The Ranger

by Ace Atkins

  Quinn shrugged.

  Lillie said, “We’re thinking that Jett may have owed some folks some money when he got killed.”

  “Sure. He owed me some goddamn money.”

  “Some people may have wanted to scare him a bit?” she asked.

  Keith looked down at his coffee. He looked around the restaurant and caught the eye of a teenage boy eating a cheeseburger and staring at Keith’s face. Keith looked at him and flipped him the bird. He shook his head. “What are y’all driving at?”

  Quinn looked at him.

  “I done my time,” he said. “Okay. I got the hell out of Dodge and got free of that kind of life. When a man gets turned upon the spit, he starts to contemplate his soul. I can imagine hell feels a lot like waking up in the middle of the night with your clothes on fire and children screaming. I tried to find those kids. I tried. I see ’em every night. That little girl comes to me sometimes. Jett’s daughter told me it was okay. I tried, man. But half that damn trailer was up and burning after the explosion.”

  Lillie exchanged looks with Quinn.

  “What exploded?”

  “Half that trailer.”

  Keith put a hand to his destroyed face, his fingers moving up to his temples and lost eyebrows. He shook his head. “You ever get to that point that you just don’t give a goddamn?”

  “What explosion?” Lillie asked.

  She knew. Just like Quinn knew.

  “They said they’d pour gasoline on me and finish the job if I said a word,” he said, starting to laugh. “I guess that’s what happened to Jill. You know what? She was never too smart.”

  “What explosion?” Lillie asked.

  “What’d you think it was?” Keith said. “A grease fire? Goddamn. When I come to, I looked for my britches and my gun, thinking my ass was back in Fallujah. You know what I’m sayin’, Lieutenant?”

  “Sergeant,” Quinn said. “I enlisted just like you.”

  Keith met his eyes for a second and then looked away. He nodded to himself, as if making up his mind.

  “What the hell did y’all think Jett Price did for a living? He couldn’t even finish the paperwork to get disability. That dumb son of a bitch was cooking meth all around Tibbehah County. He’d been doing it since he got back, and I was helping him. The lab exploded and burned that trailer down, not a goddamn skillet. Okay? We straight?”

  Quinn leaned in and grabbed Keith by the forearm, Keith’s face softening in pain. “For who?”

  “Come on, man.”

  Quinn didn’t let go, and he felt Lillie touch his arm.

  “Who?”

  Quinn squeezed until he could feel the flesh become bone.

  “You ever heard the name Gowrie?” Keith asked.

  Quinn looked over to Lillie.

  “He have a run-in with Sheriff Beckett?”

  “Sheriff Beckett tried to run his ass outta the county when Gowrie started actin’ up.”

  Lillie nodded, listening, not offering anything back.

  “Gowrie said he was gonna kill him. Can you imagine having the balls to take out a lawman like that?”

  17

  “So how’d this whole deal work?” Quinn asked. “This shit Gowrie was running.”

  “I’d sure like to get home,” Shackelford said, sitting in the backseat of Lillie’s Cherokee. He stared out the window at 9 as they passed a sign that read 18 MILES TO JERICHO. “You got no cause to take me in. I got mud in my boots and up my ass when you tackled me like that.”

  “Deputy Virgil here is just giving us a ride to town.”

  “Gowrie sees me with y’all and he’ll kill me.”

  “No he won’t,” Quinn said. “We’ll use an unmarked car.”

  “You don’t know Gowrie.”

  “He’s of no concern.”

  “You gonna watch my ass for the next few years, Ranger? ’Cause I’d prefer not to end up like Jill Bullard’s dead ass. Didn’t you say the buzzards had got to her?”

  “Just keep me on the right roads.”

  “I don’t know what you want.”

  “He wants to know about your damn operation, shithead,” Lillie said. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Goddamn, she’s mean.”

  “I’ll pay you for your time,” Quinn said, turning around to look at the bony, hairless man. “Okay?”

