by Ace Atkins
“You want me to turn on my own father?”
Quinn turned his head to Bentley. He adjusted the brim of his cap, looking him straight in the eye, and nodded.
“And possibly land his ass in prison?” he asked. “Lose everything my family has left?”
Quinn didn’t answer.
“Damn you, Quinn Colson,” Bentley said. “That’s a hell of a thing to ask a man. You might could turn on Jason. But damn. I can’t do that. That’s too damn much.”
Quinn watched one of the women, one hand on the reins with a light touch as she moved the horse into a steady gallop, going round and round. The horse fighting her at the bit, tossing its head back and forth but finally taking the direction, the hooves clomping in a steady, elegant rhythm.
“My daddy’s coming later tonight,” Bentley said. “When he hits that fourth scotch, there’s not a man alive who can shut his damn mouth.”
Quinn turned to him and offered his hand. “You know where to find me.”
Bentley waited for a second and then shook it.
* * *
• • •
It was almost as if nothing had happened at all. The rain had gone away and the sun had come out and Caddy and Jason were making their weekend rounds to the food banks, grocery stores, and churches in Tibbehah. She had the windows down on the old truck, thank God running again after she replaced a bad battery that morning, and now they were headed south from the Yellow Leaf community, richer by a few hundred cans of food and some cooking oil. Mac Davis’s “I Believe in Music” coming from an old cassette she found at her momma’s house, Jean telling her that Mac had not only written songs for Elvis but had hosted some of the best Christmas specials ever made. Jean made the seventies seem like some weird, mystical time, like a Redneck Camelot.
“When do you think Coach will let me back on the team?” Jason asked.
“That’s between you and Coach.”
“But what I did should count for something.”
“Running away?” Caddy asked.
“No, that other thing.”
“Depends on how impressed your coach is with you stabbing a pimp in the leg.”
“Wasn’t his leg, Momma,” Jason said. “I stabbed that son of a bitch right in the foot.”
“Jason?” Caddy said. “How about you tone down the cussing. Just for a few days. You can talk like that in front of your Uncle Quinn and Boom. But I’m your mother. OK? Not your fishing buddy.”
Jason nodded, Caddy taking those gentle curves down toward Jericho, Mac Davis now singing his own rendition of “A Little Less Conversation,” a funky, down-home version of the song Elvis made famous. It was slow and cool, good driving music, Caddy thought, heading into the sun and reaching for her cheap white sunglasses on the cracked dash.
They passed over the Big Black River bridge, a slash of heavy-duty concrete built beside the old train trestle. Caddy could never pass over the water and see that boat landing without thinking about poor Milly Jones, doused with gasoline and set afire for trying to tell the truth, a trucker finding her walking from her car in flames.
Caddy glanced over at Jason and patted his knee, thanking the Lord that he’d escaped and made it back home safe. She’d always hoped and prayed that the darkness would never touch her son’s life. Caddy had more than her fair share of darkness, living in sin and desperation until she crawled out from her hole into the sunshine. She felt she’d left those people behind, the ones that clawed at you and tried to hold you down. Jason looked over at her and smiled, brown-skinned and blue-eyed, looking more and more like her father every day and a little like some man she couldn’t even recall.
“Slow down, Momma.”
“What’s that?”
“Slow down,” he said.
Caddy looked into her rearview, noticing a Tibbehah County Sheriff’s patrol car coming up behind her. In the past, she’d never given them a second glance. Being the sheriff’s sister definitely had its advantages. Not to mention, the sheriff’s office didn’t mess much with speeding tickets and traffic violations. But after what happened to Hector Herrera, just the thought of a cruiser tailing her made her blood run cold. She turned down that fun, funky music and placed both hands on the wheel. She made sure her seat belt was buckled and told Jason to do the same, even though he always wore his seat belt.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
She saw the patrol car speed up close to her bumper, Caddy looking back and praying it was someone she knew. But it wasn’t. It was a white man wearing dark sunglasses, and soon he hit the flashing blue lights, riding her tail until she slowed and rolled over onto the shoulder. They weren’t two miles from the Jericho city limits.
Caddy looked over to Jason and tried to compose herself. She reached into her purse for license and registration, Quinn always telling her to have it ready, just to put the deputy at ease.
“You know why I stopped you?” the deputy said.
“I sure don’t,” Caddy said, trying to be polite, although she knew what was coming.
“You were driving twenty miles over the speed limit.”
“In this old truck?” she said. “That’s not possible.”
The man didn’t answer. He had narrow, sleepy eyes and a pockmarked, bloated face. Something about his hair made her think of a child’s, cut off with scissors in a straight line across his forehead. His eyes red, unfocused, and bleary, breath that smelled like liquor and onions.
He walked behind her truck and wrote down her tag. “License.”
She handed over her driver’s license, noticing the name tag on his uniform said M. DANBURY.
“You kin to the old sheriff?”
“The sheriff is my brother.”
“And who’s this colored kid?”
“Excuse me,” she said. “What the hell did you just say?”
Two motorcycles came off the Big Black Bridge and sped past them, going twice the speed Caddy had been going. M. Danbury didn’t even look at them as they passed, their exhausts blasting loud down the hills and into the straightaway.
