The Ranger

by Ace Atkins

  He and Boom had decided to split the men, keeping most in a nice choke point of empty ground bordered by thick trees and briars and backed by a steep incline into the hills. The small clearing would’ve been a perfect place to put a deer stand, the men walking right into it, standing there talking and pointing, far from any cover.

  Quinn smiled when he heard that motor start and saw his uncle’s old four-wheeler come zipping and spinning wild down the hill trail, riderless, but scaring the hell out of Gowrie’s boys, who let into it with shotguns and AKs they’d probably bought at backdoor gun shows.

  They huddled over the toppled four-wheeler, lying on its side, motor high-pitched, oil spurting and wheels spinning, and Gowrie scouted the trees. He looked right at Quinn but didn’t see him, instead just squinting into the light and spitting, pointing up the hill for some of his men to follow. Perfect.

  Two cracking shots. A man yelled.

  Quinn smiled. Boom was having a time, having found the right spot for the deer rifle, loaded, balanced, and sighted right down that path. Gowrie sent more men up the hill, keeping most of his boys in that open space that would become Quinn’s kill zone.

  Quinn took a breath and steadied himself, letting the string go and zipping an arrow right into Gowrie’s shoulder blade, knocking him forward and then backward to his knees, the AK chattering away up into the laced branches overhead.

  Quinn smiled again and reached for another arrow. Gowrie’s men looked to the shitbag for some direction. He was just squirming and screaming.

  The men had turned, feet planted on the hill, unsteady and off base and pointing. Some of them had dropped to the ground and covered their heads. The big fat guy had the bloody dish towel still wrapped around his missing thumb, and wore a shirt so tight it exposed a large hairy belly. He started marching toward Quinn and pointing.

  “There he is. Git ’im.”

  Zip.

  Quinn got him two inches away from the groin. The man screamed his dick had been shot.

  Up the hill, Boom shot three more times. Gowrie’s men let loose on him, but Boom had some solid concealment, enough to play with them until Quinn was ready.

  Ten or so boys started to walk away and scatter from the kill zone but then turned back to where the fat man had pointed. Gowrie was on his feet, finding cover behind a fat oak, touching his bleeding shoulder and aiming the barrel of his AK toward the grouping of old oaks. He raked the ground, Quinn seeing he was just shooting, not aiming, not knowing from where the arrow had struck.

  Quinn stayed concealed, still invisible and silent.

  Half the group yelled and charged up the hill. A half-dozen more loud cracks from Boom’s Browning .308. That was a hell of a gun.

  “You chickenshit motherfucker,” Gowrie said, screaming. “You shot me in the back.”

  Three of his men had started to crawl through the dead leaves and muck toward him, the air cold and silent. He could see the hot breath of the men coming from the ground, each of them so damn easy to pick off that it wasn’t even worth it, served up on a platter in that kill zone. Two more shots from one of Gowrie’s boys, and a big fat plug of oak splintered by Quinn’s ear, sending him flat to the ground in a roll. More shots. Gowrie laughing and yelling for them to kill that son of a bitch.

  “Come on out,” Gowrie said, yelling.

  Quinn crawled on knees and elbows back behind a row of privet and dead kudzu and moved up and around the men. The bow didn’t weigh much more than three pounds, and he could crawl as he entered the tree line again, swallowed up into the cold and mottled darkness and light, seeing the back of Gowrie’s shaved head as the man screamed at his boys to keep going into the hills, keep shooting, kill the bastard.

  The light flickered through the dead branches and onto the cold ground.

  Quinn kept his breathing light, moving soft over branches and leaves, Gowrie making it so damn easy with all the noise, until Quinn was maybe twenty meters from him, watching the man aim his AK up the hill and yell for his boys, who’d gone over the crest and met Boom’s gun.

  One yelled back that they couldn’t see the shooter.

  “Who’s dead?” Gowrie said.

  “Jessup’s shot. He’s bleeding bad.”

