The Sinners

by Ace Atkins

  * * *

  • • •

  That Freightliner’s engine started knocking right as Boom turned up on Highway 15, the dawn starting to come up on that twisting road to Blue Mountain. Boom was already trying to figure out the problem, the cab shaking and shuddering, wondering when the last time that truck had some basic maintenance, someone with half a brain checking on the wear to the rings and valves. Whatever was going on, he was losing a lot of power, the truck straining to go up that next hill. And he had a full tank of gas. Could be the liner seals, bearings, or the pistons. The goddamn combustion timing was most definitely off. If he could just get on up to Ripley, he could park the son of a bitch and get gone. He had no interest in looking at the problem or fixing it for a fucked-up company like Sutpen. He just prayed to the Lord he could make it a few more miles.

  “Come on, baby,” he said. “Come on.”

  Last thing he needed was to be standing on the side of the road with a trailer full of pills and dope. His dick in his hand as the highway patrol rolls up, wanting to know the trouble. Maybe DEA would come through. Nat Wilkins was kind and sweet, with that perfect smile and big bouncy hair. But sometimes life didn’t go like that. Ain’t nobody wants to be your friend when that shit hits that fan.

  High beams flicked up in his rearview. Boom turned on his hazards, letting down his window and reaching out to motion the car forward. It was five in the morning and there weren’t many vehicles on the state highway. But the damn car, Boom now seeing it was a big white truck, didn’t speed up, only kept on hanging there behind the trailer, lights up on high.

  The engine kicked under the hood, Boom wanting to stop off and check things out, but also noting the time. L. Q. Smith expected that delivery in twenty minutes, and if Boom could just ease up on that engine a bit, maybe coast down some hills, he could hand over the rig and get the hell out of there.

  The light flickered a grayish blue through a planting of small pines, and up over the reddish brown dirt of a clearing, some machines left vacant up into a logging site. The truck behind him flashed its damn lights again, this time trying to pass. Boom motioned them forward again, the engine kicking like a goddamn mule almost like it was out of gas, rpm’s falling low and hammering quick and fast till the damn thing died. He was on a straightaway now, coasting, after cresting the hill, a long shot of blacktop in the first light as he slid to a stop. His hazard lights blinked as he parked off on the side of some cleared property. A big sign planted up on the cleared land that read GO TO CHURCH OR THE DEVIL WILL GET YOU!

  Boom stopped and slammed his good fist into the steering wheel, locking the brakes and engaging the pressure with a long hiss. He looked down at his GPS. He only had eighteen miles to go to the address of that land they’d given him up in Ripley.

  He looked back in his rearview and saw that white truck that had tried to pass had stopped.

  Boom reached for his door handle and hopped down to the ground.

  The air smelled of fresh pine cuttings and the early-morning heat off the soil. No cars coming his way as he walked back to the truck, ready to tell them everything was fine and dandy, before getting on the phone to Smith, telling him to come get his fucking truck and his black ass out of here.

  “It’s good,” Boom said. “It’s all good.”

  And then the truck’s doors opened and two men in black T-shirts with the sleeves cut off got out, both of them wearing goddamn skull masks, looking like Halloween come to town.

  “Boys,” Boom said. “I’m fresh out of candy.”

  The boy with the shotgun crooked his head in the skull mask and studied Boom for a second. “How ’bout you hand over them keys and we’ll be the fucking judge of that.”

  * * *

  • • •

  As Tyler and Cody had followed Boom Kimbrough up to New Albany and then onto the back highway toward Ripley, Cody wanted to make it real clear that the two of them weren’t thieves.

  “This is a one-time deal,” Tyler said. “We show Sledge that we can deliver and then we put it on Miss Hathcock to figure out the rest.”

  “No way, no how,” Cody said. “We don’t kill. We don’t steal. We don’t covet thy neighbors’ wives.”

  “Only neighbors we got is livestock,” Tyler said. “And I sure as hell don’t covet no cows.”

  “I read about some woman down in Calhoun City who had relations with her dog,” Cody said. “They arrested her ass.”

  “For what?”

