by Ace Atkins
She shook her head.
“How long you got?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe a couple weeks. That baby’s been in me since March. I feel like I’m about to bust.”
“I’ll take you to a doctor.”
“I don’t need no doctor.”
“It ain’t gonna just pop out like no calf,” Ditto said. “A calf lands on its feet.”
“I know how a calf lands.”
“I knew you were a farm girl.”
“Some guy gave me this,” Lena said, reaching into her old coat pocket for a business card. “If something happens to me, would you call him? In case I go batshit crazy, with all that pain I hear about.”
He nodded.
“Ditto?”
“Yep.”
“What in the world are y’all doing here?” Lena asked, taking a seat on the stoop of the old trailer. The shame of it was that the shithole felt as much like home as anywhere she’d ever been. She’d never lived in the same place longer than six months.
“Training,” Ditto said.
“For what?”
“Gowrie says a war’s coming,” Ditto said. “I don’t know about that, but he pays us regular to run errands for him, drill and all that. He’s got a zip line put on top of that hill over yonder where we slide down and shoot guns.”
“What’s that prove?”
“It’s all about getting ready.”
“For the war.”
“I guess,” Ditto said. “Oh, hell. I don’t know. I didn’t drink all the Kool-Aid.”
“I’m glad,” Lena said, leaning into him, thinking that she liked the smell of his cigarette around her. He didn’t move, like he might spook her away, stock-still, and not able to speak.
“I’ve been wishing that Charley Booth would leave you alone,” Ditto said. “He isn’t right in the head. You understand that about him, don’t you?”
“What’d you mean?” Lena asked, feeling something funny and sharp and getting to her feet, reaching for the railing. A sharp pain, and the splat of something big and wet across the wooden planks.
“You just piss yourself?” Ditto asked.
“This baby’s comin’.”
The highway into south Memphis was pretty much industrial, with gas stations and trucking companies, cheap roadside motels, and some Mexican markets and Tejano bars. Quinn knew the city pretty well, Memphis being the city of choice for North Mississippi kids who wanted to cut loose but needed something bigger than Tupelo. There were signs to Graceland and signs to the airport, the sky overhead dotted with blinking lights. Not far from Winchester Road, the El Camino slowed and got into the turn lane. Quinn tried not to make a show of slowing himself but thought that if he’d been spotted it was too late anyway, so he just fell in line with the turning car.
“He’s headed to the airport.”
“I doubt Daddy Gowrie has ever been on an airplane,” Shackelford said. “He seemed confused about indoor plumbing.”
About a mile down the road, you could see the lights and neon of a club. DIXIE BELLES advertised hundreds of the SOUTH’S FINEST WOMEN, AMATEUR CONTESTS, and HALF-PRICE LAP DANCES. Daddy Gowrie turned into a busted-up parking lot, and Quinn drove right on past, getting a glimpse of the grizzled little man as he crawled out of the cab and started to comb his thin, greasy hair with a pocket comb in the flickering light.
Brother Davis followed, grinning up at the neon sign with his gold teeth. He borrowed Daddy Gowrie’s comb and went to work on his ducktail.
“Daddy know you?”
“Is this a face you’d forget?” Shackelford lit another cigarette and nodded. “You bet. Even before I became so unforgettable. I whipped his ass one night after he stole a pint of whiskey from me.”
Quinn nodded back.
“I know,” Shackelford said, waving the smoke from his face. “Stay here. Will you at least describe to me all them titties?”
Quinn waited five minutes before following the men inside, paying the five-dollar cover and paying ten for his first drink out of a two-drink minimum. The girls were cute but hard at the cash register, commenting on his buzzed hair, and they told him he could get a free lap dance with a military ID.
Quinn grabbed a Budweiser and walked into the club, scanning the big open space for Daddy Gowrie and the preacher.
Most strip clubs were the same, but he could tell right away this one beat the crap out of the ones lining Victory Drive in Columbus, Georgia. He’d dropped so much money in those places when he’d been a young man, maybe eight, nine years ago, he couldn’t even imagine. There was always a Ranger who’d get stupid and drunk, falling in love with one of those girls. Quinn actually knew two that married girls they’d called dancers, and when Quinn met one of the dancer wives, he had already seen her naked a half-dozen times.
All the same shit, stage lights, bad music, and some goofball DJ trying to be funny, making sure all the fellas knew to tip their waitresses.
He hadn’t been inside five minutes and had been hustled twice and asked to buy another drink three times.
Daddy Gowrie and Brother Davis had found a table close to the stage, where a girl worked a pole to some electronic shit music. At Daddy Gowrie’s feet sat a small bag, maybe a little larger than a grocery sack, that he’d touch every few minutes, feeling for it and then returning his hands to the table.
Brother Davis moved up to the stage and put a dollar bill in his gold teeth. A woman pressed her titties together and snatched it from him. Ole Daddy Gowrie watched and clapped, smiling a big shit-eating grin and slapping his knee while he reached for a couple shots from the waitress and handed her back some cash.
He threw back both of ’em, motioning to her that he wanted a couple more.
