The Sinners

by Ace Atkins

  They stood together, Caddy’s head barely meeting Boom’s shoulder, as they watched the family drive away. Caddy turned back to the commissary to lock up as Boom wandered down the road to close the front gate. The Mexicans had been the last family of the day, Boom arriving just as she was about to shut down. When he got back, he saw Caddy sitting on the stoop of the metal building, smoking a cigarette.

  Boom took a seat beside her. He could see the sun starting to go down over the creek and the cotton fields.

  “Can’t smoke at home,” Caddy said. “Jason hates it. Last week, he threw my cigarettes in the trash.”

  “Can’t fault him for it,” Boom said. “Just looking out for you.”

  “My mother’s on my ass, too,” she said. “She quit last year and has taken up ice cream. Her freezer looks like a damn Ben and Jerry’s.”

  Boom shook a smoke from the pack and lit up, taking a long draw, watching that big orange sun drop. He started thinking about that cotton around his property and how he should have gone in with his daddy this year. His daddy being such a hard ass that Boom wasn’t sure he’d want help with the harvest.

  “You hear about Ordeen Davis?”

  Boom nodded. A plume of smoke hovering over them in the late-day heat.

  “His poor mother,” Caddy said. “Momma’s cooking for the family now. Quinn’s taking her over there tomorrow.”

  “You know I coached that kid when he played for Coach Mills?” Boom said. “Ordeen was tough. A hardworking kid but too slow for college. I don’t think he saw a future outside football. Saw himself playing D1 and then going into the NFL. Ended up having to clean toilets for Johnny Stagg after graduation.”

  Caddy let the smoke out slow from her mouth. Her boots dusty, black dirt up under her short fingernails. “I heard they found the kid’s body in a toolbox,” she said. “What kind of person does something like that? Some true evil in this world.”

  Boom leaned forward, watching the beaten land around the church and that one goddamn tree hanging over the creek, all the mud and shit eroded from its roots. He wondered how the fuck that thing kept hanging on.

  “You know he worked for Fannie Hathcock?”

  Through the smoky haze, Caddy nodded. “Oh yes.”

  “Got me wondering,” Boom said. “On account of what went on with Mingo—”

  “That woman killed Mingo,” Caddy said. “No two ways about it. I don’t how she found out about him talking with us. But she did. And he just disappeared from Tibbehah County. Mingo would’ve let me know what was going on.”

  “I need to talk to Quinn,” Boom said. “Today.”

  “What’s the rush?” Caddy asked. “He’s already been out to Vienna’s and talked to that Hathcock woman. He said whoever killed Ordeen shot him in the back with buckshot, like he’d been running away. If she did it, Quinn will find out.”

  “That boy couldn’t keep out of trouble,” Boom said, ashing the cigarette on the edge of the porch. “I tried to make him go straight, make sure he got kicked loose from Nito Reece, but that boy was too far gone. He liked money and would do whatever the fuck it took to get it.”

  “Mingo was a good kid,” Caddy said. “And I heard the same about Ordeen. Vienna’s Place is a damn black hole in this community. How many girls do you think have gone in there and never come out?”

  “Too much money coming through this broke-ass county,” Boom said. “Ain’t not everybody sees it. And they sure as shit can’t touch it. But it’s there.”

  “I know,” Caddy said. “Too damn well.”

  Boom narrowed his eyes, looking toward the sun, feeling its last light warming his face. “Quinn needs to know a few more things about Ordeen,” he said. “Might get my ass in some trouble. But won’t be the first time.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Same ole low-down, dirty-ass shit.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They’ll be back,” Tyler said. “You can’t treat those motorcycle boys like some jailhouse bitch and not expect retribution. Those fuckers will be riding back in here full force next time wanting to burn us out. And you know goddamn well we can’t call the law on them. This is some shit that needed to be handled with a little diplomacy.”

  Tyler was seated at the four-seat dinette set in the kitchen. Cody had brought home a family helping of Popeyes fried chicken, that twelve-piece bona fide meal with green beans, mashed potatoes, and a box of extra biscuits. A bunch of Keystone Light cans littered the table, most of them empty and half-crushed. A hand-painted sign hung by the stove read THIS KITCHEN IS SEASONED WITH ME-MAW’S LOVE.