  “Damn cruelty to animals,” Cody said. “What do you think?”

  “How do you know she was being cruel?” Tyler said. “What if the dog liked it?”

  “It wadn’t how you think,” Cody said. “This old gal weighed about two-fifty and entrapped the poor animal with a jar of Skippy peanut butter.”

  “That’s sick, boy,” Tyler said. “Real sick.”

  “And the reason she got put in jail.”

  “We ain’t going to jail,” Tyler said. “We’re nothing but a couple of farmers carrying on an old family tradition. If that jug-eared midget from Alabama hadn’t gone to Washington, we’d be just about to be on the legal side.”

  “George Washington,” Cody said. “Goddamn Thomas Jefferson. All of ’em grew and smoked weed. You tell me the difference between what we do and them fat cats down in Jackson who drink up whiskey with a straw. Sweating their fat asses off in church because some preacher tells them they can’t drink, can’t screw, when that’s all they’re doing while talking up family values. What are we doing but taking care of our damn family?”

  “Big liquor don’t want the competition.”

  “No, sir,” Cody said. “Sure don’t. What we’re growing may be illegal. But what they’re doing is downright immoral.”

  The red lights on the trailer ahead of them started to flicker, Tyler slowing down a bit, the truck looking to have real trouble just getting around that next hill. “I’m gonna pass his ass,” Tyler said. “See if we can’t get him to slow on down, help him out with his problem.”

  The sky was a pinkish blue at the top of the hill, nothing coming at them in the opposite lane. Tyler sped up, keeping up with the truck, watching a big black hand appear from the driver’s window, telling them to go on ahead.

  “What do I do?” Tyler said.

  “Keep moving,” Cody said. “We can catch him down the road.”

  As Tyler saw the hazard light flicker from the cab, he let off the gas, sliding back behind the truck and following it up and over the hill until it got maybe a few hundred feet onto a straightaway and slowed to a stop by a logging site.

  “Here we go,” Tyler said.

  “We ain’t thieves.”

  “Nope,” Tyler said. “Just headed off road a little bit. Now, put on that fucking mask and hand me the shotgun.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Right after they asked Boom for the keys to his rig, the two men stood still beside the trailer, not a single vehicle coming and going on Highway 15. Boom had his hands up, the shorter of the two boys coming up on him holding a cordless drill and searching into Boom’s empty pockets when he didn’t answer. The other boy in the skull mask stood a good bit taller, a mess of tattoos trailing down one forearm. Boom couldn’t see much of the tats, but he saw crossed checkered flags and a big blue Chevy symbol that looked familiar as hell.

  “Why you boys doing this?” Boom said.

  “Shut the hell up,” said the shorter one.

  “You want this rig?” Boom said. “Take it. I ain’t gonna stop you.”

  “’Course you ain’t,” the taller one with the beard poking out said. “’Cause you ain’t holding the gun.”

  “No,” Boom said. “Because I don’t want what’s inside.”

  Neither of the boys answered, Boom still keeping his arms up, nodding to the trailer. He could hear the bugs and cri
ckets out in a grassy field between the road and the long stretch of pines. The earth had been dug away in large sections, leaving little squares of dirt looking like slices of cake. The GO TO CHURCH sign sat on one of the slices, sitting up maybe five, six feet from the dug-out pasture.

  “Go on,” Boom said. “Git. Keys is in it.”

  “Follow me,” said the tall boy with the shotgun. “That’s it. Come on. Right back behind the trailer.”

  “Mister,” Boom said, not taking a damn step. “You gonna shoot me, shoot me where I stand. ’Cause ain’t no goddamn way I’m stepping behind my truck for y’all to cut me down like some dog.”

  The shorter one with the drill had already run off from Boom and he could hear the high whine and boring into some metal. The tall boy with the gun just stood there, dropping the barrel while they waited, a couple cars passing and sending grit up into Boom’s eyes. Whoever saw them didn’t seem to take no mind that his hands were in the air and talking to a guy in a skull mask. Just another day in the piney woods of north Mississippi.

