Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,29
hard squeeze with callused hands. Like this, out of all the day’s indignities, is the part that stings him the most. Tears roll down his eyes over his bruised cheek.
Atlanta’s mother is pulling on her elbow. “Honey. Come on, now. Car’s running.”
“Chris,” Atlanta says, not budging. “You coming?”
He does, and the three of them escape the gun club.
* * *
The car is a boat. An Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera from 1992. White, but dirty. Has enough miles on it to suggest it’s been to the moon and back.
Chris sits in the back. Quiet. Up front, Mama grabs the steering wheel, but makes a sound in the back of her throat like a wounded coyote—a low keening whine. Fingers tighten around the wheel.
Knuckles go bloodless.
“They hurt you in there,” she says. Her hands are shaking worse than Atlanta’s. “Didn’t they.”
It’s a statement, not a question.
“It’s fine, Mama,” Atlanta says. “Let’s just… get the heck outta here.”
“I said to myself, Arlene, you best never let anything happen to your baby-bird again or she’s gonna hate you forever. Because what kind of mother lets her baby-bird get hurt? Huh?”
Atlanta doesn’t need this. Not now. “I said, it’s over. It’s fine. Let’s just go.”
“I can’t abide this no more. Can’t sit idly by while people think they can do what they want. They can’t. World’s not supposed to work like that. I bought something. Something to make sense of everything.” Her mother plops her big fake-leather purse, pink as a baby pig, onto her lap and begins rooting through it frantically. “Something to make up for what happened, something that… that says this ain’t gonna happen again.”
She pulls out a small revolver. Blued steel. Rosewood handle. Fit for a lady—appropriate enough, given that it’s a Smith & Wesson Ladysmith. Atlanta’s seen them in her gun magazines.
But right now, that’s not what she’s thinking about.
Right now she’s thinking, Holy shit, Mama has a gun.
And Mama gets out of the car and starts marching toward back toward the gun club.
“Atlanta,” Chris says from the backseat, “did your mother just pull out a—“
“Yes,” Atlanta says, struggling to undo her lap belt. Damn belts in this car are stickier than a cocklebur. She finally gets it undone and hurries outside and gets in front of her mother.
“Mama,” she says. “You don’t want to do this. Trust me on this.”
“You did,” Mama says. Eyes wet. She holds up the gun as if for demonstration. “You protected yourself when I couldn’t. Or didn’t. I made a mistake, baby-bird. I let him hurt you. And you’ll never be the same again.” A look crosses her, a look of a spurned dog ready to bite. “This time I’m not letting anybody get away with hurting you. Now move aside, girl.”
The gun is trembling.
Atlanta gently places her hand over the side of the weapon. Eases it down.
“Please,” her mother says. A sad plea.
But Atlanta just shakes her head, then takes the gun.
“Let me handle this,” Atlanta says.
“No,” Arlene says, but the word has lost conviction. Fresh tears run.
“Mama, it’s okay.”
“Please don’t get hurt.”
Atlanta kisses her mother on the cheek. Smells the cigarettes and perfume. Finds comfort there.
Then she goes back inside the gun club.
* * *
Skank sees her, cackles, says “Oh, the bitch is back,” then starts to march over with her claws out. But that’s before she sees the .38 in Atlanta’s hand, and Atlanta makes sure the Skank sees it by sticking it up and pointing it at that mouth of hers—the one framed by the blackened scabbing split in her lip.
“Back off, White Power Barbie,” Atlanta says, drawing back the hammer on the gun.
John Elvis says, “Whoa.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Mitchell says. “Poking a stick into a den of snakes.”
“Poke-poke, motherfuckers.”
Atlanta pulls the trigger.
The Skank falls sideways. Not because she’s shot, but because she’s clutching her ear—after all, the gun went off only inches from her head.
What is shot is one of the pictures on the wall. Some hunter with a dead bear. Glass drops to the concrete, then the frame and photo follow with a clatter.
It hung only a foot from Mitchell Erickson’s head.
He drops to his knees. Fetal position. One hand out as if it could stop a bullet with the flat of his palm.
John Elvis skulks to the opposite corner and stays there, stiff and still as a broom. An epic task for a tweaker, she figures.
Atlanta knows what’s coming next and so she levels the gun at the door to Orly Erickson’s office. Orly’s the