by Ace Atkins
He scratched Hondo’s head as the front of his truck bucked up and over a little hill, turning out from the Hardin property and heading back into Jericho.
Nothing like three bodies to really screw up a Sabbath.
Caddy ran into her house, wanting to change out of her new dress before she met up with Jason and Jean at the El Dorado for lunch. It never failed for her to spill some salsa or queso onto herself, and no matter the dry cleaning, it would never come out. She grabbed a pair of jeans and a fitted Dixie Chicks T-shirt, reaching under the bed for her buckskin boots. She’d been working so hard on making sure that first service had launched that her little house had become a mess. The living room still had open beer bottles and pizza boxes from Jamey’s rehearsal. The kitchen sink was overflowing with dishes. Even Jason’s room was nothing but a rat’s nest of tangled sheets and toys. As soon as they got back from the El Dorado, they’d get down to work. She’d get Jason to put away his toys while she got into the wash, thinking Jamey would probably want to cook out tonight, drink a beer and reflect on the big day.
She pulled her dress overhead and hung it up onto the oval mirror by the closet. She turned this way and that, examining her body, the embarrassment of a blue tattoo of an angel at the small of her back. She huffed and turned to grab her jeans when a man came from the closet at damn near full tilt and placed a big hand over her mouth and face and rushed her down onto the bed. She screamed and tore at him, but the man was large and heavy, red-bearded and muscle-bound, telling her to shut the hell up, that he had more important things on his mind than her nekkid bony ass.
She tried to fight more. He just held her there, as easy as he would a kitten or a puppy. His breath smelled of cigarettes and onions.
“I’ll stay here all day,” he said.
She bit at his hands.
He knocked her hard against the face. She could taste blood in her mouth, the one window of her bedroom half cracked, lace curtains flowing over the writing desk where Jamey wrote sermons.
Three steps, maybe four, was the closet. At the top of the closet was the gun.
“Listen,” he said. “Where’s your boy?”
She shook her head. Her mouth was awash with the blood.
The breeze rushed on into the window and cooled off the room. The smell of his breath and testosterone all over her. He had narrow eyes nearly yellow.
She shook her head some more.
“Where’s Dixon?” he said.
She lay still, body slowly starting to relax, knowing and feeling he hadn’t come for her but Jamey. The man was too calm, not even looking once at her in her bra and panties, not putting a hand on her except to pin her down and shut her mouth. The curtain fluttered over the writing desk and one of Jamey’s old Bibles.
“This ain’t no complicated deal,” the redheaded man said. “I want you to explain to Dixon that I want to see him. I gone to that church after it let out and he was gone. ’Least I got something to eat. Me and my buddy were pretty hungry.”
The man sat at the edge of the bed just as calm as you please, almost like they’d been lovers or friends, talking over old times. Just Caddy Colson in her underthings, not worried about nothing. He slowly removed his hand from her mouth. She tried to move upright, but he placed a rough hand onto her throat and eased her down against a pillow. “You sure are a wildcat,” he said. “How in the hell did you fall for a piece of shit like Jamey Dixon? You can do lots better.”
“Get your hands off me, or I’ll goddamn kill you.”
“Come on, baby,” Esau said. “Come on.”
And with those hot breathed words in her ear, she was eight years old again in another old barn in another part of the county. She was flat on her back, pinned down, unable to move, a heavy whiskered man pressing her against the rotted hay, telling her how pretty she was as he unbuckled his trousers and did his business. You press it hard from your mind and try to fill it with other things, but he and that man from all those years ago were made of the same stuff. “I’ll goddamn kill you.”
“That’s fine,” Esau said. “That’s fine. But before you do, I want you to tell Jamey Dixon that Esau is coming for him. He wants what’s rightly his and what he’s had stoled from him. You tell him that?”
“He didn’t take nothing from you.”
“Ask Dixon,” Esau said, grinning. “We want what’s ours, and we coming for it tonight. If he runs, we will follow him to goddamn China. He calls the law, and they get us, we give up all his rotten shit and that pardon’ll be worth as much as yesterday’s toilet paper.”
