The Broken Places

by Ace Atkins

  “Door was open,” Becky said. “Just helped myself. You say this is your buddy’s place?”

  “That’s right,” Esau said. “He wanted me and you to have somewhere special to go when I got out.”

  “I never saw a refrigerator like that in a house before,” she said. “Hell, I could live in there.”

  Esau put his rough, stubby fingers on her and pulled her close, reaching up under the towel and feeling her large and firm butt. “Damn, I love how you smell.”

  “You still smell like prison,” Becky said, pulling away, twisting her wet blond hair in her hands, wringing out the water. She walked to the bathroom counter, where she’d stowed a zebra-print overnight case, and pulled out a fresh pair of panties and some cutoff jeans. First thing Esau had noticed about Becky at that Tupelo Waffle House where she waited tables was her legs. And she hadn’t lost any of it. She slipped into the panties and shorts, and then fit a red bikini top over her head and asked Esau to tie the back.

  “What you putting that on for?” he said.

  “Duh,” she said. “Hadn’t you even seen the pool? That’s the best part of this log cabin. I turned on the heater and set out some chairs. Let us make some margaritas and play around. I don’t care if it rains on us or not. I’ll put on some Kenny Chesney and we’ll pretend we’re in Florida.”

  “How about we just go back to one of them bedrooms and I’ll fuck you?”

  “Which one?” she said. “They got about forty of ’em.”

  Esau pulled her pale body in close to his chest. He nibbled at her ear a bit, saying some dirty ideas that had come to him in prison. Esau marveled at the sight of them together in the mirror till he spotted something move down the hall and come toward them. Sure as hell wasn’t Bones. He pushed Becky away, pulled the .357, and aimed it hard and fast at the white man sneaking up on them.

  The little guy flinched, dropped to one knee, and covered his head. At first Esau thought he was shaking from fear but then realized he was giggling.

  “Little jumpy, ain’t you, Red?” Dickie Green said.

  He slowly got up, hands raised. And Esau set the pistol back on his belt.

  “What the hell?”

  “Went to Miss Becky’s house in Coldwater and she tole me she was comin’ to you,” Dickie said. “Figured we just ride together. Ain’t this something?”

  Esau looked down over the railing onto the first floor. Bones stood in the center of the big room, shaking his head. “Dickie,” Bones said up to the balcony. “Good to see you.”

  “See?” Dickie said. He wore a flannel shirt without sleeves and a pair of Wranglers. Bald head shining in the lamplight. “Y’all still need me.”

  “How’s that?” Esau said to Dickie, but more looking down at Bones.

  “Dickie?” Bones said. “Didn’t I hear you can swim real good?”

  • • •

  Quinn stood at the edge of the Rebel Truck Stop parking lot, watching the 18-wheelers come and go, a large grouping of trucks, maybe fifty or so, hooking into free cable and Wi-Fi, until their next leg or word from the dispatcher. The Rebel’s sign along Highway 45 was a girl’s silhouette often seen on mud flaps against a neon blue-and-red Confederate flag.

  Lillie pulled up her Cherokee two feet from Quinn and got out.

  “You must have a good reason for calling me over here,” Quinn said. “I haven’t had much sleep.”

  “Maybe I just wanted some of the Rebel Truck Stop’s fine chicken-fried steak.”

  “Their chicken-fried steak tastes like shit.”

  “Or maybe today is the day that we finally break down the door to Johnny Stagg’s strip club and raid them for prostitution?”

  “And they’ll open an hour later.”

  “Or maybe we got a vehicle here possibly connected to a robbery in Webster County.” Lillie motioned Quinn to a Chevy Caprice Classic parked over toward the neat rows of 18-wheelers. “Car belongs to a cook over in Eupora who was working the late shift. Man never stopped by the owner’s house last night, as was custom, to deliver the earnings.”

  “Any sign of the cook?” Quinn said.

  “Nope.”

  “How did we know about the car?”

  “Would you believe Johnny Stagg himself called it in?” Lillie said. “It was blocking an exit lane for his truckers. He told Mary Alice it was time we did something on the job, other than just cruise around the county and drink coffee.”