He looked over the license and then tucked it into his shirt pocket. He turned his head to spit and then looked right back to Caddy, staring hard at her and then to Jason. Her heart was beating so damn fast, hands tight on the wheel while her left leg started jumping up and down.
The deputy turned and headed to the patrol car, hefting his thick body behind the wheel.
“What’s going on?” Jason asked, whispering.
“I don’t know.”
“Were you speeding?”
“No.”
“Then what does he want?”
Caddy couldn’t lie. Had always promised to always be straight and truthful with Jason. “He’s trying to make trouble.”
Neither of them spoke until Danbury got out of the patrol car and shuffled back to Caddy’s open window. Caddy looked in her rearview mirror, hoping like hell that someone she knew would pass by. Maybe someone who’d stop off and notice her, realize what this man was trying to do to her and Jason. Her son had already been through enough.
“Your tag is expired.”
“Is it?”
“Expired two months back,” Danbury said, his mouth working into a tight little grin. “And this insurance card is from two years ago. What do you think we should do about that?”
Caddy didn’t answer. She was so damn mad, she was shaking. That was the worst of it. The humiliation of letting this man try to scare and intimidate her. But she’d had enough. She knew full well Jesus was riding shotgun and would look out for her and Jason and there was nothing this man could do to them.
“I guess you were one of the men who shot and killed Hector Herrera.”
Danbury grinned some more. He turn
ed his head. He spit.
“Y’all are killers,” she said. “The real criminals.”
“I’d be careful with that attitude,” he said. “You might be figuring that the little camera on my dash is on and you can smart-talk me all you want. But you’d be wrong, Miss Colson. That camera’s dead-ass broke. And what happens out here is between us.”
“And my child,” she said. “You want to do this in front of a child?”
“Honestly, I don’t give a fuck about you or your colored boy,” he said. “How about you agree to shut your damn mouth and I’ll give you your license back.”
Caddy was about to answer when she spotted a second patrol car roll up behind Danbury’s. When the door opened, Reggie Caruthers jumped out and marched up to where Danbury stood. He didn’t say a thing, just hung there on Danbury’s shoulder, staring him down. The fat man’s face was red and sweating as he reached into his pocket and tossed her license to the ground.
Danbury swore a few times before pushing past Reggie, knocking shoulder to shoulder, and jumped into his patrol car. He burned some rubber on the pavement and sped on past them on the way back to Jericho.
“Y’all all right?” Reggie said. “Jesus. Heard him call in your license on the radio.”
“God, Reggie,” Caddy said. “Who the hell are these people?”
* * *
• • •
Boom got a strawberry ice cream cone at Lipscomb’s Drugstore and walked across the street to the Square to see what the hell was going on. A crowd had gathered by the gazebo and veterans’ memorial with a couple TV news trucks parked downtown. Cameras had been set up and aimed at the gazebo steps where Brock Tanner appeared to be holding a news conference. He was dressed in the khaki uniform Quinn always wore, minus the Wranglers and the cowboy boots, black hair slicked down against his skull and jug ears jutting out like handles on a sugar bowl.
Boom stepped in the crowd and stood by Betty Jo Mize, who was scribbling notes onto a steno pad for the Tibbehah County Monitor. She didn’t even seem to notice Boom while she worked, writing fast on the page with eyes up on Brock Tanner speaking at a makeshift lectern.
“At approximately one a.m. this morning, the Tibbehah County Sheriff’s Office answered a trespass call on a private property near Choctaw Lake. There we came into contact with Samuel Teschu Frye, who was wanted on numerous felonies by the sheriff’s office, the FBI, and U.S. Marshals Service. When members of the sheriff’s office rapid response team cornered Mr. Frye, he began to fire on myself and three of my deputies. Through quick action and quick thinking, we were able to neutralize Frye. He was pronounced dead on the scene by EMTs. This man was considered armed and dangerous, the main suspect in a raid that happened at our sheriff’s office almost a year ago. He was believed to be the suspect who gained entry to our county jail by unknown means and killed a prisoner. That prisoner had known ties to a criminal syndicate on the Gulf Coast and this incident was considered a contract killing.”
Boom could see that Tanner loved to talk, continuing on about his daring raid and all the brave deputies in his employ had done. He thanked his military training and the Maker above.
“We believe Mr. Frye was also involved in a shoot-out with my predecessor last October when the sheriff was nearly killed,” Tanner said. “A task force was set up a short time later by Governor J. K. Vardaman to get to the root of how Frye was allowed entry to the jail and how a dispute between him and the then-Sheriff Colson erupted. The findings of that inquiry should be made public in the coming weeks.”
Betty Jo Mize elbowed Boom hard in his ribs. When he looked down at the little gray-headed woman, she shook her head. She looked disgusted at the whole sorry carnival that had set up on her beloved Jericho Square.
As soon as she could, the woman wove her way through the crowd and TV reporters to the front of the gazebo and Tanner’s lectern. “Last week your deputies were also involved in a deadly shooting with a man named Hector Herrera,” Mize said. “Since that time, y’all haven’t answered a single question about how or why it happened.”
