The Redeemers

by Ace Atkins

  “You run down Quinn Colson again and more blood’s going to get spilt,” Lillie said. “This is his sister with me. You hear me, old man? It’s been a long day of tramping through these woods to get where we’re going. Whether you like it or not, I am the acting sheriff of Tibbehah County and I’m in command of this whole show.”

  The Trooper grinned with those goddamn stubby tobacco-stained teeth, his face like leather. “Maybe you don’t realize this ain’t Tibbehah County? Now keep on walking so I can get you two little ladies on out of here. I got shit to do.”

  The man motioned them on, Lillie noting the gun in his hand was a fifty-cal sniper rifle made by Barrett. Someone had planted a gun just like that in her home two years ago and blamed her for killing a convict and the preacher who Caddy had loved.

  Jesus Christ, it kept on getting better and better.

  36.

  Well, that’s the last of it.”

  “Damn,” Chase said, watching Mickey, making sure the man didn’t get tricky on his ass. “Man, you right. It smells like shit.”

  “Maybe that’s why they call it a septic tank,” Mickey said, tossing the black plastic bag with the others. The man closed up the hole and kicked some dirt over it. “Drag these bags up to the sheds and count what’s left. Get what you want. Just promise me I don’t have to see you no more.”

  “I promise.”

  “Don’t get caught,” Mickey said, lighting up a cigarette, the smoke smelling good to Chase. The stink all around them and all over them. “Run far and fast. Don’t look back home. You understand? Change your hair and your looks. Get a tan in Mexico. Buy a new name. Become someone else. Hell, you’ll have enough money to do it.”

  “That’s all you got?” Chase said.

  Mickey grinned, flicking the ash off his Marlboro. “Don’t fall in love,” he said. “Pussy will fucking kill you.”

  “That’s what my Uncle Peewee always said,” Chase said, laughing. “He said he had no shame in buying his loving because it was the only honest transaction in life. How much you figure is in those stinky-ass bags?”

  “Half a mil,” Mickey said. “Give or take a nickel or two.”

  “Fifty-fifty?”

  “I really don’t even give a shit anymore,” Mickey said, tossing the cigarette into the weeds. “How about you just get your money and get gone? I just want to be left alone and think on things.”

  “At least put up a fight for it,” Chase said. “The whole show being your idea. Maybe something like sixty, forty. That might make me feel better.”

  Mickey Walls shook his head, kept on walking back to the Hazlewood house and that red Hummer with black seats and a high-powered heater. He looked like a fella who was just spent.

  “Hey,” Chase yelled. “Hey, you? Mr. Walls? What the hell? Mr. Walls.” Chase knew he’d have to do something, call an audible right then and there. Wasn’t no time for no trick plays and misdirection. “Mickey?”

  Mickey Walls looked at him.

  “How ’bout we warm ourselves in that shed and count it out?” he said. “Won’t take long at all.”

  • • •

  Can you hold this gun?” a voice said.

  Quinn turned to see Ringold standing over him, stroking that big black beard. He had on a thick parka with the hood over his ball cap.

  “Yeah.”

  “You nearly bled out,” Ringold said. “You’ve got hypothermia.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Made it out the woods,” Ringold said. “I dragged you here. You thought I was someone named Hamp. That mean anything to you?”

  Quinn nodded and tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. Ringold lifted a canteen to his lips and poured more water in his mouth. Quinn drank it down. Ringold lifted it up again, water pouring down, a fresh blanket wrapping him. There was a fire. He could feel the heat in his hand and spreading across his chest and down his legs. Damn, he could not stop shivering.

  “I’ll leave you with a gun and the water,” he said. “How many do you think are left?”

  “Two,” Quinn said. “Maybe more.”

  “You see them?”

  Quinn shook his head. The fire smelled very good and warm, embers catching in the cold air and floating up to the crossbeams of the roof. He tried to stand, go out with Ringold, and finish this thing.

  Ringold put a hand to Quinn’s shoulder. Quinn’s whole body shook, teeth chattering. “Consider it a favor,” he said. “I appreciate you saving a couple bastards for me.”

