by Ace Atkins
“It’s me,” Stagg said. “I got two shitbirds on my ass. A couple convicts busted out of Parchman. Some redheaded freak named Esau Davis and his nigger partner, Bones. I got them headed to my property before sundown. I’d like y’all to blast their shit to Kingdom come just as fast as possible. Mmmhmm. I sure would appreciate it.”
Quinn drove back to the farm at 0200 to check on things and leave some chow out for Hondo. He turned on the house lights and set a pot of coffee on his old gas stove to boil. He’d driven nearly every inch of Tibbehah County, looking for Caddy and Jamey Dixon, and was thinking at this point they may have shagged ass until things quieted down. Or at least he hoped they’d made that decision. The highway patrol, the Marshal service, and all his deputies—everyone out and on patrol—couldn’t find Esau Davis or Bones Magee, either. Everyone out there, finding some way to make contact in another town and another county, was not the best of scenarios. Until he found Caddy, he’d just keep going, keep on driving, until he made contact and could lock her up in the county jail until this thing shook out.
Hondo had run in from the back field, where he often slept on hay bales at night or inside one of the old barns. He came in through the dog door to the kitchen and found his chow, wagging his tail and crunching up a mouthful. Quinn was pouring coffee when he heard a car outside, and he wandered out to the porch, lit up from lights he hadn’t taken down after Christmas because he liked the way they looked. He watched Anna Lee walk up the front path to meet him on the steps.
“Caddy is safe,” she said. “She’s at the hospital with Luke.”
Quinn nodded her over to the front porch swing, where she took a seat. She was dressed in a navy Ole Miss sweatshirt, khaki shorts, and canvas gym shoes.
“What happened?”
“She’s fine,” Anna Lee said, pulling her long tan legs up under her. “She came to our house a few hours ago with Jamey Dixon. He’d been shot up and was bleeding. She tried to get Luke to help without having to take Dixon to the hospital.”
Quinn shook his head. He leaned against the porch rail and took out a cigar, burning the end with a butane lighter. The coffee mug steamed next to him.
“Luke doesn’t know I’m telling you this,” Anna Lee said. “He checked in Dixon under a fake name. Caddy said those two convicts were trying to kill him.”
Quinn nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “But Caddy shouldn’t run out like that. She left Jason with Lillie, and that put Lillie’s ass in a sling. I don’t know why Caddy thinks that everyone in town owes her a favor. And I don’t know why she keeps on trying to keep away from me. It’s not like I don’t have some type of professional interest in her matters.”
“It’s always been that way,” Anna Lee said, setting down one leg to rock on the swing.
“Yep.”
“Dixon had been shot in the leg, but he’s going to be fine,” Anna Lee said. “I don’t have long. Momma is at the house with Caroline, and Luke will be home soon.”
“I appreciate this,” Quinn said. He smoked down the cigar, a brisk wind carrying the smoke away. Lightning bloomed and cracked off in the west. Wind would grow strong and then quiet to a lull. The rumbling thunder came in faster and faster spurts. He could feel the reverberation down in his boots.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to finish my coffee and my cigar,” Quinn said. “And then I’m going to drive over to the hospital and have a heart-to-heart with Caddy. After that, I’m gonna ask Reverend Dixon to witness to me a bit. I’m sure he’s familiar with a come-to-Jesus.”
Anna Lee smiled. She had nice cheekbones and wide-set sleepy eyes. Her hair tied up high in a ponytail.
“What about those convicts?” she asked.
“Not my problem,” Quinn said. “They killed two Marshals. They just signed off on their own execution. None of the lawmen here will have a hard time punching their ticket.”
“Awful,” she said. “Just awful. Did you know the men?”
Quinn nodded. “Just met them today.”
“After they killed those men, they kidnapped Johnny Stagg?”
“Damn shame.”
“Why’d they take Stagg?”
“Don’t know,” Quinn said. “Don’t care. Right now I just want to talk some sense to my baby sister and keep Dixon as far away as possible.”
“Are you going to arrest him?”
