by Ace Atkins
“Women,” Stagg said. “Mmm. Mmm.”
“Did you fuck her?” Bones asked.
“No, sir,” Stagg said. “And I find that kind of question completely without honor.”
“Now, I’m asking you,” Esau said. “Did you fuck my woman?”
Stagg leaned back in his seat, foot tapping up and down as if listening to a real good song on the radio. He stared up at the twenty-foot ceilings and the railings boxing the great room. He sucked on a tooth with thought. “I think you need to concern yourself a little bit more about where you stand in all this,” Stagg said. “Y’all been cut out of the show. I need one of you to get up and make some phone calls. Decide exactly what kind of situation you have. Y’all think you’re in the armpit of Mississippi, but you need to know who’s running things.”
“Ain’t no man running things that’s got two guns on him,” Bones said. “Did you miss the part where we just killed two Marshals? We’d shoot you and dump you on some county road for the buzzards.”
“OK,” Stagg said. “If you don’t care who I am or what I do, I understand. But y’all need to think on your time limits. I don’t have your money. And if I did still have it, it was money I earned.”
“How do you figure?” Esau said, eyes flashing up at the balcony, wondering how long Becky would lock herself up and sulk.
“What did Jamey Dixon tell you?” Stagg said, grinning just like a two-bit preacher licking his lips as the collection plate was being passed around.
“He said he told you about that armored truck, y’all pulled it out and got the money, and that you pulled some strings in Jackson,” Esau said. He poured some more booze. Bones shifted the rifle in his hands, getting a steady bead on Stagg just in case the son of a bitch turned to smoke and flew from the room.
“And you think that’s where he washed his hands of the situation?” Stagg said.
“Yes,” Esau said.
“Get me a Dr Pepper and you boys listen up for the whole story.”
Esau looked to Bones, and Bones shrugged. Esau reached for a glass and a warm can of Dr Pepper.
“Can I trouble you for some ice?” Stagg said.
Esau reached into a little icemaker and filled the crystal glass and then topped it off with a can of fizzing Dr Pepper. When he handed it to Stagg, he looked Stagg dead in the eye. “What you say better make a load of fucking sense or you’ll be drinking soda pop out your asshole.”
Stagg drained the glass, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed. He again took the handkerchief and dabbed his nose and then wiped his mouth. Esau loomed over him from about two feet away, hand on his .357. Bones tilted his head as they waited for Mr. Johnny Stagg to start making some fucking sense.
“So, did you fuck her?” Esau said.
“Let’s get beyond that shit,” Stagg said. “OK, boys. What this all boils down to is my word against ole Reverend Dixon. Dixon says he gave over that truck no questions asked. I say that’s a truck full of bullshit. I did what I did for a percentage. I didn’t know a thing about that truck until you boys told me. Dixon got that truck out when he was released. That was our deal. That’s what your woman in there made sure of. She may not have screwed me, Mr. Davis, but she sure cornholed you good.”
Esau threw his crystal glass hard against the fireplace. Pieces flew everywhere. He breathed hard through his nose, his one good eye getting a bit blurry. The other eye had closed up shop.
“I got me three hundred thousand,” Stagg said. “From what I’m hearing now, there was a lot more money left over. That’s between y’all and Dixon. I know you both been away a while and don’t understand my position in this state. But the former governor and the present governor are on my speed dial. Every lawman in north Mississippi is looking for me. You let me go, and I’ll make sure y’all have some time.”
“Why the fuck would you do that?” Esau said.
“Give y’all a chance to do business with Dixon,” Stagg said. “I think what he did to you both is a disgrace. What he did to me, lying about what he had, was just downright dishonest.”
“Honor among thieves?” Bones said, laughing.
“Call it what you like,” Stagg said. “But you let me go and you got a better chance to live. How did you both think you could get me to pull out that kind of money? Just get my ATM card and head on over to the machine at the Dixie Gas? Y’all decide on some kind of hostage deal and a SWAT team will be picking you off like gnats.”
