by Ace Atkins
“You’re not talking about Heath Pritchard?” she said. “The really bad seed?”
“Yep,” Quinn said. “Heath Pritchard got paroled from Parchman two weeks ago. He came back to spend some quality time with his nephews.”
“Hamp used to talk about him,” Lillie said. “Lots of stories. There was zero love lost between those two. Did you know he vowed he’d kill your uncle when he got free? He didn’t happen to mention that to you?”
“About getting robbed of the chance?”
Lillie nodded.
“I tried not to listen,” Quinn said. “Prison seems to have messed up the wiring in his head.”
“I doubt he was a stable genius to begin with,” Lillie said.
A streetcar passed by the federal building on Main, no one on it but the driver, headed on toward the Pinch District and the Pyramid. Quinn leaned against a big round planter filled with flowers but designed as a barricade in case someone tried to make an Oklahoma City–style run at the feds. The flowers were a bright purple and white, Quinn thinking that he needed to do a little work at the farm before Maggie and Brandon got completely moved in. Maybe he could stop at the Farm & Ranch on the way home get some petunias and impatiens.
“That’s sweet Heath Pritchard is back with his family,” Lillie said. “Those Pritchard boys look like the spawn of Charles Manson if he fucked some of those Hee Haw honeys. Did they get messed up bad by the Losers?”
“Here’s the thing,” Quinn said. “Wrong Way was the victim. He got shot in the ass by one of those boys.”
“Terrific,” Lillie said. “Some good old-fashioned drug shit.”
“Probably. Maybe something more,” Quinn said. “But if I don’t make some arrests, the locals are going to start writing letters to the editor at The Tibbehah Monitor about how I’m not doing my job.”
“Rednecks don’t like people to fuck up their Walmart time.”
“Nope,” Quinn said. “They sure don’t. Second only to church.”
Lillie grinned at Quinn and he smiled back. It was good to see her; they hadn’t been together since she’d left for her Marshal training. They’d left on good terms, Quinn knowing that she was a hell of a lot better, and bigger, than Tibbehah County. The only reason she’d come home after working in Memphis was to take care of her dying mother, who’d passed years ago. It was only a matter of time before she broke free, expanding her horizons and searching to take down more shitbirds outside Tibbehah.
“I’m supposed to be chasing down a nineteen-year-old Vice Lord who robbed two banks and nearly choked out his baby momma,” she said. “Now you want me to look for Wrong Way’s sorry ass?”
“Up to you,” Quinn said. “I couldn’t be in Memphis without saying hello. Maggie and I hadn’t heard back whether you’d make the wedding. Sure would like you to be there.”
“That’s what phones are for,” Lillie said. “You know what? I think you just wanted me to come with you to fuck with Wrong Way. You would’ve felt guilty doing it alone. Having too much fun at the new Born Losers clubhouse breaking shit.”
“Is that a fact?” Quinn asked, squinting into the bright light high overhead.
“Nothing changes, Ranger,” Lillie said, slipping on a pair of gold aviator sunglasses. “We’re still on the same side. Just ninety-nine miles are between us.”
“You know where we can find this new clubhouse?”
“What part of U.S. Marshal don’t you understand?” Lillie said, hands on her hips. “I didn’t do seventeen weeks of training at Glencoe to just come home, sit on my ass, and google shit.”
“Sure is good to see you, Lil,” he said. “Been too long.”
“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’m driving.”
“No shit,” Lillie said. “But I left my favorite shotgun up in the office. Those Loser boys have some hard motherfucking heads.”
* * *
• • •
Fannie hated goddamn chickens. She hated their smell, their nasty feathers, their beady little eyes, and the way they cocked their head when they stared at you, scratching and scraping in the dirt. When she pulled up to the Pritchards’ house and barn, a fucking flock of them, or whatever you call a mess of chickens, gathered by her freshly waxed Lexus. They clucked and pecked in front of her as if they expected her to emerge from the leather and air-conditioning tossing out milled corn. Instead, she scattered them with the pointy toe of her Italian boots, being fucking careful of where she walked in all this nastiness. The Pritchard compound was a goddamn mess of redneck boys gone wild. Hollowed-out race cars, old trucks, Sea-Doos, and trailers with flattened tires lined the drive up to the house and big metal barn.
