The Sinners

by Ace Atkins

  “How’d that happen?” she asked.

  “Donnie Varner and I were using a brass candle lighter and the cross like swords,” he said. “Wasn’t a real good idea.”

  “Too bad Donnie can’t make our wedding.”

  “Mr. Varner said he’d be sending us a handmade gift from Atlanta,” Quinn said. “I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a barbecue grill he welded. He’s a hell of a welder.”

  Calvary Methodist was a white clapboard structure with heart pine floors, beaded board walls, and two dozen or so rows of weathered pews. The floors had been swept clean for the Sunday service, with neatly stacked hymnals at the end of every row. After three days straight of rain, the sun had finally shone and brightened the sanctuary, making everything seem airy and clean. The last forty-eight hours had been nothing but traffic accidents and folks stuck in gullies. Quinn looked down at his cell phone, saw a text from Reggie, and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

  Whatever it was could wait.

  “The pastor kept on referring to Brandon as our son,” Maggie said. “I know she was just being sweet. But we can’t change his name right off. I think listing him in the announcement as Brandon Colson might not be honest. Or fair.”

  “I want to adopt him.”

  “I know you do,” Maggie said. “But Rick plans to fight it every step of the way. He’s already got an attorney sending me nasty letters, talking about the rights and privileges of the father.”

  “You never showed me those letters.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you,” she said. “I know how you feel about Brandon. We wouldn’t be getting married if I thought you felt any different. But this fight with Rick may get ugly. He’s afraid he’ll be forgotten and that he’ll never see his son again.”

  “Rick killed a lot of folks,” Quinn said. “And stole a lot of money. I think he’s kind of forfeited his right to Daddy of the Year.”

  “You really think a guy like Rick is going to wander into prison hanging his head?” she said. “This is all he’s got now. He still thinks he’s a damn hero for killing some drug dealers and boys in a motorcycle gang. He doesn’t see what he did was wrong, only what he calls fighting injustice in America.”

  “That might explain hitting a drug house,” Quinn said. “Not robbing small-town banks.”

  “That was the PTSD,” Maggie said. “Or haven’t you read his profile in the Commercial Appeal?”

  “Yeah, I read it,” Quinn said. “And tossed it. Looked like the only thing he was interested in doing was selling his shitty music from inside a prison cell. I also doubt half the shit he says he did in Afghanistan.”

  Maggie took a deep breath and Quinn wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her in tight. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek as she stared down at her hands. She’d been biting her nails again, taking that black nail polish down to the quick.

  “We can change the announcement,” Quinn said. “But I prefer Reverend White calling him our son at the wedding. Most folks know the whole story.”

  “Can I at least decide the song list and the menu?”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “How about tofu and tacos?” she said. “Fresh fruit and vegetables. Skip the sappy love songs and go right for Waylon singing ‘Lonesome, On’ry and Mean’?”

  “Always good with Waylon,” Quinn said. “But you’ll have riots on the tofu. Folks expect good food that’s bad for you.”

  “Your momma still thinking about adding a few folks to the guest list?”

  “A few?” Quinn said. “How about the whole damn town?”

  “Let’s discuss over lunch,” Maggie said. “I don’t have to be back at the hospital until two.”

  “Just got a text from Reggie,” Quinn said. “Some kids fished something out of the Big Black River and he wants me to drive over and take a look.”

  “What is it?”

  “Probably nothing,” Quinn said. “Reggie thinks everything he finds is a damn crime scene.”

  * * *

  • • •

  You always take me to the nicest places,” Fannie said. “How the hell could I turn down all the goddamn egg rolls I can eat?”

  Fannie sat across from Ray in a back booth of a Chinese buffet in Southaven, Mississippi. It was too late for lunch and too early for dinner and, besides the Asian woman at the cash register, they were completely alone. The buffet was in a far corner of a strip mall down from the Super Target and across the street from a Chevy dealership. Nothing but fast food, cheap motels, and endless strip malls along Goodman Road.