  • • •

  That’s a fine weapon,” Lillie said.

  “Appreciate it, Deputy Virgil,” the Trooper said. “But how about you shut your mouth until you’re on that helicopter.”

  “What is that?” Lillie said. “A Barrett fifty-cal?”

  The Trooper turned his thick head to stare at her as they walked, tromping through the high grass. The man walked a couple paces behind them, holding the big-ass gun up under his arm.

  “You plan on running into a combat situation out here?” she asked. “You can shoot an elephant at maybe a thousand yards.”

  “I didn’t care to come out in nature with my pants down.”

  “But you could make a shot that far?” Lillie said, walking side by side with Caddy Colson. “On a clear day, good light, and the right wind, you could make that shot.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You better believe it.”

  “Especially if you set up shop real high,” Lillie said. “Looking down into a valley. Maybe an old airstrip where some good ole boys had gathered for a little fun.”

  Caddy cut her eyes to Lillie but kept walking, mouth hanging open.

  “Man took a hell of a shot like that a couple years back,” Lillie said. “After the twister. Could never find him. Some folks even pinned the mess on me and Quinn. Saying I’d been the one up in the hills with a fifty-cal, making that shot. You do know I was a member of the Ole Miss Rifle Team?”

  The man didn’t answer, turn to look, or acknowledge Lillie in any way. He just kept on following a deer path through the high weeds to that old barn. The weeds were bunched tight in the ice, boots crunching over the brown, lifeless grass.

  “Figured you wouldn’t,” Lillie said. “You don’t look like a fan of higher education.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” the Trooper said. “And drop your weapon. You raise that peashooter at me and I’ll blow a hole through your chest the size of a softball.”

  Caddy had turned white. Her shoulders shaking like a little girl from a long way back. “It’s fine,” Lillie said. “It’s fine.”

  “Drop the goddamn gun.”

  Lillie dropped the rifle, put her arm around Caddy, and kept on moving through the weeds and briars, the scraggly pine trees. About halfway across the meadow to the barn, Lillie could smell smoke.

  Someone had a fire going in that warped old structure.

  • • •

  Quinn lifted his head as the three of them entered the mouth of the barn. Two women and a man. They walked closer and he knew it was Caddy and Lillie. There was a hard-looking man with a gray crew cut holding a big-ass rifle, not pointing it at them but walking with it. The man raised the gun with both hands as Caddy ran toward Quinn. She was crying as she fell to her knees and touched her forehead to his. His sister hugged him close, sending a shock of pain through the bad arm, but he almost didn’t mind. The heat, the feeling, was coming back into his body.

  She held him closer and touched his face, telling him he had blood all over him. And he shook his head, saying he’d been shot but was fine. Quinn lifted his head at the man with the crew cut. “Who are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Your men are dead,” Quinn said. His voice sounded hoarse and very far away.

  “I know it.”

  “I killed them.”
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  “Makes us about even, then,” the man said.

  Lillie tossed her chin at the man. “This turd killed Rusty Wise and Jamey Dixon.”

  Caddy’s eyes shot up to the man with the gun. Quinn reached for her hand under the cover of the blanket, touching her warm fingers and squeezing her hand. The fire had kicked up a little in the wind, sending more little sparks into the barn. Ringold had busted up some old barn wood and set it beside Quinn before he left. There was plenty of heat in the cold barn. The big twin doors had fallen off long ago, leaving nothing but a big square hole showing the dark gray light of the end of the day.

  “The woman’s talking crazy,” the man said.

  “That’s the same type gun seeded in my house,” Lillie said. “Dumb shit’s not smart enough to at least get another model.”

  “Women shouldn’t be the law,” the man said. “Got more emotions than sense.”

  “Did you kill a man named Jamey Dixon?” Caddy said. “Did you?”

  “Sister, I ain’t never heard of no man named Jamey Dixon. Sounds like some country singer outta Nashville.”

  “Oh, yes, sir, you sure did,” Lillie said. “And I’m going to nail your old withered ass for it.”

