by Ace Atkins
“You blame her?” Boom said, slitting open a box and pulling out a new pump. He set it on the table, picked up a hanging light, and hooked it under the Jeep to shine the light bright and deep. “Besides,” Boom said. “Miss Jean is cooking. I ain’t missing that.”
“Do all mechanics keep calendars of women posing as sex objects?”
Boom fitted a new tool under his hand and nodded. “Most I know.”
Lillie nodded. “That one’s got a pair of aftermarkets up top, not to mention no hips. A woman’s got to have hips.”
“Didn’t notice.” Boom looked to the calendar and studied it a bit as he tightened the prosthetic. “So I’ll be seeing you tonight?”
“Hell, yes.”
• • •
Mickey drove into Jericho and parked out on the town Square, the centerpiece being a big white gazebo and a big marble monument to all the local soldiers who’d died, from the Civil War to all that recent business overseas. The oak trees were bare but full of white lights from Christmas, the shops open for business, which still seemed strange to him, as most of downtown Jericho had been barren for his whole life. Even that shitty old movie theater where that crazy-ass preacher had been hung from a homemade cross was open for business again, showing new and old movies for two dollars a ticket. The side of the downtown that had been taken out by the twister now had a Greek restaurant and two women’s shops. And there was still the Western Wear shop, Doris’s Flowers, and a big coin laundry that was jam-packed this morning. Mickey got out and walked across the street to the little place his ex owned. For some reason, Tonya thought Jericho could really use a combination coffee shop and tanning parlor.
And there she was leaning over the counter, talking to Betty Jo Mize, who ran the local newspaper, glancing up once at him and then returning to her conversation. Despite it being late December, the girl was as brown as a nut. She’d be the same way buck-ass naked. Her skin looked like some kind of stained wood against that gray baseball shirt with red sleeves. Her blonde hair as bleached as her big toothy smile. Her hair was cut up and styled like that woman on television with all those kids, like a barber had taken an axe and chopped off a good hunk.
Miss Mize had a Styrofoam cup in her hand as she passed him. He smiled at the old woman and she spoke back, her being friendly with him since he’d laid down some high-traffic wall-to-wall at the Tibbehah Monitor office last year. As she went out the door, Mickey grinned and set his elbows across the counter.
Tonya put her hands on her hips. “What the hell?”
“I just want some coffee.”
“Hell you do.”
“Your momma come by yesterday to see me,” Mickey said. “Do you know what she said?”
“Good riddance?”
“Nope,” Mickey said. “She wanted to know ‘Who the fuck did I think I was?’ Where does an old woman learn to talk like that?”
“Before she married Daddy, she drove trucks. And after she married Daddy, she drove a backhoe. If she couldn’t dog-cuss those boys out at the lumberyard, they’d walk right over her. You know that.”
“She didn’t need to come to my place of work.”
“Did it hurt your feelings?” Tonya said, smiling just a bit. The first time she’d smiled since he’d walked in the door.
“No,” he said. “Your momma couldn’t do that. What hurt my feelings is that you told her I was late on alimony. That hurt me real bad.”
“You are late,” she said. “You owe me money.”
Mickey tried to look sad, shaking his head. He glanced away and tried to give her a soft, kind of wistful smile, the way he’d done when they first started going out. He’d give her that sad look and say he couldn’t believe she didn’t want to go to bed with him. He’d been so lonely since his wife had left, but that she didn’t give him no love at all anyway. He told Tonya that the woman had shattered his heart.
Tonya wasn’t buying it anymore, walking out from behind the counter and over to a little table where someone had left a couple mugs and a half-eaten muffin. He found himself talking to her back.
“It’s not that I don’t owe you,” he said, “I do. That’s why I came here. I brought you a check. I just finished on a big job. Them people hadn’t paid me a dime till this morning.”
“Then why are your feelings hurt, Mickey?” Tonya said, tossing the muffin and setting the dirty mugs on the counter. “’Cause of what happened a couple weeks back?”