  “Diplomacy?” Uncle Heath said, reaching for a drumstick. “What the fuck do you think I was doing when I shot that greasy bastard in the leg? That’s the only kind of talk those shit monkeys understand. You got to be the damn cock of the walk in this county or else someone is gonna ask you to touch your toes and drive it on home to Hong Kong and back.”

  “This ain’t Parchman,” Tyler said. “We run a business. We don’t work under Parchman rules.”

  “No, sir,” Heath said. “This is Tibbehah County and that makes it ten times worse. This place has always made Tombstone, Arizona, seem like Six Flags Over Georgia.”

  “We had the whole thing worked out with that Hathcock woman,” Cody said, mouth full of mashed potatoes. “We had a deal that kept the peace.”

  “You keep thinking that,” Heath said, “and someone will knock you boys upside your head while y’all are diddling with your peckers.”

  Tyler shrugged, searching for a fried chicken breast, thinking it was a fucking lie to call this a family dinner. Not a one of them even thought about saying a prayer, just reaching into the sack, snatching up those chicken parts like a bunch of mangy-ass dogs. What his momma used to call heathens before she got on the meth. Only Cody had on a shirt and that was on account of him having to go to Popeyes in person and fetch supper. His T-shirt read EASTBAY RACEWAY / WINTER NATIONALS, with a big ole orange sun and a couple palm trees. Tyler would do anything to be back down in Florida right about now, sipping on a frozen margarita and punching up some old Buffett.

  “I don’t like where this is headed,” Tyler said. “This is a goddamn mess.”

  “Hell, I can straighten out that rear axle drunk and blind,” Heath said. “Y’all will be ready to race this weekend at the Hooker Hood Classic. I promise you.”

  “Not with the goddamn car,” Cody said. “We can fix the goddamn car.”

  “With them scooter boys?” Heath said. “Shit. They done run off with their tails between their legs. One of them bleeding like a stuck pig right there in the Walmart parking lot. That ain’t trouble. That’s just some good ole wholesome fun. We got back to the farm before the peach ice cream even started to melt.”

  “Maybe we should cancel the race,” Tyler said. “Last time we left the property, we come home to you shitting the damn bed by killing that black boy.”

  “I saved y’all’s ass,” Heath said. “That Hathcock woman doesn’t know a damn thing about our business, just to stay away from our goddamn foxhole. You understand? We don’t need her approval to do business. Our business is our business. Damn, son. Ain’t no different than a race. Look at the condition of your damn vehicle. You see that? Who was you racing against? That son of a bitch about ate your damn lunch?”

  “Just some kid,” Cody said.

  “Some kid done this to you?” Heath asked. “Some kid did that to me and I’d put a bounty on his ass. I’d have him knocked up into the fence.”

  “Name’s Booger Phillips,” Tyler said. “He ain’t but sixteen.”

  Cody shrugged, not looking like he gave two shits, and reached for a biscuit. He began to sop up the gravy and stuck the whole damn thing in his mouth. He chewed, watching the back-and-forth between Tyler and Uncle Heath, looking like he thought the whole damn
thing was kinda funny.

  “That woman ain’t gonna be intimidated,” Tyler said, using a chicken bone to point Heath’s way. “She’s gonna want her cut or to shut us down.”

  “A cut?” Heath said. “For what? What did that dang cunt do for us?”

  “Shit,” Tyler said. “You ain’t never in your life met a woman like Fannie Hathcock.”

  “I don’t care if she’s Shania Twain with a solid-gold cooch,” he said. “She ain’t a Pritchard.”

  “Damn, old man,” Tyler said. “Shania Twain? She’s a hundred years old now. I’m talking Fannie Hathcock. That place out on the highway is a laundromat for the damn Dixie Mafia. You want to get into a pissin’ contest with those fuckers?”

  “Ain’t none of those boys been in north Mississippi in a long while,” Heath said. “Not since ole Buford Pusser knocked heads with a two-by-four. I ain’t never had trouble with any of ’em.”