The room was dark. They couldn’t see him. If they’d turned the houselights on, they wouldn’t have noticed anyway, as the girl threw her bikini top down on the stage and hugged the pole.
Two more girls followed.
Daddy drank four more shots. Brother Davis drank three beers within five minutes.
A few songs later, Daddy Gowrie reached into his pocket for a cell phone and nodded to what he heard. He got to his feet, grabbed the bag, and walked back behind the bar, where he knocked on a metal door.
The door opened, and he was gone.
Quinn ordered another Budweiser but didn’t drink it.
It was oh-one-hundred.
He wondered if Shackelford had bailed.
Quinn didn’t care. He’d gotten what he needed, now had to figure out what to do with the information.
The music changed, and a tall blonde in boots made of fur high-stepped it down the center of the runway to Led Zeppelin. Quinn watched for a bit till his eye caught another couple girls, sitting down at a table with a couple college boys. One of the girls reached out and grabbed one of the boys by the hand and led him back to a VIP room, where he’d get a lap dance for forty bucks. The other girl, dressed as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, made small talk with the kid left at the table. Quinn’s eye shifted to her from Brother Davis, who was getting dead drunk and moving with the music.
Quinn tilted his head, the strobes and lights of the stage making weird patterns on the walls and across faces. He could only see the girl’s neck and a tattoo on her shoulder blade.
She turned in profile, and Quinn just shook his head.
He drank the beer in two sips and stood, a girl in black panties and bra grabbing his belt from behind and asking if he wanted a dance. He dodged her and walked over to the table, looking down at the cheerleader.
She craned her neck up at him, eyes glassy.
“Boy, you look just like my brother.”
Caddy agreed to follow him out to the parking lot, where she lit up a cigarette and leaned up against a brand-new red Mustang that she bragged belonged to her boyfriend. She wore a long fake-fur coat over her cheerleader getup and tried to keep balanced in her white boots, pretending that she was sober and goddamn well in charge.
“I wondered how long it would take till you came up here.”
“I wasn’t looking for you.”
“You know military gets free lap dances,” she said. “You taking advantage of that?”
“You should call Mom.”
“That’s it? No speeches?”
“What the hell, Caddy. You really need a person to warn you off working a pole?”
“You know how much money I make?”
“I met Jason.”
She took a drag of the cigarette and let out a long exhale, kneading her fist into her eye. She met Quinn’s gaze and then craned her neck back at a big jet taking off and buzzing over the concreteblock club and the Dixie Belles’ neon sign.
“How is he?”
“Why don’t you go home and find out?”
“You want me to support my son by checking folks out at the Piggly Wiggly?”
“I don’t think you send a dime home.”
“Momma tell you that? ’Cause that’s a damn lie.”
“I didn’t come to find you.”
“Liar.”
“You should have come to the funeral.”
She reached into her pocket for another cigarette, finding an empty pack, squashing it in her hand and tossing it to the ground. Her glassy eyes focused on Quinn’s face, and then she muttered something that he didn’t understand.
“What?”
“Forget it.”
“I just followed an old man up here from Tibbehah County,” Quinn said. “He brought a sackful of meth or money and dropped it off behind a metal door behind that bar. You know anything about that?”
She laughed at him.
“What’s funny?”
“What the hell you into now?”
Quinn reached out and grabbed her arm. He looked down at his sister’s face, not really seeing his sister now but seeing that kid she used to be at Halloween, when she’d put on makeup and pretend to be a princess or a witch.
“He’s a good boy, Quinn.”
Quinn nodded. “You saddled Mom with him. Don’t try and get noble now.”
“Fuck you.”
“Who’s on the other side of that door?”
“Big money.”
“Big money got a name?”
She placed her small thin hands into her coat, covering everything but her knee-high white leather boots. “Let me give you some advice, dear big brother. You got no idea what kind of people run the show.”
“I’d like to know.”
“Why do you give a shit?”
“They killed Uncle Hamp.”
“Bullshit.”
“Who runs this place?”
“Good-bye, Quinn.”
Caddy turned, shoulders hunched, and walked back toward the music and lights. Quinn stayed there and watched her go, wanting to grab her, throw her in the car, and force her to go back to Jericho and be a good daughter. Now a good mother.
“See you at Christmas?” he said to her back.
She kept walking, flipping him the bird.
You can’t make a person be what you wanted. Caddy had been broken since she was twelve. He had some ideas why, but they weren’t discussed. You don’t talk about such horrible things in a place as bright as Tibbehah County.
19
“You find what you were lookin’ for?” Shackelford asked Quinn right before they hit downtown Memphis, Quinn not saying a word since he’d cranked that old Buick at the strip club and headed into the city. He slowed at the Greyhound bus station on Union, still lit up in the early morning with a few street people shuffling about. Quinn braked under a streetlight and knocked the car into park, reaching into his wallet.
“I got my shit back in Eupora,” Shackelford said.
“Anything that can’t be replaced?”
Shackelford shook his head.
“I’d get out of town for a few weeks.”
“You planning on a shit storm?”
Quinn didn’t answer, handing him four hundred dollars, and only asked if he had a place to go.
“I got an Army buddy in Atlanta,” Shackelford said. “I guess he wouldn’t mind seein’ my pretty face.”