  “I ain’t exactly welcome in Tibbehah County,” Shackelford said, sort of talking to himself. “How’d y’all find me? ’Cause if you can find me, I’m thinking I better boogie on down the road.”

  “Let’s meet back up at the sheriff’s office at ten o’clock,” Lillie said. “That’ll give me some time to talk to Wesley.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “I still don’t know why y’all need me,” Shackelford said. “You getting some kind of pleasure in watching me shit my pants?”

  Quinn remained silent, driving a twelve-year-old green Buick Lillie had borrowed from impound, looking for the cutoff road that Shackelford had told him about. They passed the remnants of an old country store, a lone trailer filled with sharp light, and more leaning barns that would be swallowed in kudzu come spring. The sides of the road had been recently shaved away, leaving no shoulder, only a steep drop down into a gully filled with brush.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?” Shackelford said.

  “Nope.”

  “Bet you was a good soldier. How long you been in?”

  “Little more than ten years.”

  “You seen some shit?”

  Quinn didn’t answer him.

  “Can’t you talk about operations?” Shackelford asked.

  “Where’s the cutoff?”

  “Just around this bend,” he said, scrunching down into the passenger seat, making himself small, Dale Earnhardt cap covering half his scarred face. “Shit.”

  “No one can see you unless I turn on a light.”

  “I don’t take chances.”

  “How many places cooked for Gowrie?”

  “Many as thirteen and little as five or six.”

  “How much money?”

  “Me and Jett got paid per batch,” he said. “I don’t know how much Gowrie sold it for.”

  “How much per batch?”

  “Maybe five hundred. I didn’t exactly keep a record.”

  “Where’d he sell it?”

  “I don’t know. Didn’t ask.”

  “Who collected?”

  “Him and his daddy. You ever met Daddy Gowrie? He’s a mess. Dumber than dog shit. Once tried to rob a bank with a salad fork and did a ten-year stretch at Brushy Mountain.”

  Quinn looked at Shackelford, down in the floor of the car, hairless and pink, and then up to a bent-up road sign with an arrow pointing down another county road. They drove up through wide hills and down into valleys that used to be farms but now had mainly become rows of pine for timber. The land had been stripped and planted and then clear-cut down to nothing, making the whole landscape feel used.

  “Look, these things move around some,” Shackelford said. “This is where I know they used to cook. But Gowrie’s gonna shake some things up every few weeks in case the law is on him.”

  “Is that it?”

  Quinn motioned to a mailbox in the shape of a horse’s ass, the head looking away from the mail slot.

  “That’s where it was.”

  Quinn killed the engine and grabbed the door handle.

  “What if I run?”

  “Are you under arrest?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not the law.”

  “You sure feel like the law.”

  “Shut up and sit tight.”

  Quinn walked the road a quarter mile down into a cleared circle with two mobile homes up on concrete blocks. He circled the property twice before he was sure no one was inside either trailer. He tried the doors, finding one unlocked; the other had to be busted open.

  Both were empty.

  Quinn jogged back to the Buick under a patch of moonlight and
spotted Shackelford, standing by a ravine, taking a leak. “Can you please take me back to Eupora?”

  “You’ve shown me two places.”

  “So?”

  Quinn reached into the glove box and found the Tibbehah County map he’d bought, circling the sites they’d already visited.

  “You said you knew of at least thirteen cook spots.”

  “I said I know where they used to be,” he said, zipping up his fly and turning back to Quinn. “I didn’t make you no promises.”

  Quinn scratched his neck. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want nothin’.”

  “He killed my uncle.”

  “Probably,” Keith said. “He sure killed Jill. But that don’t mean nothin’ to me.”

  “Where next?”

  “You know, I used to be good-looking,” Shackelford said. “You better believe it. I was king-shit stud in high school. Played football. Ran track. I got more tail than you could shake a stick at.”

