by Ace Atkins
“I don’t want to drink,” Sam said, standing with the Chief in his office, the great gold mirrored plate-glass window looking out onto the casino floor. “And you should know better. When did you start again? The drunken Indian is a cliché from the Westerns. I’ve been that man. I lost my family because of it. You know what became of Norma. And later of Mingo. If I had been a father, I’d have come back for him.”
“Please, Sam,” Chief Robbie said. “Leave it alone. Leave Fannie Hathcock and Mississippi. Go to your lovely condo in Tulsa and be with that young woman you told me about. The one with the beautiful face, the golden hair, and the wide hips. Spend the money you’ve made, live the life you have earned. You built this place the same as me. If not for a few pieces of bad fortune, you’re the one who’d have been chief.”
“I’ve made many mistakes, Robbie,” Sam said. “And you know them all. I could never have been chief. I’m a killer. I was trained to kill at Parris Island. I killed as a Marine and I’ve been doing it since I got back to the Rez. That’s who I am.”
“Promise me you won’t kill Fannie Hathcock,” Chief Robbie said, reaching for a fancy crystal decanter on his desk and pouring out some whiskey. “When you called, I was worried you were about to make a bad mistake for the entire tribe. Why? Because some crazy white woman threatened Fannie and said she’d killed Mingo? It sounds like this woman is unstable. Why risk the peace and all our business dealings for the unhinged ramblings of a woman you don’t know?”
“She’s the sister of the sheriff I shot.”
“Even worse,” Chief Robbie said, taking a sip and then sitting behind his huge wooden desk with the eagle-claw feet, turning back and forth in his leather seat. “Leave now. You can have my big Mercedes. You can drive all night and be in Tulsa by morning. OK? You will feel much better then. You can come back when we’ve settled all this mess.”
“I can’t ever come back,” Sam said. “You’ve told that to me many times. There is a U.S. Marshal after me. They have photos and information. They know who I am and what I’ve done.”
“It can be corrected,” Chief Robbie said. “In time. Trust me.”
Sam shook his head, watching Chief Robbie drain the glass of fine whiskey. The Chief poured himself another half glass of the brown water. Sam noticed how soft his old friend had gotten around the jawline and thick in his smiling cheeks. The Chief had sworn off alcohol many years ago, getting healthy and fit, and Sam never thought he’d ever see his friend touch the stuff again.
“This woman will hang herself,” Chief Robbie said. “She’s made too many enemies. So many people want her dead, she won’t make it another year. And then, well . . . We will be there to take over.”
“Do you recall that time in New Orleans?” Sam asked. “When you found me living under I-10 like a wild animal? I had gone on a drunk for two, three weeks. You wrestled me to the ground and chained me in the back of your truck. The whole way back to the Rez, singing old hymns in Choctaw, playing Metallica as loud as you could. Why did you do that? Why did you come for me?”
“You’d lost your wife,” Chief Robbie said. “The government had taken away your children. You had lost your way.”
“I’m not lost anymore,” Sam said. “I know what to do.”
“I would offer you money or position, but none of that means anything to you, Sam Frye.”
“Stop me from leaving,” Sam Frye said, turning toward the door, exposing his broad back to his old friend. “I have a long walk through the casino and out to my car. You’re chief. You can do as you please.”
“I can’t,” Chief Robbie said, tossing back the second glass. “But I will be there to clean up whatever follows.”
* * *
• • •
Jason and Ana Gabriel took a walk from the little shotgun cabin she shared with her brother Sancho. The sun had finally gone down and the rain had stopped, leaving the grassy fields and the small rutted paths choked with steam and humidity. They found an old fallen tree to sit on and watch the lightning bugs come alive in the nighttime heat, thousands of them flickering their yellow tails on and off like tiny flashbulbs.
“We should do something to honor Señor Herrera,” she said. “He should be remembered and respected for all he tried to do for us. While we were gone, he found my father in Atlanta. He’s coming for us, Jason. I didn’t know how to find him and Señor Herrera told him about my mother and that we were left alone.”
