by Ace Atkins
“Yes, you do,” the doc said.
“You lousy bastard.”
“Grab my hand and squeeze till you think you’re gonna break me,” the doctor said. “Call me Luke.”
“I’ll crack your bones like a pecan, Luke.”
The pain hit her again, and her elbows gave way, those pimply-faced girls holding her down, acting like they knew something, like they had some kind of strength or knowledge that made them right for this. But them girls would be on their backs right now, legs spread so wide they was going to split, if Gowrie didn’t have sense. That man had more sense than Charley Booth, Jody Charley Booth. In jail. In prison. A big smile on his face. Yeah, I didn’t finish.
Hell he didn’t.
“Don’t cut me. I ain’t no fish. Goddamn, don’t you cut me.” And she pushed hard and long, and breathed and breathed and breathed, ’cause that was something that people all around her were saying: Breathe, breathe, breathe. “Hell yeah, I’m breathin’, and hurtin’, too.”
And then the hurt stopped, Lena thinking that her heart and insides had done exploded. No breathing, no pushing, no pain. Maybe she was dead?
“One more time,” Luke said. “About there.”
“I’m done.”
“Push.”
Goddamn, she hurt, but then she started to notice the soft light around the doc’s face, such a soap-opera hero, with nice clothes and smelling clean, not like those rats who hung out at the barn down the hill. Not like Jody. Two of them dumb girls were cooing and carrying on about something in one of them’s arms, and she couldn’t see it but it seemed to be bringing them a mess of pleasure. Goddamn, she hurt.
Lena tried to right herself in the bed, her legs feeling slick, body just filled with nothing but air. “I’m dying. I got things blowing up in me.”
She was alone and standing on a hill and looking down into a valley covered in nothing but corn and sunflowers in the wind. The hills had snow, and a man with no eyes held her hand. Blood rushed through her ears, sounding like a heartbeat. Her body felt hollow as she opened her eyes, the world coming back into focus.
“You want to hold her?” the doctor asked.
“What? Hold what?”
“Your daughter,” he said, his profile coming into view as he turned to her and handed her that little baby wrapped in a towel decorated with beer bottles and Mex hats. “That’s your baby.”
“I hate you, Charley Booth,” she said, her eyes closing again and then opening. “I hate you.”
“We need to get you out of here,” the doctor said, whispering into her ear where those tramps couldn’t hear.
Quinn saw Luke come outside a trailer, wiping blood off his hands with a dish towel and having some words with Gowrie in the cold. Gowrie smoked down a cigarette as he listened and then tossed it, growing wild-eyed and ranting. He snatched up Luke by the arm and screamed at him.
Luke pulled his arm away and reached for a cell phone in his pant pocket, yelling back at Gowrie before Gowrie took the phone and threw it as far as he could out into the woods.
Luke started to yell some more.
Gowrie pushed him flat on his ass and pulled a Glock from his branded belt, tapping the barrel into Luke’s forehead.
Luke calmed down.
He sat there, white dress shirt covered in blood, propped up on his elbows, and nodded. Gowrie grabbed him by the front of his shirt, yanked him to his feet, and opened the door, throwing Luke back inside the trailer.
Quinn readied himself, lowering the rifle and throwing it back over his shoulder with the sling, taking the .45 from his belt. He could hear the blood flush with excitement in his ears, feel a smile on his face. He’d seen all he needed.
He’d be an easy target running from the concealment of the woods to the trailer, about twenty meters, to get the girl and Luke and bring them all the way back to the county road where he’d parked the truck.
He looked across the way to Boom and nodded. Boom had his six.
The generators hummed up the ravine from the leaning mouth of that old barn, where two pit bulls were staked to chains. If they let the dogs loose on him, he’d have to kill them, but he hated to do that. He could take out an enemy with little remorse, but he figured a dog was a pawn in the situation.
