by Ace Atkins
Stagg picked up a toothpick right before he hit the side door, moving out by the gas pumps and crossing the big wide-open space of the empty truckers’ lot that would be filled tonight. He and Ringold walked side by side, their shadows blackening the edge of the cracked concrete while they made their way over to the corrugated tin building with the unlit neon reading BOOBY TRAP.
“You want me to talk to him?” Ringold said.
“No, sir,” Stagg said. “Not yet. I’ll let you know if it comes to that.”
Ringold nodded, feet moving off the concrete and onto the crushed gravel lot and up to the locked side door of the Booby Trap. A printout was taped to the door saying ALL GIRL REVUE FROM 8 TILL 8 FRI TO SAT. CLOSED ON SUNDAYS TO GIVE THANKS!
Stagg unlocked the two dead bolts and stepped into a big room that wasn’t any different, and built on the same plan, as a metal horse barn. He flicked on the overhead lamps, lighting up a place that was always noisy and dark, playing modern music that Stagg didn’t understand and hated to hear. If he thought them boys would throw dollars to Pat Boone, he sure as hell would play it. The light showed no mercy on the ole Trap, industrial carpet showing stains and imitation-leather chairs with big rips sealed with silver duct tape.
Stagg spotted a half-full ashtray on a table and shook his head, not saying a word to Ringold. He dumped it out in a canister and then moved behind the big bar to fix himself a Dr Pepper with grenadine and a couple cherries.
Ringold did not ask for a drink. Nor did Stagg offer.
“What concerns me about Rusty Wise is how far he may go,” Stagg said, and added some ice and shook the glass to make the drink colder. “Me and him got to be real friendly before the election. I made some casual, offhand remarks to him about the way the Rebel worked, the way business here affected this whole community. He’s lived here most of his life and he didn’t seem interested in changing things. Even goddamn Colson didn’t mess with the economics of Tibbehah.”
“You think he might shut you down?” Ringold said. He reached across the bar for a bottle of his go-to baby juice, Old No. 7, and poured him a tall order in a short glass.
“I think he’s working with the Feds,” Stagg said.
Ringold drank down a little of the whiskey. He looked up but didn’t say a thing.
“Me and you both know the Feds are watching this place,” Stagg said. “You yourself saw them slick-suited boys from Oxford using video that night. Now we got a new sheriff coming in, changing the way he talks to me and the understanding we have. I think he’s the goddamn point person for those turds. Think about it. He shuts down me, the Rebel, all we done, and he becomes Buford Pusser for the ages.”
“I think he’s nervous, is all,” Ringold said. “He doesn’t know what to make of you.”
Stagg took a sip and pulled in some ice, crunching it with his back teeth, the only real teeth in his whole head, already wearing down and getting old like the rest of him. He thought on things, shook the glass to chill the Dr Pepper and cherry juice more. “Them Feds got rid of my dear ole pal Bobby Campo. Got him shuffled off to the federal pen. And then the Mexes took out Houston’s black ass. I saw his goddamn head in the bed of a truck. Now where you think they’re looking? They want me and the sonsabitches Mexicans and I’m the easiest to pick off first. Or try and turn me.”
“I think you’re giving Rusty Wise more credit than he deserves,” Ringold said, finishing off his whiskey like it was ice water. “I heard he once pissed himself when he had to draw his gun during a robbery.”
“Yeah?” Stagg said. “I heard that story, too. Robber didn’t even have a gun, was carrying a damn pocketknife. We tried to hush it up during the election.”
Ringold sat down on a stool, removed his jacket, and sat his muscular tattooed arms across the bar. He wasn’t facing Stagg but looking at himself in the mirror. He stroked that big wild-man beard and ran a hand over that bald head. God damn, that boy liked himself.
“Keep an eye on Rusty for me?” Stagg said. “Maybe do some of that shit you were trained to do? Follow him around? Maybe put some bugs in his house to hear his conversations?”
“Yeah, I could do that, Mr. Stagg.”