  Quinn touched his sister’s fingers and passed his Beretta into her hands, letting the weight of it fall to her. “He was a good man,” she said. “He helped a lot of people.”

  • • •

  I never thought I’d come back to this place,” Caddy said. Lillie watched her eyes, Caddy talking as if she and Quinn were the only two in the barn. “I feel like I can’t breathe in here. I knew you’d come here, Quinn. I knew it.”

  “Who else knows?” the Trooper said.

  “You and me walked that whole way,” Caddy said. “That man pushing us on with his gun and the rope. Remember how he threw away your rifle? What happened to that gun?”

  Quinn shook his head. He looked skeletal, little blood in his face or much life in his eyes. His back rose and fell with each breath. There was a lot of tin leaning against a far wall. Feed signs and scraps of roofing. Some leather tack had been nailed to the wall and petrified. The wooden walls had separated, leaving a good three or four inches between them, soft white light crossing paths.

  “He told me you were going to jail,” Caddy said. “Can you believe that? He said he was going to take a ten-year-old boy to jail. For what? Killing some deer? Why did it bother him so much? What was it that just ate at the man?”

  “I cut his tires,” Quinn said, mumbling. He grinned with the memory.

  “Who else knows where y’all are at?” the Trooper said.

  “I can smell his breath,” Caddy said. “Even now. I can smell that rancid, horrible shit in my face. And that beard nuzzling my little neck, the weight on top of me. I couldn’t breathe. He was so fat and, god damn, it hurt so much. Thank you, Quinn. Thank you for what you did.”

  Somewhere far off, Lillie heard a helicopter. The Trooper heard it, too, the putt-putt-putt sounds of the rotors growing closer, night coming on fast out the mouth of the barn. “I came to help y’all,” the Trooper said. “I’m a goddamn hero. Has everyone lost their mind?”

  “At first, he couldn’t do it,” Caddy said. “He groaned and growled. Like an animal. Pissed as hell. He spit on his hand and worked on it as he pinned me down. I just knew I was going to die. I felt like my insides would split apart.”

  “Come on,” the Trooper said. “Get up. Get up. I don’t give two shits about this mess.”

  “Why would a grown man do that?” she said. “What kind of horror turned him into walking evil?”

  Caddy stayed at Quinn’s side, arm wrapping around her older brother, Quinn’s shivering, almost in a palsy, under the blanket. Through the fire and smoke, he looked up to Lillie and then with dead eyes over to the Trooper. He nodded slow and with purpose to Caddy. Caddy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I don’t pray anymore,” she said. “I think I’ve forgotten how.”

  “I didn’t kill nobody,” the Trooper said. “I didn’t rape nobody. Come on. Let’s go. I’ll make sure Colson is tended to. He’s in rough shape.”

  “He loved me,” Caddy said. “God damn you. He gave me purpose.”

  “Who the hell you talking about?” the Trooper asked.

  “His name was Jamey Dixon,” Caddy said. “He had a real light about him.”

  Lillie saw the movement under the blanket, Quinn’s resigned look at the Trooper. The Trooper recognized it and brought up that big, heavy fifty-cal. But not in time for little Caddy Colson.

  Little Caddy fired twice. Only one hit him.

  But it was enough. He fell hard into the fire, smothering it under his body.

  • • •

  Chase liked the car. A Hummer was one hell of a ride—black leather, sunroof, satellite radio, and heated seats. Never in his life had he driven such a vehicle. Uncle Peewee’s van was something special, like some kind of mythical beast, but this was riding in style. A man could get drunk just on the smell of that leather. Chase checked the fuel, nearly full, and turned on the radio, finding some sports talk radio on the ESPN channel. With all that money and all that fuel, he might not even have to stop until Texas. Maybe Mickey was right. Maybe Mexico was the place for him.

  Or maybe the man was talking out his ass ’cause he knew that Chase was about to drop the hammer. He tried to keep the boy off guard, see his reaction, see how the money situation worked out. He would’ve hated to kill the man and find out he’d been left with a few hundred bucks and some torn-up newspaper.

