The Ranger

by Ace Atkins

  “Help,” he said. He was bleeding bad, gray-faced and dying.

  “Where’s Ditto?”

  “Please,” Brother Davis said, screaming. “He took all I got but said it wasn’t enough.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Help me.”

  “Speak, you old wretched man.”

  “They gone to the bank.”

  34

  Quinn stood up from the hospital bed wearing one of those paper nightgowns that left his naked ass hanging out as he made his way to a water pitcher. He was weak and light-headed, not feeling much in his body at all, his right leg stinging like it was asleep and fingers fat and clumsy in a sling. He’d watched Luke Stevens dig the buckshot out of his leg and ass and then work on that bullet in his shoulder, saying the blade had been cracked and Quinn would need to see a surgeon in Memphis or over in Columbus. Luke wanted to knock him out for the whole thing, but Quinn wanted only something local for the pain, to have that shit dug out of his body and be sewn up. Of course Luke tried to explain to him that the process was a little bit more complicated. Quinn’s muscles had been torn, bones cracked, and he’d lost a damn good bit of blood.

  Quinn drained the water glass and eased his way to the bed.

  That was about the time Johnny Stagg walked into the room.

  “Son of a bitch,” Quinn said, closing the back side of the gown. “You got to be kidding me.”

  “Judge called Benning,” Stagg said. “He wanted me to relay that.”

  “What’d he tell them?”

  “Said you’d been ambushed by some poachers.”

  Stagg wore a checked button-down shirt with a V—necked tennis sweater tucked into a pair of pressed gray pants. He looked like the gardener who’d stolen the millionaire’s clothes.

  “Y’all make for a nice pair.” Quinn laughed. “You know what happened to my damn pants?”

  “I imagine they cut ’em off you,” Johnny Stagg said, nodding down to the wound on the back of Quinn’s leg. “That don’t look so good.”

  “Yeah, it stings a little when you get shot in the back,” Quinn said. “You gonna leave or you want to be tossed out of the window?”

  “I wasn’t a part of this,” Stagg said, looking down to his tasseled loafers or maybe the worn linoleum floor. “I wanted to look you in the eye and tell you.”

  Quinn held up his hand and shook his head. “What do you want, Johnny?”

  “Gowrie and me weren’t partners,” Stagg said. “All I wanted to do was jump-start the economy of this old town. There was gonna be a regional hospital taking over for this old rotting place. A Walmart, too. You got my word.”

  “True gold.”

  “If we’d known what was going on . . . I wouldn’t have made a deal for nothin’ in the world.”

  “One of my best friends was just gunned down in front of my face,” Quinn said. “Gowrie shot him in the head and heart right after he’d turned on me. I guess you wouldn’t know a thing about that.”

  “What Wesley done makes me sick to my core, but he doesn’t stand alone,” Stagg said, looking solemn behind that craggy mask. He reached into his pocket and unfolded a letter, placing it in Quinn’s hands. “This belongs to you and your momma.”

  Quinn knew it instantly as his uncle’s handwriting.

  “I was gonna burn it,” Stagg said.

  Quinn read the short note written to his mother, flecked with blood:

  I walk a lonely road, Jean. It’s never been a straight path and you loved me despite it. I killed a young woman named Jill Bullard. She was a witness to a fire in a drug house. She kept coming back for money after. I, and I alone, shushed it up. Don’t look for answers because that’s all there is to it. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ”—Matthew 11:28. Your loving brother, Hamp

  “You see now?” Stagg said. “You can read the truth right there. Your uncle killed to cover up for Gowrie. He let all this shit grow wild. He couldn’t live with it and did the honorable thing.”

  “Why don’t you bring that note to Jill Bullard’s family in Bruce?” Quinn asked. “You explain it, Johnny.”

  “You can make it right.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Kill the man who tarnished your uncle,” Stagg said, looking him hard in the eye. “Gowrie just killed Brother Davis and looted his church. He’s high as a kite and wants to burn Jericho down.”