“Good,” Stagg said. “’Cause if he’s turning on his own folks, me and him need to talk. We don’t give a shit for federal people down here. Never have. That’s not our way.”
• • •
You found her where?” Jason Colson asked.
“Memphis,” Quinn said. “Last night. You don’t want to know the rest.”
“I’d like to know,” the old man said, smaller and more wiry than Quinn, with slick gray hair and a short gray mustache and goatee, still handsome, but weathered in kind of a cowboy way. “She’s my daughter.”
Quinn didn’t care for his father’s tone, as the man had been estranged from the family, from Jericho, for more than twenty years. He’d been a semi-famous stuntman on the West Coast well before Quinn was born, working as a top man at Hal Needham’s Stunts Unlimited, and had doubled for Burt Reynolds for a number of years. He was always in and out of his family’s life, and then one day he was gone for good. As children, Caddy and Quinn couldn’t know that there were other circumstances that last time, people who wanted him dead. Jason quietly came back to Mississippi years ago without them knowing, working horses in a town called Pocahontas.
Now every time Quinn turned down his dirt road to the old farmhouse, he spotted Jason Colson’s single-wide, his old GMC truck, and a cherry-red Pontiac Firebird up on blocks. The Firebird moved wherever Jason moved, as it had once been featured in Hooper, the same car they’d driven through Armageddon and then pretended to jump over a river in Alabama.
“Can I see her?” Jason said.
“Sure,” Quinn said. “But I’d wait a few hours. She took some pills and laid down. I think she’s out. She’s been through a lot.”
“But you won’t tell me what?”
“Shit,” Quinn said. “I don’t know the details. I told you that.”
They stood face-to-face on the big wraparound porch of the old tin-roof farmhouse, the day bright and sunny, not a cloud in the blue sky, but brisk and cold. Quinn and Jason both wore heavy coats. Jason wore a cowboy hat. He could pull it off, the black Stetson pulled down low on his craggy face. Quinn’s cattle dog, Hondo, rested nearby, with his patchwork black-and-gray coat ruffling in the wind. Hondo breathed slow and easy, his flank rising and falling.
“You ask Caddy,” Quinn said, looking back to the back field and the big burn pile of busted timber and branches that sat about halfway between the old house and his dad’s trailer. “Maybe she’ll be straight with you.”
“Drugs?”
“Some.”
“Men?”
“Why don’t you ask her, Jason,” Quinn said, checking his cell to see if he had any missed calls. He was set to go on night duty at six. Two more nights to go. His chief deputy, Lillie, running the day shift. They’d switch off at six.
“I really wish you’d quit calling me that,” Jason said in his hoarse, whiskey-soaked voice.
“Hell,” Quinn said. “It’s your name, and your grandson’s name. It’s a fine name. I don’t mean any disrespect.”
“You don’t have to call me Dad, but at least call me Mr. Colson.”
“All right, Mr. Colson,” Quinn said. “Let your daughter sleep it off for a while. I’m going inside to make up a late breakfast. I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday. Come on, Hondo.”
The dog jumped to his feet after hearing his name and the word breakfast. He shook the dust from his coat.
“OK, then,” Jason said, cheek twitching a little. “Fine. I got some work to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like finishing that half-done barn or fixing those outbuildings turned to shit.”
“They turned to shit fifty years ago,” he said. “They ca
n wait.”
“Your Uncle Hamp must’ve been the laziest man God ever created.”
“I make no apologies for him,” Quinn said. “Or me.”
“You can’t keep an animal in those barns,” Jason said. “They got snakes in all ’em. One of them is about to fall over.”
“What does it matter?” Quinn said. “I just got tools and some equipment in there.”
“Horses.”
“Horses?” Quinn said. “Shit. We don’t need horses. I don’t have time for horses.”
“I got four back in Pocahontas,” Jason said. “And I’m not as friendly with the woman keeping them as I used to be. She wants them gone. Or for me to start paying her.”
“Jesus,” Quinn said.
“They won’t be any trouble,” Jason said, his eyes the lightest blue, almost weird-looking up close. “I can turn them out with your cows.”
“Shit.”