She figured the barn was where they were growing the weed until she looked through the big open bay door and saw one of the brothers working on the engine of a car. He stood up, shirtless and wearing flowery pajama bottoms and cowboy boots, and headed her way, holding some kind of engine part in his hand, cleaning it with a dirty red rag.
“Well, hello there,” he said. He was tall, with a bushy beard, some kind of weird-ass sleeve tattoos on his arms. “Didn’t know you was stopping by so early, Miss Fannie.”
“Figured it was high time we met.”
“Mmm-hmm,” the boy said, setting down the rag and the part on a tool cart. “We met once before at Vienna’s Place, but I don’t expect you to remember.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling with some yellowed teeth. “You told me to quit dancing on your fucking furniture or you’d make sure my pecker would never get pulled again in the VIP room.”
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Common problem. Didn’t mean anything by it. Besides, we don’t even have the VIP room anymore. Can’t serve champagne with the girls’ coots on full display.”
Pritchard pulled at his beard with his dirty, oily fingers. His arms long and skinny, framing a caved-in boy’s chest and a small potbelly. “Them Holy Rollers in the county don’t want us to have any fun, do they? I don’t think I’ve had a better time ’cept for when me and my brother went over to Six Flags in Atlanta and nearly died eating cotton candy. You sure do provide the entertainment.”
“Appreciate that, kid,” Fannie said. “Which one of the Pritchards am I talking to?”
“I’m Tyler,” he said, glancing over her shoulder, something catching his eye.
Fannie turned to see another boy about Tyler’s age, shorter and rounder, with lots of brown hair and wild eyes. He had a shotgun up in the crook of his arm, walking slow and easy, being followed by those fucking chickens and a mangy-ass dog.
“And that’s Cody,” the one named Tyler said. “We weren’t expecting you to come alone since you had that colored fella call on us.”
“Midnight Man?” Fannie said, smiling. “Nope. This is a private conversation. I wanted us to meet outside Vienna’s and discuss our recent misunderstanding and fucking failure to communicate.”
“You ain’t never wanted to talk to us before,” the boy, Cody, said behind her. “First time you sent that Indian kid to tell us our business. The next time you sent goddamn Ordeen Davis to come spy on our land. Who else you got coming?”
“Just me,” Fannie said. “Do you boys mind if I smoke?”
She couldn’t imagine smoking a cigarillo inside their race car shop would do a thing but improve the smell of the grease, chickenshit, and body funk. The kid wouldn’t put down the shotgun, circling her, watching her as he started to walk backwards as if she was about to pull her gun from her Birkin bag or shoot a high-powered laser out of her pussy.
“Y’all have anyone else in the rafters?” Fannie said, pulling out a cigarillo, setting fire to it, and looking up to the crossbeams where they’d hung some Confederate and race car flags.
“Go get Uncle Heath,” Tyler said.
>
“He’s asleep,” Cody said.
“Then wake his ass up,” Tyler said. “He needs to be in on this and listen to whatever this woman has to say or what she’s peddling.”
Peddling. Every rich white woman in a fancy car must look like the goddamn Avon lady to these fuckwads. She smoked, moving forward, past Tyler and over to the tool bench. It looked like they’d taken apart an engine and spread out every part along some slatted two-by-fours polished smooth with a thick varnish. Ten years ago, she’d taken the company of a well-known NASCAR driver who’d been on Wheaties boxes and underwear commercials. She’d been five years his senior, but that boy didn’t get any satisfaction from her working girls, being someone who lived for speed and curves and liked to be left gasping and spent on the floor of their motel room.
Tyler shot his brother a hard look and Cody finally lowered the shotgun, not looking thrilled about it. He stood there for a long moment, gun hanging limp in his right hand, scratching his ass with his other. He had on a blue T-shirt that read SHAKE ’N’ BAKE that hung down nearly to his knees. His legs were thick and squatty, with big calves and no shoes. Without another word, he turned from the barn and went walking up to the old house with the rusted tin roof.