Quinn reached into his pocket for an old nickel-plated Zippo and took the long way around to the barn, finding an easy trail, the dirt of it smooth and silent under his old Merrells. He moved up and over a grouping of trailers, hearing a television going, some men playing cards—spotting them through an open window that was letting out the stink of dope. All the men soft and lazy. Trash had been dumped down into a gulley, and it smelled like this is where they’d been dumping their shit, too.
The sky through the leafless trees turned a soft gray and blue. Quinn moved to the back of the barn in that first light, finding a soft, easy way, so quiet that the pit bulls didn’t even lift their heads. Two large Honda generators sat, thumping and shaking, among piles of gas canisters. In a mess of junk he spotted a cord of hemp rope and he cut off a solid two feet of it with his buck knife, opened the tank, dipped one end in like a wick, and slid the other end into the tank.
He lit the end and moved back out to the woods, taking the same path he’d walked before, listening to the men laughing, playing spades, the television blaring loud from another trailer, a man and a woman passed out in a bed that looked like a rat’s nest.
Smoke curled and snaked from the barn.
And a few minutes later the barn exploded, emptying the trailers as men ran down to the fire. A couple of them shooting into the flames, as if bullets would stop it.
Quinn watched as Gowrie, shirtless and sweating, worked to fill buckets from the creek.
“I think you got a celebration goin’ on,” the doctor said, not looking at all excited about the prospect. All that shooting and yelling.
“They always shoot guns and blow shit up,” Lena said, the baby suckling at her breast, the doctor telling her how all that worked. “It’s not on account of me.”
The doctor leaned forward on the bloody bed, head in hands.
“What’s the matter?” Lena asked.
“Your boyfriend won’t let us leave,” Luke said. He had soft green eyes and nice teeth.
“He ain’t my boyfriend.”
“Where’s the child’s father?”
“County jail.”
“Of course.” The doctor nodded and stood, peering outside a dirty window, shaking his head more and pacing. “We got to get you to a hospital.”
“I feel fine. Let me sleep. Jesus.”
“You’re losing a ton of blood, and that son of a bitch out there said I was to attend to you here,” the doctor said, sitting down on the mattress and bloodied sheets, feeling for her free wrist and pulse and then holding her hand. “He said he doesn’t want the police. I didn’t say anything about the police.”
“Gowrie hates government.”
“No kidding,” the doctor said. “He said he’d like nothing more than to blow my fucking brains out.”
“You married?” Lena asked, feeling light-headed, stroking that little pink baby, wanting like hell to leave with this doctor. “You have a nice face. Such a nice face.”
“How do you feel?”
“Fine, fine, fine.”
“You look white as a sheet.”
“I just dropped a child,” Lena said, speaking so low she wasn’t sure she had spoken at all. “Takes some out of you.”
“You have a phone?” the doctor asked. “Gowrie pitched mine in the woods.”
She shook her head, smiling at the doc some more and then smiling down at the baby’s face, touching its nose and little ears, feeling such a strange damn connection. Lena closed her eyes. “Ain’t she pretty?”
“Do you have a phone? Listen to me. Wake up.”
“Won’t do you no good,” Lena said, eyes closed and feeling at peace, smiling big. “Phones don’t work in the hills. You can’t get no signal.
It’s like being on the moon. I said that you have a nice face. You heard that?”
Quinn sprinted from the concealment of the woods to the trailer, holding the rifle in his right hand. He made it to the steps, not a shot fired, no one even spotting him. He looked up into the woods to where Boom waited.
He nodded, not seeing his friend but knowing he was there.
Quinn tossed the rifle over his shoulder and grabbed the .45 before he kicked in the front door and checked all corners for movement. A ragged couch and chairs, trash bags and stuffed animals.
No one.
He made his way down the narrow hallway, kicking in another door to find Luke Stevens in a dress shirt spotted in blood. Luke looked up and smiled.
“You hurt?”
Luke shook his head.
“Anna Lee called.”