“Yep,” Quinn said. “I just hope he’s so doped up at the hospital it won’t take much to find his connection to the convicts and that armored car. Or maybe I can just press down on that bad leg.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Quinn shrugged. He blew out some smoke.
“She really loves him, Quinn.”
“I don’t give a damn.”
“You think love always makes sense or has some kind of order?”
Quinn ashed the cigar, watching Anna Lee rocking on his front porch, the muscles in her thighs as she pushed off the swing, the length of her neck as it turned from him to out in the field where a bolt of lightning split the air.
Quinn didn’t say anything for a long while. On the way out, Anna Lee kissed him hard on the mouth and then was gone.
• • •
“Do you want to know how we met?” Caddy asked.
Quinn sat next to her in the hospital waiting room. Nothing but his sister and a broke-ass TV in the corner showing an infomercial about some kind of magic towel that could clean, polish, and make everything new again.
“I decided to hear him preach when he first came back,” Caddy said, Gideon Bible in lap, staring off with a smile. “Remember he was doing those Thursday nights at the Southern Star? I thought it would be just wild to hear a sermon in a Jericho bar. I don’t know what I expected. I think I only went because I was bored and needed an excuse to go back to the bar, maybe heading back in that direction. Quinn, I swear to you I felt he was speaking right to me the whole time.”
“No kidding.”
“He has that ability to talk to everyone at once.”
“So does Crazy Chester when he goes on a bender.”
“Jamey came up to me after it was all over, I’ll never forget it.”
“Of course not.”
The man on television was saying he would throw in not only an extra towel but an extra can of wax, too. But you had to call within the next hour or the deal was off.
“He said to me, ‘Where have you been all my life, Caddy Colson?’” she said.
“Not very original,” Quinn said. “Besides, Jamey has known you his whole life.”
“You’re missing the meaning, Quinn.”
Quinn nodded.
“We sat at the Southern Star past closing time,” she said. “Only had two beers over four hours. I told him my whole story. And he told me his.”
“I think he must’ve left out a few parts.”
“He was protecting me.”
“Or maybe himself.”
“And you bust up in here, wondering why I tried to keep what’s going on a secret?”
“You ever think I need to know stuff not as a brother but as a sheriff?”
Caddy rolled her eyes. She clutched the Bible. The television was flashing a montage of all the tricks of that magic cloth along with the 800 number. The man on television was trying to convince everyone this deal was on the sly and that perhaps he’d gone a bit insane.
Quinn stood up.
“Where you going?”
“To talk to Dixon.”
“Are you crazy?” she said. “He just came out of surgery.”
“For what?” Quinn said. “Someone nicked his damn leg with a .22 bullet.”
“He lost a lot of blood and nearly died,” she said. “And it wasn’t a .22. It was a damn .357.”
“Just what did he tell you after he was shot?” Quinn said. “About those men? Why are they after him?”
“Sit down.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“You sit down and I’ll
explain it,” she said. “His hands are clean. He didn’t want to have a thing to do with them ever again.”
“Then why did they break out and come for him?”
“Sit down, Quinn,” she said. “I’m going to tell you so you quit harassing Jamey. His hands are clean. Those men just want him dead out of meanness and revenge.”
“Revenge usually has a preface.”
“They want him dead.”
“I got Kenny coming over right about now,” Quinn said. “Your boyfriend is going under house arrest. No one coming in or out.”
“For what?”
“I got a hell of a grocery list to choose from.”
“What about Johnny Stagg?” she said. “You don’t think it’s strange those boys went straight for that son of a bitch when they knew Jamey was broke? Why aren’t you looking at him? You think he’s the victim?”
“I’m pretty familiar with Stagg’s MO.”
“Then sit down and listen,” Caddy said. “Jamey couldn’t have stopped any of this. Those men protected him while he was at Parchman, and now they’ve busted out believing he owes them something. They know about The River, probably thinking he’s got some money and some kind of pull around here. Jamey can’t set them right.”
Quinn nodded. He took a seat.
