s h a d e {kneedles}

Out in the back passages, the streets of District Ten were dark with something more than just the night. The heady scent of booze lingered on the air- the kind of booze used to strip away paint from the sides of barns and strip away all of life’s nasty little problems- while the moonlight danced so pretty like captive fireflies in the rancid pools of vomit slapped against the cobbled guttering. Men in bars overuse the line ‘what’s a pretty little girl like you doing in a place like this?’ but no one would have asked the same of Tallow Tansy. She was the kind of girl that didn’t fit anywhere but seemed at home wherever she went, wearing her skin like a little satin number. You know ,the kind of little satin number a girl gets ‘more comfortable in’ and Tallow Tansy was comfortable, alright. Walking like she owned the darkness, had the shadows wrapped around her little finger, Tallow didn’t huddle in close to her body or speed up for fear of the monsters that only came out to play in the dark- head back, chest out, legs as long as she was a bitch. Poetry in motion, wasn’t that how the old saying went? Baby, Shakespeare could have written a dozen sonnets about that sashay.

She wore her makeup like a mask and her dress like a guided missile, lips sweet and wet, fleshy red and parted oh- so invitingly around the tip, with one target and one target only. You don’t find The Dodger, he finds you. Tonight, she wasn’t the kind of girl that you would wanna miss; the kind of girl that made thunder turn tail and run, made men forget themselves and little things like wives. The only man she wanted though was about five four and not all the way through puberty yet. Get close enough and you’d smell that there was desperation mixed in with the scent of cigarette smoke, lemon disinfectant and the secrets a woman keeps between her ‘nethers.

Truth was, the family farm was sunk, Tallow Tansy was up to her neck in pig shit, sliding under and about to be in over her head. Foot rot Scutcher said like Tallow knew what that meant, but she understood the corpses, the piles of burning pig flesh and her future with her brother floating on the air like the wisps of their cremated remains concertinaing like grey snowfall. They needed money and they needed it fast - what a goddamn cliché. Ask any one of the sad old broads selling their saggy tits for shitty pay and they’d say it started like that. The way that everything did. All roads- especially the darkest ones- led to brass, to the rent and to the sweet jangling of coins in a pocket, the exact same sound as a woman draped in jewellery running her hand down the length of your arm. There were other ways though, whispers hidden in plain sight just so long as knew where to look. And The Dodger knows where to look. Don’t many people get to see what he sees. Wear a white handkerchief tucked into the back pocket of your pants and the Dodger found you, they said. Wave that white flag and surrender to your fate; lowest of the low down desperates. Trouble was, there was no room in the back of Tallow’s dress except for what nature had given her- a slip of paper would have found a job working its way between that ass and the material-and certainly no room in her vocabulary for things like white flags and surrender.

She stopped outside a dive bar, like how she and Swallow Anne liked, where the floor was rimed thick and sticky- layer on layer of drink and blood and sweat and the rest of life’s unwanted fluids, drunks looking pretty watery and spineless themselves as they crawl around the seating area outside. They leered, and she saw them leering, they saw that she saw them leering and Tallow might as well have been the décor, elbow up on the table she sank down into, a fresh cigarette out and waiting to be lit. It took a heartbeat or a gunshot for her to be obliged, the click and the hiss of a clipper- lighter fluid on the man’s breath too. Drinking like he’s gonna find an answer at the bottom of a bottle, even though everyone knows that the colors in life run when they get wet and whatever answer he’s looking for is all smudged up and distorted. Tallow’s eyes fluttered close as she sucked down hard on the cigarette like it was oxygen and she was the fire, the glimmer of a smile perhaps- but then again, probably not. “Can I get you somethin’?” the man with the light asked and if he knew she was underage, he didn’t care, sinking down to sit beside her. Age is just a number, skin is skin when the lights go out and Tallow’s was fresh Irish cream and lace. The man wanted to touch, wanted to tuck the loose strand of hair falling across her cheek behind her ear. Tallow leaned in close, begun to whisper so he had to be closer.

“You can do me a favour.” A pink tongue runs across bright red lips.

“These are tough times, I aint in the business of givin’ favours, Darlin.”

“If you did me a favour I’d have to give one back. It’s just the neighbourly thing to do.”

“If we’re neighbours, Doll, I don’t ever wanna move.”

“That is a shame, because the way I pay back favours requires a little motion.”

Their faces were inches away from each other’s by then and Tallow could practically feel his moustache on her top lip, the gap between them as tight as a the buckle on a chicken farmer’s wallet. “Well shit yeah honey, I’ll do you a favour.” Tallow chuckled, and he did too, leaning in, eyes fluttering closed and lips pursed. With one swift motion Tallow had pulled the handkerchief from nestled in between her bosom, warm and carrying that same lemon smell, stuffing it roughly into the mouth of the man so that the tip of the white handkerchief was fairly visible.