Luke nodded. Quinn didn’t expect a thank-you as he opened the door wide to see the girl lying in the bed, more blood around the sheets. She looked to be about twelve, with her hair matted around her white face, holding a child that could be her sister.
Her face and throat had been drained of all color. Her eyes were glass.
Luke cleaned his hands on a towel. “Can you get us out? I got a gun in my face. A goddamn gun.”
“Can she be moved?”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Come on. Boom’s watching our back.”
“Quinn?” Luke asked, touching his arm.
Quinn looked at him.
“They won’t let us go.”
“They got more troubles.”
“Where’s y’all’s truck?”
“A mile down the road,” Quinn said. “You hold the baby. I’ll carry the girl.”
22
“You carried her the whole way?” Lillie asked.
“That girl didn’t weigh a hundred pounds without that baby in her,” he said. “When you carry a grown-ass man a few klicks, that’ll get to you.”
“You’ve done that?”
“Sure.”
“With bullets flying?”
“Something like that.”
“I had to carry my ex-husband from the barstool to the car many a night.”
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“You never asked.”
“Someone I know?”
“Lord, I hope not.”
They sat across from each other in the back booth of the Fillin’ Station diner. Quinn drank black coffee and smoked a cigar, a nice perk of being in a town where smoking wasn’t outlawed. He’d eaten breakfast, still feeling like you should eat when you get a chance, still wearing his hunting camos from a few hours before. Of course everyone else sitting in the Fillin’ Station at nine a.m. on a Monday morning was dressed for hunting. An entire family, mother, daddy, and a little boy, dressed in identical camo getups, sat at a table by the front door. You got your hunting in before work or school.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” she asked.
“Gowrie’s not worth it.”
“When we got the call, about what had happened, I figured we’d be cleaning up bodies.”
“The situation definitely presented itself.”
“I went down with two other deputies this morning. We arrested Gowrie for pulling that gun on Luke.”
“He still in jail?”
“He’ll be out by noon,” she said. “His lawyer got all charges dropped.”
“Come again?”
“Luke Stevens seems to have seen things different than you.”
Mary, the waitress, came over and filled their cups, asking them if they had had a fine weekend. And both Lillie and Quinn looked up at her and smiled, saying it was pleasant, all things considered. She touched Quinn’s shoulder with her weathered hand and squeezed, saying, “We appreciate you.”
“Don’t you need to sleep?” Lillie asked when Mary walked away.
“I’m not tired.”
“You stayed up all night.”
Quinn shrugged. “What exactly did Luke say?”
“He didn’t remember a gun being pulled on him.”
“I saw him,” Quinn said. “Gowrie hammered the barrel of a Glock between Luke’s eyes to make him pay attention.”
“Lawyer got a signed statement from Luke.”
“How does a man like Gowrie get a damn lawyer?”
“Anyone with money can get a lawyer. And this guy is high-dollar. Came down from Memphis.”
“Johnny Stagg has a high-dollar attorney from Memphis,” Quinn said. “What’s his name?”
“I think his name is Lamar,” Lillie said. “His suit probably cost more than I make in a month.”
“Yep.”
“He and Stagg have the same lawyer?”
Quinn nodded. He drank some coffee, smoked the cigar, and watched the camo family get up from the table, the father peeling off a few bucks for Mary, and heading back out to the deer stand.
“I’d like to talk to the girl,” Quinn said. “She’ll have a different story.”
“Her name is Lena,” she said. “Found out the father of that baby is a boy we have staying at the county bed-and-breakfast. His name’s Charley Booth.”
“You ask him about Gowrie?”
“He wouldn’t say shit if his mouth was full of it.”
“What did he do?”
“Possession of meth. Intent to sell.”
“You think Lena will go back to their camp?”
Lillie nodded slow, leaning back and resting her arm across the edge of the seat. “I guess that depends on where Booth winds up.”
“What’s he like?”
“A real prize. Cracker Jack material.”