  Down the hill, three of the men found the big old oak where Quinn had watched them, and they circled the ground with weapons raised, spotting his tracks in the mud. They kept moving past the old oaks and into the cleared ground toward the old house. Gowrie walked into the open ground, feeling Quinn had been flushed. When Gowrie turned, Quinn was on him, putting him onto the earth, facedown in the mud, his hand over Gowrie’s mouth, with a knee into the base of his neck, and whispering:

  “Why’d you kill my uncle?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Quinn increased pressure on Gowrie’s neck, feeling the vertebrae stretch and crack. High on Gowrie’s shoulder, almost at the pit of his arm, the arrow had entered and stuck, the shaft still sticking out of him like a pin, Gowrie not being able to pull the hunting tip from his flesh.

  Quinn grabbed it and turned, Gowrie screaming. Quinn kept his hand over his mouth, muffling the shouts.

  He again asked him the question.

  Gowrie’s face was hot and red, and pain tears streaked his filthy face. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “You work for Stagg?”

  “I work for myself.”

  “You do business with Stagg.”

  Gowrie tried to buck Quinn off, but Quinn had a tight hold of his throat, knee still in his back, holding that arrow like a handle, while Gowrie’s boys scattered and crept over woods that he and Boom had been hunting since they were boys, knowing every stone, every tree, every break in the land.

  He heard feet behind him but without even turning said: “You kill him?”

  “He’s not dead,” Boom said. “Shot him in the leg.”

  “We don’t want to kill you pieces of shit,” Quinn said. “We want you gone. You leave here, and I won’t follow. You stick around town, and I’ll start blowing shit up. It doesn’t really matter to me.”

  Gowrie was gasping with pain, and Quinn worried that he might pass out. He twisted the arrow a slight turn just to make sure he had his complete attention.

  “I think Stagg lets you work here for a cut,” Quinn said. “You boys come down with an invitation from some folks in Memphis. Isn’t that right? You can do what you want in Tibbehah County and it doesn’t mean shit. That’s why y’all killed my uncle and Jill Bullard.”

  “Get off me,” Gowrie said. “The sheriff killed the Bullard girl.”

  Quinn looked back at Boom. Boom to Quinn.

  “Say that again?”

  “He shot her ’cause she wouldn’t shut the fuck up.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Kill me, then,” Gowrie said. “You the same as him.”

  “You got two minutes to collect your men and get gone,” Quinn said, standing, catching his breath and watching Gowrie waver to his feet and spit, jacket hanging ragged and loose off him. He whistled for his boys.

  “Stagg made a deal with the devil himself,” Gowrie said. “Hell awaits.”

  Boom took a solid bead on Gowrie’s head with the chrome .44.

  “You go ahead and get smart,” Boom said.

  Gowrie looked at Boom and said: “All you got is a dyke woman and a one-armed nigger? Sleep tight.”

  Gowrie gathered his boys in a big sunny field and headed out, marching down the gravel road.

  Boom raised his eyebrows and lowered his gun as they crossed the creek bridge. “Who’s he calling a dyke?”

  27

  Quinn was at the courthouse when it opened at nine, heading down into the basement to the chancery clerk, the keeper of land records going back to when the county had been purchased from Choctaw chief Issatibbehah back in 1823. Since the last time he’d walked down those steps, it looked like they’d bought two computers, trying to get on into the twenty-first century. But they still kept those endless shelves
of fat, aged leather-bound volumes, hand-inked transactions of deeds, liens, bankruptcy records, divorces, and delinquent taxes. The basement was always filled with a mildew stench and spindles of dust in the little bit of light from narrow windows at ground level.

  The job was elected, but unless you ran away with half the county’s budget or performed an intimate act in public you could pretty much keep the job as long as you wanted it. For the last thirty years, Sam Bishop had run the office due to Sam’s interest in few things, outside church, bass fishing, and being a troop leader to the Boy Scouts. He’d been the man who’d kicked Quinn out of the Scouts at twelve for running a whiskey-fueled poker game one rainy night on the Natchez Trace.

  “This is it,” Sam said, passing two printed-out sheets across the desk. “Lists people or companies owning adjoining land. I sure am sorry about your uncle.”

