The Ranger

by Ace Atkins

  Stagg smiled some more. Brother Davis smiled, too.

  “God love you,” Quinn said, walking to another junk pile in the front yard and tossing more into the bed of his truck. Stagg followed him, continuing to talk, as if he didn’t find any insult in Quinn turning his back. This pile was mostly Hamp’s old worn-out shoes and coveralls, issues of Field & Stream, and torn pieces of flannel he’d been using to plug holes in the walls.

  “I didn’t want you hearing this from a lawyer,” Stagg said, still grinning. Quinn tossed more tattered rags into the pickup and waited a beat to hear him. “Your uncle owed a mess of money up against this old house. I helped him out awhile back with some work, but he never did repay me. I’m sorry, but I can’t go broke on this here deal.”

  “Did he sign over the land?”

  Stagg looked over at Brother Davis, and the country pastor smiled, showing off a couple of gold teeth.

  “I got papers with me,” Stagg said, handing them to Quinn, Quinn holding the papers into the glow of the headlights and scanning a legal document that looked as if it had been typed out by a monkey. Maybe three paragraphs, and Hampton’s scrawl at the bottom.

  “This loan here,” Quinn said. “You’re going to have to prove that it wasn’t paid.”

  “I’d hoped we could settle it without all that mess,” Stagg said. “Lawyers ain’t gonna do nothin’ but leach off what’s left. Can I have them papers back?”

  “Nope,” Quinn said, folding them and tucking them into his coat pocket. “I’ll take this to my attorney in the morning.”

  Stagg’s face lit up like a jack-o’-lantern with a crooked-tooth grin. “Just the same, please hand those back.”

  “You come out to my uncle’s place the day after he’s buried with some two-bit preacher to steal land that’s been in my family for generations, and you expect me to sit here with my thumb up my ass and pray? Get the hell out of here.”

  “This was a business affair between us,” Stagg said. “And this man here is a reverend.”

  “I know who he is,” Quinn said. “He used to drain our septic tank when I was a kid.”

  Brother Davis scowled and sucked at a tooth.

  Boom walked up beside Quinn, standing a good head taller than everyone, and didn’t say a word, just loomed there over all the garbage and refuse in the headlamps and faded light. “C’mon, Quinn.”

  “You can handle this deal any way you like,” Stagg said. “Paper or no paper, your uncle owes me a lot of money for use of them machines and personal loans. You don’t believe me, you just call up my competition. That Cat 320 alone goes for two grand a week.”

  Quinn nodded and went back to work. Stagg shuffled back to his car, the preacher followed wearing a cocky grin, and Quinn went back to the cab to start up the truck and load more onto the fire. Boom didn’t even look up until that pile was gone.

  “We gonna be here all night?” Boom asked.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Your uncle got another bottle?”

  “We haven’t finished this one yet.”

  “Just thinking ahead. Don’t you Rangers lead the way?”

  Must’ve been way past midnight by the time the bottle was gone, most of it going into Boom, who’d stretched out by the heat of the fire, lying on his back in the dead cold and looking skyward. They hadn’t talked in a long while, Quinn being used to long periods of silence and waiting, just getting used to the difference in the sounds, the familiarity and quietness. The last few years had played hell with his hearing, and when it got very quiet, he could hear a piercing electric pitch, his ears waiting for more gunfire and explosions, the big revving hum from a Chinook or Black Hawk right before it would lift off the sandy ground and drop them up in the mountains or the edge of a village made of rocks.

  He tossed the empty bottle into the fire, squatting down and poking at the embers with a stick. Boom spoke; Quinn was surprised to hear his voice.

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  “You asking?” Quinn asked.

  “I’ll just say I never expected you to step foot back in this town again.”

  “Unless someone died.”

  “Even then.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What’s been souring you?”

  “I’m not soured.”

  “Okay. You want to play it like that.”

  “I’m not playing,” Quinn said.

  “I see you got that Purple Heart, too.”