“Nope,” Esau said.
“No way,” Bones said.
“First thing I’d do is march on upstairs and apologize to Miss Becky,” Stagg said. “Second thing I’d do is let us all figure out an escape plan for y’all. I’m not pleased with my dealings with Reverend Dixon. How long till he has a moment where he wants to witness to the whole state and bring me down?”
Esau looked to Bones. He took his hand from his gun. He shook his head.
“Y’all finish your deal with Dixon and I’ll get y’all an airplane out of state,” Stagg said.
“You mean if we kill him?” Bones said.
Stagg shrugged and smiled. An offer on the table.
“Maybe you’re just lyin’ to us so you can crawl on your belly on out of here?” Esau said.
“Son, if I wanted you fellas to get caught, I’d just keep talking,” he said. “I liked what I saw back at the Rebel. You men know how to take care of business, and I respect that. Y’all need Dixon’s money, and I need Dixon gone. This is what football coaches call a win-win situation.”
“And you provide us with a plane?” Esau said.
“You got to prove to me that Dixon is dead,” Stagg said, smile settling. “But without my help, I don’t see either of y’all getting out of Jericho alive.”
“Y’all got an airport round here?”
“Son,” Stagg said. “I got one made personal just for me.”
“You can help him,” Caddy said, hands shaking and trying to control herself. “Right?”
Luke Stevens was on a knee, in a plaid robe and slippers, standing outside the open door to her car, checking out Jamey’s leg. The open-door bell dinged as dogs barked from the backyard of the Stevenses’ restored Victorian a few blocks off the Square. Caddy was relieved as hell it had been Luke who’d come to the door and not Anna Lee. Anna Lee had never been one of Caddy’s biggest supporters and was the last woman she’d call if she was in a shitstorm.
“I can’t do anything right here,” Luke said. “You drive, and I’ll follow y’all to the hospital.”
“The hospital?” Caddy said.
“What did you think?” Luke said. “You want me to operate on him on my dining room table? He’s lost a lot of blood and is in shock. He’s a mess, Caddy. He may lose that leg.”
“It’s just a small hole,” Caddy said. “He was just walking on it.”
“Caddy,” Luke said. “Listen to me. We don’t have time for an ambulance. Get in the car and drive.”
“He can’t,” Caddy said.
Luke, tall and reedy in his gold glasses, leaned in, grabbed her shoulders, and said, “Why’d you come to me?”
“Luke,” she said. “Please help me. Please. People are trying to kill him.” She looked into the car, hugging herself from the wind. Jamey’s face was a bright white, and his eyes had started to sag. The white strips from his shirt were a dark red, and his breathing was low and raspy. She felt her own breath catch in her throat and wiped her eyes. “If people know that Jamey Dixon is at our hospital, those sonsabitches will march right in and finish what they started.”
“How about we save his life first,” he said. “I’ll get him checked in under an assumed name.”
“You can do that?”
“Caddy.”
“OK,” she said. “OK.”
Caddy got in the car and pulled out, Luke running up the hill to his house for pants or car keys and probably to tell Anna Lee just what kind of shit Caddy Colson had gotten herself into now. “We’re go
nna be OK,” she said in a soft voice. “Jamey? You’re gonna be just fine.”
She circled the Square, the wind blowing so hard the streetlamps rocked back and forth. The old lamps scattered light across Jamey’s white face. She held his hand and prayed quiet all the way.
• • •
“Baby,” Esau said.
The bedroom was dark besides a small lamp on the bedside table. Becky was under the covers, head turned to the outside window, snuffling and crying a bit.
“I know you didn’t fuck Mr. Stagg,” Esau said. “I am sorry I implied that you did. His pecker probably don’t even work.”
“You didn’t imply, Esau,” Becky said. “You come right out and said I’d gotten nekkid and saddled up to his old ass.”
“My mistake.”
“Goddamn right.”