“And I can teach little Jason to ride,” Jason said. “How would that be? You know he’d love it.”
“Let me think on it,” Quinn said. “My mind needs a break this morning. Is that OK? Can I just get a damn break for five minutes?”
“Yes, sir,” Jason said, pulling up the collar on his sherpa Levi’s jacket. “Not a problem. I don’t want to be any trouble.” Quinn watched his father turn and move toward the steps of the porch. The cows wandered far out into the pasture, plenty of space for a few more.
“Hey,” Quinn said.
“Yeah?”
“You want some breakfast? Mr. Colson.”
Jason turned and looked over his shoulder. He smiled. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“You already said that,” Quinn said. “Come on.” He opened the kitchen door wide and waited for his father to pass.
“Where is she?”
“My room.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“Upstairs,” Quinn said. “In one of the bunks with Hondo, until she comes out of it. Or goes somewhere to get help.”
The old man took off his black hat and set it crown down on the table. Quinn reached into an old 1940s refrigerator made by International Harvester, retooled by a guy up in Memphis. He started frying up four pieces of bacon in a black skillet, and laid out several eggs and some bread. As the meat started to sizzle, Quinn set his backside against the sink, crossed his arms over his chest, and turned to his father. “I need to ask you something.”
“Anything.”
“I don’t even know how to start.”
“Not about Caddy?”
“No.”
“Your momma?”
“God, no,” Quinn said. “She’d kill me if I talked personal matters with you.”
“Your job?”
“Just listen,” Quinn said. “Over the summer, I got involved with two different women.”
“And you want to keep them both?” Jason said, serious as can be. “I had a deal like that going out in Los Angeles. They were roommates, a couple hippies. One of them had spent some time with Gram Parsons before he passed. And I had suspicions about her knowing Charles Manson. I slept with one eye open.”
Quinn held up his hand. “I only kept one,” Quinn said. “The other one isn’t talking to me right now.”
“You’re talking about Ophelia Bundren,” Jason said. “That nice girl from the funeral home. Hell, I knew y’all had split up. Everybody in town knows that. Don’t blame you. Didn’t she throw a fork at your head?”
“No, sir.”
“I thought she did,” Jason said, thinking on it. “When we cooked out steaks on your birthday?”
“It was a knife,” Quinn said. “She’s very good with knives. It stuck straight in the kitchen wall.”
“Good God,” Jason said. “What’d you do to piss her off?”
“The worst thing I could.”
“What’s that?”
“Told her the truth,” Quinn said. “We weren’t ever getting married. She wasn’t the one.”
“Did she know about this other gal?”
“Nope,” he said. “That happened later. And before her, too, I guess. But it had been coming on for a long while.”
“I know the woman you’re talking about,” Jason said, grinning. “Y’all have been trying to sneak around. But neither of you are too good at it. Damn, she’s a fine-looking woman.”
Quinn nodded. He walked to the sink and filled up a coffeepot with water and spooned in some grounds in the percolator.
“But careful,” Jason Colson said. “She looks like the kind of woman who’d tear a man’s heart into shreds.”
5.
If he was real honest with himself, and didn’t let Jesus or his kin get in the way, Chase Clanton had to say the most important thing in his whole damn rotten life was University of Alabama football. He’d been a Tide fan since he was born, his momma making sure of it, never really knowing how his daddy stood on lots of things: family, politics, religion, or important matters like knowing whether he pulled for Auburn or Alabama. One of the first memories Chase ever had was watching the great Gene Stallings, that old rawboned Texan, roaming the sidelines to beat the hell out of Michigan in the Outback Bowl. His Uncle Peewee always said he was full of shit, as Chase was only two years old. But Chase remembers it clear as yesterday, as that was the last big team before those lean years, before they brought in the second coming of Bear Bryant—Nick Saban—to again take their place as the football machine they’d been back during the glory days.