  “Ole Johnny,” Quinn said. “Concerned citizen.”

  Lillie grinned. A large Kenworth loaded down with pine logs blew past them, kicking up some grit and drowning out any words.

  “So you ran the tag and got in touch with the sheriff in Webster?” Quinn said after the truck passed.

  “Yep.”

  “This guy have a record?” Quinn said.

  “Nothing to worry over,” Lillie said. “Name is Highsmith. Been arrested a few times for possessing dope and petty theft. Sounds like a burnout.”

  “Who got some ambition late last night.”

  “So much ambition, he stole a whole three hundred dollars and fucked up his life.”

  Quinn turned to the Rebel’s main building, the Western-wear shop and restaurant’s long bank of picture windows with truckers downing coffee and loading up for breakfast. A sign advertised a Denver omelet for four bucks and ninety-nine cents.

  “I’ll talk to Stagg,” Quinn said.

  “You always take the fun parts of the job.”

  “He may know more than he’s saying,” Quinn said. “I can always tell when the son of a bitch is lying.”

  “Hell,” Lillie said. “That’s easy. Hard part is knowing when he’s telling the truth.”

  • • •

  “Who were those men?” Caddy asked Jamey Dixon. They had parked outside the Sonic drive-in, waiting for some burgers, fries, and Cokes. She didn’t have much time before picking up Jason from school. She and Jamey had spent the rest of the day in the garden, not speaking, since the men peeled away from the church.

  “Just a couple fellas I knew.”

  “Men from Parchman?”

  Jamey nodded.

  “What did they want?”

  “Like I said, they think I have something that belongs to them.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I don’t, Caddy,” Jamey said. “I’m done with all that. They’re the kind of people looking for a free ride and always have excuses about what they’ve become.”

  “They looked pretty rough.”

  “Not a lot of the clean-cut types in the Farm.”

  “That one man, the black man, I didn’t care for the way he looked at me.”

  “’Cause he was black?”

  “Because there was something wrong with his brain,” she said. “He thought it was OK to look at a person like an animal. He looked like he was in ecstasy.”

  “Maybe he had to go to the bathroom.”

  “I’m not joking with you about this.”

  “One thing I know for sure,” Jamey said, smiling. “We aren’t that far different from animals. It just depends on how you decide to evolve.”

  A teenage girl on roller skates and in a pair of shorts and a tight Alan Jackson T-shirt appeared and handed them a couple Cokes and a big sack of burgers. She smiled big at Jamey, and Jamey tipped her two dollars, sending her off on skates.

  “Caddy, I appreciate all you done,” Jamey said. “The garden is going to be beautiful and help a lot of folks in need.”

  “I about made a mess of it, tromping through when those men came up.”

  “Caddy?”

  She looked at Jamey behind the wheel, wearing sunglasses, not touching the food between them. “I want you to forget about those men and what they said,” he said. “More than anything, I don’t want you to talk to Quinn about it.”

  “I don’t tell Quinn anything.”

  “Good,” he said. “It will just get messy for me. He’s looking for an excuse to get me in trouble with the paro
le board. He hates that we’re together.”

  “But those men,” Caddy said. “They’ll come back for you. What about then? What if they try to hurt you or the church? Or what if Jason is around?”

  Jamey reached into the sack for a cheeseburger and a couple fries. He thought as he ate, nodding to himself with what he seemed to believe was a solid answer. “When they get what’s happened through their thick heads, they’ll leave us all alone.”

  “But if they don’t,” Caddy said. “I still don’t know what happened. What the hell do they want from you? More money?”

  “I don’t want to discuss it,” Jamey said. “But I swear to you that they’ll never get close to you again.”

  Jamey set his jaw and ate in silence, studying on a part of his life he’d never share with her. It didn’t make her mad as much as it made her face flush with jealousy.

  “Sheriff,” Johnny Stagg said. “Good to see you. Come on in.”

  “Thanks, Johnny.”