  “I got hurt. Wasn’t a big deal. My problems with the Army don’t have a thing to do with that. My wounds were nothing, man.”

  “What was it?”

  “The Regiment thinks I’m too old to be storming the castle.”

  “You don’t have to be a Ranger.”

  “It’s the only thing I ever wanted to be. I could give a shit for regular Army.”

  The last few sticks on the fire toppled over in the mound of ash, and Quinn found some more fallen branches and cedar logs to add to the pile. He warmed his hands and sat back on his haunches.

  “How’d you get hurt?” Boom stretched out his legs.

  “Hand-to-hand with the devout, hiding in some rocks near our LZ. He was on my back, yelling about Allah, me reaching for my M4 to neutralize the bastard when he yelled, ‘Bomb!’ ”

  “In English.”

  “Plain English.”

  “Funny how we use the word neutralize. Sounds kinda nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you?”

  “What?”

  “Neutralize his ass.”

  Quinn poked at the fire and shook his head. “Yep, but he shot me, too, while we scrambled for that bomb. And you?”

  “My world got rocked on a convoy outside Fallujah.”

  “That’s it?”

  “All there is to tell. Hell of a thing when you see your goddamn arm lying down the road from you. Puts you in a different frame of mind.”

  Boom started to laugh.

  “Damn, Boom. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “You know what I miss most?”

  Quinn waited.

  “Neutralizing all those motherfuckers,” he said. “I was pretty good at it. Riding convoy with that big-ass machine gun, protecting my boys. I liked that.”

  “Performing what you’d been trained to do.”

  The men didn’t talk for a while. You could hear coyotes up in the northern hills, and the sky was bright and clear. Quinn sat down and fell asleep watching the fire, a hot, even glow of red ashes. When he awoke sometime later, Boom had passed out on the ground. Quinn tried to wake him. But Boom wouldn’t stir, Quinn stepping down and lifting his friend’s massive weight up with his legs.

  He tossed his friend over his shoulder, the weight crushing, and carried him up the hill just as first light burned weak and gray over the dead trees. Down the gravel road, a rangy cattle dog padded its way up to the front porch and waited for Quinn to open the door.

  The dog cocked its head, studying him with two eyes of different colors.

  “Howdy there, Hondo.”

  5

  Judge Blanton lived toward the northeast corner of Tibbehah County, right around the hamlet of Carthage, about five miles or so from the Rebel Truck Stop. This part of the county had once been far removed from Jericho and the highway traffic, but now the county road toward his house was clogged with trailer homes filled with Mexican laborers and poor blacks and poorer whites. Junk cars and garbage littered the road Quinn had remembered as pristine when he’d come to ride horses as a kid. He’d once felt like he’d entered a secret part of the county, miles and miles of virgin woods that belonged to the judge stretching far out into the northern hills where he’d been lost during that time as a boy, separated from the hunt camp and left to wander into what had felt like endless forest and backtracked trails and black nights filled with coyotes and copperheads. But then accepting the situation, owning it, and killing off any fears he’d had.

&nbs
p; You used to could drive into the judge’s land straight from the road, but now Quinn had to stop at a locked cattle gate and unlatch a chain, closing the gate behind him, knowing the old man must lock up at night with his pistols and shotguns. As he drove closer to the simple one-story home, noting two trucks and a car in the drive, two pit bulls ran out to greet him, circling Quinn as he stepped out, growling and bristling until the old man emerged from the horse barn and whistled.

  Judge Blanton was a short, wiry man who probably didn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds. But he’d had the reputation as being one of the toughest figures ever to sit on the circuit bench, later serving on the state supreme court before retiring. He’d been a Marine in Korea—seen lots of action at Chosin Reservoir—and had been a mentor to Quinn’s uncle. His skin sagged a bit from his chin, but he still kept that same white crew cut he’d had since forever.

  Mr. Jim and Luther Varner walked out onto the front porch and waved to Quinn while Quinn shook the judge’s hand. All the men wore heavy jackets and boots and were drinking coffee and smoking cigars. Luther Varner, lanky and angular with long, bony fingers, handed Quinn one wrapped in cellophane, and Mr. Jim fiddled with an old Zippo to light it.