“No,” he said. “I mean, yes. Hell, yes. I mean, I didn’t think you’d turn on me like that. What happened was really beautiful.”
“Come on,” she said. “Must have been the song playing in your truck. I don’t recall nothing beautiful about giving you a quick hand job outside the Southern Star.”
“Meant something to me.”
Tonya shook her head, smiling to herself, finding Mickey kind of funny. And that was fine. He didn’t have any problems with that. As long as she wasn’t pissed at him. She was pissed at him, everything was going to turn to shit. All he wanted was a little room to work.
He looked her over, in those tight jeans with those bejeweled ass pockets and that tight baseball shirt with the words COWBOY UP written across her titties. She stared back, knowing something was turning in his mind. “What?” she said. “What is it?”
He reached into his wallet and pulled out a cashier’s check, getting it official, as she might not have accepted one from Walls Flooring.
“You sure are tan.”
“No shit, Mickey.”
“And you smell nice.”
“I’m not going out to your truck,” she said. “That wasn’t me. That was the Jäger working.”
“I don’t want you in my truck,” he said. “How’d you like to ride down to the beach with me for New Year’s?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and just stared. She looked doubtful as hell, but she was listening. Just as he was about to lay it on out, some fat woman in sunglasses and a big heavy coat walked out from a back room. He bet her big ass was the color of a belt. She thanked Tonya and headed out the front door, waddling as she walked.
“Go on.”
“I don’t want to spend the New Year in Jericho,” he said. “Florida Georgia Line is headlining at the Flora-Bama. You know how much I like that song ‘Sun Daze.’”
“So?”
“So?” he said. “I hadn’t forgot those times.” He leaned into the counter, noticing that a cup of coffee cost three dollars and five tanning sessions cost thirty. He wondered if you could drink the coffee while you tanned, and, if you did, could you get some kind of discount.
“You are two months late on alimony, walk in here complaining about my momma being a real bitch, and now you think I’m going to jump in your truck and head down to the Gulf for some quick hot sex and country music?”
Mickey’s mouth hung open for a second. And then he closed it. “That’s about the long and tall of it.”
Tonya rubbed her hand over her face, lightly enough not to smear all that makeup. She looked up at the ceiling as if dear God himself was going to answer if she should head down to the Flora-Bama. She stared at him long and hard for half a minute until two Chinese women from the restaurant across the street walked in, talking Chinese between themselves.
“What do you say?” Mickey said, giving her a big old smile.
“OK,” Tonya said.
“We’re going to have a hell of a time.”
She pointed the folded-up check at his head. “We better.”
9.
Mickey Walls had ball games to watch and beer to drink, now that damn-near everything was teed up. He picked up a case of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly—finally being able to buy beer in Jericho even if it was illegal to buy it cold—and drove on back to his ranch house and eighty-inch television. He was about to turn down his long driveway when he saw
a black van parked outside, lights on in his house. When he got closer, he put down the windows and heard music. Someone was playing Hank Williams, Jr., like it was the goddamn Fourth of July and had even turned on the Christmas lights along his fence and the little glowing Nativity scene he’d gotten from his aunt in Arkansas to put the Christ in Christmas. Mickey was about to call the damn sheriff but then started thinking it must be that knucklehead Lee Salter, thinking he’d been serious about inviting him over for the bowl games. He probably just let himself in and was burning down a joint, his mind not quite right and not realizing what he was doing was breaking and entering.
If he called the sheriff, he’d never get down to thawing out some Tony’s pizzas and icing down that beer. Goddamn Lee.
He parked and walked up the front steps. His front door stood open, letting out some wafting smoke that didn’t smell like weed. More like someone burning bacon. He coughed and waved away the smoke. Through the haze, he saw a young dude, maybe seventeen or eighteen, sitting on his couch and calling out some dumb-ass quarterback for throwing the stupidest interception in history.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Me?” the boy said.