  “I know these folks,” Quinn said. “I recognize all the borders except the one to the west.”

  Sam reached for the sheet and looked at it through half-glasses, nodding. “Timber company, out of Bruce. That help any?”

  “I don’t know,” Quinn said. “You mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “You aren’t still mad about the Scouts.”

  Sam had grown a lot grayer since the last time he’d seen him. He seemed smaller, bonier, and Quinn noticed he’d developed a limp. He remembered him being strong and vigorous, and leading hikes that seemed to go on forever. But Sam had grown old, and the thought of it was strange to Quinn. The man had always seemed ageless.

  “No, sir.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What do you think about Johnny Stagg?”

  Sam Bishop took off his glasses, keeping his eyes on Quinn while he slipped them into his checkered dress shirt. Quinn pretty sure he was wearing a clip-on tie. He nodded and said, “Well, as he’s the head of the board of supervisors, I guess I’d say he’s my boss.”

  “Y’all friends?”

  Bishop walked back to a far wall and closed a door with a light click. He returned and lowered his voice, leaning over his desk: “Why?”

  “I’d like to know just why Johnny Stagg is so interested in getting my uncle’s land.”

  “Quinn, I could get in a hell of a lot of trouble speculating on land deals.”

  “He said he’s going to file a lien.”

  “He hasn’t yet,” Sam said, whispering. “If that means anything.”

  “I just can’t figure how the land would be much use to him,” Quinn said.

  Bishop reached for the two pieces of paper, slipping the glasses back on and running through each line with the eraser tip of a pencil, nodding. “You see this?” Bishop said. “That’s the land you asked about. Your uncle’s first tract. Would you like to see any additional parcels he might have owned?”

  “How many?”

  “Offhand, I recall three,” Bishop said. “If you’d like, I’d be glad to pull up those records for you. If Mr. Stagg were to file a lien, it would be for all of Hamp’s assets and land. You understand that.”

  “I’m afraid to ask,” Quinn said. “But I bet you know.”

  “I really can’t say,” Bishop said, limping back to his office. “I can only comply with any requests from taxpayers here in Tibbehah County. This little jigsaw puzzle is up for you to decide.”

  Quinn hadn’t gone two steps out of the courthouse when a sheriff’s cruiser pulled in front of him and Wesley Ruth climbed out and whistled.

  “How ’bout a ride?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” Quinn said. “I have my truck.”

  “Not a request.”

  Quinn stopped and nodded. He walked around to the passenger seat and climbed in, and said, “Where to?”

  “Let’s ride and talk.”

  “You mind stopping for coffee?”

  “No, Quinn,” Wesley said. “I don’t mind a bit.”

  “So this is when you tell me to lay off,” Quinn said.

  “Pretty much.”

  “What have I done?”

  “There was some serious shooting going on last night on your uncle’s land,” Wesley said. “Wildlife and Fisheries got a complaint that someone was hunting deer with automatic weapons. They came out to see you and you weren’t there, so they put in a call to me. You want to tell me what went on last night?”

  Quinn shrugged. “Is my hunting license expired?”

  “We also got five different reports of shooting goin’ on all around this county,” Wesley said. “Someone saw a one-armed black male and a white male accomplice. Guess who I just pulled in?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “He won’t talk,” Wesley said. “Pretends he’s never heard the name Quinn Colson. Seems like all the victims here are shitbag drug dealers, three of ’em with out-of-state driver’s licenses, all part of Gowrie’s crew. None of them will report a thing. Listen, man, I’m sorry about your barn and cattle. We’ll get that son of a bitch for what he did. You got to believe there is no one that wants that turd flushed more than me. But you could’ve killed someone. I spoke to one fella this morning who said life was great while his missing thumb was in the freezer.”

  “You want to search my house?”

  “How long you got till you report back for duty?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Would you take offense if I asked you to leave early?” Wesley said.

  “I might.”

  Wesley shook his head, taking off his ball cap and blowing out a breath, before finding a drive where he could stop and turn back around to town. “You sure know how to push a friendship.”