  Mr. Jim kept a well-worn Bible under his arm, Quinn figuring he’d interrupted some kind of meeting between the men, a regular Saturday routine where they argued politics, religion, and women.

  “Had a visit last night from Johnny Stagg,” Quinn said.

  “What a pleasure,” Blanton said.

  “He claims he owns my uncle’s land.”

  Varner asked, “Can he back it up?”

  Quinn unfolded the amateur document Stagg had given him, and Blanton pulled some reading glasses from his weathered plaid mackintosh jacket and read through the piece quickly, folding it and handing it back. The smoke on the porch was heavy but blew away with a sharp chill of wind.

  “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I’ve seen shittier things than this hold up in court.”

  Quinn nodded, getting the plug of the cigar going in the cold, adjusting his feet, as the judge looked up squinting into the white light.

  “He could fight you for it,” Blanton said. “Even without a contract. Everyone knows your uncle played around with those machines like a kid in a sandbox.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Mr. Jim said, settling his portly body into an old rocking chair and tugging down his Third Army ball cap over his bald head. “Y’all know about that deal?”

  Blanton shook his head.

  “Hell, he kept those bulldozers and backhoes at the farm. In exchange, Stagg said he’d let Hamp use ’em whenever he wanted. Hamp used ’em to dig that bass pond last summer, bulldozed a bunch of deer trails through the woods.”

  Quinn said, “Stagg says my uncle rented them.”

  “That’s a black lie,” Mr. Jim said, shaking his head, cigar clamped down in his teeth. “No other way to put it.”

  “So these were just personal loans,” Quinn said. “Y’all know about some casino trips?”

  Every one of the men nodded and mumbled but still kept on calling Stagg a son of a bitch for lying about the use of those earthmovers.

  “He claims to have gone straight,” Quinn said. “Said he sold the truck stop and titty bar.”

  Varner laughed and leaned against a support beam, smoking and coughing at the idea. Mr. Jim just shook his head, standing up from the chair for a brief moment and spitting over the railing before settling back down.

  “Not long after you left,” Blanton said. “He sold that filthy place, but I have my doubts. Same ole place, with its backroom whores and card games. It may have exchanged officially, but I have the feeling he’s still got a piece of it.”

  “And got himself elected. He’s running the county board of supervisors.”

  “Everything in Tibbehah County is for sale,” Mr. Jim said. “Most folks who kept things straight are dead.”

  “Or retired,” Blanton said.

  “Well, I’m not handing it over,” Quinn said.

  “You could get a decent price for the property,” Varner said. “It’s the land he wants, not trouble.”

  “I’d rather burn the house and timber,” Quinn said.

  Varner smiled and looked over to Mr. Jim, who cracked a grin, smoke leaking out from his old lips. He crossed his legs at the ankle and smiled with pride at Jason Colson’s kid, although the men had never really accepted Quinn’s father, always seeing him for what he’d become, a drunk who ruined about everything he touched.

  “Want some coffee?” Blanton asked.

  Quinn nodded, placing his smoldering cigar on a large ashtray, and followed Blanton to the back door of the old house and into the kitchen, where he had a pot of coffee plugged into the wall. Blanton poured them both a cup and headed into a sitting area filled with fine antiques, foxhunt paintings in oil on canvas, and an enormous old grandfather clock that ticked and whirred, filling the silence until the time changed to eight, clanging and gonging, then only the slow tick between them.

  “So you’re going to stay awhile?”

  “I got five more days.”

  “Can I recommend a good lawyer?”

  “I was thinking of you.”

  “I’m retired.”

  “But you’re the only one I trust.”

  “I guess I could file a few things in town to keep Stagg off your property. Sooner or later this thing’ll end up in front of Purvis Reeves.”

  “He’s the judge?”