“Hell, yes, ‘you,’” Mickey said. “What are you doing in my house?”
He looked up to see a fat man stepping from his kitchen with a plate of bacon and eggs and a bottle of Jim Beam under his arm. He had glasses and wild hair and the picture of the fucking Grinch on his T-shirt like some kind of child would wear. He didn’t say nothing, didn’t apologize, only walked over to the big La-Z-Boy—Mickey’s seat—and made himself comfortable. When he got settled, he said, “I got some extra bacon. It’s a little burnt.”
“I said, who the fuck are y’all?” Mickey shouted over Hank Jr., who was bellowing loud enough to wake the dead, the music turned up and the ball game turned down. “I’m calling the fucking sheriff.”
“Don’t do that,” the man said. “Don’t you recognize me? I’m Misty’s Uncle Peewee.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“You bet,” Peewee said. “It’s been a year or two.”
“And who the hell is the kid?”
“My nephew, but no relation to Misty,” Peewee said, forking some bacon and eggs in his mouth. “Chase, say hello.”
“Hello,” Chase said, the kid looking Mickey over with his big cow eyes and opening his big dumb mouth. “Can I have some of that beer?”
Mickey didn’t know what to say to that. He just looked to the kid and said, “It ain’t cold yet.”
“I don’t care.”
“You want a warm beer?” Mickey said.
“If I can have it,” Chase said.
“Can I ask what y’all are doing in my house?”
Peewee Sparks lifted up one end of his backside and let out a fart. He didn’t break stride as he forked some more bacon and eggs into his mouth. “You got a pizza in there. Didn’t figure you’d want us touching it, as it’s the only thing in there. Reason I made the bacon and eggs.”
“Didn’t expect you till tomorrow,” Mickey said. “You said we were straight. Didn’t want us to be seen together. We done worked out that whole deal on the telephone.”
“We were driving along close by and Chase said damn, why don’t we just drive on over to Jericho tonight,” Peewee said. “Let’s go ahead and get that shit done right now.”
“We can’t tonight,” Mickey said. “You said you had to get your tools.”
“I got my tools.”
“And you said you were coming alone.”
“What?” he said. “You mean Chase? He ain’t nothing. Are you, boy? He just my goddamn protégé. He’s watching me work so he can do what I do someday.”
“Sit in other folks’ chairs and fart?”
“Been in the car for a while,” Peewee said. “Gas backed up a little. Say, pass me one of them beers.”
“Son of a bitch,” Mickey said, feeling a swell of worry and fear flood his body. He thought he just might throw up. This man was supposed to be a pro. The best. Not just some fat man in a Grinch shirt about to shit his britches. He didn’t seem to be the man he recalled from the Sparks family reunion. “Someone might see you.”
“That’s why we go on tonight.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause they’re at home,” Mickey said. “Didn’t you listen? They leave tomorrow night for a big high-rollers’ party in Tunica. We can’t go tonight. The plan was never tonight.”
Peewee nodded, put the plate down on the floor, and kicked back the lever on the La-Z-Boy, looking at the television and listening to Hank Jr. He rested his hands over his fat stomach and said, “OK, tomorrow it is. Now, how about some of that pizza and a beer. We got some thinking on things to do.”
The kid Chase smiled big and wide, shaking his head like his uncle sure was one tough old character. Shit. This wasn’t good at all.
• • •
The man drove a black Crown Vic, with tinted windows and a special tag noting he was law enforcement. He slowed a bit in front of the Booby Trap Lounge, Stagg walking around the back of the vehicle to crawl in the passenger’s side. The man didn’t even turn to look at him, knocking the car in gear, reaching down with his right hand to tune down the radio set for troop headquarters of the Mississippi Highway Patrol. It took a couple minutes, not until they were cruising at a hundred-plus miles per hour on Highway 45, before the Trooper turned to Stagg and said, “What’s that motherfucker want now?”
