by Ace Atkins
“Who you work on?”
“Girls don’t have no money,” she said. “You know, lots of female kind of afflictions.”
“Can you get it?”
Esau was not seeing shit right now but that hot, white light, thinking of getting this thing settled and then meeting up with Becky and then getting right with Jamey Dixon. Ain’t no one expected the wrath of God to come down onto this godforsaken county and say hello, least of all Esau. Esau thought maybe some of this had to do with Dixon and that girl he’d killed and then him getting pardoned. If Dixon hadn’t been trying to hot-jockey things, maybe Bones’s poor, dumb black ass would still be alive. Johnny Stagg told him his neck had been broken on a tree limb, his body sent back to the Farm. The worst part of it was that Bones would be going back, buried in that no-luck field by the horse stables where they planted the convicts whose families didn’t even want to acknowledge that you had a life.
“Got it,” Sandi Jo said. “Got it.”
Esau’s good eye shifted off the light and saw a sliver of glass, maybe a half-inch long, dripping with blood from a set of tweezers. She picked up a big bottle of something and squirted it hard all over into his eye, bloody water dripping off his face and onto his hands and down his shirt and across Johnny Stagg’s desk, the nameplate saying: JONATHAN T. STAGG, BOARD PRESIDENT.
Sandi Jo wiped up the mess with a roll of paper towels and handed him a wad. “Hold that against your eye,” she said. “I’ll get some gauze and tape, and you better not be taking it off for a couple weeks. Go see a doctor when you can. But not here, they got enough shit to deal with.”
“How bad is town?”
“You ever been evicted from your place and come back and find the landlord threw all your shit out into the road where it gets messed by the rain and wind and dogs?”
“Damn right.”
“That’s the way our town looks right now,” she said. “Hey, you want some Percocet? A nice old trucker just left me with the bottle.”
“What did you do for him?”
“Danced five times to ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ sung by Miley Cyrus’s daddy.”
Esau stood up, feeling no pain but only the throbbing. The harsh light shone in the one eye, bringing on a hell of a headache. Sandi Jo walked over to him and placed some gauze on the eye and sealed it with some hospital tape. “Just what the hell happened to you?”
Esau took the bottle of Percocet from her and washed it down with some Turkey on Johnny Stagg’s desk. “Everything, little girl.”
Ophelia Bundren slid into the church pew behind Quinn and handed him a foam cup of coffee, lingering her arm over his shoulder. She patted him on the chest and asked him if he was doing all right.
“You’re the one doing the packing and shipping.”
“Not much shipping,” Ophelia said. “Most will be buried right here.”
They sat together in the quiet little chapel at the funeral home. The building seemed to have the only lights coming up off the Square in the early evening, two big propane generators softly chugging from the sally port. The chapel itself had paneled wood walls with a small stained-glass window up front of a white dove being let free and flying toward the yellow cross. Yellow tulips sat in a vase at the lectern.
“With Kenny’s momma,” Quinn said. “How many?”
“Nine.”
Quinn nodded.
“Where were you when it hit?” Ophelia said, scooting from behind Quinn and coming up beside him, taking a seat, hands in her lap.
“With Mr. Varner, coming in from Sugar Ditch,” he said. “We got the edge of it, knocked Mr. Varner’s truck upside down.”
“Is he OK?”
“He’s mighty pissed about his truck.”
“Everyone accounted for?”
“Yep.” Quinn nodded. “Even my Uncle Van.”
Ophelia smiled slightly, nodding. “My brother and I had gone up to Tupelo to drop off a client and saw it on the way back. I couldn’t stop driving toward it. It was raining and we could see the funnel dropping from the clouds. I knew it had crossed the Big Black and was headed north, so we thought Jericho must be gone. We just parked the van up off the Trace and stood there. You know that spot where they have the Indian Mounds? Lots of folks had pulled off, just watching it spin and move with no purpose at all. I thought it might just wheel off and come for us. But you couldn’t keep your eyes off it, the power and energy it had. Would it be strange if I said it had some grace to it?”
“Yes, it would.”
“I heard about Caddy’s house.”
Quinn nodded. Ophelia rested her hand on his knee. Quinn drank some coffee. The generators whirring outside keeping the coolers nice and chilled for the dead.
“Can I get you something to eat?”