  “Even if Stagg hadn’t been the one who put him on the bench,” Blanton said, “Purvis’d likely look at both claims and seek to split the difference. That’s his idea of justice. I might could whittle Stagg down some, though. That I can promise you. Maybe you keep the house and a good hunk of the property. You’re apt to lose some road front, though.”

  “I hate that bastard.”

  “He’s not worth that,” Blanton said. “Hate’s too powerful an emotion to waste on turds.”

  Quinn tested the coffee and it had cooled a bit. Blanton walked to the fire in the small chimney and poked at it, the air smelling of burning cedar, pleasant and warming on a cold, gray morning. He looked through the glass panes in the front door and watched his friends, sitting comfortably and smoking. “Don’t let that cigar go out on you.”

  “Do you know what happened to my uncle?” Quinn asked.

  Blanton placed the fire poker back into the metal rack and turned back to him.

  “Lillie Virgil doesn’t believe he’d kill himself.”

  “That little ole gal likes to create problems.”

  “You must’ve seen him before it happened.”

  “None of us had spoken to Hamp for nearly a month,” Blanton said. “He wouldn’t return our calls. If we stopped by the jail, he’d find something that needed to be done.”

  “But you were his friend,” Quinn said, leaning in from his chair. “Just what was it that hit him so hard and fast?”

  “This county,” Blanton said. “His job, the way most everything he’d known had been tainted and ruined. He’d become obsessed with taking the blame for things he couldn’t control. He was too old and too experienced to take his work so personally.”

  “Is it that bad?” Quinn asked.

  Blanton began to rebutton his mackintosh coat and motioned his head toward the porch. Quinn followed him to the front door, the daylight coming on strong but not seeming to break the brisk cold. Blanton put his arm around Quinn’s shoulder. “Do you know I have to sleep at night with my doors locked and a pistol under my pillow?”

  “And two mean dogs.”

  “Around here, I wish they were meaner,” Blanton said. “People will steal anything not chained down.”

  He gripped Quinn’s shoulder and led him back to the front porch.

  Outside, Mr. Jim handed him the cigar and his old Zippo to get the damn thing going again.

  Lena didn’t get to see the man called Charley Booth till Saturday morning, du
ring what the acting sheriff called “family time” outside a chain-link fence where prisoners got to kiss through the wire and accept packages of food and cigarettes, some sly groping between the slots. A guard watched all the time, seeming to be more concerned about pot or pills than weapons. But Lena saw Jody right away, knowing it was him from the way he stood, too cool for everyone, smoking a cigarette, with shorter, spiky hair now, but looking skinnier and more pimply than when she’d known him in Alabama. He was talking to a black guy in a far corner, both laughing, Lena noticing for the first time a tattoo on the side of his neck and wondering just when he did that to himself.

  She called for him. The tattoo was of a flower or a wolf head.

  He turned to her but looked away as if he didn’t recognize her. She’d worn her best clothes, a sparkled Miley Cyrus matching outfit she’d bought at the Walmart outside Tuscaloosa where she’d stopped hitching for a day or two and spent her last forty dollars on a cheap motel. That’s where she’d learned Jody had left town for this nowhere spot called Jericho, Mississippi, and she’d had to make the choice whether to go back home or see the thing through, and that little kick in her stomach made that decision all the easier.

  Jody finally got the idea that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him and bugged off the black guy and walked over to the fence separating them. She hung her hands up on the little diamond of wire and smiled at him, but he just shot her a glance and said in a low voice, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  She couldn’t answer, her voice seizing up in her throat.

  “You need to get your ass back home, girl. I’ll call.”

  “Hell you will.”

  He looked away, and she noted the leanness of his jaw, his teeth looking looser and more askew in his mouth, almost as if he’d aged a decade in months. He rubbed his sweating neck and bristly beard on his skinny face. He spit onto the concrete and breathed hard out his nose.

  “I have your baby in me.”

  “How do I know it’s mine?”

  “Goddamn you to hell, Jody.”

  “Hush.”

  “Just who the hell is Charley Booth?”