“OK.” He rubbed his tired neck and stared down at the worn-out hospital floor. “Tell me what you know.”
“I know Jamey has been pardoned,” Caddy said. “But everyone wants to see him fail. These men are going to ruin all we’ve built. Don’t join the lynch mob. You’re too smart for that, Quinn.”
There was no wind and no rain, just rolling sand-colored hills and ravines pockmarked and ugly from the diggings of a Chinese mining company. Two Apache helicopters had just strafed a half mile of ground running up to the old mud-packed monastery and the twin headless stone Buddhas covered up by sand and mud before America existed. The Buddhas blocked the entrance to where seventeen Taliban fighters had hidden after a night raid on an Army convoy that killed six soldiers. But the team only found dirt and rocks and soil between that Chinook and the Taliban hidey-hole where they pelted the helicopters and the Rangers as soon as they stepped off the ramp. Forty, fifty meters in the night and open ground to the enemy position. Quinn had five men with him, Quinn with his M-4 and a fire-team leader with his belt-fed MK-46 led the way. The helicopters were gone, although the sound of them remained in his ears, while the second team moved up from the west to east, taking the hell of it. Quinn pushed himself and his men on their bellies over the hard-packed, unforgiving terrain to lay down all they had, suppress the enemy, knowing they were too close to risk another Apache gun run. The enemy returned fire from dual machine guns, Taliban popping up from the copper mine craters, bullets zinging off the walls of the forgotten city. More enemy gunners had come from nowhere, showing themselves in the moonlight, and targeted that second team coming up fast. Quinn and his team could only move forward, crawling toward the enemy guns, their only protection coming from their own bullets, a quick change of a magazine, another belt fed into the MK, forty, thirty, twenty, fifteen meters on their elbows and knees. Quinn could smell those bastards on the wind, all their spice and body odor, dirty clothes and beards. Taliban popped up again from the carved-out earthen maze and fired, Quinn shooting back and catching something that felt like a hot fist launched into his shoulder. The punch knocked him down hard to stone and earth, everything tunneled and raw, radio voices in his ear while his gunner kept shooting and dragged his ass away and backward, heels of his boots catching on rocks, as the second element crossed and moved on into the ravines. The last thing Quinn saw were those headless Buddhas as still and silent as goddamn time and the whooshing blades of a Chinook hitting that hot LZ. “Sergeant?” The sound of his uniform being torn from his body, his blood flowing too freely.
“Sergeant?”
Quinn opened his eyes.
Lillie Virgil was shaking him awake. His boots swung to the ground and he was upright, taking in a big lungful of air.
“You OK?”
Quinn nodded.
Lillie handed him a foam cup of coffee. Quinn remembered he’d gone back to the County Barn and Boom’s shop to sleep after the hospital. He hadn’t heard his phone ring. It was still night, dark as hell outside, that wind and rain that seemed like it would never end.
“What time is it?” Quinn said, standing, lolling his neck from side to side.
“Five.”
“Thought we were switching off at oh-eight-hundred.”
“Something’s come up.”
“Shit,” Quinn said. He walked to the bank of old industrial windows, his green truck sitting under a fluorescent light by the gas tanks. Crews of county workers were already filling trucks with gravel and sand to patch eroded highways.
“Mary Alice got a call from Willie Tucker this morning,” Lillie said. “You know Willie? He played tight end at Tibbehah when we were still in junior high. Went to Ole Miss and came back working for Senator Vardaman?”
Quinn shook his head.
“He came back last night and found the lights on in the senator’s hunt lodge,” Lillie said. “He saw a strange car parked outside and got up close enough to see two men, one black and one white, and a woman inside. The window around the back door had been busted out.”
“You think it’s our boys?” Quinn said.
“Could be,” she said. “You want to pass this on to the Feds?”
“Maybe,” he said. “He say anything about seeing Johnny Stagg?”
“Stagg showed up a few hours ago back at the Rebel,” Lillie said. “Claims he escaped from the convicts and walked five miles to freedom.”
“Hmm.”
“No hostages.”