“You’re leaving?”
“For now,” she said. “What else can we do? They say they’re sending our mother back to Mexico. How will we find her? I’ve never even been to Mexico.”
“Are your mother and father together?”
“No,” she said. “Not for a long while. He has a new wife and new children. But my mother said he was a good man, always sending money to help us. But I don’t know what will happen. Me and Sancho living with his new family in Atlanta. What if they hate us?”
“When is he coming?”
Ana Gabriel reached out and snatched a lightning bug out of the dusky air. She turned to Jason, gave a soft smile, and then opened her hand. The lightning bug’s tail glowing weak and slow in an old rhythmic pulse. They both watched the bug as it flickered its wings again and flew out into the night.
“I don’t know,” Ana Gabriel said. “He left a phone number here at El Rio. Your mother had me call and leave a message. I haven’t heard back. But I will. He’s not the type of man to ignore family.”
“You can stay here,” Jason said. “My momma said you and Sancho can stay here as long as you like.”
She reached out and grabbed Jason’s hand, squeezing his fingers. “We’re not safe here,” she said. “I worry for Sancho. Everything that’s happened. I know this is your home, but this is an evil place, filled with evil and dangerous people.”
“Only home I’ve ever known,” he said. “I guess you get used to it.”
“The things I’ve heard about your uncle, the sheriff, and his friend, the big black man.”
“Boom,” Jason said.
“Why do they stay?” she said. “Why do all of you stay? You can start a new life anywhere. My father came from Juárez, not from El Paso. He told me that he left to be something better and bigger for his family. He works so hard, Jason. Not only does he send money to us, but to his mother as well. And his mother takes care of his younger sisters and cousins. How is that a bad thing?”
“It’s not a bad thing,” Jason said. “Who would say that?”
“The people here,” she said. “I hear what they whisper behind our backs, the names they call us. They say we steal food and jobs from people who want to work. They say we are dirty and have no value.”
“Not me,” Jason said, squeezing her hand back. “You’re the prettiest and smartest girl I’ve ever met in my life, Ana Gabriel. If I hear someone saying something about you and Sancho, I’d punch them right in the throat.”
“Your mother wouldn’t like that,” she said. “Would she? She says to forgive others as Christ Himself forgave, seventy times seven.”
“My mother thinks on things different,” Jason said, smiling over at Ana Gabriel. “She always has. She feeds other folks before she can eat. She brings clothes to people out in the county while she’s got holes in her own blue jeans and holes in her shoes. That’s just the way she is.”
Ana Gabriel nodded, looking down at their hands clasped together, their skin a similar brown. “And this makes her happy?”
Jason didn’t answer. He looked out into the field, thousands of those bugs lifting off into the night, searching for their mates. He remembered seeing maybe twice as many back in June, those bugs having one last big party before fall set in down south. The air was so thick and wet outside, it was tough to breathe.
“I don’t know if my momma is ever really happy,” Jason said. “She seems only content when
life is real hard.”
“Why is that?” Ana Gabriel said. “Why would anyone want that for themselves?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “She always says she’ll get her reward in heaven.”
“But not here?” Ana Gabriel said. “Not in the comfort of a better place, away from all this death and violence?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “I always figured what she was doing was right for everybody.”
Ana Gabriel put her head on his shoulder. “Everyone but herself,” she said. “I feel very sad for your mother.”
20
Donnie couldn’t go home. The thought of staring at the walls of that old trailer or that big blank movie screen made him physically ill. He didn’t want to see his daddy at the Quick Mart, watching him chain-smoke Pall Malls and lecture about Jesus. And he sure couldn’t see Quinn and Boom now that both of the best friends he’d ever known thought he was as crooked as a wild duck’s pecker. Instead, he headed on into the Dixie gas station and bought a case of warm Coors, set it into a Styrofoam cooler along with a bag of ice, and placed the cooler in the seat beside him, the beer riding shotgun, icing itself colder and colder each country mile. He finished beer after beer, crawling up on those old gravel roads as twilight turned to night, breaking into a straightaway on the old Jericho Road, passing that dark place where he’d heard Diane Tull and her friend were attacked back in ’77, three years before he was born. So many damn sad sights on the grand tour.