  “You tarnished my uncle. You just want me to save your ass and get that money back. How much are you on the hook for, Johnny?”

  “Gowrie got more than a hunnard thousand dollars in donations. Crucified Brother Davis on some cedar logs.”

  “Who are these people in Memphis?”

  “I need that money,” Stagg said. “I’ll give you a cut. You can keep all your land. I’ll buy that slice of 45 for whatever you think is fair.”

  “Let me think on it.”

  “Gowrie’s tearin’ shit up. We got five deputies left. What can they do?”

  “Wait for the help that’s coming.”

  “What do you want, Quinn? I got to get that money or they’ll kill me.”

  “I thought about it.”

  “And?”

  Quinn offered his hand with a smile. “Good luck, Johnny Stagg.”

  Ditto never signed up for this bullshit. But when a fella like Gowrie puts a gun to your head, you tend to listen up.

  “Grab that bag,” Gowrie said, stopping the Camaro with a skid on the town Square.

  “The one with the Little Mermaid on it?”

  “You see another?”

  “The big suitcase is filled with the preacher’s money.”

  Ditto reached into the backseat of the car and grabbed the child’s duffel bag. The bag wouldn’t hold a full-grown man’s shoe. “I can’t get nothin’ in this.”

  “Go get a trash bag.”

  “Where?”

  “Come on,” Gowrie said, the big motor idling. He walked straight on into the Citizens Bank Building, bigger than shit. He strolled right up to the windows to the only teller working and grabbed her by the back of the neck. “Give it up.”

  He wheeled the gun around to a couple men and a big woman sitting at desks with computers and said, “Y’all come on over and join us. Anyone does something that doesn’t sit well and I’ll blow this woman’s goddamn head off. Hands behind your heads. Hell, you got it. You got it.”

  The office people walked over slow and easy, Gowrie pointing to the floor, where they got down on their knees and laced their hands over their heads. The office looked like it hadn’t changed a thing in about thirty years, with old-timey wood paneling and green vinyl furniture. A picture of a smiling black woman promised FREE CHECKING!

  Ditto just stood there—waiting any second for someone to bust in the door and start shooting—and glanced up to a corner and saw a security camera. He looked the other way and saw another. He looked right ahead of himself and saw another taking his damn picture.

  Son of a bitch.

  Maybe he could give some kind of sign, something that the police could see to know that he wasn’t an active participant in the matter. But as long as Gowrie walked right by that GMC Jimmy they stole and left Lena and her baby alone, he was fine with whatever came of this.

  “Don’t give me a dye pack, neither,” Gowrie said, shoving a gun into the teller’s face. “Something explodes on me and I’ll come back to this town again and take a shit in y’all’s commode.”

  The girl, young and doughy, wearing a good bit of makeup and gold jewelry, nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

  Yes, sir, to Gowrie.

  “Give me that bag, dipshit.”

  Ditto handed him the Little Mermaid bag, and the teller looked right past Gowrie to Ditto and gave him a confused look. Gowrie saw the exchange and said, “Fill her up.”

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Everything,” he said.

  “It won’t fit.”

  “Then
get yourself another bag.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Stagg on the board here?” Gowrie asked while she worked. The girl didn’t know what to say and just shook her head.

  The big woman in the flowered dress, the woman who seemed to be in charge, didn’t bother to look up, her hands still laced over her head, but kind of mumbled, “Mr. Johnny Stagg serves on this board.”

  “Tell him I got what’s mine,” he said. “The rest he can shove up his ass.”

  The door bust open and five of Gowrie’s boys came in with some pillow sacks and smiles on their faces. They looked like this was all in good play, like those Army maneuvers in the woods, and if they got shot it wouldn’t be bullets but paint.

  None of ’em had turned twenty yet, including that son of a bitch Charley Booth. All of ’em, dirty and bald-headed, in heavy coats and gloves. None of ’em had shaved in days, and they stunk. How in the hell had Ditto ended up here?