Quinn nodded. Shackelford absently shuffled the money in his hand and then tucked it into his T-shirt pocket under his leather jacket.
“You gonna kill Gowrie?”
“I appreciate the help,” Quinn said. “You’re stand-up.”
Shackelford looked at him and nodded, offering his hand. Quinn reached out and shook the man’s hand, skinny and feeling almost hollow.
“Hell, I didn’t do nothin’.”
“Gowrie forced you out and you came back anyway. I’d call that stand-up.”
Shackelford waited a beat, breathing, and then nodded before he opened the door and headed on into the bus station.
Quinn stayed a moment after the door slammed shut, smelling the diesel fumes of the Greyhounds, and watched Shackelford disappear before he headed back south.
Quinnʹs cell rang about halfway back to Jericho. It was Anna Lee.
“You asleep?”
“I’m headed back from Memphis.”
“Quinn, did you give some girl Luke’s number?”
“She was pregnant and needed a doctor.”
“That girl called us at supper, and Luke drove off to find her. He hasn’t answered his phone in nine hours.”
“Sounds like the girl’s in labor.”
“He’s not at the hospital.”
“Call Wesley.”
“I called him,” she said. “He wasn’t worried.”
“I’m sure Luke’s fine.”
“He went out to that compound up in the hills.”
“You want me to call Wesley for you?”
“Why in the hell would you put Luke in with those people?”
“I’m sorry, I thought Luke was a doctor.”
“Those people out there. Holy Christ. Why’d you set him up like that?”
Gowrie left after the screaming got too bad, after her water broke on the steps with Ditto and ran through her panties and down her legs and she was left in that dirty little room with four women stoned out of their minds. Not a one of them had five years on Lena, and they kept on telling her everything was going to be all right. The hell it was. She kept on punching that number on the cell phone, the one she’d been given at the truck stop, feeling like this was the only way the goddamn pain would stop. But the girls tried to soothe her, bringing her some pills, which she spit on the floor, and a hit of whiskey, which she did drink. Just about twilight is when time kind of stopped, and she threw that phone to the floor and began to walk the creaky floor of that trailer, women on each side of her, telling her to be cool. Be cool? She walked and couldn’t breathe, those damn girls not giving her the space. She held on to her big belly and thought of Jody. Jody Charley Booth, and what he’d done by planting his seed in her, after lying on his back and looking up at the stars and telling her how good it felt when he didn’t have to wear one of them things. And she’d asked if he’d finished within her, and he swore on his momma’s life that he hadn’t. And she believed him.
Not ’cause she trusted him, but ’cause it was what she wanted to believe, and if Charley Booth was going to be beholden to her and they’d live together, and he’d go out and make sure they was taken care of, she’d never, ever, have to step foot in Alabama again.
“You want some more whiskey?”
“Hell no, I don’t want no whiskey.”
She doubled over, the pain something fierce, her busting apart at the seams, muscles and organs coming undone, that baby on the move and wantin’ out of there. And as she got on all fours on the bed, a woman bringing a cool cloth for her neck, she had the scariest thought of all. What if she was too small? What if the baby couldn’t get out? She’d hide it. She’d hide it. ’Cause she saw, in her mind, Gowrie walkin’ in and splitting her in two with a hunting knife and having no more worries about it than gutting a fish. She’d be a fish to Gowrie.
And that’s all she’d be.
Men were in the room now. She could smell them. She could smell and feel better than she ever had before, and she wished at this moment that she wasn’t feeling a goddamn thing. They craned their necks and looked at her bare legs, the women trying to push those grinning bastards out.
“She don’t look right,” Gowrie said.
A hand reached for her, and she turned and grabbed it and bit down with all she had, tasting fur and blood and bone. The man yelled and backed away. And she rolled over to her back, scooting far against the wall, feeling the cold tin against her back and telling the man to get the hell away from her. “Don’t you cut me. I ain’t no fish. Goddamn you, don’t you.”
He held his arm where she’d bit him and dropped to a knee by her bed, reaching for the hair that had gone wild over her eyes. His glasses caught light all funny in the weak glow of the lamp. He held his hand over her forehead and told her to just hold on, the pain letting go, like the busting wasn’t gonna happen at all. Everything gone still as a lump in her.
I can’t feel nothing. I can’t feel nothing.
His hand held hers. He was nice-looking, with green eyes and brown hair, reminding her of that fine doctor on Days of Our Lives.
“Call 911.”
“Shit, no,” Gowrie said. “Brought you here, didn’t we?”
“She can’t have this baby here in this filthy room.”
“She called a doctor. I don’t need the law.”
That’s when the pain came on so strong that her spine bucked from the bed, and she dug her nails into his arms and said, “Goddamn you, Jody. Goddamn. You killed me.”
The doctor just said, “Hold on.”
20
Wesley Ruth met Quinn at the Tibbehah County line, his sheriff’s truck pointing north on a muddy shoulder and chugging exhaust in the cold night. Quinn pulled opposite him, headed toward Jericho, and Wesley let down his window, Styrofoam spit cup in hand, and said, “You sure like waking me up at night. Is this going to become something regular?”