Bayou Blackout

Nine months since Dale Hutchins died with his own antenna wire wrapped around his throat. Nine months too long.

Marley Crenshaw gripped the Pelican State Carriers shuttle wheel hard enough to feel her pulse in her palms. Six AM, January third, 1978. Nine months and two weeks since she'd felt like a human being. The chemical refineries along I-20 bled orange light into the Louisiana dawn, flames burning off waste gas like perpetual sunrise. Diesel fumes mixed with something worse—sulfur, maybe, or benzene—the kind of stink that crawled into your lungs and stayed there. She ground her teeth. Felt the ache in her jaw, the constant pressure where enamel met enamel. Couldn't stop. Hadn't been able to stop for three months.

The passengers in back didn't notice. Three truckers catching sleep between runs, heads against windows, snoring into the diesel-stained upholstery. A lot lizard named Cherry going somewhere that wasn't here, staring out at the refineries with dead eyes. They never looked at Marley. Never really saw her. She was furniture. A necessary service. A woman driving a shuttle in a man's world—invisible.

Good.

She'd learned invisibility from her mother. How to be the woman men talked over, around, through. How to exist in their spaces without registering as a threat. How to watch, and listen, and remember. Rebecca Crenshaw had been a lot lizard once. Had moved through these same truck stops, these same men, until one of them decided she was disposable.

The police had never found her killer. Never really looked.

Her right hand cramped. She'd been holding the wheel so tight her fingernails had broken skin. Little half-moons of blood on her palm. She flexed her fingers, watched them tremble, made them still. Control. She still had that.

The itch lived under her skin now. Electric current that never shut off. Started as a whisper after Hutchins—that was good, you should do it again—but nine months had turned the whisper into a scream. She'd thought six months would be enough distance. Professional. Careful.

She'd been wrong.

At night, she ground her teeth so hard she woke with blood in her mouth. Dreams of the antenna wire. The way Hutchins' eyes had gone wide when he realized. When he understood. That moment—right before—when he saw what she was.

God, that had felt good.

The shuttle pulled into the Shreveport stop, air brakes hissing. The refineries here ran twenty-four hours, stacks burning off waste gas in perpetual flame. January in Louisiana meant sixty degrees at dawn. Unnatural. The whole state felt wrong, swamp and chemical plant bleeding into each other, nothing clean anywhere.

She liked it.

"Ten minute break," she said, voice soft. Tennessee drawl, apologetic. The persona she wore during daylight. Marley the shuttle driver. Nervous. Forgettable. The kind of woman men talked over, around, through.

Cherry got off first, stretching in a denim jacket that didn't hide much. Nineteen, maybe. Black girl with straightened hair and a bruise on her jaw she'd covered with foundation that didn't match. She lit a cigarette, hands cupped against wind that wasn't there.

Marley watched her walk toward the truck stop. Watched the way she moved—practiced vulnerability, prey animal making herself smaller. Survival instinct. Her mother had moved like that.

The craving flared. Marley closed her eyes, counted backward from ten. Breathed diesel and sulfur until her pulse steadied.

She'd spent the last nine months preparing. Not for justice—she'd stopped lying to herself about that around month four. Preparation because the next time had to be cleaner. Better. More controlled.

She'd studied anatomy in the Shreveport Public Library. Medical textbooks, diagrams of the human throat, the carotid arteries. Bought a grip strengthener from a sporting goods store. Practiced until her hands moved without thinking.

Hutchins had taken two, maybe three minutes of struggle. Too long. The antenna wire had slipped twice. Her grip had faltered.

Almost.

Next time would be ninety seconds, start to finish.

The coffee counter at the back of the truck stop smelled like burnt oil and cigarette ash. Marley ordered black coffee and sat at the corner booth with her maintenance log, pretending to study shuttle routes. The lot lizards talked freely around her. They always did. She was just the tired-looking shuttle driver, minding her own business.

Cherry sat two booths over with Diamond, an older Black woman—twenty-five but looked forty—who worked the same stretch. They spoke in the half-whisper of women who'd learned to read danger.

"Girl, you look worn out." Diamond stubbed out a Virginia Slim. "Which one was it?"

"Some nobody going to Dallas. Paid cash, didn't get weird." Cherry wrapped both hands around her coffee mug. "Mostly I just want to sleep."

"You hear about Jasmine?"

Cherry's face went still. "What about her?"

"She ain't come back." Diamond lit another cigarette. "Been three weeks now. Last I saw, she was talking to that chemical driver. The one with the snake tattoos."

"Rattler?"

"Mm-hmm."

Marley didn't look up from her maintenance log. Wrote: Oil change needed. Chemical hauler. Snake tattoos. Her handwriting didn't shake.

Cherry hunched smaller. "He gives me the creeps."

"Should. That's four this year." A third voice, older and gravel-rough. Mississippi Marie slid into the booth, coffee already in hand. Forty-five and mean as a cut snake, the kind of survivor who'd outlasted a dozen younger girls. "Four of our girls. All Black. All went with Rattler, none came back."

"Police don't care," Diamond said.

"Police never cared." Marie sipped her coffee. "We're just dead whores waiting to happen."

The words hung in the air like smoke. Cherry looked at the table. Diamond studied her cigarette. They'd all heard it before. Believed it, because it was true.

Marley turned a page in her log. Wrote: Four victims. Chemical driver. "Rattler." Targets Black women.