  “Well, times change,” Tyler said. “That’s just the cost of doing business in Tibbehah County. We don’t get to make the rules.”

  “Shit on that,” Heath said. “We got family. We got guns. And we got a whole lot of cans of whoop-ass. You can either run for the hills covering up your peter or you can stand up straight like a fucking white man and assess the goddamn situation. Why would you pay out to that bitch for growing your own damn weed?”

  “’Cause she does business with Memphis,” Cody said. “We want to sell up there, then we got to make the damn peace.”

  “And why the hell does this bitch get to make the rules?”

  Tyler let out a long breath and tossed the half-eaten chicken to the center of the table. He stood, wiping his mouth, and cut the greasy taste by finishing the rest of the Keystone. “’Cause that woman and her people on the Coast are able to move a massive amount of shit up here that we couldn’t get in a million years.”

  “Like what?” Heath said. “What’s so damn precious?”

  “Oh, hell,” Cody said. “We don’t know. Pills and shit. OxyContin. Heroin. Fucking Mexican meth. All that shit.”

  “And that separates y’all from the big dogs?”

  Tyler looked across the table as Cody piled some more mashed potatoes on his plate and poured out a mess of gravy. He wasn’t sure his brother had touched a bit of the spicy New Orleans chicken, always a man to just eat up them side items. Fine by him. Tyler only cared for that white meat and beer. He got up, wiped his hands on his blue jeans, and reached into the ice bucket for another can of beer.

  “That ain’t how we do business,” Heath said, setting his hands palm-down on the table. “No way. It’s gonna be the goddamn Pritchards running the show. Y’all want me to get you the keys to a pharmacy? Ain’t nothing to it but to do it. I made a lot of friends in Parchman. One of them in Arkansas can get us about anything under this sun.”

  “Bullshit,” Cody said.

  “Call me a liar,” Heath said. “Go ahead and do it, son. But I been running shit since before y’all was sucking your momma’s little titty. This man I knowed? Fucking Doc McDuffie runs the whole Aryan Brotherhood in the Mid-South. Just sit back and make a grocery list and my buddy can roll trucks with more shit than y’all can handle.”

  “It’s a lot,” Tyler said.

  “I don’t know,” Cody said. “This don’t sound good, Uncle Heath.”

  Heath eyed them both. “Who’s the buyer?”

  “Used to be these two nigger brothers down in south Memphis,” Tyler said. “Had a place called the Wing Machine before they got kilt, place all shot to shit. Now it’s this old black man named Marquis Sledge. He operates a string of funeral homes, got back into it after those boys died.”

  “What’d I say,” Heath said. “Everything old is new again. Can’t believe that black bastard is still alive. He know me and you boys are related?”

  Tyler said, “Never said either way.”

  “I bet he wouldn’t mind if the Pritchards could handle all his damn needs,” Heath said.

  “Don’t see why not,” Tyler said. “Sledge hates working with Fannie Hathcock. He believes she was the one who got the twins all shot up. They weren’t kin, but he’d helped raise those boys. He was real shook up about the whole thing.”

  “You don’t want me in the same room with Marquis Sledge,” Heath said. “I once tried to choke out the son of a bitch at a Western Sizzlin down on Poplar. I know business. Yes, sir. Doc McDuffie is one sharp son of a bitch. Y’all talk to Sledge.”

  Tyler drank some beer and stared out the kitchen window, the sun going down over the cornfields, row after row growing up high, green, and straight. He looked over at his brother, seeing if Cody would give him some kind of clue over what he was thinking. Cody just kept on munching on a biscuit, eyes far away, gazing at that setting sun.

  “It’s either let that bitch bleed y’all or get up off your fucking knees and walk like a man,” Heath said. “What the fuck do you boys have to lose?”

  Cody turned to look at Tyler, working something out of his back teeth with a finger. Tyler stared him down, waiting for him to weigh in on all this important family business. He just lifted his eyebrows and pointed at an open Popeyes box.

