by Ace Atkins
“What if that truck’s not there?”
“I’ve been thinking on that,” Esau said. “Figure nobody likes to leave empty-handed.”
“Dixon doesn’t look like he’s got shit.”
“He owes us,” Esau said.
“I think Dixon always figured it was the other way around.”
Esau felt his face fill with blood. “That was five years ago,” he said. “He done what he thought was right.”
“Still figure he might think this is calling it square.”
“He does that,” Esau said, “and I’ll choke every inch of life out his ass.”
Bones was quiet. He sipped some beer as the hills raised up out of the flat farming land and curved up to where rich men could afford to drink whiskey and raise hell for the fun of it. He turned up the stereo, more David Allan Coe to fuel his thoughts.
Quinn drove back to the farm and lay down on the made-up iron bed. The front door was open, screen door letting in a cool breeze, the evening smelling of new flowers and damp earth. Hondo knew how to let himself out and use his nose to let himself in, the door thwacking upon his return. Quinn hadn’t even taken off his boots, lying back in the big, cool room and tipping the brim of his baseball hat over his eyes to shield the light. He had two hours before he’d be back on duty. In the Army, he’d learned to sleep whenever possible. He could stick a rucksack under his head and sleep at the edge of an airfield or nearly to the minute he’d rappel from a Black Hawk. He was nearly asleep when he heard a car pull into the drive.
Hondo was on his feet and back out the screen door. He didn’t bark. If it was someone he didn’t know, there’d be much barking. Hondo was good that way.
The door opened and feet in the hall and a knock on the door.
Quinn lifted up the brim of his ball cap to see Anna Lee standing in the light of the door. A bright light shined from behind her and through her long strawberry hair, blurring her face a bit.
“Don’t you have to be up in an hour?” she said.
“Yep.”
“At least you got to sleep all day.”
“Yep,” Quinn said. He did not move.
Anna Lee took a seat on the edge of the bed, springs creaking. She ran a hand over his chest and sighed. “I brought you some supper,” she said. “You can take it with you.”
“What’d you make?”
“Lasagna,” she said. “I made a little salad, too. And some garlic rolls.”
“Appreciate it.”
Anna Lee wore tight Levi’s and a long white T-shirt under a thin yellow cardigan. The cardigan had holes on one elbow. Quinn remembered it from back in high school. He couldn’t recall all the times he’d found it in the back of his truck. Why she didn’t give that thing away, he had no idea.
“Did you sleep in your clothes?” she said.
“We got some escaped convicts headed this way,” Quinn said. “Not to mention I was up late tracking down a dangerous turnip thief.”
She rubbed the flat of her hand on his chest some more. He caught her at her wrist and pulled her close, his arm slipping behind her back.
“Come here.”
She held firm and stayed quiet.
“I’m awake.”
“Luke’s coming back,” she said, sort of just blurting it out. “Tonight. He’ll be here until Monday.”
Quinn nodded and thought for a moment. “Well. You are his wife.”
“You don’t have to be nasty.”
“I’m just stating the truth.”
Quinn closed his eyes. A cool breeze shot through the center of the old house, the chain on Hondo’s neck jingling. He held on to her hand for several moments. She finally squeezed back, leaning down and kissing him on his chin.
“When can I see you?” he said.
“I think we need to slow things down.”
“I was waiting for that,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow we both can get a really good sermon and help us all figure it out.”
“It’s the way it is,” she said. “It’s what we got.”
“This isn’t usual,” he said.
“You ever think maybe we’re just telling ourselves that?”
Quinn held her hand. “Nope.”
• • •
In Caddy’s living room, Jamey sang and played his Martin, with her Uncle Van on second guitar and J.T., the local master of auto body repair, on a fat acoustic bass. All three men wore baseball caps and T-shirts and jeans, kitchen chairs huddled together, cords strung from two of the guitars into amplifiers. Even Jean had come along and was harmonizing on “The Model Church,” tapping her white tennis shoes and sipping that rancid white wine.