  “You said you were going to stop for coffee,” Quinn said.

  “I suppose I’m wasting my breath to ask what you and Sam Bishop were talking about?”

  “I figure you’ll ask him when you drop me off.”

  “I guess you’re dead set on making me a bad guy,” Wesley said with a slight smile. “You ever think that I’m just trying to look out for a friend and do my job at the same time? You put me in a hell of a situation.”

  Most of the lunch crowd at Varner’s store had cleared by the time Quinn showed up. Old Mr. Varner was working the register, selling cigarettes, Coca-Cola, and gas, while Judge Blanton finished off his plate of barbecue and beans and read the Tibbehah Monitor. He looked up and told Quinn to take a seat, and Quinn removed his cap and stood across the red-and-white oilcloth from him. “Figured you’d be packing up by now. Sit down.”

  “I was at Sam Bishop’s office,” Quinn said. “You want to tell me more about my uncle’s other property?”

  “I don’t know what Johnny’s gonna file on the lien,” Blanton said, scraping up a mouthful of beans. “I’ll let you know when I hear something.”

  “How ’bout you? You gonna sell your piece?”

  “I’ve got a lot of land, Quinn.”

  “But only one parcel next to Highway 45,” Quinn said. “Without those pieces, Stagg would be landlocked.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything now,” Blanton said. “Stagg’s project is dead. Those leases would’ve only happened if they started construction.”

  “Would’ve guaranteed y’all a seat at the table. Full partners with Stagg.”

  “He needed our parcels. We would have been fools not to want in.”

  “I can’t believe you’d throw in with that piece of shit.”

  Blanton pushed away his plate and leaned back in his chair. He took a deep breath as if to calm himself and nodded before he spoke. “You think because we invested in this project that makes me and your uncle corrupt? I don’t know anyone in this county who wouldn’t have wanted in. We saw an opportunity to make some money and for this whole county to come alive. That doesn’t mean I’m in his pocket, or anyone’s pocket.”

  “You should’ve said something.”

  “Stagg wanted it all,” Blanton said. “The house. The farm. I was looking after your best interest.”

  “You should’ve told me about my uncle and S
tagg doing business.”

  “I never lied to you.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Stagg would’ve been in his legal right to take it all,” Blanton said. “Hamp owed Stagg a lot of money for a hell of a long time. Your uncle had his vices.”

  “Stagg lied about him owing on all that equipment,” Quinn said. “Why didn’t he just tell me he funded all those trips to Tunica?”

  “Sit down, Quinn, and quiet down,” Blanton said, looking over his shoulder to Varner, standing at the register. Varner was listening and closed the cash drawer with a hard snick, meeting Quinn’s eye and staring at Judge Blanton.

  “Johnny didn’t want to make your uncle look bad. If folks knew he’d had a gambling problem, owed money, half his cases would be called into doubt. That’s a hell of an epitaph.”

  “You and Stagg should’ve worked out a plan before I came back,” Quinn said. “You’re tryin’ to good-ole-boy me while Stagg’s trying to cornhole me. How ’bout a handshake first?”

  “No one’s trying to screw you,” Blanton said. “Take the money. Your mother and that little colored boy she’s raising sure could use it.”

  “You can go to hell,” Quinn said.

  “Excuse me, boy?”

  “You’re fired,” Quinn said. “I think my family can find some better representation.”

  28

  Johnny Stagg didn’t like those telephone calls when people asked you why the shit was flying when you were damn well trying to dodge it yourself. But the Memphis folks had called three times now, and on the last call asked him to drive nearly two damn hours up to the city and tell them about just what was going on with Gowrie. Johnny tried to pleasantly remind them that Gowrie was his own damn man, and if they had some kind of trouble with Gowrie, they needed to ask him. But that just wouldn’t do, and so Johnny had to skip a fish fry with the Rotarians and an early Bible study led by Brother Davis to meet Bobby Campo up at CK’s Coffee Shop off Union at eight a.m.