  Prison would be a hell of a vacation. He’d shack up with the biggest nigger in the place to get free of this shit.

  Gowrie reached over the ledge of the teller’s booth, making the little girl with all that makeup jump. She put her hands up in the air, leaving hundred-dollar bills scattering to the floor. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Gowrie just laughed, fishing a Blow Pop from a candy jar and tearing off the wrapper. “Throw in all these, too. You don’t need to paint yourself up like a whore . . . And smile sometime. Son of a bitch, this old town is sad.”

  Quinn had to lay facedown on the bed to relieve the pressure on his backside. He had a pillow up under his face so he could watch the door, converse with the nice black nurse who’d come in to check on him every fifteen minutes. She wanted him to take some more pills, put him on a pain drip, but he said no thanks and asked again about his clothes.

  She said they’d been thrown away.

  “Even my boots?”

  “Even the boots.”

  He tried to close his eyes. He heard a knock on the door.

  Anna Lee Stevens walked in and stood over him, then sat at the edge of the bed and looked down at the bandages on his legs and back. She touched his arm and smiled. She’d been crying.

  “Luke got called,” she said. “We thought you’d died.”

  “Wouldn’t have hurt as bad.”

  “What happened?”

  “Boom brought Hondo back.”

  “Who’s Hondo?”

  “My uncle’s dog,” Quinn said, smiling.

  “You’re laughing?”

  “Why the hell not? Beats crying.”

  “And Wesley? He’s dead?”

  Quinn was silent.

  She moved her fingers back and forth across his forearm and just stared at him, grabbing his watch and starting to cry a bit. Quinn watched those sleepy eyes and her soft red mouth as she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Because I felt like it,” Anna Lee said. “You need it.”

  “I didn’t kill Wesley.”

  “I’m so sorry, Quinn,” she said. “Those men should all die.”

  Quinn grabbed her wrist lightly and lifted his head, their faces maybe two inches apart. He could feel her breath on him before she shook her head and stood.

  She got halfway to the door, turning back once to smile.

  “Anna Lee?” Quinn asked.

  Lillie Virgil burst into the room and nearly bumped into her, dressed in full Tibbehah County Sheriff’s gear, with ponytail threaded through ball cap and holding a police radio. “You look like shit,” she said. “Hey, Anna Lee.”

  Anna Lee smiled at Quinn before heading out. Quinn wondered what her husband had done with the bullets he’d dug out of him.

  “So you got shot in the ass?”

  “Just some buckshot,” Quinn said. “And a bullet in the shoulder.”

  “I thought bullets bounced off Rangers.”

  “You’re in a good mood.”

  “Why the hell not?” Lillie said, standing over him and then turning her back to answer a call on the radio, a lot of squawking and static, but it was clear some shit was going on at the Citizens Bank Building. “Gets better and better.”

  “Wesley sold me out.”

  “Boom told me.”

  “You expected that?”

  “I wasn’t surprised,” she said. “I never wanted him a part of what we’d been up to.”

  “He was my friend.”

  “We can sing ‘I’ll Fly Away’ sometime later,” she said. “I got ten troopers blocking the roads out of the county. We got Gowrie bottled up, and now he’s come right back for more. I think he’s lost his goddamn mind. Ain’t no way this will end pretty. He either surrenders or gets killed.”

  “How many with him?”

  “He’s got seven of his boys and I got five, counting me,” she said. “He killed that preacher.”

  “Johnny Stagg offered me a reward to get back his collection plate,” Quinn said.

  “And you told him to go fuck himself.”

  “You should probably wait for some more folks,” Quinn said. “Who’s in charge anyway?”

  “I guess that’s me,” Lillie said. “We got deputies headed this way from Webster and Choctaw.”

  “Folks will say a woman shouldn’t take action,” Quinn said, playing with her. “That Tibbehah always needs outside help.”

  Lillie studied Quinn’s face as he moved slowly off the end of the bed, slipping down light and easy on wobbly legs. They held steady but hurt like hell, the medication wearing off.