Jason lay on his little belly by the amplifiers, head in hand, legs kicking back and forth to the music, as he worked on a coloring book.
Music filled the wood-paneled room that hadn’t changed much since it had belonged to her grandmother. Same two couches Caddy had gotten out of storage, a leather recliner, and an antique standup piano. There were old-lady doilies on headrests, a glass case in the corner with figurines of cats and ladies with parasols, and lots of old frames of family members she’d never even met. The entire house made her feel like she lived in a museum.
“Again,” Jamey said.
“Hadn’t y’all practiced enough?” Caddy said, smiling.
Jamey grinned. “Again.”
And he sang on, foot thumping, about walking through that crowded old church, finding that pew to hear the trumpet voice of the preacher and that angel choir. She knew he’d worked up a whole sermon around the song, and would say how a model church was made up of real people, not just a physical space of grandeur or stiff traditions put upon us. He’d talk about Jesus walking and preaching in sandals and robes, bringing his good news to whoever would listen, not caring where you lived, who your people were, or where you’d been. Jamey talked about giving away all you owned and following the real path.
As Jamey strummed and harmonized with Uncle Van, he winked at her. Van Colson, fat and compact, with a mustache and goatee, had his eyes closed all corny as he played and hummed. To Caddy, he looked just like a redneck Buddha wrapped in an XL Mossy Oak tee.
“Jamey?” Caddy said. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
Jamey lifted his eyes from where he played with a capo on the guitar’s neck and nodded. Caddy went on into the kitchen to unload the Piggly Wiggly sacks, stocking their shelves. She thought about frying up some thin pork chops tonight, wishing it didn’t take so damn long to make mashed potatoes. Hell, the peas she could microwave.
Jamey walked into the little kitchen, kissed her on the cheek, and helped himself to a cold beer, reaching his arm around her and hugging her tight. “You never told me your Uncle Van could sing.”
“Maybe ’cause I never heard him.”
“Never?”
“Does doing karaoke to the Marshall Tucker Band count?”
“Sure,” Jamey said. “I caught him humming while we were doing some painting. When I complimented him, he said he could play some guitar, too.”
“Go figure,” Caddy said. “I never thought Uncle Van did much but watch wrestling and smoke grass.”
“We all have our talents.”
“His karaoke wasn’t too bad,” she said. “He really tore up ‘Can’t You See’ at the Southern Star.”
The wind had started to lift a little outside, the small trees in her backyard twisting left and right. A sudden darkness covered the sun, and rain stared to hit the roof and fall in sheets off her back porch.
“Jamey, I saw those men again.”
Jamey looked at her as if he was saying “What men?” without giving the words. He just waited for Caddy to speak again.
“They followed me and Jason back home to my momma’s house.”
“You sure it was them?”
Caddy nodded. “That one with red hair looks like he should be swinging from a vine.”
“They were looking for me.”
“You were at the
church,” Caddy said. “Your truck was there. Those sonsabitches wanted to know where I lived.”
“They follow you back here?”
“I drove around to make sure they didn’t. But they know where Momma’s house is. I think we should warn her or something. Jamey, who are they? Quit tryin’ to bullshit me.”
“No bullshit,” he said. “They’re just men wanting a handout.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“Son of a bitch,” Caddy said. It looked like night outside now, although it wasn’t more than five o’clock. She turned back, hearing the good-time laughter of J.T., Uncle Van, and Momma out in the salon. Real knee-slappin’ stuff.
“Come on, baby,” Jamey said.
“I trust you,” she said. “Always have. But don’t bring my son into whatever kind of deal this is.”
“Ain’t no deal,” Jamey said, sliding into his playful country twang he could put on or take off.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and nuzzled his chin over her shoulder as she turned. “Those boys were just trying to scare you,” he said. “I find them, I’ll give them a talking-to.”
“I don’t want Jason to ever be scared. I don’t want them nowhere around us.”
