbing some old lady’s purse.
Addie Jones, who had not been called by her Christian name in too many
highs to remember, had an Atlanta Braves duffel bag she’d stolen from one of her tricks.
In it she had a few things, and both hands had been gripping hard as she had walked
along West Trade, nearing the Presto Grill, across from the All Right parking lot, where
Punkin Head was waiting in its van, fishing. Most of its best catches had come off buses,
all those fuck-ups washing ashore like biological hazards, their stories all the same.
Punkin Head knew this for a fact, having crawled off one of those buses itself some time
back.
Fifteen minutes later, Addie had been inside that dark blue van, and Punkin Head knew it
had a find this time. Not only did it want this girl for itself, but the Johns out there were
going to fall hard for her perky body and sultry eyes and swollen mouth. Punkin Head
christened its new creature Poison, and the two of them began their unfriendly takeover.
Other pimps were flip at first. Then the killings began, and cops were everywhere. There
were stories of bad hollowpoints and something painted orange, and something else about
a spider. All got scared.
“What’ll be?” Remus asked Poison as she smoked a cigarette and stared out at the street.