  “I can see your ass,” Lillie said.

  “Troopers got him bottled in,” Quinn said. “He’s in the bank right now. No other way out?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And he’s killed three men we know about.”

  “And Jill Bullard.”

  Quinn shook his head, handing her the suicide note Johnny Stagg had given to him. Her face dropped a bit, eyes lifting up and meeting Quinn’s. She shook her head like she didn’t believe a word of it even though they both damn well knew it was written in Hamp Beckett’s own hand. Shit, it was flecked with his blood.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You should,” he said. “We can debate it later.”

  “We could just wait around.”

  “Yeah,” Quinn said, grinning. “Sure thing.”

  “Let everyone think that this whole county is corrupt and weak.”

  “Would you please have someone get me a pair of jeans, a gun, and boots,” Quinn said, winking at her. “I’d like a shirt and jacket, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  Lillie wadded up the suicide note and tossed it in the trash. “Be right back.”

  “And Lillie?”

  She hung at the doorway, hand on the doorframe. She had to lift her chin to see him from under the dropped bill of the ball cap.

  “We’ll need some more local folks to make a stand.”

  35

  The old men seemed frozen in the same spot at the VFW where Quinn had joined them one week ago after the funeral, where they’d first asked him to pull up a chair, share in some whiskey, and explained how his uncle stuck a .44 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. They all looked up from their ceremonial cups of coffee, seated at a corner table below a group photo from 1993 of the same men plus his uncle. Mr. Jim pointed to a chair—his uncle’s chair—and asked Quinn to join them, saying he was headed down to the barbershop and he always cut the hair of active service members for free. “High and tight,” he said. “I can give that Ranger cut as good as anyone.”

  “We need help,” Quinn said, explaining the situation.

  Varner walked behind the VFW bar, reaching for an M40 sniper rifle that hung in a red velvet perch. He checked the sight and racked open the chamber. “I keep ammo at the store. I can take a fair shot from the water tower.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “You loan me a gun?” Mr. Jim asked Lillie. “All
I got is a peashooter I keep by my cash register.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lillie said. “Two more of my deputies just quit. I’m down to Quinn, Boom, and two others. Four boys just got in from Choctaw. Two from Eupora. Troopers got the highways out of town.”

  “What about you?” Quinn asked Judge Blanton.

  Blanton hadn’t moved since Quinn and Lillie had walked in, sitting still with a hand around the heat of the coffee mug. He looked hungover, with half a cigar going in the saucer. “You sure about that?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “I got a shotgun and an old M1 in my trunk,” Blanton said. “Just got it out last week to show the boys. Works as good as ever.”

  “Gowrie’s bottled up in the Square,” Quinn said. “We need to hold him there, make sure they don’t move.”

  “Wesley really threw in with that sack of shit?’ Varner asked.

  Quinn nodded.

  “Who’s driving with me?” Varner asked. “My finger’s startin’ to itch.”

  Gowrie strolled down the rows of the Dixie Gas convenience mart, throwing chips, beef jerky, and liter bottles of Mountain Dew to his boys. They’d made it all the way out of town only to spot that roadblock with two state patrolmen, Gowrie not saying shit, only working that black Camaro into a wide U—turn and trying for another route. After the third roadblock, he drove back to the gas station, filled up the beast, and told the two cars following him to do the same. “It’s gonna be a battle,” he said. “Git some supplies.”

  Daddy Gowrie drove the second car with Charley Booth riding shotgun, his cherry red El Camino with bucket seats complete with a nekkid-woman air freshener. He wasn’t so sure about his son’s plan and told Ditto, while everyone looted the store, the store clerk down on his face, counting squares.

  “I think my boy’s brain has corroded.”

  Ditto nodded.

  “Why the hell you come back?”

  “For money.”

  “Money and pussy has killed many fine men.”

  “You want to run?” Ditto asked.

  “He’d kill me. He’d kill you, too.”

  “I just as soon try,” Ditto said.