“What I need to know is why you didn’t tell me about working with Dixon?” Esau said. He reached for a pack of cigarettes under the bedside lamp and lit up a smoke. Wind howling like a son of a bitch outside.
“You knew I was meeting with Jamey,” she said. “You told me to.”
“OK,” he said. “But what did Dixon tell you to tell Stagg?”
“We could talk at the church at Parchman,” she said. “Wadn’t nobody listening in. He had written out a letter to Stagg. I wasn’t supposed to look at it, but he should have figured I would. It offered Stagg a lot of money if he could get Jamey a pardon.”
“Did it tell Stagg where to find that armored car?”
“In the letter?” Becky asked, now turning and facing him.
“Yep.”
“He didn’t mention it.”
“Did you tell Stagg where to find the car?”
“No,” Becky said. “Shit. How fucking stupid do you think I am?”
Esau blew out a long stream of smoke, took in a long breath. “All Dixon wanted you to do is go back and forth between him and Stagg to work out a deal?”
“I had to go six, seven times before they came to an agreement.”
“You know how much?”
“I don’t know final offer,” she said. “Stagg came to Parchman, I think for them to settle.”
“Maybe he told him then?” Esau said. “Where to find my fucking pond?”
Becky shook her head. “I don’t know, Esau. What are you thinking?”
“Stagg says Dixon got that money after he got out,” Esau said. “Not before, like he told us. He says he kept some of that money back.”
“That rotten motherfucker.”
Esau nodded, letting more smoke stream out from his lips. The blinds were closed in the room, and everything felt real closed in. He nodded to himself in thought.
“We ain’t getting out of here,” she said. “Are we?”
“You can go,” he said. “Go on if you want.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I said you’d fucked that old coot.”
“’Cause you love me.”
“Guess I do.”
“What are you going to do?” Becky said, half raising from the bed, wrapping her arm around Esau’s hairy neck. Esau burned down the cigarette and mashed it into a coffee cup beside the bed.
“Plans have changed,” Esau said. “But we’ll get out by morning. Pack your shit tonight. That old coot is making a lot of sense right about now.”
• • •
Caddy now had to put her full faith in Luke Stevens and Jesus Christ while she kept praying and walking in a sad little waiting room filled with People and Us Weekly from three years ago. A fuzzy television sat in the corner of the room, playing some silly sitcom with a lot of canned laughter and people falling down, as all Caddy could do now was think about what life would be like if Jamey Dixon died.
She’d come to God before she’d met him, but there was so much strength in that man. She hadn’t cared if she had ever met another, every man she’d ever been with treating her like trash, calling her trash, taking from her and wanting more because she believed she wasn’t good enough. Jamey made her feel the way God made her feel. Loved, valued, and purposed. She had told him everything about the stupid boys in high school and their big trucks with big cabs and later sneaking off to Memphis and that boyfriend, whose name she would never repeat for all her days, who helped her run up thirty thousand dollars on credit cards. And how all of her Memphis friends told her how sexy and gorgeous she was and how much money she could make just in a couple months putting on big heels and taking off her clothes. Caddy had told Jamey she didn’t expect to do it but a couple months. It turned into more than a year.
She told him all about the needy men she knew—Jamey making light of it and calling it her own style of ministry—who came to her with problems about their wives and their girlfriends. Most of them just wanted someone to talk to, even if that meant talking with her naked in their lap. Jamey had asked why she did it. And she told him about what had happened to her when she was eight, something that only Quinn knew about, since her brother and Uncle Hamp had been the ones who took care of the situation. She told him about another boy who forced himself on her at a swimming pool bathroom and that time when she was thirteen and those two boys cornered her that summer. She started to believe these things happened to her because she was worthless and unimportant and trash, and that the only thing God had given her—not really thinking of it as God-given at the time—was sex. And she might as well start using it to her advantage.
The apartment in Memphis became her prison. Three girls and one stupid boy. The boy at one time being a boyfriend to them all, Caddy bringing home her cash every night and him taking it, still getting more credit cards in her name, sending her out to the couch to sleep and watch television while he had sex with another girl. She was worthless. And unimportant. She believed she was fucking trash. The drugs just numbed her, made her a spectator to life.