  But deep in that shithole, Chase had found his future. Sure would be a sweet ride to the west. He wouldn’t miss Gordo, Alabama. Not one bit. He had cut the money, shook Mickey’s hand, and then called the play, dropping his ass right then and there. Perfect call.

  “There’s no way Alabama can finish next year in the top ten. It was a hell of a run, but Saban’s done lost his edge. Maybe he can do the same at some other school. I think it’s time he moved on.”

  “Next caller?”

  “Well, if he’s gonna try and make things right, Saban needs to fire his special teams coach. That joker cost us the game against Ole Miss.”

  When he hit the Louisiana line, Chase had damn near had enough of all this crap talk. He’d gone through two different shows over the last few hours. This time some shit-for-brains was running down Alabama’s recruiting and, hell, it wasn’t even close to signing day. Chase picked up a burner phone he’d taken off some black guy in New Orleans and called the number for the station. After two tries and another half hour, they finally patched him through, night rolling along on Interstate 10 to the Big Easy and on toward Houston.

  “That train’s gonna roll in T-town, you peckerhead,” Chase said. “A bad ’Bama can kick the shit out of most everyone else. So before we all start crying in our cornflakes, how about we look to the future? And I don’t want none of this Saban can’t adjust to no hurry-up spread horseshit. You take what comes at you in this world and turn it around in the second half. I seen it happen time and again. That’s what makes a man a goddamn winner.”

  37.

  It only took one year and nearly three months before Caddy asked, “How come you got all the credit for shooting the son of a bitch?”

  “Did you really want to be dragged into that mess?” Quinn asked. “Jesus, Caddy. You have a record. You’re still back and forth in rehab. How’s that going to look?”

  They were standing side by side on the fence railing, watching the newborn cows and a couple new horses Jason had just bought without telling Quinn. “I’ve been clean and sober now for ten months, thank you, sir,” Caddy said. “Being an addict doesn’t make me a weak person or a bad person. It’s just who I am and what I’ve got.”

  “But it would have confused the issue,” Quinn said. “A bad man got killed. Nobody needed to muddy that water.”r />
  It was spring again. Quinn had been gone for six months, back over to Afghanistan for a good-paying job—protection, and some training of local fighters. He might go back or he might stay in Tibbehah. He hadn’t really decided. There was a special election coming up in May, the second one in six years, and he’d been asked to run. Lillie was acting sheriff, but she didn’t want to run—she didn’t think she’d win. She said she talked too plain and honest to make friends. Right now, Quinn was just watching the cows in the pasture. Some new calves, jumping around and nuzzling at their mothers. The trees were green again, blackberries and honeysuckle had started to grow wild at the edge of the woods.

  Quinn smoked a La Gloria Cubana from a box that had been sent to his home. He still didn’t know Ringold’s real name. Nor had it been divulged during the inquest that followed the deaths of four known hoods and a corrupt captain with the Mississippi Highway Patrol.

  “Maybe if I had been involved, it might have shed more light on Jamey’s murder,” Caddy said.

  “That Trooper’s dead,” Quinn said. “He never wanted Jamey Dixon to talk, like he didn’t want me or Rusty to talk about what we knew. The way of Mississippi. Corruption is all good unless someone shines a light on it. Then they scatter like fucking rats. Dixon was a good man and I’m sorry, Caddy. I don’t know if I ever told you how sincerely sorry I am for your loss.”

  “Quinn?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A couple calves walked, cautious and slow, to the fence line, confused by the people watching them. They were pure white but splattered with mud, big eyes curious. Their ears twitched with the unfamiliar sounds.

  “I wish you’d stay.”

  “A lot of shit has happened,” he said. “I got a lot to think about.”

  The things Quinn noticed most after being back were the colors: all the bright greens and the deep brown of the soil. Not the dull brown-beige of rocks and sandy earth. Home smelled different, rich with growing grass and ripe cow manure. There was no more fertile place than north Mississippi in the spring.