But he had Waylon in his daddy’s tape deck, a nice little buzz working as he wandered the back roads of Tibbehah. “The Chokin’ Kind.” “Anita, You’re Dreaming.” “Just to Satisfy You.” Someone’s gonna get hurt before you’re through. Someone’s gonna pay for the things you do.
“Damn,” Donnie said. “Goddamn.” He tossed another empty can of Coors into the back of the GTO, speakers thumping and jumping, windows open, warm humid air blowing through the car, lightning bugs in the wild brown field clicking on and off, humping the hell out of each other out in those weeds.
Everything he’d ever tried to do was for a good purpose. But somehow, someway, he always ended up cornholing himself. He thought when he was over in Trashcanistan that nobody would really miss a few dozen of those rifles and that maybe he could put them to good use back home. Everybody else was getting a check from Uncle Sam back then, why not him? In the end, he got those damn guns into the hands of good folks who needed them. Luz and her people were taking on the fucking Cartel, back in Cherán, the Cartel owning the damn town, the federales strip-clearing every tree in what had been a crazy, wonderful forest. But that had cost him. Doing the right thing, fighting the bad guys, landed his ass in prison.
And when that federal agent showed up at FCI Beaumont last Thanksgiving, Donnie was just trying to get through his day, thinking about that turkey and dressing the trusties were fixing up for him and his buddies Luis and Salvador. Salvador even sneaking a bottle of Casamigos tequila into the prison along with his regular supply of cell phones.
Help out his friend Quinn Colson? You bet your ass. But nobody would think Donnie Varner was a fucking good guy even if he wore a Nudie Suit the color of vanilla ice cream and a white hat taller than Tom Mix’s.
Donnie headed down that curvy stretch of the old Jericho Road toward town, the bright lights of the Jericho Square beckoning. Maybe hit the pool hall or the Southern Star, but goddamn if that golden GTO didn’t have a mind of her own, its nose pointing south at the Fillin’ Station, Donnie heading down into Sugar Ditch and knowing full well that he was headed to The River to see Caddy. He’d missed her so much, knowing wherever he went and whoever he’d been with, he’d always wanted Caddy Colson. Caddy was home. He could wander around and around this earth and never find a woman as quality as Caddy. And right now, he didn’t give a good goddamn what anyone thought or what he wasn’t supposed to say. Caddy needed to know just what the hell Donnie Varner was all about.
He slowed down as he approached that big hand-painted sign, the ribbon of cracked asphalt working its way past the cotton and cornfields and then into the lowlands of Sugar Ditch. He turned at the cattle gate, open big and wide, and slid on down the muddy road, back tires slipping and sliding as he headed to the barn. Take it to the barn. Take it on home. He could see the light on in Caddy’s office, a beaten white single-wide cast off and unwanted, that old GMC truck, two-tone brown and white, parked crooked out front. Donnie knocked the car into park and crawled out of the GTO, taking a final sip of the can of Coors as he wandered down the path, children playing and singing songs in the barn as he headed up the beaten wooden steps and pounded on the door.
Nothing. And so he pounded more. Caddy finally opened the door and looked Donnie up and down and shook her head. “Why don’t you just quit?”
“Not in my nature.”
“Fannie Hathcock?” she said. “Good God.”
Donnie put a hand on Caddy’s slim sun-brown arm and said, “Baby, don’t you believe half of what you’re seeing.”
“Good night.”
“Come on, now.”
Caddy shook off his arm and turned back to the trailer.
“I love you.”
“Bullshit.”
“I said, I love you,” he said. “Damn it, Caddy. You know. Hell, we’ve always known.”