“Some assurance this here deal is going through,” Stagg said. “I told him this kind of business takes time and he told me so did the cornholin’. I really don’t have much patience for Cobb’s dumb ass. But I threw in with him after the storm because I had to. He was the only one with the equipment ready to go.”
“He say anything about that?”
“Yeah,” Stagg said. “He was acting like we owed him something. Christ, you mind crackin’ a window or something? It must be ninety degrees in here.”
The Trooper reached down again and lowered the heater, Stagg already sweating up a lot under his red sweater and hundred-dollar dress shirt. They soon hit the Lee County line, the Trooper not slowing a bit, actually speeding up, taking the Crown Vic to around one-fifteen. He was a lean, square-jawed man who’d kept a silver crew cut ever since Stagg met him down in Jackson with Senator Vardaman. The Trooper did things like that. Favors for a U.S. senator. He also guarded football coaches for Ole Miss and made sure they were protected and got to where they needed to go. Discretion, the Trooper said, was why he’d been the go-to man for the last couple decades.
“Everything’s fine,” the Trooper said. “You tell that dumb son of a bitch that they can’t announce a fucking project until the start of the new quarter. Doesn’t he know the way that government works?”
“He’s a logger,” Stagg said. “Runs the biggest mill in three counties. His head is as thick as an ole oak. He thinks this is gonna work like the storm money.”
“Wasn’t that federal?”
“Most.”
“Then you need to educate him, Mr. Stagg,” the Trooper said. “Them boys in Jackson don’t write no IOUs.”
Stagg nodded, the Crown Vic flying down the highway, running light on the rails, the motor growling, the interior still feeling like the inside of a goddamn sauna. Only a sick man would keep his car so hot, and the man was dressed in full Highway Patrol gear. He had on sunglasses, no expression, hair looking like a gray box on his head. “When’s that new sheriff taking over?” the Trooper asked.
“Supposed to be on the fifteenth,” Stagg said. “But us supervisors decided it best for all concerned that he go ahead and take over first day of the year. Quinn Colson’s already cleaning out his desk.”
The Trooper reached down in the pocket of his uniform and fingered out a little Skoal.
He had a half-full Dixie cup in the cup holder that he reached down to spit into. “Hallelujah.”
“Don’t go and thank Jesus yet,” Stagg said. “We don’t know what we got.”
“Can’t be worse than that son of a bitch Colson,” the Trooper said. “How the fuck you let a man like that be sheriff?”
“I may influence it, but I don’t control the ballot box, sir.”
“Since when?”
Just then, Stagg looked up in time to see a big purple billboard with the image of Jesus Christ looking skyward. The sign read IS HE IN YOU? The Trooper didn’t seem to notice as he spit in the cup and set it back in the holder. The billboard had a listing for a website where the true world suckers could donate some money for some phony-ass ministry. Football coaches and preachers had the easiest shuck in the world. People were supposed to shut their mouths and listen and pass the plate for the ministry. Pass the plate, if you wanted your team to win the game. At least with football coaches you could fire their asses if you didn’t get results. As one of Ole Miss’s top fifty donors, Johnny T. Stagg sure made sure they changed out their coaches as regular as lightbulbs. He’d yet to get a National Championship ring on his hand.
“Where does it all end?” the Trooper said, sounding like he was talking to himself.
“Excuse me?”
“All this shit in Tibbehah,” the Trooper said. “You better get your leash tighter, Stagg. You nearly got fucked two ways from Sunday by them bikers out of Tennessee and now you’re letting some turd in Jericho tell you how to do business. When you’d get so soft?”
Stagg didn’t speak until he was ready. He reached into his vest pocket for a peppermint, unwrapped it, and stuck it in his mouth. He sucked on it as he thought, then crunched it up with his back teeth. “How about you head back south,” Stagg said. “Our talk is done.”
“I didn’t mean nothing, Stagg,” the Trooper said. “Shit. Don’t get your panties into a wad.”