The Redeemers

by Ace Atkins

  “I thought Lee was in prison,” Debbi said, popping that gum.

  “He just got out.”

  “And you hired him back?”

  “Lee’s the best man I have.”

  “Didn’t he expose himself to a checkout girl at the Piggly Wiggly?”

  “He was relieving himself in the parking lot.”

  “Not the way I heard it.”

  “No?” Mickey said. “Well. Yeah, I guess the judge wasn’t buying it, either. Sit down. You still like that fancy hazelnut stuff in your coffee?”

  Debbi took off her sunglasses, spit out her gum, and sat down. Mickey filled a Styrofoam cup, mixed in a little Coffee-mate, and handed it over to her. She took it but didn’t thank him, holding the coffee in her hand, as Mickey took a seat behind a desk loaded down with more work orders than he could keep up with, stacked under a runner-up trophy from an over-forty softball league.

  “It’s been busy, Debbi,” Mickey said. “You know?”

  “Didn’t you tell Tonya that you’d ‘get her later,’ since she was living right next door to her momma and daddy and she didn’t need the money?”

  “No, ma’am,” Mickey said, slipping on a pair of half-glasses that hung from around his neck. He stretched out his legs under the desk, reading the delivery-and-installation list for the rest of the week. “I never said anything of the sort. We made an agreement during the separation. She’ll get the check. I am just a little late, is all. Business has been slow.”

  “Bullshit,” Debbi said. “You just got done sayin’ you’re busy. We got more building going on in this town that we can keep up with. It’s like Jericho got a damn do-over after the storm. Larry’s got the mill running day and night. Most of the timber is staying right here in Tibbehah.”

  “Good for ole Larry.”

  “Good for you,” Debbi said. “How much of your business comes from heart pine planks from our mill?”

  “A fair bit.”

  “More than that,” she said. “Larry wants you to think about your future.”

  “Is that what it come to?” Mickey said. “A silly-ass threat?”

  “I know you hate Larry,” Debbi said. “And he don’t like you much, either. You two always fought over who Tonya loved best. But let me tell you something right now. The real reason y’all hate each other is because y’all are just alike. You’re like a couple dogs pissing on the same tree branch.”

  “Pissing on Tonya?”

  “You know what I mean,” Debbi said. “Me and you always got along because we are just different enough that we can communicate. I know Larry and I know you. That’s why I came here this morning, all nice and pleasant, just wanting to know when you were going to get straight with my daughter.”

  “Correction,” Mickey said, standing, stretching out his aching back from loading all that cherrywood. “You marched onto the loading dock and said to me who the fuck do I think I am and then threatened about where my flooring supply is gonna be coming from.”

  “I can’t help but tell the truth,” Debbi said, taking a little sip of the free coffee. “I shoot straight. You and Larry’s the ones who shake hands, jackass around, and drink your goddamn Dickel, but, not five minutes after one of you is gone, y’all talking shit about one another.”

  “How’s that coffee?”

  “I had better coffee at the Quick Mart.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “I appreciate the gesture,” Debbi said, standing up to her full five-foot-two, including the nails and hair and five pounds of makeup and jewelry. “Just get straight with Tonya. OK? Last thing I want is for you and Larry to get into a goddamn wrestling match like Thanksgiving. All that did was scare the kids and the dogs. You broke my favorite wineglass and the legs off a handmade coffee table.”

  “That was unfortunate.”

  “It was the Dickel,” Debbi said. “We’ll leave it at that.”

  “Larry called me a pussy hound in front of my three-year-old niece.”

  “And so you jumped on him.”

  “He just sat there cocky as hell, sitting back in that La-Z-Boy and pointing at me with his crooked finger.”

  “What he said was that you have BIG DAWG written on the side of your tool trailer and that it should have read something else. He never said ‘pussy hound.’”

  “Well,” Mickey said. “I heard it.”

  “You heard the Dickel sloshing around between your ears.”