  “You’re looking good, mama.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Enough to make an old man blush.”

  Ray helped her into the life more than twenty years back. A mentor, friend, and sometimes lover. He was a nice man, did Buster White’s bidding while Buster did a twenty-year stretch in Angola, running the hot pillow joints, casinos, and other cash businesses from Biloxi to Gulfport and on to Pass Christian. He was good-looking old gent, with tan skin, silver hair and mustache, and a tailored navy linen suit.

  “Perfect hair,” he said. “Perfect clothes. Damn, if you don’t smell like Christmas morning.”

  He was right. Fannie knew she looked good. She had on a low-cut white silk top with tapered black ankle-length pants and a pair of Yves Saint Laurent strappy heels. Before she’d left the club, she’d dabbed a little Chanel Gardénia perfume right behind her neck and between her breasts, where she’d hung her heart-shaped ruby pendant. “What’s on your mind, Ray?” she said. “You didn’t come all this way to smell my goodies.”

  “Our friends down on the Coast have been making a few complaints,” Ray said, spreading his hands wide in a What can we do? gesture. “I told them they don’t understand the complexities of dealing with these fucking animals in north Mississippi and Memphis. But there you are. This wasn’t something I wanted to bring up over the phone.”

  “Why didn’t Buster just call me up himself?”

  “You know why,” Ray said. “Shit, that guy has wiretaps all over him. He said he can’t take a dump without wondering if there’s a bug in the toilet paper roll. He talks to people, those people talk to people, and then they talk to me. Sorry. But that’s just what we’ve got.”

  The Asian woman from the cash register walked over and asked in broken English if they wanted sweet or unsweetened tea or Coke or Sprite. They asked for the sweet tea and the woman let them know they only had ten minutes to get the buffet, after that they’d have to order off the menu. Fannie gave her a Fuck you smile and the woman moved off quick to fetch their tea.

  “Business is down,” Ray said. “Memphis seems to be a tough nut.”

  Fannie nodded, knowing full damn well what he wanted to discuss when he called. She just didn’t know why the hell he couldn’t have hinted around that his sunburned fatties down on the Coast were pissed. But Ray was old-school and he’d never deliver bad news on the phone. Besides, she knew Ray always liked seeing her in person, bringing back fun memories of when she was twenty-two and he was forty-four, balling and dining down on Grand Isle.

  “I can’t deal with this new guy,” Fannie said. “I’ve tried. But he just won’t fucking listen.”

  “Can’t you charm him?”

  “I can charm any fucking man,” Fannie said. “But this shit, this crap you’re getting from the Mexicans, ain’t exactly to his liking.”

  “This fella has high standards.”

  “His name is Marquis,” Fannie said. “He’s a seventy-year-old black dude who’s living the fucking Super Fly dream, driving a gold-plated Bentley and running whores out of motels down in South Lamar. Last truckload we sent up was left abandoned down on Winchester. We were lucky as hell they didn’t trace the trailer back to us. He told me, and this is a direct quote, that he ‘wanted weed,
not seed, bitch.’”

  “He called you bitch?” Ray said, eyes wide.

  “He did.”

  “God help his black ass.”

  The Asian woman brought over two huge sweet teas, filled with a lot of ice and lemon. She pointed out the artificial sweetener on the table. Fannie gave her another hard, silent look and the woman scooted on back to the register. Outside, across the street, Fannie could see the multicolored flags flapping over rows and rows of pickup trucks. A sign read that it was time for the annual SUMMER SALEBRATION.

  “Besides those good ole country folks trying to convert you,” Ray said, “everything else running smooth through the Rebel?”

  “Smooth as Grandmomma’s silk panties.”

  “You know you can talk to me, Fannie,” Ray said. “What goes between us doesn’t reverberate down in Biloxi. I know you have some worries about the way they approach a woman running things, but you know I don’t have those kind of hang-ups. I can’t imagine anyone else I’d trust with business.”