Across the town Square, through the gazebo and around the veterans’ memorial, Quinn spotted a group of five men loitering around an old pickup truck with its fat dual exhausts thundering. It was the truck with the back window painted with the face of an evil clown, green hair and bloodshot eyes, death metal screaming on the stereo.
Lillie walked next to Quinn, headed back to her Cherokee, as he watched Gowrie slide around the truck and grab hold of the neck of a skinny boy with jug ears like a brother. He wore a pair of calf-length blue jeans, a chain hanging from his waist, and a baseball cap cocked on his head.
“Charley Booth,” Lillie said.
Gowrie hugged the kid and patted his back.
Lillie got into her Cherokee and pulled the seat belt across her and cranked the engine, Quinn tossing his cigar and climbing in before she backed out. She reached over and flipped on the heater, the morning feeling gray and cold, while they slowly made their way around the Square, pulling past Gowrie, sitting on the tailgate of the truck.
“Pride of the South,” Lillie said.
“You bet.”
“The clown’s a nice touch.”
Gowrie smiled a rotten black smile at Quinn and waved like they were old buddies. His face was red and wind-chapped, his shaved head covered with a do-rag of the ole Stars and Bars.
“You want to flush the toilet on these turds?” Quinn asked.
“I’ll grab the rope.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“I loved your uncle. I just don’t much give a shit anymore.”
“About what?”
“The law.”
“Justice moves slow, partner,” Quinn said.
“How’s it move for a Ranger?”
“Like a scalded cat.”
“I bet your blood is boiling.”
“I want Stagg.”
“You talk to Wesley?”
Quinn nodded, Lillie’s Jeep trailing off to the north on Main, past the old general store, the Odd Fellows Hall, the Ace Hardware, and a Baptist church. Every other business had been boarded up, FOR SALE signs in their windows or nailed to the plywood over the doors. The gates to the old feed store had been padlocked for some time.
“He chewed my ass out this morning for interviewing Shackelford,” Lillie said. “Said Shackelford was a professional snitch an
d a liar, and I told him that sometimes liars hit a truth every once in a while. He may not be the man to put on the stand, but you got to listen to what he’s telling us. Shit.”
“We sure could have used Wesley last night.”
“He drove over to the compound but didn’t see Luke’s car,” Lillie said. “Without a warrant, there wasn’t jack he could do.”
“You on duty?”
“Sure,” Lillie said, turning the wheel gently, chewing gum, tapping her fingers on the center console. “I stay on duty. Why?”
“Let’s go see the girl.”
Lena was resting when the men walked in, three men she’d never seen before in her life. One was scrawny and craggy-faced, wearing a blue suit and a bright yellow tie. He looked like a farmer playing dress-up. The other was tanned with graying hair, in a pin-striped suit and red tie. He wore a silver watch bigger than a fist and smelled like money.
The third man nodded to her, showing the glint of a pair of gold teeth. Not dressed up, just wearing shiny khaki pants and a gold shirt with a cross on its breast. The logo read WINNERS FOR JESUS.
“Ma’am,” the craggy-faced man said. “I’m Johnny Stagg. This is Mr. Lamar, an officer of the court. And I brought along Brother Davis. Brother Davis is the pastor of the Living Waters Church here in town.”
She continued to lie on her side. The man Stagg sat without being asked, the slick lawyer and the pastor standing by the window, looking out into a small garden where she’d been watching cardinals and finches fight over a birdbath all morning. The room smelled fresh and sharp, the linoleum floors scrubbed with piney cleaners.
She noticed all the men breathed very loud but let the silences fill the room.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Lena was spent. She did not try to move from her resting spot. The nurses had brought her a hamburger and some cherry pie, and she’d devoured them.
“We heard y’all had a rough night,” Stagg said, smiling, grinning, like an old friend of the family. His teeth were plastic-looking and big as tombstones. “Thank God, you and this fine-looking baby pulled through.”