  Mickey let out a long breath and shook his head. You couldn’t reason with a Cobb. Any of them. Picking Tonya Cobb as Mrs. Walls number three was a hell of a bad bet. But Tonya was newly divorced herself and a hot little number, not looking a damn thing like her fat, red-faced daddy or painted-up momma. Tonya had gotten the hell out of Jericho and then come back a couple years before the storm to open a combination coffee shop and tanning parlor. She was stick thin, blonde, and had a pair, about as real as a set of Goodyears, that stuck out like torpedoes. She and he had partied a hell of a lot on his boat down in Gulf Shores, gone to a Jason Aldean concert at the Hangout, and eaten shrimp with their fingers out on Robinson Island. Damn, he’d been drunk as hell when they’d gotten engaged. Can’t fault a man for that.

  “Good-bye, Mickey,” Debbi said as Mickey walked past her to the door. She leaned in, expecting a kiss on her cheek after dog-cussing him in front of his employees. Damn, if he couldn’t help himself, bending down and kissing the woman’s cheek, covered in a good inch of makeup. Debbi probably bought the stuff in tubs like it was spackling. “Do right by Tonya.”

  Do right by Tonya? Mickey wanted to tell her about the time her little angel tried to kill him for the third time. She’d poured paint thinner into his whiskey and served it up to him in a crystal glass as if he couldn’t tell the difference. But he kept his mouth shut, glad to see Debbi on her way, watching her short old ass switching and swaying in those black jeans down the hall.

  The Cobbs wanted alimony on top of the goddamn settlement Larry got for that horseshit business deal. These people wouldn’t leave him alone until they’d picked him dry or they were ruined themselves.

  And Mickey Walls wasn’t one to sit around with his thumb jacked up his damn ass. He searched through his desk for the number he needed for some professional help.

  • • •

  Caddy’s a real mess,” Luke Stevens said. “I’m glad you went up there and found her. I don’t think she would’ve lasted another day.”

  “Wasn’t me,” Quinn said. “Lillie called in a few favors with her Memphis people. Tracked a number to a throwaway phone she’d been using. It put us in the neighborhood, and, after that, it didn’t take us too long.”

  “She was nodding off in the waiting room,” Luke said, standing in the hall in his hospital coat. “Low on fluids, nothing in her stomach. She nodded off again, she might not have woken up. Y’all need to get her into treatment. If she goes back to where she’s been, she’s not coming back.”

  Luke and Quinn used to be friends. They’d known each other since second grade. Luke’s dad had been the town doctor, while Quinn’s daddy had gone off to Hollywood to be a stuntman. They had played together, fished together, played high school football for the Wildcats. And they both had loved the same girl, growing up. Anna Lee Amsden had been Quinn’s first and only love until he joined the service. But she’d gotten married to Luke, had a child, and all looked right until Quinn came back to Jericho and complicated matters a good bit.

  “I gave her a shot that will help with the withdrawal,” Luke said. “And I gave her a scrip for Valium to help her sleep and clonidine for the anxiety. She probably would be a lot more comfortable, and safer, in a detox clinic, if she’s going to get better. But that’s got to be her call. You can’t force her with a gun.”

  “I don’t think she’s ever getting better,” Quinn said. “I think she’s fried her mind.
”

  The men stood together in front of an old flickering television playing Family Feud in the Tibbehah General waiting room. Lots of old magazines lay on beaten tables between couches and chairs with ripped upholstery. Black-and-white pictures hung on the wall from when the hospital first opened in 1968, with young men and women who were now old or dead. Luke was a shaggy-haired, handsome guy, who liked to duck-hunt and ran marathons. He’d gone to Vanderbilt and Tulane while Quinn had been running and gunning in Trashcanistan. Quinn often wondered if Luke suspected anything about him and Anna Lee. Maybe he was too proud to confront them.

  “It’s not her fault,” Luke said. “It’s not just a weakness. She went back to needing this high because of some kind of stressor, maybe a reminder of when she was using before. Do you know what she was doing in Memphis?”

  “Nope.”

  “Or who she might’ve seen?”