“Get your hands off my neck.”
The man called Esau did. He stood up from the bed; a large pistol hung in his leather belt. He looked her over as she reached for a T-shirt and pulled it on, eyeing him walking back, trying to find a way to get around him and get that gun. She could end it right here. She’d kill him just the same as Quinn had killed that diseased man all those years ago. She and Quinn were the same. They could kill if things came down to that sort of situation.
Caddy spit on the floor. “You mind if I get my pants?”
“Right there on the bed, doll.”
“I need a pair in the closet.”
Esau looked her up and down, thinking on it, and then finally nodded and stepped back. Caddy walked to the sliding door, calmly went through some hanging clothes as if deciding, and then ever-so-gently slid her hand up to the top shelf, knowing she’d loaded at least three shells in the chamber. She knew she had it set and ready and all she’d have to do is point, pull, and be done with it. The hell of it would be cleaning up after.
The big hand was on her wrist, yanking her backward, backhanding her down to the bed.
He pulled the 12-gauge, checked the breech, and then slammed it shut.
“Been needing one of these for what we about to do,” he said. “Tell your boy he got till nightfall. We’ll come to the church. He’ll bring our cut of the money. He does what we say and he’ll never see us again. Y’all be drinking fruit punch and singing hymns until Judgment Day. You tell him.”
She nodded.
“What’s your name, girl?” Esau said.
She shook her head.
“Afraid to say it.”
“Caddy.”
“Beautiful,” he said. “OK, Miss Caddy. Let’s be friends. You sure as hell don’t want me to have to come back and truly make a real fucking mess of your world. Let’s make this nice and clean.”
Caddy nodded. The room felt hollow and silent and cold. His boots were heavy on the old pine floor as he took the shotgun and moved under the fluttering curtains, fleeing the room like a teenage boy at midnight.
She walked to the mirror. Her face was a goddamn mess. How would she explain that to Jean? Or Quinn?
• • •
The U.S. Marshals were sitting in Quinn’s office in less than two hours. Two men sent over from Oxford, but said they’d been just over in Lee County when they got the call. Apparently they’d had a pretty good sighting of Dickie Green at the Barnes Crossing Mall eating at the food court. Quinn told them he was pretty sure it hadn’t been Dickie Green, explaining details from what he’d seen out by the pond.
The Marshals’ names were Buster Wilson and Toby Sisk. Sisk was short and stocky and kept a neatly trimmed black mustache that influenced the way he spoke. Wilson was larger and kind of doughy, clean-shaven, with saggy skin and windblown hair. Sisk took the lead, spitting some snuff into a foam cup as they discussed Esau Davis and the man named Joseph “Bones” Magee.
“I guess you got the whole rundown on who they are and how they escaped?” Sisk said. He seemed to kind of fancy himself as a slow-talking gunslinger, with slow-eyed careful movements and the mustache. He looked to Quinn like a thousand shitkickers he’d known over the years. Couple of them had turned out to be decent people.
“They rode out of Parchman on horses and out of the Delta in a Chevelle,” Quinn said.
Sisk spit in the cup and nodded.
&n
bsp; “But Dickie Green drove straight out the front gates,” Wilson said, shifting in his chair. “Still figuring out how that whole deal worked. Somebody got paid.”
“Doesn’t matter much to Mr. Green now,” Quinn said.
“He got used,” Sisk said. “He wasn’t buddies with either of these two, but they needed his horse trailer. Dumb shit should have seen that coming. Did you say he got shot down in his underwear?”
“All he took out of this world was a pair of dirty white Hanes.”
Wilson glanced around the little office at Quinn’s photos and the framed flag that had hung in AFG. “You military?” he said.
Wilson didn’t seem much of an investigator. Quinn just nodded.
“So, has anyone seen these shitbirds around your county?” Sisk said.
Quinn shook his head.
“We know they got a woman probably traveling with them,” Sisk said. “Woman named Becky, who used to come visit Davis at Parchman.”