  “Everything is just great,” Fannie said, looking at Ray with heavy eyes. “If it were any better, I’d flash my titties at every trucker who drove past our little exit. No trouble at all. If we can just get a better grade of shit hauled on up the Coast, I’ll be doing fine and dandy.”

  “Damn,” Ray said, leaning in. “You always smell so good. You mind telling me what you have all over you?”

  “Pussy and cash,” Fannie said. “Few men can resist.”

  * * *

  • • •

  It was a lovely little section of river south of town, where the Big Black turned and twisted into the bottomland toward Choctaw County. Quinn knocked his F-150 into four-wheel drive and followed the ruts into the mud off the gravel road, rambling toward the gathering of other vehicles from the sheriff’s department. As he walked toward the river’s edge, he saw Kenny interviewing a teenage boy. Kenny caught Quinn’s eye and pointed down the riverbank to where Reggie Caruthers stood, bolt cutters in his hand, speaking to another teen boy. He waved to Quinn, waiting to bust open a big truck lockbox that someone had dragged up onto the rocky little flats.

  “These boys were out hunting for arrowheads,” he said. “After all that rain. He says they come down here most Saturdays and saw where it had caught at the edge of those rocks. They pulled it out with their truck winch but couldn’t bust it open. They didn’t notice the smell until they got down to work.”

  “I smell it from here.”

  “And what are you smelling, Sheriff?”

  “Same as you,” Quinn said. “Glove up and cut it open. I’ll video it all on my phone in case we get questions about the surprise we find inside. Cover up your face, too. You got a handkerchief or something? If it smells this bad now, God help us.”

  Reggie nodded and walked to his truck to get a bandanna. Quinn was left standing there with the teenage kid with an orange bucket hanging loose in his hand. The kid was white, medium height, and bone-skinny, dressed in a Deadpool T-shirt that said LADIES DIG CRAZY. The air was thick and still down on the riverbank, the sun high and hot. Quinn reached for the sunglasses in his pocket. “You may want to go on up top,” he said to the boy. “Stay with your buddy.”

  “I found it,” the boy said. “I’d like to see what’s in it.”

  “Nope,” Quinn said. “No you don’t. You think you do. But, trust me, you don’t want it on your mind. Go on.”

  The boy hung his head but nodded and followed the little trail up the rocky banks to where his friend waited with Kenny. Quinn pointed for Kenny to back the boys away from the river and Kenny, although confused for a short second, did as he was told just as Reggie wandered back with the bolt cutters. The cypress and cottonwood blew in the wind along the wide twisting banks of the Big Black. Reggie rolled up his sleeves and strapped on a pair of rubber gloves as Quinn hung back to get the opening up on his phone’s camera.

  “How’s everything going with the wedding?” Reggie said, wiping his brow with his forearm and picking up the cutters.

  “Church and band are booked,” Quinn said. “Maggie wants to serve tofu and tacos, but I think I can get her to agree to catfish or barbecue.”

  “That’s a tough call,” Reggie said.

  “They got a place up in Oxford who’ll fry the catfish on-site,” Quinn said. “Bring barbecue, too. Ever been to Taylor Grocery?”

  “No, sir,” Reggie said, gritting his teeth and squeezing the bolt cutters tight. “Can’t say I have.”

  “Want some help with that?”

  “Ain’t budging,” Reggie said. “Shit.”

  Quinn handed him the cell phone, slipped on his own pair of rubber gloves, and tried the cutters. “You know that kid?” Quinn said, motioning up the bank at Kenny.

  “His momma is Tonya Boyette,” Reggie said. “Works over at the western shop on the Square.”

  “Sure,” Quinn said. “I know Tonya. She sold me a pair of boots for Brandon. Tried to get me into a new pair of Tony Llamas, but I’m kind of partial to these Luccheses. Had ’em a long time. John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart preferred them.”

  “I got both kids’ phone numbers,” Reggie said. “Addresses and all that. Both of them live in town.”