“Mrrfle Flurrf,” he protested around the handkerchief but Tallow ignored him, turning around to look out at the street .

“Sit tight and shut up,” she said lazily, taking another deep toke of her cigarette. Everywhere and nowhere, they said of the Dodger. Right now he seemed to be more of the latter than anything else.

“Mmmfining nuurrr.”

Speeding past her like a good time, the knife found its way wedged into the pillar beside her. He was here. She turned and plucked the knife from its place, holding the handle of the blade between forefinger and thumb, her pierced handkerchief falling crumpled into the other, open palm. Turning to face him, he spoke and Tallow lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks before slowly raising them again, like a theatre curtain. Scanning him briefly with eyes like strange sins, she took in the one they called The Dodger. Or more appropriately the boy they called The Dodger- and there weren’t no mistaking the lingering traces of baby fat, features that would have been hard on a grown man still soft and round, like a mould not properly set - but he was still a boy with something strange and deceptive in his face a little like stale beer. He had a face the way that she felt. The Dodger kept his hat pulled low and when his quick eyes stopped flickering around the bar, Tallow could feel them eating her up. There wasn’t much that people in District 10 weren’t hungry for.

Exhaling, her cigarette smoke turned the air in the bar into a desolate grey cloud around her face, the same colour of faded hopes and long forgotten dreams. “I read a line in a book once- it said, Love, like fortune, favours the bold. I seen glimpses here and there of a lot of rats running through these streets, slippin’ in the shadows, stayin out of sight and most of ‘em seem lackin’ in both. If I wanted a rat’s help, I woulda stuck my head in a sewer. I needed to know you could be bold.” Her voice was soft but there was a firm finality to it, the thick black ring of a full stop at the end of a sentence to mark the matter over for good. Don’t question my methods again, hung in the distance between them like the heady wafting of bath tub brewed spirits.

“I’m impressed. But I still have the handkerchief and now I got your knife as well,” Tallow’s teeth flashed in the dim glow of the bar, glinting like the steel in her hand. The Dodger seemed keen to get proceedings started. The underworld was a fast moving, endless, conveyor belt; another day, another dime, another piece of flesh. Tallow could see a bead of dried blood clinging to the surface of the knife. Nothing she hadn’t seen on her brother’s knives before, but she’d make good money betting that this wasn’t just from pig’s blood. Fast and brutal, even in the lazy sultry heat of an August evening- but Tallow would set the pace however she wanted, slipped the knife underneath her dress, cupped like a secret close to her chest, nestled warm and safe in her brassiere. “This is the part where the fella buys a lady a drink if he wants her name,” she said, not without a hint of playfulness. Looking at him though, Tallow didn’t expect that to happen, raggedy coat, battered top hat and she’d only had two coins in her pocket for the last month- shaking them together, trying to get them to mate or something.

Glancing out across the bar, she saw granite faced drunks sinking into the counter tops, roughnecks with flannel shirts eyeing their drinks behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn out ranch foremen with lean fingers, cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; morphling peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually had families they loved and jobs that kept them ticking over. Those ones were the fewest and the furthest between- those were the ones Tallow was most wary of. “I’ll get a table. We can talk”.

Tallow found them a seedy dark corner- someplace where the light couldn’t or wouldn’t go- and slipped into the booth, putting her fingers on the table. It was sticky, encircled with beer mug stains like the rings around a planet, the butt of a cigarette pushed into the split in the wood like a tulip bulb that someone expected to grow and to flower, Tallow extinguished her own, a black pile of hot ash forming on the table and shoved it in there with the other. She was still smiling, the kind of plastic smile a person makes when they are fighting hard not to scream and though she didn’t show it, Tallow didn’t think she’d been able to breathe properly for a moment since she got into the bar. She didn’t have to do this, Tallow tried to tell herself. Didn’t have to go out of her way, put herself out on the line like this- her family didn’t expect her to, no one would have asked it of her. But what was it she’d said earlier- love, like fortune favours the bold. This was for love, this was for money so Tallow had sure as shit better be bold. More than she’d ever been before in her life.

“Listen…they tell me you’re the guy I talk to if I need information. And I need lots of it. Real specific stuff for what I got planned.” Tallow leaned in close now, close enough to see the grime underneath the Dodger’s neck, close enough so he could see the pores of her skin.

“You hear much about what’s gonna happen when the Victory Tour passes through this District?”