  The door slammed. And then the engine sputtered and kicked and finally chugged to life. Boom wondered what those boys had done to get him started again or if they’d played with that engine somewhere back on the road, probably Okolona, while he was watching Gomer Pyle and talking about lost time with that old waitress.

  The tall boy walked up on him, shotgun loose in his right hand, black T-shirt fluttering around his waist, a bushy beard spilling out from under the mask, as another car hauled ass by them. Boom could make trouble, try to wave someone down, but he didn’t like the odds of that boy in the mask raising up that gun and blasting his ass.

  “It ain’t far back to New Albany,” the skull man said.

  Boom looked down at the tats covering his right arm. HEROES OF DIRT TRACK RACIN’. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Goddamn Pritchard boys. Dumber than dog shit.

  “Y’all know who owns this truck?” Boom asked.

  “I look like I give a damn?”

  “Hard to say,” Boom said. “Can’t see your face.”

  “Shut the hell up.”

  “You boys watch yourself, now,” Boom said, hands still raised, watching Tyler Pritchard’s eyes from behind the mask. “These good ole boys own this truck don’t play.”

  19

  A few hours after they lost contact with the truck and that black boy driving the rig, J. B. Hood walked into an empty Sutpen warehouse, where he found Wes Taggart stacking and counting barrels of bourbon. They’d taken the lot off the hands of some friend up in Kentucky, thirty-year-old Pappy Van Winkle, that most thought had been destroyed after a court case. But he and Wes had arranged to have it brought down to Tupelo, where they parceled it out to some of their friends. Wes scooped an old barrel up on a hand truck to drive down to a Jackson for a state senator named Vardaman.

  “What the fuck happened?” Wes said. “I mean, Jesus H. Christ. Last I heard, he was gonna meet you over in Ripley.”

  “He never showed,” Hood said. “Just got a call from the driver at a Waffle House in New Albany. He claims that his rig tore up on Highway 15 right before he got hijacked by two fellas dressed up for Halloween.”

  “That sounds like some bullshit right there,” Taggart said. “He just happens have some trouble with his rig and two boys just happened to wander by and jack his ass. How the hell did they get the trailer? They bring in a new rig?”

  “Nope,” Hood said, watching Taggart lean against the hand truck. Looked like he’d been working a while stacking those barrels, nearly sweating through his T-shirt. “Driver claims them thieves got it started right back up.”

  “See, that’s the thing that don’t make no sense, J.B.,” Taggart said. “Who was driving for us?”

  “Boom Kimbrough.”

  “Boom Kimbrough?” Taggart said. “Well, fuck me. What the hell did we expect?”

  Must’ve been twenty more barrels of Pappy set up in a pyramid display in what they called the party room. They had extra TVs, stereos, jewelry, fucking mink coats, women’s shoes, hunting rifles, and boxes of cigars from Cuba. When the boys needed some folks in Jackson to move on in the right direction, they called up Wes and J.B. to sweeten the pot a little.

  “Did fine with me the other night,” Hood said. “Didn’t have no trouble bringing those slants and Mex poon up from Gulfport. He didn’t seem to give two damn shits about what we were hauling long as that cash was waiting for us when we switched trucks.”

  “I don’t like him here.” Taggart said. “Who the fuck hired him anyway?”

  “Smith,” Hood said. “Said he was buddies with ole Jerry Colson. Smith says he didn’t expect any trouble with his ass on account of him being a cripple.”

  “I just wish the son of a bitch had at least tried to fool us,” Taggart said, hoisting up the hand truck, the veins bulging in his forearms and biceps as he scooted it toward the open doors of a cargo van. “It’s like he was laughing at us while we was getting cornholed.”

  “I don’t buy that shit he got engine trouble,” Hood said, reaching for a cigarette in the front pocket of his black shirt. Going full-on Johnny Cash today with black shirt, black pants, and pointy-toed black boots. A woman at the old Vanelli’s bar, before it burned down, told him that he looked slim and tough with that gray ponytail. He never forgot that. Although that woman had turned out to be a real piece of trash, giving damn Wes a blow job in the parking lot after she’d been dancing with Hood all damn night.