“He don’t trust you,” Tyler said.
“No shit.”
“I don’t trust you, neither,” he said. “You send Ordeen to spy on us? Or fucking shoot us?”
“If I’d wanted to shoot y’all, I would’ve sent someone much better.”
“Guess it don’t matter much now.”
“No,” Fannie said. “You boys took care of Ordeen. That matter’s finished.”
“Except for the law.”
“That’s between you and me,” she said. “Unless y’all been running your damn mouths.”
“Is that why you’re here?” he said. “You want us to know where we stand in Tibbehah County. Like when you sent those biker boys to come whip our ass?”
Fannie shook her head and blew out some smoke. She looked up, admiring all the trophies and flags and motivational shit spray-painted on discarded racing car hoods: YOU CAN’T LET ONE BAD MOMENT SPOIL A GOOD ONE; IF YOU HAVE EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL, YOU AIN’T MOVIN’ FAST ENOUGH; DON’T MATTER IF YOU WIN BY AN INCH OR A MILE.
“Y’all got a real can-do attitude,” Fannie said. “Real spunk. I like that bullshit.”
“Them bikers were lucky to only get shot in the ass,” Tyler said, standing there in his kiddie PJs and Walmart boots trying to be tough. “Next time, they’ll end up like that black boy.”
“You won’t have any more trouble,” Fannie said. “I fired Wrong Way and those boys. What I want to discuss is between me and you, Tyler.”
“And my family,” he said. “Whatever you got to say needs to be heard by all of us. But let me tell you something right here and right now, Miss Hathcock. We’re not stopping what we’re doing or slowing down none. I don’t care how much money you’re offering to buy us out. This is our fucking land. And our fucking product.”
Fannie held the cigarillo close to her face as she brushed at her chin with her thumb, nodding. She turned to see the short one, Cody, walk in with one of the ugliest creatures God had ever put on this Earth. Short, bald, and muscled, with skin so dirty and tanned that he looked like old leather. He had nothing on but blue jeans. No shirt. No shoes. He couldn’t get served at the goddamn Waffle House, but here she was, about to talk shop with the worst Tibbehah County had to offer.
“Can we sit down somewhere?” Fannie said. Not liking the way the three men had approached her, looking at one another like a bunch of coyotes, two of them holding guns while all she had was a smoke.
“What the fuck do you want?” said the old man. “I know’d who you represent and don’t want shit to do with those folks. Pritchards work for ourselves. We’re independent owner-operators.”
Fannie smiled, nodding toward the mouth of the barn, to the sunlight and somewhat-fresh air outside by the chickens pecking around a mudhole. “Good,” Fannie said. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”
The two boys looked at each other as the old man continued to stare. But all three of them followed her out, goddamn single file, to a waiting porch at the old house. Settling in on rusted metal chairs, the Pritchard boys waited, curious as hell at what she possibly could have to say.
* * *
• • •
Did you have to break the damn jukebox?” Lyle Masters, aka Wrong Way, said to Lillie.
“I didn’t break it,” Lillie said. “I just busted it. Send me the fucking bill.”
“Yeah, with one of my boys’ heads,” he said. “That’s just not right. Look at him sitting over at the bar, bleeding like that. Don’t you know it’s not fair to beat on a drunk man? We’ve been up all damn night.”
Lillie looked over at Quinn and shrugged. He wasn’t sure if she’d tripped the guy because he’d touched her back or because she hated the music blaring from the box. It was playing some old Mötley Crüe, “Looks That Kill.” Lillie hated hair metal about as much as Quinn hated that bro country shit.
As soon as they’d walked into The Busted Shovel on Summer Avenue, all eyes were on them, no one mistaking him or Lillie for anything else but law enforcement. Lillie carried a pump Winchester. Quinn wore his Army-green Tibbehah sheriff’s cap and Beretta on his hip. But as they scouted the room for Wrong Way, most of the bikers and their women did their dead-level best to make sure they didn’t care. Except for the fat man in the leather vest who put his hand on Lillie, asking if she’d like to give him a slow lap dance.