Tanner looked annoyed, not used to getting straight talk or basic questions. But Mize stood her ground, while the other, much younger reporters kept quiet and waited for a reply. The old woman’s gray hair stiff and teased, a pencil slipped behind her right ear.
“I told you several times that shooting is an ongoing investigation,” Tanner said. “Since you’ve been around since the Civil War, Miss Mize, I figure you’d understand how law enforcement works.”
Tanner gave a little grin, happy with himself, shuffling the papers in front of him. Boom wanted to walk up to that boy and grab him by the throat with his hook, toss his ass far and wide from the memorial and town square.
“I’ve covered a lot of fine law officers in this county and some sorry ones, too,” Miss Mize said, raising her voice enough that people in the crowd took note. “Want to guess what category you fall in?”
Tanner’s face colored and his nose flared. He shook his head and made a twirling motion around his ears, letting everyone know he believed Miss Mize had gone senile. Boom had known Betty Jo Mize since she used to cover his little league football games. She’d once written a sympathetic editorial about his father when he joined in with some other black cotton farmers to get fair prices at the local gin.
“Hector Herrera had been fighting to get those poultry plant workers freed,” Betty Jo Mize said. “He’d also filed a ten-million-dollar lawsuit on their behalf. Are you telling us that he just happened to jump out of his vehicle and start firing on y’all one day? What kind of stupid do you think we are, boy?”
Tanner shook his head, announcing there would be no more questions. He left the lectern, walked from the Square, and met up with his right-hand man Mitchell Danbury, who’d just parked his cruiser. Danbury stood by the open door of his patrol car and leaned into Tanner’s ear to whisper something.
“Goddamn, this sure stinks,” Miss Mize said. “Where’s Quinn?”
“You know, I was just about to call him,” Boom said.
“Tell him to call me, too,” Miss Mize said. “That jug-eared son of a bitch just accused him of being in bed with organized crime. Sure would like to know what Quinn has to say about that.”
“Oh, you know Quinn,” Boom said. “Few words. Lots of action.”
“Tell him to hurry,” Miss Mize said. “Like ole Porter Wagoner sang, I’ve enjoyed as much of this as I can stand.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
• • •
Flowers.
Nat Wilkins watched as Fannie brought in more fucking flowers, huge arrangements of white roses, birds of paradise, and orchids, to her intimate and personal dinner party. Of course, those men from Jackson wouldn’t notice. The only thing they cared about was young cooze wiggling in their laps and old scotch being poured into their crystal glasses.
Nat had worked most of the day stocking the bar with bootleg booze from Fannie’s trucker contacts. So many whiskeys and bourbons that weren’t allowed to be sold within the state of Mississippi now being set high on the mirrored shelving of the bar. She made sure they had some tequila, vodka, and good gin, too. But mainly this was about the whiskey, cigars, and women for Vardaman’s inner circle. The centerpiece being that damn swimming pool made of river rocks out back where Fannie would bring in a dirty dozen in the tiniest of swimsuits and probably nothing at all, making sure those young girls told those old fat men, bald and graying with hairs coming out their ears, just how attractive they were.
“Don’t forget the soda pop,” Fannie said, sneaking up behind Nat.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Some of these old boys would fuck a light socket but won’t touch a sip of liquor,” she said. “Better make sure you can pour a tall Coca-Cola on ice.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nat said. “You think we’re good on
that Pappy Van Winkle? Only have four bottles. I know that’s all these folks gonna ask for. Pour me a big ole bourbon and Coke with the best damn whiskey y’all got. Damn heathens.”
“I’d take exception to it if I didn’t know it’s nothing but Jim Fucking Beam in those bottles,” Fannie said. “They won’t know the damn difference.”
Nat nodded, watching Fannie fiddle with the towering flower arrangements along the center of the long cypress table. From the place settings, it looked as if Fannie was expecting ten to twelve men, with Vardaman at one end of the table and Fannie at the other.
It was damn hot inside that lake house with the French doors propped open for the deliverymen to come and go. Nat had already started to sweat in her black tank top, her hair worn in long braids down her back.
“What happened to the afro?” Fannie asked.
“Decided to switch it up a little.”
“Can you change it back?” Fannie asked. “Already had two good ole boys wanted to know about that fine girl with that big bouncy afro. I’ll pay whatever you need to get it back styled high and right. We want everything to look and feel perfect for this little dinner party.”
“You mind me asking what this is all about?”
Fannie winked at Nat. “Half business,” Fannie said. “Half hail to the goddamn chief. Make sure all that beer gets iced down, too. We want those bottles cold as can be when those first planes touch down.”
Nat nodded, watching Fannie walk out of the back doors and speak to the foreman of the crew setting out leather recliners and rocking chairs and staking tiki torches at the edge of the pool. Another twenty minutes passed before she saw Fannie heading out a side door, saying she’d be back later.
Fannie acted like she was more secure and in charge with Sam Frye dead. But Nat knew what this was really about was making those good ole boys fat and happy and on her damn side just in case Chief Robbie wanted to make trouble. Those boys loved their gambling, but there wasn’t a man alive who couldn’t be caught in a trap made of whiskey and cooze.