  Quinn squeezed as hard as he could and the bolt cutters snicked the lock apart. He reached into his pocket for a small baggie and carefully removed the lock, knowing any trace of fingerprints would long be gone. But he’d learned from Lillie Virgil, you never take any piece of evidence for granted and you tag and bag every little thing you find. He placed the baggie with the open lock on the riverbank, then turned back to the box and looked to Reggie. “You getting all this?”

  “Oh yes, sir.”

  “You mind if I use that bandanna?”

  Reggie reached into his pocket and handed it to Quinn, Kenny appearing at the top of the riverbank again. “Can I let these boys go yet?” he said, yelling down toward where the water flowed south.

  “Nope,” Quinn said, looking down at the metal box. “And y’all back up from here.”

  Quinn spit on the ground, covered his face with the blue bandanna in his left hand, and looked up to Reggie. Reggie nodded back and Quinn lifted up the top.

  “Oh, damn,” Reggie said. “Goddamn, Sheriff.”

  Quinn stood up and walked back a few steps, the smell of it all about to knock him on his ass. “Call Batesville and get some tech folks down here,” he said. “Let’s tape off this whole damn bend in the river.”

  “I know that face,” Reggie said. “Damn. You see that? You see who that is?”

  “Yes, sir,” Quinn said. “He’s been headed for this box for a couple years now.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Who said truckers are lonely?” the woman said.

  “Not me,” Boom said. “Not anymore.”

  “That bunk’s not made for two people,” she said. “We had to move around a lot.”

  “We made it work,” Boom said. “You and me. Between the bunk and that chair.”

  “And the floor of the passenger side.”

  “There, too,” Boom said. “You said you wanted to see how a trucker lives. I’m good to my word.”

  Boom had met the woman last trip through, waiting tables for her father’s Vietnamese restaurant down by the Port of Houston, serving up pho and spring rolls. She was short and slightly chubby, with shiny black hair, a beautiful broad face, and large white smile. He was ten hours and seven hundred miles from home with some mandatory sleep due. So while they loaded the trailer, he decided to call her up. She’d met him where he’d parked his truck at a wide-open crushed oyster shell lot at Boggy Bayou, surrounded by nothing but endless warehouses, oil tanks, and loading docks. When she’d knocked on the door last night, she’d been carrying a cardboard box filled with about everything on the menu, including a pot of hot tea.

/>   “I was surprised you called,” the woman said. “You hadn’t been by in a while.”

  “First time back in Houston,” he said. “And you said you liked trucks.”

  “I love trucks.” The woman sat under his bunk bed wearing one of his old TIBBEHAH WILDCATS T-shirts. “When I was a kid, I used to watch this movie that played all the time on TBS called Black Dog. Patrick Swayze was a trucker who’d lost his license because he’d been in jail. When he got out, his family didn’t have any money and they were about to lose their house when he got an offer to run an eighteen-wheeler full of guns and explosives up to New Jersey.”

  Boom nodded, reaching for a pack of Kools and lighting up. In a big plume of smoke, he asked, “He do it?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Swayze didn’t have a choice. First, he needed the money. Then this other bad guy kidnaps his wife and daughter. He said he’d chop them up into little pieces if Swayze didn’t make the delivery.”

  “Tough spot,” Boom said. “Man’s got to do what a man’s got to. And all that shit.”

  He stood up and looked into the minifridge for the rest of that good Vietnamese food. The pot stickers and white rice wouldn’t make a bad breakfast with some instant coffee.

  “Do you have a wife?” she asked. “I don’t care. You can tell me.”

  “Nah,” Boom said, shaking his head. He took a seat beside her, mixing up the rice in the paper container and eating with the fork in his left hand. “I ain’t been married. Don’t ever want to be married. But my friend Quinn said that, too, and he’s getting married in two weeks. Man don’t do nothing but fly by the seat of his pants.”

  “What about family?”

  “Sure,” Boom said. “I got a family. Lots of family. My folks live in the same house my whole life. My daddy farms and preaches. My momma worked for the post office. I got three brothers and three sisters. All but two live in Tibbehah County. My family hadn’t left that little county since slave times.”

  “That’s home?”