“Let’s take a look and see what we got,” Quinn said. “Call Kenny, Art, and Dave. Where’s Ike? Is he on or off this week?”
“How’s that coffee?”
“Tastes like shit.”
“I bet,” she said. “Just found it over in the corner by Boom’s tools. Wasn’t sure if it was motor oil at first.”
“You’re too good to me, Lillie.”
“That’s why you made me chief deputy,” she said. “You need to go shake the dew off, or are you ready to ride?”
“Grab your weapons,” he said. “We’ll take my truck.”
“You sure you’re OK?”
“Why’s that?” Quinn said.
Lillie hit the button on the bay doors, which rose up and exposed the big cracked asphalt lot and the bulldozers and backhoes and county supervisor toys. She pulled up the hood on her rain slicker and turned to Quinn. “You just kind of look like you’re coming back from somewhere is all.”
• • •
Esau stuffed some cans of Vienna sausages and sardines and fresh clothes into a camo backpack he’d found in a supply closet. Bones made eggs with deer sausage, and they ate at the kitchen table, watching the rain, feeling good about being out and free but not talking about it. Bones had a cigarette going in a saucer by his elbow.
“That eye looks rough,” Bones said.
“I hoped that glass would work itself out,” Esau said. “Got a few bits out, but son of a bitch won’t open. When we get on ahead, I’ll need to see a doctor. Tell ’em I got hurt on a construction job with no insurance.”
“Then you’re really fucked.”
“I’ll pay cash.”
“If we got the cash.”
Esau nodded as he broke apart the deer sausage with his fork and mixed it in with the scrambled eggs. He doused it all with a good helping of Tabasco, watching the rain hitting that rich man’s lighted swimming pool, now knowing the son of a bitch was a U.S. senator, which made sense when you noticed all his photos and clippings about the man hanging everywhere but over the commode.
“You think Becky’ll do right?” Bones said, sliding the plate away from him and picking up the cigarette.
Esau shrugged. He wore a nice Carhartt flannel he’d take
n from the senator, a little snug with the sleeves rolled to his elbow. He continued to eat.
“Don’t have much choice,” Bones said.
“Nope.”
“She either telling the truth or she ain’t,” Bones said. “Got to believe in someone.”
“Only one I don’t believe is Jamey Dixon.”
Bones grinned, smoke scattering up in the ceiling fan. “What about Mr. Johnny Stagg?”
“You?”
“Hell, naw.”
“Me, either,” Esau said. “But I sure as shit believe he wants Dixon dead.”
“And then he kill our ass.”
Esau nodded. “Hands clean, everyone gone,” he said. “And he keeps all that money. Yeah, I thought about that. But if he’s got himself a small plane and a pilot, it’s worth taking the chance. You know every road is blocked. If the old man makes a play, you and me gonna finish it.”
“All about the women now,” Bones said. “Next move decided by the goddamn women.”
“It will work if Dixon’s woman got any sense.”
“You mind killing him?” Bones said. “We all pretty tight at the farm. I’m pissed but don’t want to be the one turn out his lights. Something’s gotta be bad about killing off a preacher. I don’t know what kind of man he is or if I can trust him, but I think he’s a man of God.”
“I don’t have a problem killing Jamey Dixon,” Esau said. “Nobody forced him to keep that money. He can say what he wants, but he’s a skillet-licking greedy motherfucker like us all. We find his ass, I’ll be the one turn out the lights. Trick is getting that money first. You think he may have spent it all?”
“On what? Bibles and hymnbooks?”
“Well, he ain’t keeping it in coffee cans,” Esau said. “And he didn’t give it all to Stagg.”
“That’s what Stagg say.”
“Makes sense to me,” Esau said. “Becky never did show him that pond.”
“If that happens,” Bones said. “If he got it somewhere we can’t get to and he can’t get to fast, let’s just get the fuck outta here, man. We outstayed our welcome in this county for a couple days by my account.”
“Good place to be,” Esau said, looking around all the marble and stainless steel. “Nicest place I ever been.”