  “Where’s next?”

  “You know your way up to Fate?”

  Quinn circled the hamlet on the map, got into the car, and cranked the engine, which sputtered twice before turning over. He drove back down the hill and pulled onto the highway to town, where they’d hit 9 going north.

  “Latecia said where to find me?” Shackelford said, righting himself up into the seat and cracking the window, the cold air feeling good in the cab, blowing away some of Shackelford’s body odor. “Right?”

  Quinn didn’t answer.

  “Man, if Gowrie had known I liked black women, he’d a shit a brick. ’Course, Latecia was light-skinned, hot as hell. Guess that don’t make no difference.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “He’s a crazy-ass, nigger-hating nut job,” Shackelford said, coughing up a lugie and spitting out the window. “What else is there to know? He likes to shoot guns, shoot crank, and talk about the End Times like some kind of wandering preacher. I did business with him. I didn’t say I followed him.”

  “Who’d he do business with?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He didn’t sell what y’all made in this county?”

  “He sold some, I guess,” Shackelford said. “But he said he wouldn’t shit where he ate.”

  “I heard that before,” Quinn said, taking a soft turn in the road, stealing a glance at Shackelford. “Taliban said they sold poppies only to the infidels. Their politicians made excuses for those shitbags, saying the farmers couldn’t survive.”

  Shackelford took off his baseball cap and creased the bill. “I sleep in on Election Day, never figured a single politician to be worth a shit.”

  “You ever hear Gowrie talk about Johnny Stagg?” Quinn asked.

  “The county supervisor?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Stagg sent over some of Gowrie’s boys to steal some of my uncle’s cattle.”

  “You know, most of those boys believe in Gowrie, like he’s some kind of prophet. I went out there one night to some kind of barbecue, and he showed us an old movie about the mongrelization of the races. Said if we didn’t come together to fight it, we’d be the new niggers. What the hell does that mean? But he did make some pretty good ice cream. Peach, I think.”

  They drove north, turning on the Square to the northwest part of the county on the other side of the Big Black River, a full moon shining out onto the flooded land like a mirror. They crossed over an old metal bridge that had always reminded Quinn of an Erector set.

  “You headed back?” Shackelford asked.

  “You got more places to show me.”

  “I mean, headed back to the AFG.”

  “I’m headed back to Benning.”

  “You know your next deployment?”

  “Ranger instructor.”

  “No more stormin’ the castle, huh?”

  “Why don’t you shut the hell up?”

  Quinn studied the broken line on Highway 9, not being able to see an inch beyond those headlights. He turned on the radio, George Jones singing he had stopped loving her today.

  A little before midnight, Quinn spotted a cherry red El Camino bumping out from a dirt road that Shackelford said led to Gowrie’s compound. The headlight high beams washed up over Quinn’s face before the car headed on down south. He cranked his car and followed, Shackelford stirring to life next to him, having been asleep for the last hour after spending a long while bragging about what a high school hero he’d once been. Before the meth had parched him out into something he didn’t even recognize.

  “Where are we?”

  “That truck ahead just came out.”

  “You see who it was?”

  “Nope.”

  “What is it?”

  “Red El Camino.”

  “Shit, that’s Daddy Gowrie, unless someone took his truck. You see how many people are with him?”

  “Another man in the passenger seat.”

  Shackelford scrunched down and reached into his thin leather jacket for a pack of cigarettes, cracking the window and lighting up. “Man, I’d sure love to have a beer right about now. There’s nothing like getting a warm six on a cold day. You know?”

  “I do.”

  “How far do we follow them?”

  “Far as they go.”

  Shackelford smoked down the cigarette, tossing the butt into the night. The shadows would fall across his scarred face sometimes, and Quinn could kind of piece together what he must’ve looked like, but when they got close to the truck stop, streets lit up and shining through the window, he transformed back again, wrecked and old. His face looking like melted wax.