  Stagg smiled his satyr grin, his face an elongated mask of self-confidence, and pointed to an empty wooden chair before a big old desk. Behind him there were dozens of 8×10 photographs of the famous, nearly famous, and almost famous who’d come through his truck stop over the last three decades. The only two Quinn could really place were Goober from The Andy Griffith Show and B.B. King. Several of the pictures showed Johnny with his arm around the athlete or ballplayer or state politician. Johnny seemed to collect meeting people the way some kids do bubble-gum cards.

  Quinn stood behind the chair, resting his hands on the back.

  “You come to talk about that stolen car?” Johnny said, still smiling, all bemused in Quinn’s presence.

  “Yep.”

  “I didn’t even see it,” Johnny said. “It was Leonard come in this afternoon and tole me that some truckers were complaining that it was blocking a turn.”

  “Probably where the girls can hop up in their cabs,” Quinn said.

  Johnny grinned some more, looking downright civil in a red Ole Miss sweater, a checked shirt with spread collar, and stiff khaki pants. He was in his late fifties or early sixties, with the purplish reddened skin of a hill person and the pompadoured hair of a 1950s rockabilly star. He sucked on a tooth, took a seat at his desk, and looked up at Quinn, hating the disproportion. Johnny Stagg was the head of the Tibbehah County Board of Supervisors and often incorrectly assumed he was Quinn’s boss.

  “The girls don’t work in a parking lot, Sheriff,” Johnny said. “We keep to the county ordinance and don’t let them step off the property unless their shift is over and they have to tend to something personal.”

  “I heard you were thinking of renaming the bar?”

  “Can’t think of a better name than the Booby Trap,” Johnny said, grinning wide with his picket of veneers. “Says it all.”

  “So you never saw the car or anything strange,” Quinn said. “More than usual.”

  “No, sir,” Johnny said. “Just reported it.”

  “Ever hear of this man Highsmith?”

  “No, sir,” Johnny said, grinning.

  “Why didn’t Leonard report it?”

  “You and Leonard had never seen eye to eye,” Stagg said. “I’m sure you realize he didn’t feel comfortable, thinking you might harass him.”

  “That why you put him up to be new police chief in Jericho?”

  “That’s between Leonard and the Board of Aldermen,” he said. “I got nothing to do with that.”

  Quinn nodded. He scratched his neck, taking a bit of paper off that Mr. Jim had left after nicking him.

  “I’ll need to pull video from your security cameras,” Quinn said.

  Stagg leaned back in his chair, wood creaking, and crossed his arms over his little potbelly. He reached back to a molar, trying to work some of his lunch away. He didn’t react at all, just watched Quinn.

  “Maybe we can see what time he parked that car,” Quinn said. “I’m not interested in anything else around here.”

  “Easy to say.”

  “Have I tried to roust you yet, Johnny?” Quinn said. “I’ve been sheriff now for a year and haven’t once tried to shut down your place. If truckers want to get their gear shifter worked, that’s up to them. I only care when some of your business spills out into the county.”

  “On their own time,” Stagg said. “You see a girl with a trucker, that’s on her own time.”

  “Of course it is,” Quinn said, letting go of the back of the chair and standing straight. He stayed silent, waiting for Johnny to keep talking.

  “I’ll get those videos,” Stagg said. “Although they ain’t videos now; they put them on a computer drive. Y’all have the capability of working with something like that?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Quinn said. “We got some capable folks.”

  Johnny Stagg leaned forward, moving his arms off his belly, and reached his elbows onto his desk. He looked up and said, “I can bet Lillie Virgil will get a kick out of watching those girls in them little skirts.”

  Quinn said nothing.

  “Oh, come on now, Sheriff,” Johnny said, laughing. “Everybody knows that Lillie doesn’t care too much for the fellas.”

  Quinn nodded. “I’ll make sure I tell her that, Johnny. I’m sure she’d like a chance to respond.”

  “Come on,” Stagg said, his face turning the deep shade of a ripe tomato. “Hell. Don’t stir up that wildcat.”

  “See you at the supervisors’ meeting.”