Jamey Dixon loved her as-is. That’s how he put it. “As-is.”
And she loved him the same. She started to cry.
He would not die. He’d get on through.
She found an old Gideon’s Bible in the waiting room and thumbed to her favorite passage. John 15:5. I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.
Nothing.
Caddy could not be nothing again. The room was windowless and airless. A black woman, about her age, walked in with an infant and a five-year-old boy. The woman looked very tired. The kids sleepy. She smiled at Caddy as she hugged her kids close. Caddy wiped her face and closed the Bible, resting it soundly in her lap.
Loved, valued, and purposed.
• • •
“Good thing I seen you when I did, Mr. Stagg,” said the trucker. “I said to myself, That fella looks just like ole Johnny Stagg, and then I thought, That can’t be Mr. Stagg. Mr. Stagg wouldn’t be walking by the side of Highway 45. But as I got close and seen your face, damn if it weren’t you, Mr. Stagg. Sure am glad I stopped. Real windy out there.”
Stagg nodded. The truck kept on rolling north toward the Rebel.
“I can’t believe it stopped raining,” the trucker said. “Been raining on me since I left OK City. I ran into a hailstorm out there that knocked dents in the pavement. Hail as big as softballs. I had my rig in the shop. If I hadn’t, I’d be out of luck without no load. Got to be keeping it moving. Supposed to be down in Meridian in a couple hours. I get a little rest, turn her back around, and get on back up to Kansas City. I got a bunch of TVs and electronics and such for Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City. They got stores all around Mississippi. You know them?”
Stagg nodded.
“You OK, Mr. Stagg?” the trucker said. “You weren’t in no wreck or nothing. Figured your car just broke down.”
Stagg nodded again.
Stagg could see the exit sign coming up for the Rebel Truck Stop, a big billboard for the Booby Trap a half mile from the exit reading SLIPPERY WHEN WET. The sign had been Johnny’s idea, knowing tha
t truckers always took heed of road warnings and pictures of a woman’s gigantic ta-tas.
“I think y’all have the finest chicken-fried steak in north Mississippi,” the trucker said. “I know my stops, and I always stop at the Rebel. I just wish I didn’t have such a quick turnaround or I might take a little detour at the Booby Trap. Last time I was there met a fine little ole gal named Brittany. You think them girls use their real names? Something about her didn’t seem like a Brittany at all. She was a black girl, and black girls ain’t usually a Brittany. I think more about some white girl being named that.”
The trucker turned off Highway 45 and crossed the overpass on into Johnny’s big, sprawling complex lit up with tall parking lamps and headlights and taillights of dozens of trucks and miles of neon from the Rebel and the Booby Trap. The sign on the Trap talking about Miss Double D Texas, who had been recently voted Dallas’s Nude Woman of the Year. Where the hell do they make this shit up?
“I tell you, Mr. Stagg,” the trucker said as his brakes hissed on the wet asphalt. “Sure has been an honor having you in my cab. You ever need anything, you let me know. This place sure has meant a lot to me for a long time. That chicken-fried steak is just a-calling.”
Johnny thanked the man, jumped out of the cab, and slammed the door, trying to steady his breath as he walked back to the Rebel. He went right through the front doors, past the cash registers, and into the Western-wear shop to the side entrance to the diner and the door to the back offices. A few people waved; others said hello. A big fat Choctaw dishwasher they called Double Down opened the door for him, and he went down the long linoleum hall, fluorescent light scattering on and off, to the back office, where he unlocked the door and turned on the desk light.
The phone numbers were written on the back side of a desk drawer, and he had to yank it on out and dump out all the crap inside. The phone rang and rang, maybe twelve, thirteen times, before the man picked up. Johnny Stagg identified himself as the man from Jericho. The line went silent. The line started to ring again and again. Not as long this time, until a familiar voice answered.