“Like I said, those men were with me in Parchman,” he said. “They heard about my church and see I’m doing well and they want a piece of it. It’s that simple. I offered them a place to stay, a way to work for food. But that’s not how they see the world. They believe that I and everybody else owes them something.”
Caddy studied the reflection of the two of them together at the sink in the little picture window. She smiled despite herself. “Don’t get hurt.”
“I won’t.”
“Or go all redneck on me.”
“I can be persuasive.”
“I can call Quinn,” she said.
“And him learn about a couple convicts hanging out by The River?” Jamey said. “I’d rather for that not to happen.”
She turned and faced him, both his hands wrapping her. “I do love that hymn y’all were singing,” Caddy said.
“Uncle Van did say he can do a killer ‘Heard It in a Love Song.’”
“How would that sound in church?” she said.
“Not too bad,” he said. “Hell, why not? Who made up all these traditions, anyway? It sure didn’t happen in Jesus’ time. My Jesus would dig Marshall Tucker more than some slick contemporary.”
“And Uncle Van, too?”
“Especially Uncle Van.”
The house shuddered a bit from the wind and rain, bringing a strange safe comfort to her. She placed the pork chops in a bowl to thaw and heated the skillet, while the songs in the parlor started again. Everything would be just fine. She was almost sure of it.
“What the hell I don’t understand is how this son of a bitch knew about this dang armored car if he wadn’t in on the job,” Dickie Green said.
Esau eyed him, tossed his cigarette butt, and took a breath. “I told him.”
The men stood down in a valley about four miles from the hunt lodge. Dickie had found an outbuilding for a construction company with a big-ass back bulldozer and a trailer that would hitch up fine on the Toyota. He wasn’t sure if the Toyota could haul it, but Dickie said it’d be plenty of power either way. Power enough in the Tundra and power enough in the CAT to pull out the damned Wells Fargo car. Bones and Becky were going to meet them at the pond with some chains.
“That doesn’t make a fucking bit of sense to me,” Dickie said, swilling a Coors, stifling a belch. “I mean, shit. You and Bones were the ones who robbed this thing.”
“Yep.”
“And y’all executed a perfect fucking job,” Dickie said. “Y’all didn’t get caught for it and for them other jobs, but got nailed for what?”
“Robbing a Best Buy.”
“How’d you get caught for it?” Dickie said, tossing the bottle over his shoulder in a big mess of pea gravel. The bottle shattered. Didn’t matter, there wasn’t jack around this place for miles.
“I forgot to get Becky’s little sister an iPod and ran back in.”
“You shitting me?”
“Nope,” Esau said. “She liked listening to that Britney Spears.”
“Man, that pussy will trip you up.”
“I’d appreciate you not talking about my woman like that in my presence.”
“I apologize,” Dickie said. “But you got to admit it’s kind of funny.”
The outbuilding and the gravel pits were situated at the dead center of the small valley. Up and around the bowl dotted with big oaks and old-growth pine, lightning flashes zipped up and around, only the tops of the trees bucking kind of nervous. The thunder was sparse but powerful.
“So, why’d you do it?” Dickie said. He’d taken to wearing clothes he’d found inside the lodge. He had on camo pants and a black-and-red flannel worn open with the sleeves cut off, his small, tattooed belly hanging out the front.
“Do what?”
“Tell Dixon about where to find the money?”
“He was supposed to get it when he got out,” Esau said. “He was from here. Knew people. And he got to keep a third of it and use the rest to get me and Bones a good lawyer.”
“What’d he say about that?” Dickie said. “When y’all found him and probably made him shit his drawers.”
“He said he didn’t want to have nothing to do with it,” Esau said. “He said that plan was over when he got pardoned. Said our plan only meant something if he’d gotten out five years from now like we’d talked about.”
“Were y’all like queer lovers or something?”
Esau knocked Dickie to the ground with the back of his hand. Dickie cackling, laughing, and bleeding just the same on the ground. “Well, good goddamn. I was just funnin’ with you. Hell.”