  “Y’all mind if I take that last biscuit?” Cody asked.

  * * *

  • • •

  Quinn got home at twilight, spotting Boom on his front porch. The big man sitting in his swing, moving back and forth under the colored Christmas lights, taking some time with Hondo, who sat beside him. Walking up the stairs, Quinn turned to his friend and asked if he wanted a cold Coors.

  “Sure,” Boom said. “Been a long-ass day.”

  Quinn opened up the old house, Boom and Hondo following, letting the screen door thwack behind them. In the kitchen, he snatched up two cans of Coors from the old International Harvester refrigerator and handed one to Boom.

  “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Boom said. “We need to talk.”

  “You know, I do keep regular hours at the sheriff’s office.”

  “In private.”

  “You getting worried about being the best man?” Quinn said. “Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to sing. Or read any stupid speeches. All you got to do is stand tall with me and make sure I don’t bolt from the church.”

  “You bolt on a woman as fine as Maggie Powers?” Boom said. “Damn. Then I know you crazy.”

  Quinn agreed as they walked back out to the front porch, Hondo hopping up onto the swing. Boom and Quinn took the old rusted metal chairs, opening up the beers and looking out in the darkened pasture. In the shadowed half-light, he could see the dozens of cows and, far to the edge of the pasture, the two horses his father had abandoned. One of them was a pretty paint named Hooper.

  Quinn propped his cowboy boots up on the ledge and sighed, glad to be home, reaching down and scratching Hondo’s head. The dog’s tongue lolled from his mouth, his black-and-gray patchwork fur covered in something that looked like mud but smelled like something far worse. Hondo just couldn’t keep away from those cows.

  “I was about to leave,” Boom said. “Mary Alice said you left an hour ago.”

  “Stopped off to see Ordeen Davis’s momma,” Quinn said. “She’s in some rough shape. Said she’d been praying that the county would shut down Fannie Hathcock’s titty bar. She said she’s sure whatever happened to Ordeen came about from Fannie.”

  “What do you think?” Boom said.

  Quinn shrugged and drank some Coors, nodding a little. “About ninety-nine percent.”

  “And the other one?”

  “I’d have to hear different,” Quinn said. “All I know is where Ordeen was last seen and who he’d been working for.”

  “I saw that kid about a week ago,” Boom said. “Maybe the same day he got killed. Over in Tupelo.”

  “Tupelo?” Quinn said. “What the hell’s in Tupelo?”

/>   “Where I work,” Boom said. “He was over at the offices at the company I’ve been driving for. I didn’t think much of it. I just saw him, talked to him for a little while about his momma and them. What he been up to. He said he was just over in Tupelo to pick up some rubbers and French ticklers and shit for Fannie. But after what happened, I figured you might needed to know.”

  “Appreciate that,” Quinn said. “Something else to add to the time line.”

  “Only, there’s more to it,” Boom said, leaning forward in the chair, left hand playing with that silver hook, twirling it in his fingers, spinning it around. “That company ain’t straight. I about quit today. They got me running stolen shit and drugs packed in little hidey-holes. I don’t like none of it. I’m on the way out, man.”

  “Who are these people?” Quinn said.

  “Outfit’s called Sutpen,” Boom said, turning his head toward Quinn, meeting his eye. “Got their operation right off 45 outside Tupelo city limits. Only man I’d known is this dude named L. Q. Smith. When I asked ole L.Q. what he tryin’ to pull, he got all smart with me. He introduced these two mean motherfuckers he said were the real owners. They were named Taggart and Hood. Don’t know shit about them. One of them, this old dude with a ponytail, carried a billy club in his belt like it was a pistol.”

  “He threaten you?”

  “Shit, man,” Boom said. “Them boys want to come up close and personal with some crazy one-armed nigger, come on.”

  “Was Ordeen picking up what you dropped off?”

  “I don’t know what Ordeen was really doing,” he said. “That night, it was just TVs, electronics, and shit. But maybe. All I know is, I seen his ass there. And that place is dirty as hell.”

  Quinn finished the beer and placed the empty can down beside him. “How the hell did you get up with these folks?”