The Devils in Alabama

PROLOGUE

In south Alabama, you can see tornadoes coming for miles, but sometimes that’s not enough of a warning. They say tornadoes sound like an oncoming train, but to me, it sounds more like the devil. As a child, hoping to see a funnel cloud and listening for that evil conductor’s hiss, I would stand at the screen door and watch as the sky turned green. As soon as pine limbs began crashing in the yard, Mama would crush out her cigarette and make us run to the bathroom and sit in the tub with a mattress over our heads. Back then, that bathroom with the blue and white tile and the fuzzy toilet seat cover was the safest place on earth. That was, until that fateful day when my house, along with a piece of my childhood, were both destroyed. 

Looking back over the last few years, if only I had heeded the warning of that approaching storm set on a course to destroy my life, perhaps she wouldn’t have died there in the streets of Montgomery. Maybe there was something I could’ve done differently. Just maybe.

CHAPTER 1 

Standing in front of the Capitol building in Montgomery, I watched in anticipation as an obscure SUV pulled around the corner. This was it. Our plan had worked. A life for a life. The swap was actually happening. The SUV was going fast. Too fast. The engine roared. Faster and faster. It approached rapidly. I recognized the driver from afar. How was he still alive? I thought I’d killed him.

The SUV’s tires squealed to a stop but lost control. It slid sideways. I watched as the love of my life walked away. Smoke billowed from the screeching tires. I tried to call out, but I was speechless and in shock. I was helpless. She was oblivious to the wreckage unfolding behind her. The SUV slammed into something as she went out of view. Crack. I knew it was her. I heard her scream. She’d been hit.

The SUV came to a sliding stop beside my truck. The rear doors flung open, and they dumped a motionless body in the street and sped away. I stood on the curb. Frozen. Unmoving. Confused. I stared at the bound ball of flesh in front of me—she was badly beaten and bleeding. The smoke cleared from the fleeing SUV and I looked across the street to where the other body lay wincing in pain. She was bleeding too. Her leg looked disfigured and streaks of her blond hair were crimson. Two women, two loves. I couldn’t decide whom to help. The woman of my dreams or the woman who loved me unconditionally? “Someone call 9-1-1!”

I ran to her.

***

Two Years Earlier.

I was an intern at The Alabama Herald, a small print newspaper in Birmingham, Alabama, where I wrote mostly obituaries and garbage stories nobody else wanted to write. It was my second year of grad school at Birmingham College, and I was working toward my master’s degree in literature. The Herald was the best job I could get two years out of college as an English major. I should’ve listened when they said there wasn’t any money in my career path. But Mama told me to major in something I’d enjoy, and I enjoyed books, probably because books took me to places I never thought I could go. Growing up poor, I was able to travel the world, work undercover as a spy, infiltrate the Mob, and live the luxurious life of a millionaire playboy, all through books I read. Despite my humble circumstances, I was rich when I was reading. I guess in the back of my mind, despite what everyone told me, writing was a way I could get rich. And that was the plan: Be a writer and make a lot of money. It didn’t take me long after graduation to realize how laughable my plan was.

So, I wrote the boring obituaries and was paid $10 an hour with the promise of one byline per month to build my portfolio—you know, real writer stuff. However, I'd been there five months and still no bylines—only a photo credit in a caption. And even then, they put the wrong name. How do you confuse Drake with Chad? But I was a writer, a writer who still needed money—and a lot of it.