“I think they’re long gone,” Quinn said. “They raised that armored car and got what they’d come for. I’m still trying to find out how that truck stayed down there for so long.”
“Either it didn’t have a GPS or whatever they used to call it,” Wilson said. “Or the pond shorted it out. Hell, these days we could have tracked both those guards with their cell phones. You said you saw two bodies in the truck?”
“I saw one,” Quinn said. “My deputy was pretty sure both men are inside.”
“Body count may be old, but sure as hell is adding up,” Sisk said.
“We’ve been tracking Davis and Magee since the breakout,” Wilson said.
Sisk spit into the cup. He smoothed his mustache. Wilson crossed his legs and took a deep breath.
“We’re pretty sure they got some more friends here,” Wilson said. “We tried to figure out why they’d come to Jericho. I don’t mean anything by that. But it’s not exactly the kind of place people light out for.”
“Now we know it was all for the money.”
“Maybe,” Sisk said. He had carried a leather satchel into Quinn’s office and reached into it for a file. He pulled out a couple printed sheets with mug shot scans attached.
Quinn took the file and flipped through the pages. He set the file down and leaned back in his chair. He shook his head and cleared his throat.
“We got it on good word from the warden in Unit 33 that this fella and Magee and Davis were great pals,” Sisk said. “And now we got them escaped and coming for some hidden loot to this man’s hometown. Did I tell you this man was just pardoned by the governor?”
“I know him,” Quinn said.
“We figured you’d been notified of the release,” Wilson said. “Has he been causing any trouble?”
“Nope.”
“I voted on the governor, but pardoning all these shitbags doesn’t make a lick of sense to me,” Sisk said. He rubbed his mustache. He spit. “You know where we can find Jamey Dixon?”
“Well,” Quinn said. “Let me call my sister; she’s been dating him.”
The two U.S. Marshals laughed like it had been a joke. Quinn told them about The River and the ministry Jamey had set up outside city limits.
“A church in a barn,” Sisk said. “Hallelujah.”
Both men stood up and headed for the door.
“What makes you think Dixon has anything to do with these turds?” Quinn said.
“Dixon did these men personal favors at Parchman,” Wilson said. “He apparently got them some plum assignments, made sure they got the right detail. Dixon was a regular prison rock star. He was real close with the former superintendent, too. People really believe he’s the real thing.”
Sisk nodded. He spit one more time and dropped the cup in Quinn’s wastebasket. Standing tall still had him staring at Quinn’s chest. “Even if it’s not connected,” the Marshal said. “Seems like they’d go to their old buddy for some help.”
Quinn nodded.
Wilson patted Quinn’s back as they left. “Dating your sister,” he said. “That’s the funniest thing I heard in a long time.”
Quinn held the door for them both.
Caddy called Jean and told her and Jason to go on and eat Mexican without her. She hadn’t had a bite of the food at The River, making sure everyone else got what they needed, and now she’d spent the last hour trying to find Jamey. After the chairs and PA equipment had been broken down, Uncle Van said Jamey had run back into Jericho for supplies. On Sunday most everything closed up, and that pretty much meant he’d gone to the Dollar Store or the Piggly Wiggly. Ten minutes later, she spotted his truck parked in the nearly empty lot of the Pig and wheeled in, finding him in the frozen food section, reaching for a couple pizzas. His cart was already loaded down with Mountain Dew and Pepsi, Jamey saying how much he’d missed that stuff when he was inside. Pepsi, cigarettes, bacon, and sex pretty much topped his list.
“We still cooking out?” Jamey said. “I hear it might storm.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“You said you’re having lunch at the El Dorado,” he said. “Aren’t you full yet?”
“I didn’t get to eat all day.”
Jamey placed the pizzas in the cart and rolled toward the back of the store and the meat section, marked by that antique scrawl across fake red brick that hadn’t changed her whole life. Buckled linoleum and weak fluorescent light. Jamey spoke to a few folks, a couple asking how the service went. Jamey smiled and made a comment about how they should see for themselves. When they got to the breakfast meats, she leaned in and said, “That man Esau is looking for you.”
