Free The Big Ugly by Jake Hinkson Page B

didn't know where she was."
    "I lied."

CHAPTER NINE
     
     
    We were in her truck, driving out of North Osotouy, headed toward the sticks. I didn't ask where we were going. Jack was a pro. I didn't have anything to teach her about how to properly engage in sketchy activities. Besides, I could tell she didn't want me to ask. So I just sat there with my little purse on my lap and waited quietly.
    Jack had on jeans and Nikes and a turquoise hoodie. She sat casually with her seat pushed back, left hand flopped over the steering wheel. She drove with her wrist. She sat on her right hip and gestured with her right hand. I don't think the palm of her hands ever touched the wheel.
    North of Osotouy City were the mountains. South were the marshes. We headed into swamp country. She got off of the highway and took a back road past low fields of green and black muck. Neither of us spoke. She tugged at her bottom lip. I thought about the five thousand dollars in my purse. I hadn't wanted to bring it with me, but I didn't want to leave it sitting in my car back at her place, either.
    After a while, Jack turned off the back road onto a skinny dirt trail that zigzagged between trees.
    "Alright," I said finally. "I give up. Where the fuck are we?"
    She smiled. "We in a truck going down the road. Live in the moment, Bennett."
    "Okay, but will you at least tell me what Alexis is doing all the way out here?"
    "She called me up and said she needed to get out of town. I told her I knew a place she could stay. Got a guy out here that owes me a favor."
    "Why'd she call you up?"
    "Why not?"
    "But why you in particular?"
    Jack thought about that for a moment. "Because," she said, "I'm the baddest motherfucker she knows."
    After a few more minutes, the trail ended at a compound of buildings. In the middle was a small stone house with a front porch and a chimney. Next to it were a couple of small sheds. And beyond those sheds stood a large pole barn.
    Jack drove toward the pole barn. "That's where she staying," she said.
    As we drove up, a tall man in jeans and a sweatshirt emerged from the barn with a scowl and a shotgun.
    "Uh," I said, "that man has a gun."
    "That man always got a gun," she said.
    "He got a good disposition?"
    "Better hope so."
    As we climbed out of the truck, the man's coal black face lit up when he saw Jack. "Effervescence Jackson," he drawled.
    "Darnell Willis," she drawled back.
    "Whatchoo doing, girl?"
    "Oh, you know. Lil' this, lil' that." She gestured at me. "This Ellie."
    He shifted his gun, adjusted his glasses, and extended a hand to me. "Ellie?"
    I took his hand. "Ellie Bennett," I said. "Nice to meet you."
    We shook and he said, "Good to know you." Then he turned to Jack and asked, "What brings you ladies all the way out here?"
    "Come to see your visitors."
    When she said it, his face didn't move but his quiet brown eyes turned to me for an instant and then back to her. "I 'spect they be happy to see you."
    He led us into the barn, which turned out, to my surprise, to be a very bright and obviously climate controlled computer junkyard. Technology covered the concrete floors: old terminals, keyboards, motherboards, coils of cord, spools of wire. There seemed to be a method to it all. Paths just narrow enough for one person ran through the stacks of laptops and desktops and boxes marked
Routers
and
Cards
and
Interface Boards
.
    "Holy shit," I said.
    Jack nodded. "Off the hook. Like you died and went to computer heaven, ain't it?"
    "Where'd you get all this?" I asked Darnell.
    He shrugged. "The gettin' place."
    He stopped for a moment at a little office in one corner of the barn. A couple of computers sat on a small desk. Monitors bolted to the wall showed live video feed of the grounds, including the end of his road. He'd known we were coming to see him before we'd pulled up to the barn. He propped his shotgun against a wall, and motioned us toward the rear of the barn and said, "They up in they room. Ain't come out much,