  “Go get him,” Taggart said, laying the whiskey in the van and slamming the doors.

  Hood let out a lot of smoke and nodded. “Figured on that,” he said. “I said for him to wait for me at that Waffle House off 78. Told him to go and get his hash browns scattered, smothered, and covered.”

  “I’m gonna scatter his damn ass he don’t tell us what happened to that fucking rig.”

  Hood squinted through the smoke, looking out the big cargo doors into the Sutpen trucking lot, all the trucks coming and going. Loading up and dropping off shit from all over the country, most of it legitimate goods getting distributed out to north Mississippi and on into Memphis. He looked at his watch. Nearly noon. He’d told Kimbrough he’d be by to pick him up more than an hour ago.

  “How’s it goin’ with Fannie Hathcock?” Hood asked.

  “Good,” Taggart said, hands on his narrow hips. “She’s a crafty bitch, I tell you. Last night she brought by some young girls to work my crank. I told her she could dish out the pussy as much as she wanted, but I wasn’t goin’ soft on her.”

  “You?” Hood said. “Turning down some gash?”

  “Hell no,” Taggart said. “You think I gone crazy? I screwed both of them back in that VIP lounge. We ate chicken fingers and drank cheap champagne after. I even think that one white girl, Twilight, is sweet on me. Has a tattoo of a damn dolphin doin’ flips right over her cooter.”

  “Maybe Fannie was just trying to be friendly,” Hood said. “Now, that’s a woman I wouldn’t mind taking on sometime.”

  “That bitch would break you in two, J.B.,” Taggart said. “Don’t you ever turn your back on a woman like that. You let her know her place, let her know who’s boss, and she’ll act right. I figure I just about got her redheaded ass trained real good.”

  “How were the chicken fingers and champagne?” Hood asked, ashing his cigarette on the concrete floor.

  “Goddamn delicious.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Appreciate you picking me up, Quinn,” Boom said. “Ain’t no way I’m gonna get in the car with those country-fried killers.”

  Quinn nodded, taking the Natchez Trace back down to Tibbehah County. It was a bright blue, cloudless day, both truck windows down, the stereo playing Waylon’s “Slow Rollin’ Low.” They drove through the rolling green hills, copper-colored creeks, and deep-shadowed woo
ds. The hot air smelled clean and fresh, Hondo’s head hanging out the back.

  “What’d they say when you said you’d been hijacked?” Quinn said.

  “Told me to sit my ass at that Waffle House and order me up some hash browns.”

  “Hash browns?”

  “Like I said, these some strange motherfuckers,” Boom said. “Anybody with some sense gonna get some grits. Besides, I just ate back in Okolona. Had two sausage biscuits.”

  “And a Mountain Dew,” Quinn said, taking the next turn. The Trace bright and green after some recent rain, up and down the hills under the shaded sections of oak branches, pockets of bubbling natural springs. Quinn had wanted to take Brandon and Jason up this way for a while, hunt for some arrowheads on the site of an old trading post.

  “You talk to Agent Wilkins?” Quinn said.

  “You mean Nat?” Boom said, leaning back in his seat, every few minutes glancing in the rearview like maybe they’d been followed back in New Albany. “Yeah. She knows I’m done with all this shit. Ain’t but one person those motherfuckers gonna blame and that’s my black ass. You think they’re gonna have me trucking anything more than a load of Pop-Tarts after I lost that load? Even if I wanted to stay on, help out our friendly feds, they wouldn’t have me. I’m gone.”

  “They can’t blame you for getting hijacked.”

  “Wanna bet?” Boom said. “Especially when they find out who jacked my ass.”

  Quinn turned to look at him and then cut his eyes back on the road, taking on the next bend, hitting a straightaway, south toward home.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Hell yes, I want to know,” Quinn said. “You could have gotten killed.”

  “Naw,” Boom said. “They wouldn’t kill me. Them Pritchard boys like me too damn much. Ain’t no one else in Tibbehah County who’ll work on their engines good as me.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Quinn said. “Was the uncle with them?”