“Don’t worry about him,” Jamey said. “I got it.”
“Hell, you do,” Caddy said. “The son of a bitch popped out of my closet. He wrestled me down to the bed.”
Jamey’s face blanched. He shook his head and said, “When?”
“He didn’t do nothin’,” Caddy said. “He said he didn’t give a shit about anything but the money. What the hell is he talking about? I could have had Jason with me. He just breaks into my house and steals my shotgun. He looked mad enough to explode.”
“When was this?”
“Just an hour ago,” Caddy said. “Aren’t you listening? I’m worried he’s going to try and kill you.”
“He won’t do that.”
“How’s that?”
“’Cause he needs me to tell him about what happened to all his dirty money.”
A very fat woman on a Rascal motor scooter parked herself right in front of the country ham. She had black bouffant hair and oversized glasses with rose lenses. “Would one of y’all reach up for the Jimmy Dean?”
Caddy reached up and tossed the sausage hard enough into her cart that the woman’s neck snapped. She shook her head and motored off.
“Fuck Jimmy Dean,” Caddy said.
“I got it.” Jamey leaned into the grocery cart and pushed it forward, moving the back way from the way a person is supposed to shop. He’d started in the damn middle of the grocery, and now he was headed back to the produce and milk. Any sane person knew that you started with the damn produce and hit the bread aisle last. Just common sense.
“Jason could have been with me.”
Jamey nodded. They were alone by the cereal, rows and rows of Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs and assorted shit that could rot your teeth. She’d always told Jason that kind of stuff would leave you toothless and crazy.
“He won’t come back.”
“What are you gonna do?” Caddy said. “Shoot him? Did you forget the part about he took my daddy’s shotgun?”
“Those men shouldn’t be here,” he said. “You hear about the breakout at Parchman?”
Caddy nodded.
“That’s them.”
“I want to know what they’re looking for,” Caddy said. “If some redheaded ape popped out of your closet while you were changing your panties, I think you’d like to know, too.”
Jamey shook his head.
&
nbsp; “What did you steal?”
“Nothing,” he said. “They stole it. Esau just told me where to find it.”
“How much?”
“A ton.”
“Where’d you put it?”
Jamey shook his head.
“Damn you,” Caddy said, grabbing onto his arm and looking up into his face. He was smiling at her getting so mad, rubbing his hand on her back.
“Calm down. I called the Marshals. They’ll find them. We don’t have to worry about that mess. We got bigger things. They’re not in the plan.”
“Talk to Quinn.”
“No way.”
“You won’t talk to him,” she said, “then I will. Where is that money they stole?”
“I gave it away.”
“You gave it away?” Caddy said, confused as hell. “You mean to start the church?”
“Not exactly.”
“Damn you, Jamey.” Caddy gripped his arm tighter.
He swallowed and started rolling that old cart again in the exact opposite direction he should be traveling. “Don’t you know how to shop?” she said.
He placed a hand over hers. He smiled, and she steadied her breath. “Don’t tell Quinn,” he said. “Let me handle it.”
“Where’d you put those men’s money?” she said. “’Cause if it comes down to me and Jason being safe, I promise you I’ll tell.”
“Tell ’em,” he said. “I’m free of it. You can tell them the same thing I will. All their money is with Johnny Stagg.”
Caddy took a breath. She started to speak. She looked at Jamey and gripped him tighter, turning the cart in the proper way toward the bread.
“Stagg has their money,” Jamey said.
She let go of his arm. “Now, that’s a twist.”
“Isn’t that how the world goes round in Jericho?” he asked. “Or have you forgotten?”
“How about we start at the beginning of this story?”
• • •
They got fucked up in the rain.
Bones had got into the beer and Becky got into the tequila. And Esau hadn’t been back fifteen minutes before he said what the hell and joined them at the hunting lodge pool. He was lying flat on his back on a float, Becky resting her head and arms by his side. He was sipping a cold one, watching with interest an endless stretch of flat-ass black clouds rolling in from the west. He sipped some Coors, trying to rest until the show started, thinking on how things had not at all gone the way they had intended.