Lillie pulled him forward by his neck and tripped him at the same time, sending him falling forward, knocking his head hard on the jukebox. The room went silent, Wrong Way coming out from the bathroom, zipping up his fly. Seeing that it was Quinn and Lillie, he put his hands up and started to laugh as he recognized them both.
“OK,” Wrong Way said. “I forgot a few court dates. But my lawyer got it all straightened out. They got me back on the docket. No need for y’all to come all the way up here from Tibbehah.”
“Oh, I live here, Lyle,” Lillie said. “I’m a Marshal now and I can come and visit you boys here at The Dirty Shovel anytime I please. What night is margarita night again?”
“Shit,” he said. “That just freakin’ sucks. And it’s The Busted Shovel, woman. You know, like a Harley Shovelhead? Don’t you know nothing about bikes?”
There were about eight bikers sitting around the room at little tables and up at the bar. None of them wanted to make eye contact with Quinn or Lillie. Six men, counting Lyle, and two scroungy and tired-looking women with toothpick arms and skinny legs under short denim skirts. The light was dim, with lots of smoke hovering around the neon beer signs and stuffed dead animals by the whiskey bottles. All roadkills. Possums, skunks, armadillos, and squirrels. One of the armadillos was on its back drinking a Lone Star, the ultimate insult.
“Can you turn the music up?” asked a woman at the bar. She held her head in her hands as if she was nursing a bad hangover. “Damn.”
Lillie just glared at her. She turned back around fast.
“You were just down in Tibbehah County,” Quinn said. “You got into a mess with the Pritchard boys and one of them shot you.”
“Hey,” Wrong Way said, showing his palms. “C’mon, man. You know we’ve been out of Tibbehah for more than a year. Don’t you remember what the hell happened to us at that snatch bar? Most of my boys were carried out in trash bags.”
“I’m not asking,” Quinn said. “And we’re not here to bust you. Way I see it, you were the victim.”
Wrong Way’s mouth hung open, unable to process what Quinn was talking about. He looked from Lillie back to Quinn, shaking his head. His long black hair had been cut off at the shoulder, black beard combed into a V. He looked like he’d just stepped out of the Pirates of the Caribbean
ride at Disney World, only with more denim and leather.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Wrong Way said. “Call the DA’s office. You’ll see. I got new dates set on my appearance. Wasn’t my fault anyway. We were just trying to get a wheelchair for a cripple friend. I didn’t know we had to pay for the damn thing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lillie said. “And I sure as shit don’t care. How’s your ass doing, by the way?”
Wrong Way walked to the edge of the bar for an open bottle of Jack Daniel’s and took a nice long drink, his Adam’s apple working up and down as he swallowed. He wiped his mouth and turned back to them. It wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning. No one spoke. No one moved. Quinn didn’t think any of the Born Losers had ever seen Wrong Way being so damn hospitable to the law in his own bar.
“My ass fucking hurts,” he said. “Nearly got gangrene or some shit. Had this dumb-ass doctor in Eupora take out the bullet and he did a shit job. Nearly killed me.”
“Which Pritchard shot you?” Lillie said.
“You really gonna pay to get that jukebox fixed?”
“Sure,” she said. “Right after I sit here all goddamn day and run checks on every turd in this bar. I’m sure all of y’all want to get clean with your criminal records, moving violations, and such.”
“You believe this?” Wrong Way said, pleading with Quinn. “We moved all the way out of Tibbehah County and I turn around and it’s back to the old Wild West showdown with you and Calamity Jane. Can’t a white man catch a goddamn break?”
“Which Pritchard shot you?” Quinn said.
“And you’ll leave me the hell alone?”
“I don’t care for people getting shot at the Walmart,” Quinn said. “Makes me look bad with the locals.”
“C’mon, Sheriff,” Wrong Way said. “We was just arguing over the last Barbie doll on the shelf. I wanted to get one for my grandbaby and one of those Pritchards wanted to fuck the damn doll.”
The Born Losers all started to laugh, including the woman who had the hangover. She started to snort, then looked uneasy at the way it made her feel, and clasped her forehead back into her hand. She upturned a beer and gave the side-eye to Lillie.