  “I don’t know anything about her life up there,” Quinn said. “She’s never talked about it. Some very bad things happened to her when we were kids. You know all about that. The situation with her boyfriend getting murdered certainly didn’t help her mind-set. I asked her about Memphis. She wouldn’t say.”

  “I guess we all keep some secrets.”

  Quinn nodded. Here it comes.

  A black man in nurse’s scrubs walked into the room and Luke held up his hand and told him he’d be right there. An ambulance pulled up outside the portico. Luke didn’t move an inch. A couple EMTs hopped out of the ambulance and busted open the back doors. Quinn stood tall and waited.

  “So she just up and disappeared?” Luke said.

  “Right before Thanksgiving, there was a service out at The River to remember Jamey Dixon,” Quinn said. “I don’t think it set well with her. She got pretty upset. We talked the day after, and I thought everything was OK. She was really in love with that son of a bitch.”

  “That’ll do it.”

  “And then she goes back to what she’d been before Jamey?”

  “I’m not a psychologist, but that sounds about right.”

  “Caddy.”

  “She says she’s not going to another goddamn detox center,” Luke said. “I’d gather the family together and try and change her mind. Like I said, she’s a mess. She came within a few hours of killing herself.”

  “Going from preacher to junkie is a hard fall.”

  “How are things out at The River?” Luke said. “I heard it’s all shut up.”

  “Diane Tull’s taken it over for a while,” Quinn said. “She’s taking care of the spring planting. They got a visiting preacher from Ackerman to come and help out. He’s a crazy-ass hippie like the rest of them.”

  “So where will you take Caddy?” Luke said.

  “Back to the farm,” Quinn said. “She’s always found peace there. My mom and I can take turns watching her until we get a plan and she agrees. I can take her wherever she needs to go when she’s ready. I’m guessing she’ll want to see Jason first. That’s the one thing that will keep her strong.”

  “You think that’s such a good idea?” Luke said. “For Jason?”

  “Nope.”

  Luke nodded, thoughtful, looking as if he had something on his mind. Quinn stood there, waiting for Luke to go get Caddy or tell him more about how to handle his junkie sister. But instead he took off his expensive glasses and cleaned them with a Kleenex that he pulled from his coat pocket. The buzzer for the wrong answer sounded on the Family Feud and then the host talked about the other family having a chance to steal. They were wanting to Name something that you have to catch.

  “Appreciate it, Luke,” Quinn said. “I appreciate your help.” He offered his hand.

  Luke didn’t accept it. He looked at it as if it were dog shit. The hospital doors were open, an old woman on a gurney was being wheeled in by the EMTs. A cold wind shot into the waiting room, ruffling the crappy old magazines and scattering the stale-antiseptic smell of the room. “You need to know, I’m looking for another job far away from this county.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “I can’t stay around this mess,” he said. “You and Anna Lee, y’all do what you want.”

  Quinn placed his right hand in his jeans pocket and waited for Luke to either punch him or shoot him. He deserved both. The buzzer sounded again on the game show. The old woman on the gurney talking nonsense about having no one to feed her chickens anymore and now the coyotes were back. She disappeared down a long hall lined with yellow tile.

  “I never thought of us as great friends,” Luke said. “But I had always thought of you as an honorable man.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “The instructions for the meds will be on the bottle,” he said. “I gave Caddy my cell number. But I don’t want you calling me or contacting me ever again. And if you ever try and get in the way of my relationship with my daughter, I’ll come for you. I don’t give a shit if you were an Army Ranger or MMA superstar. Do you understand me?”

  Quinn looked Luke in the eye. Luke’s face was hot with blood, his chin quivered.

  All Quinn could do is nod and say, “I’m sorry.”

  “To hell you are,” Luke said. “Don’t kid yourself. My wife is the only reason you came back to Jericho. You wanted her and now you have her, Quinn Colson. Good luck with that.”

  4.