  Stagg swallowed and reached for a trashcan, spitting out whatever little morsel had been giving him trouble. Quinn turned and walked back into the truck stop without a word.

  • • •

  Esau picked a good bottle of Scotch from the rich man’s stash and sat down at the kitchen table with Bones and Dickie. Becky was too busy going through the lodge room by room, Esau not caring less. He’d seen the kitchen, the bar, the bedroom, and toilet. Who cared about anything else? But Becky was impressed he knew folks of such good taste, even asking Esau if she might write them a thank-you letter at a better time.

  “So you said you know how to dive?” Bones said.

  “Hell yes,” Dickie said. “I grew up in Panama City, Florida. My dad was in the Navy. We used to go out and look for sunken treasure.”

  “In Panama City?” Esau said.

  “Good a place as any.”

  Esau looked to Bones and shook his head, sadly.

  “Becky got a couple tanks filled for me in Memphis and some gear and flares,” Esau said. “You can dive with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Down in a pond, to look for a big-ass car.”

  “Sure,” Dickie said. “Ain’t like I got anything better to do.”

  “Who told you to go see Becky?” Bones asked, still working on the last bit of steak and eggs. He dotted the last egg with some Tabasco and took a bite.

  “I knew all about Becky after Esau talking so much about her,” he said. “I seen her once or twice when she come for a poke in the trailer. All the men loved looking at her in those hooch clothes. Exactly what is that tattoo she got on the back of her neck?”

  “It says NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS,” Esau said. “I didn’t tell you to go see her, and I sure as hell didn’t tell you where she lived.”

  “I knew she worked at the Dollar General over at Coldwater.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Esau said. He cracked the seal on the Scotch.

  With a mouthful of food, Bones said, “Don’t matter none now. All we got to worry about is hauling that car out of the pond. We ain’t got no equipment and no big winch. We could try using two 4×4s, but I still don’t think that’ll work. We gonna need some tractors.”

  “First we got to make sure that we ain’t wasting our time,” Esau said. He poured out three heavy measures of Glenfiddich into some lowball glasses. He shoved the glasses before the two men. He sat back and waited.

  “I told you I can dive,” Dickie said. “Hell yes. I knew I could hel
p y’all out. But I only got one question.”

  “What’s that, Dickie?” Bones asked.

  “What’s my cut?” he said. He smiled, showing off the top and bottom rows of some real bad teeth.

  “I’ll tell you right now,” Esau said, holding the Scotch up to the light, watching the brown stuff roll around in the thick glass. “We ain’t partners in this. You think we partners at any point and your ass is gone. You are hired help only.”

  “Like I said,” Dickie said, sniffing the booze and making a face. “How fucking much?”

  “Five grand.”

  He scratched his face, a jailhouse spider tattoo high on his Adam’s apple. “See here, I don’t know if that’s a fair price, or y’all jacking my dick.”

  “Five grand is more than you got right now,” Bones said. “Or you want to apply for a job scraping shit stains outta toilets at the Walmart?”

  “Y’all are funny,” Dickie said. “OK. I’ll take the five grand. When do I get it?”

  “You don’t get dick till we get what we come for, and to get what we come for, tonight we got to dive that pond.”

  “At fucking night.”

  Esau nodded. “We got flares,” he said. “Be the same as day, only we won’t have the farmer and everyone else in this shithole coming back, craning their neck, and trying to get into our business.”

  “Gonna storm tonight,” Dickie said.

  “What’s it matter underwater?” Bones said.

  Dickie nodded. Bones held up his glass, and Esau did the same. The two men drank down the twenty-year-old Scotch. Dickie got only a half-swallow before he turned his head and spit the liquor all over the floor. “Damn, don’t y’all got some Jäger around here? This stuff tastes like ass.”

  Becky strolled into the kitchen, holding up a pair of silver earrings that resembled Indian dream catchers with feathers. In her other hand, she had a matching silver necklace with crimson stones. “Can you believe someone just left this here? It was sitting right out on the dresser. I figured I could wear it till we leave. Does it match my bikini top?”