Uncle Peewee was a Tide fan, too. He even had a red Ford Econoline van customized with special seats covered in houndstooth check and a mural airbrushed on the side of a shirtless AJ McCarron, and Nick Saban, and a smiling Jesus Christ, and, in the background, Coach Bryant riding an elephant to victory, with the stats to back it up. 323 Wins. Six National Titles. Uncle Peewee sure loved that van, although they were taking his other one tonight, the one just like it, only it was black and had the VIN number scratched off the door. The plates were stolen, and everything they needed was inside a black duffel bag—the drills, hammers, and assorted picks—just in case they had to bail. Since his daddy took off and his momma had gotten fat and hooked up to the oxygen, Uncle Peewee had looked out for Chase.
Not only had they tailgated together at Bryant-Denny sixteen times but he’d become Chase’s own private junior college, teaching him things, ways of life, that his daddy couldn’t or never knew.
“You stick in the van,” Peewee said, hunched over the wheel. “You hear anything on that police scanner or someone coming down the road, you call me on that walkie-talkie. But don’t say shit ’cause someone might be listening in. You never know who might be tuned to our channel. You just do the way we talked about it. You remember?”
“Yes, sir,” Chase said. “I think someone is comin’ and I say ‘Roll Tide.’”
“That’s right, boy. That’s right.”
Uncle Peewee was a fat man, wasn’t any getting around that, with fat arms and fat legs and a midsection big as a whiskey barrel. He wore big gold-framed glasses and had wild hair that he never combed, making him seem like a cartoon owl. Didn’t help that he also ate a lot of pork plates from the Ole Kountry Kabin out on Highway 17. He liked to smoke extra-long Pall Malls, and on Friday nights he’d sometimes smoke a few joints with Chase, telling him stories about running with the Dixie Mafia, back when they meant something, and even more stories about all the women he’d laid. If he were to take Uncle Peewee’s word as gospel, then he figured Uncle Peewee must’ve screwed over a thousand women in his life. When Chase called him on it over the summer, Uncle Peewee just nodded his head, said that was probably true, and figured he still had time for a thousand more.
“You don’t have to worry too much,” Peewee said, hitting a hard pothole in the highway, jarring their asses up and down. “I been watching this house las
t two nights. Nobody’s checking their mail, and they got them lights on a timer. No dogs. Only an alarm that hooks up to the telephone line. I can cut the line before I break in the back door.”
“What if there’s nothing worth stealing?” Chase said.
“I been doing this twice as long as you been alive,” Peewee said, staring down that line in the middle of the highway from behind thick glasses. “I ain’t never been in a house that didn’t have something worth stealing.”
“How much you want to get tonight?”
“I can go back to taking her easy for a while if I get a couple thousand,” Peewee said. “That of course is minus your cut. Way I figure, that two thousand will give me just enough to fuel up my van and head down to New Orleans for an ole-fashioned pussy party.”
“You sure like the ladies.”
“No, sir,” Uncle Peewee said. “I love the ladies. Gonna buy me an extra-large box of condoms at Sam’s Club, a big ole bottle of butter spray, and a pair of handcuffs. I ain’t coming back to Gordo till the money runs out.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing the Sugar Bowl.”
“If this house is like I think, I’ll get us four tickets on the fifty-yard line.”
“Four?”
“Two for you and me,” Uncle Peewee said. “And two for them strippers we gonna meet.”
“You and your strippers.”
“I respect strippers,” Uncle Peewee said, staring straight ahead, looking for the exit they’d be taking inside the Birmingham city limits. “They respect my money and I respect their titties. What I call a fair and truthful arrangement.”
On his right hand, Peewee had three large gold rings. One of them with the initials PWS for “Peewee Sparks,” Peewee being the youngest member of the infamous Sparks brothers, three of them in prison and one of them dead. Chase’s momma was the baby, a lot younger than Peewee. She told Chase she didn’t start dating till she was sixteen on account of everyone in Gordo was afraid of her family. When Chase’s dad got her pregnant after some Bible retreat in Panama City Beach, Uncle Peewee gave him the option of getting married at seventeen or getting his pecker sawed off with a pocketknife. Chase took some comfort knowing his daddy wasn’t as stupid as some folks said.