“Me and him had a deal.”
“I seen one boy in my pod who’d take it in any hole for a dollar,” Dickie said. “He wasn’t queer. He just was addicted to eating candy bars and sweet things. He’d sure do anything for one of them Butterfingers.”
Dickie laughed and wiped the blood off his lip.
The thunder came again, the tops of the trees moving. The sun had set, but the sky was even more of a full black now, almost like smoke blocking out the sun. It was like nothing else existed outside that little valley, making the world hell if he was stuck with Dickie Green for the rest of eternity.
“What on God’s green earth could someone like Jamey Dixon do for you?” Dickie said. “I don’t recall him doing shit but talking to us a few times about Jesus and the apostles. He always looked like one of them Nashville fags to me. Like Keith Urban or another one of them boys who don’t know shit about being country but got to tell you all about how they is.”
“What if I said he saved my life?”
“I’d say that sounds like bullshit.”
“He gave me work.”
“How?”
“He had pull with the guards.”
“Shit,” Dickie said. “Hey, can I have a smoke?”
Esau gave him one fresh from the pack. Dickie fired it up.
“Gave my life some purpose,” Esau said. “I was wasting away on that bunk. I walk from bed to chow to sitting there watching that fifteen-inch television set, trying to know whether to be a Gangster Disciple or Crip. Time is hell. I hate the smell. I washed in vinegar last night, and Becky says it’s still on me.”
“Funny, before I got to jail, I thought those gangs were just for the blacks.”
“There was one guard, dull-eyed and dumber than a fucking stick,” Esau said. “He’d work me out in those fields. Didn’t matter if it was legal or not, he did it for sport. Cotton. Corn. He’d run and run me. Keep me in close at Unit 37 before they closed it. One night I figure it got up to a hundred and forty degrees.”
“And so John the Baptist got you another ticket?” Dickie said.
“Something like that.”
&
nbsp; “That how you come to work at the canteen and in the restaurant for families?”
“Yep.”
“So you got all the bubble gum and Fritos you could stand?”
“He gave me purpose,” Esau said. “You know anything about that? That guard wanted to kill me for sport. I just wouldn’t die.”
“So why not leave it all for the preacher?” Dickie said. “He did that much.”
“’Cause we had a deal,” Esau said. “Plain as anything. We even shook on it.”
“You know what they call a handshake in prison?”
Esau watched the dark clouds cross the rim of the valley to the west. A splattering of a fast rain on leaves, even harder, maybe hail.
“Second base.”
Dickie laughed at that, showing his bad blackened teeth, flannel shirt blowing about him like a damn cape. “Ah, hell. Get a sense of humor.”
“You get that dozer up on that trailer,” he said. “We ain’t got much time till that shitstorm gets here. And I’d just as soon not work in the mud.”
“Where we live, brother,” Dickie said and hopped up in the cabin of the CAT with a screwdriver and a set of needle-nose pliers.
• • •
Quinn was awake at 1630 and pulled on some PT gear and hit the fire roads and deer trails on the ridge by his farm. The trails zigzagged for nearly five miles up through scrub pines and an old dead pond where he used to play as a kid. Hondo jogged at his side, Hondo being the lucky one not carrying a rucksack loaded down with fifty pounds of sand on his back. Quinn had done his best to keep his body sharp since leaving the Regiment; softness of body led to softness of mind. And as an old sergeant had said to him, it’s easier to maintain than get it back. He didn’t use weights, mainly sticking to what he knew. Push-ups, pull-ups, and flutter kicks. He had hung a heavy bag from an old oak tree in his side yard to practice some Muay Thai he’d learned from a Bangkok-born RI.
He finished up the run on the heavy bag, took a shower, and within fifteen minutes was back at the sheriff’s office, a pot of coffee brewing at Mary Alice’s desk.
“You must bleed Colombian,” Lillie said.
“Probably.”
“Regret taking the night?”
“Nope.”