  Johnny Stagg had brought on a right-hand man not long after the storm, an ex-military soldier of fortune named Ringold who’d come with a résumé so long that Stagg needed a flowchart. He was young-looking but bald, with a full black beard and sleeve tattoos of skulls, daggers, and maps of places on the other side of the earth. Stagg never talked to him about the places he’d been or the things he’d done, all he needed to know was that Ringold was good with a pistol and would protect Johnny’s old ass when the bullets started to fly. After some trouble with a crew of shitbirds on scooters from over on Choctaw Lake—the goddamn Born Losers Motorcycle Club—the man had proven his worth. Now Ringold had taken on more, working direct with Stagg on running the Rebel Truck Stop and the ladies next door at the Booby Trap. The man not only knew how to fight but had a head for business. Stagg liked Ringold better than his worthless son, who was now over in Atlanta selling used cars and luxury watches and pretending he’d never heard of a place called Jericho, Mississippi.

  Only problem he’d had with Ringold is that the man liked to drink.

  “How’d it go last night?” Stagg said. “Any trouble?”

  “Smooth night,” Ringold said. “We had a couple kids up from State that kept on getting onstage with Laquita and dancing. One of them took her bikini top and was wearing it like a hat, putting the cups over his ears and tying the string up under his chin.”

  “Them Bulldogs don’t have no respect for strippers.”

  “Ole Miss kids are just as bad,” Ringold said. “They just tip better.”

  “Yeah,” Stagg said. “But God bless them Rebels. Those boys will call a naked woman ‘ma’am.’”

  They were in the kitchen of the Rebel Truck Stop as the breakfast rush was slowing and the lunch rush was about to begin. Plates of eggs and grits slapped on the long stainless steel counter were moving on over to the world-famous chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. The Rebel was doing a pretty good share of barbecue business these days with chopped pork and rib plates. Truckers all up and down 45 knew and appreciated Johnny’s place. Good to have the help of Ringold making sure toilets were flushed and the waitresses served a meal with a smile. He needed to give the boy some kind of title like assistant manager or something.

  Stagg moved on over to the big brick pit and pulled a little of the charred meat from a side of pork. A big black guy everyone called Midnight Man watched Stagg, seeing what the boss thought of the smoking he’d started before the sun had started to rise. The meat had that nice pink ring on the outer flesh and fell right off t
he bone. He winked at Midnight Man and followed Ringold out of the kitchen and the sound of sizzling bacon and burgers and the clatter of dishes going through the wash.

  Ringold held the swinging door for him, Stagg passing and patting Miss Baylee-Ann nice on the rump as she carried a pot full of hot coffee.

  “How’d the hunt go?” Ringold asked.

  “Rusty Wise ain’t the man I thought he was.”

  “How so?”

  Stagg leaned in and whispered, “I tried to be friendly and he went on and got uppity,” Stagg said. “Started talking about integrity.”

  “Doesn’t the man sell insurance?”

  “Exactly what I’m talking about here.”

  They were in the dining area, about half full of truckers and travelers, hunkered down the counter and in a few booths facing the big metal roof overhanging the gas pumps. It was good to be seen, something Johnny had passed on to Ringold. A man starts being absent from his business and he might as well go ahead and pull his pants around his ankles and wait for Cornhole City. You had to let every cook, dishwasher, waitress, cashier, and janitor know that you were the man around here. And if they wanted to go and get greedy, you’d damn well know their names.

  “Maybe he’s just gotten nervous,” Ringold said. “The man’s never had this kind of responsibility. He’ll relax when he gets into the routine. You caught him just after Christmas and before he’s settled into the job.”

  “Really?” Stagg said. “I don’t think he’s gonna be no different than Colson. I think I’ve been wasting my fucking time.”

  Stagg moved on through the store that sold the cowboy boots and hats, western wear and such, and through the convenience store, with its junk food, cold beer, and souvenirs commemorating passing through Mississippi. Coffee mugs, toothpick holders, and those little silver spoons that you collect from every state. These had a magnolia leaf and a hummingbird on the handle, something an old woman would crap her drawers to get.