  “There you go,” Shackelford said, pointing to the El Camino parked at the front entrance to the truck stop.

  Quinn idled at the low row of pumps, watching an old man in a worn blue jeans jacket and ski hat walk inside and come back out, thumping a pack of cigarettes and carrying a Coke bottle. The El Camino’s brake lights clicked on, and it backed up, exposing the man in the passenger seat while they circled out and headed back for the road south.

  Quinn shook his head when he saw the face, and he slipped the old Buick into gear and followed, slowing for the Highway 45 ramp.

  “He’s headed to Memphis,” Shackelford said.

  “You got somewhere else to be?”

  “You recognize the other fella with him?”

  “Yep,” Quinn said.

  “Brother Davis,” Shackelford said. “Got that church in the old movie house.”

  “Met him with Stagg.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “Why’s he buddies with Daddy Gowrie?” Quinn asked. “He get a cut?”

  “A church sure is an easy place to drop off some cash, ’specially durin’ a real good sermon.”

  “Are you shittin’ me?”

  “I wouldn’t shit no Ranger,” Shackelford said.

  “Like a bank?”

  “That’s where they count up the money.”

  “You said you only dealt with Gowrie and Daddy.”

  “That was me. Other folks made donations. Not a bad way to do business, all truth be told.”

  The cherry red El Camino cut over on Highway 78 and hit Union County, and got off at the New Albany exit, heading the opposite way from town, down one narrow country road and then another, finally disappearing onto a private dirt road.

  “They see us?”

  Quinn had turned off onto the shoulder of the road, car still idling. “We’ll find out.”

  The El Camino spurted out from the dirt road twenty minutes later and drove back toward the highway, taking the turn north for Memphis, Quinn keeping a good hundred yards behind it.

  “Wish we had one of them tracking devices like you see on those CSI shows,” Shackelford said. “We could stop off at a beer joint and find ’em later.”

  “You sure want a beer.”

  “Shit, you cut right into my drinking session, calling me u
p and saying you were a preacher and then coming to get me with that woman deputy. I hadn’t run like that in a while.”

  Shackelford laughed. Quinn smiled.

  “I’ll get you a six if we stop.”

  “You said something about money, too.”

  “How much would you need to blow town?”

  “You mean out of Mississippi?”

  “Yep.”

  “Few hundred.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just like that?”

  “What did I say?” Quinn said, keeping Daddy Gowrie’s taillights in view, watching them disappear between eighteen-wheelers and cars, till they hit the Tennessee line and the outskirts of Memphis.

  18

  That little boy Ditto looked out for Lena. She couldn’t walk two feet outside the trailer they’d given her without him falling into stride, making sure she got down to the old barn where she’d stock up on some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a couple of Hershey bars, and maybe a bottle of Mountain Dew. He was trying not to talk so much, but it seemed the restraint just wasn’t in him, as he’d hold her plate or carry some freshly cleaned laundry some of the women had washed and hung in the freezing daylight. At first Ditto was kind of a pain in her ass, and she got tired of all the stupid questions he was asking her. And maybe it wasn’t appropriate to be seen with him on account of her waiting there for Charley Booth.

  But that nervous little pig-faced boy knew how to run interference, and it had been maybe eight times that one of those jail-hard creeps—not Gowrie himself but that skinny guy Jessup who sucked Gowrie’s asshole for free or that big fat pig everyone called Tim, or Hogzilla—smiled at her like she was walking around naked. She guessed they figured since Charley had been with her, they sure had a chance.

  “Don’t you need some vitamins or s-something?” Ditto asked, kind of stuttering, trying to figure how to pull out some kind of conversation. “I can run down to the Dollar Store for you. I saw they was selling a dang pint bottle of chewables for five dollars.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “My sister got herself pregnant, and she was always taking vitamins her doctor give her,” Ditto said, smiling and then looking a bit confused. “You got a doctor?”