She turned to him, hands on her hips, jaw clenched. She was mad as hell but she looked like the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“You don’t know a damn thing about love,” Caddy said. “You lay with filth and evil. I can smell it on you now.”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “That’s just a little Rocky Mountain spring water.”
Donnie shook his head, feeling something that sure felt like tears sliding down his cheeks. He turned toward the music coming out of the barn, some kind of service in Spanish. He knew the hymn, the music familiar but the words coming out foreign. He leaned in to kiss Caddy but she turned her head away from him.
He leaned in and whispered into her ear. “I’m working for the goddamn FBI,” he said. “That’s how I got out early. I’m working to bring all these bastards down. Same as Quinn and same as Lillie Virgil. I’m one of the goddamn good guys.”
Caddy backed up as if seeing Donnie for the first time, a kind, passive light coming across her face. Donnie loosened up, thinking he was about to get one hell of an apology. But instead took Caddy’s small tight fist right in his face.
It knocked him back on the heels of his pointy-toed boots. She sure popped his ass good.
“Go,” she said, pointing back to Luther’s prized vehicle. “Get off my property. I’m too damn old and too damn smart to be told such ridiculous lies.”
* * *
• • •
“It’s late, Skinner,” Quinn said. “What do you want?”
“Plenty,” Skinner said. “How about you take a seat, Sheriff.”
“I’m fine with standing.”
Both of the men stood in the dimly lit First Baptist Church late that night, not three days after Quinn had picked up Jason in Byhalia. Quinn was tired, already headed to bed when his cell phone rang. He got up, dressed, and took two pills to ease his back on the ride to town. Seems like he couldn’t get on his boots without a little help, and he hated it.
“How’s your wife doing?” Skinner said. “Heard she’s about due. That’s a wonderful thing, becoming a parent. Changes everything. Now I know you two have a young son, but having one of your own, one that looks just like you. Well, that’s the Lord’s work.”
Quinn didn’t say anything. Even with the two pills, his lower back ached like hell. He took a seat in the second church pew from the altar. Skinner, Stetson in hand, collapsed his lumbering body in the pew ahead of him, staring up at the cross, no doubt for effect. He then lapsed into a coughing fit, Quinn waiting for the old man to finish and get on with it.
“I’ve
made a lot of mistakes,” Skinner said.
If ever an understatement had been made.
“Done things I’m ashamed of.”
No doubt.
“Everything I’ve done is to help the folks of this county.”
A lie.
“But sometimes I made a buck or two on the side.”
Truth.
“You don’t talk much, Sheriff,” Skinner said, eyes sliding down to his own lap. “Kind of remind me of ole Gary Cooper in that way. Never forget seeing that picture he was in with Grace Kelly, wandering down that barren street alone. Everyone’d turn tail and run, afraid of Frank Miller and his gang.”
“My family’s asleep,” Quinn said. “And tomorrow, I got work to do.”
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Skinner said, “just what kind of work are you doing with the governor setting up his own men up here? You know he doesn’t just aim to sideline you for a few months. He’s got plans for that Brock Tanner to run this county for a long, long time. Tanner himself says he has plans on running in the next election.”
Quinn looked up at the big stained-glass window behind the pulpit. An empty wooden cross topped with a crown of thorns and wrapped in a purple sash, a beam of golden light shooting down from heaven. He waited for Ole Man Skinner to tell him that his family had bought and paid for that window, bought special from an artist up in Illinois when they rebuilt the church. Everyone in Jericho had heard the story more than once.
“As a leader in the community,” Skinner said, starting to cough a bit again, “I had to make a few compromises. Work with folks of low integrity for the bigger picture of this county. Those millions of dollars from Jackson don’t flow up to Tibbehah easy. No, sir. Sometimes you got to turn that river, make money and business come our way. I have broken bread with godless men and women. I have looked the other way while evil was being done. And I do believe I have been in the presence of the living, breathing devil.”