Quinn shook his head.
“You been to your farm yet?”
“Nope.”
“What about Hondo?”
“That dog is so smart, he probably opened the shelter door himself.”
Quinn placed his hand over Ophelia’s and kept it there. She rested her head on his shoulder, her pale skin feeling cool and comfortable against his face.
“I better get back to the SO,” Quinn said.
“Is Caddy with Dixon?”
“Yes.”
“Helping to feed and clothe the masses?”
“Something like that.”
“He’ll make this event into something for himself,” she said. “He’ll find a way to turn a profit.”
“Probably.”
“At least he got shot in the leg,” she said. “Only I wish it had been right in his ass.”
Quinn patted Ophelia’s hand and stood from the pew. She stayed seated, looking at him with her small brown eyes and closed mouth, always seeming like she was holding back an important thought. She brushed back her bangs with the flat of her hand and said, “If you ride out to your farm, I’d like to go with you.”
“I’ll do fine.”
“I don’t think there is anything left.”
“If nothing is left, there won’t be much to clean up.”
“You will come back for me?”
“Probably won’t be till the morning.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I want to be there for you, Quinn.”
Quinn nodded and pulled on his ball cap, walking toward the ornate double doors. “Appreciate the coffee, Miss Bundren.”
• • •
“What a fucking mess,” said the trooper.
Stagg nodded. He was in the passenger seat of the trooper’s car, surveying the damage around Jericho that night and across the highways where the twister had cut through like a giant lawn mower. County road crews used everything from chain saws to backhoes to get the highways clear, but half the county roads were still blocked. The electric co-op only had about ten percent up and running again, anyone with power doing it by generator. But like Stagg had told the trooper, these were hardscrabble folks who weren’t down-in-the-mouth about things. They’d hitch up their britches and get on to the rebuilding.
“Why?” the trooper said. “What’s the point?”
“You ain’t from here,” Stagg said. “You don’t get it.”
“No, sir,” the trooper said. “I’m not. But I am from a place just like it and hadn’t gone back twice in twenty years.”
He was an older, slim man, with silver hair cut within a quarter inch. He wore his uniform, hat resting neatly in the backseat of his black car, flashers going while they roamed the back highways and town streets, cutting around the Town Square choked with TV trucks from Tupelo, Jackson, and Memphis. Stagg licked his lips, checking the time, because he was all set to be interviewed for the ten o’clock news. They called the thing a live stand-up, where he would report on what he had heard from his constituents.
“You can drop me back at the Rebel,” Stagg said. “That boy Davis is inside my office, probably drunk as a skunk and dry-humping one of my dancers’ legs.”
“I thought you’d locked him up.”
“He ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Stagg said. “Ain’t nowhere to go. Besides, the convict has the idea that we are some kind of business partners.”
“Why’d he come to you?”
Stagg grinned as they passed more emergency vehicles headed in the opposite direction, flashers lighting up the inside of the trooper’s car. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”
“But you want him gone.”
“Yes, sir,” Stagg said. “I do.”
“You got a tarp or something I can use?” asked the trooper, driving with the tips of his right fingers. “Sure as hell hate to make a mess in your office.”
“Yes, sir,” Stagg said. “That’s very much appreciated.”
“When?”
“Wait till I pull out and go into town to speak to them news folks,” Stagg said. “You need any help?”
“Shit no.”
“He’s a big son of a bitch.”
“You think I hadn’t done this kind of thing before?”
Stagg grinned, everything smelling of freshly milled pine and rich spring earth all tilled and fertile. Jericho hadn’t smelled so good in years. Almost like the city was about to start anew. “Your talents come highly recommended.”
“Me and you both got us some good friends.”
“Yes, sir.” Stagg smiled, shielding his eyes a bit from the oncoming lights. Two trailers lay upended on the roadside, leaning against each other like Ritz cracker tins. “That we do.”
• • •
Lillie called Quinn on the radio, cell phones not working since the storm, and told him to meet her at the hospital.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked.
“If I told you, that would spoil the surprise.”
Quinn shook his head and turned on the light bar of his truck, feeling lucky the Green Machine was back in commission after chasing the convicts and surveying the damage. If they ever got through the day and the whole mess, he’d be looking to award Boom whatever kind of citation befitting his service to the county. And then Boom could take it and mount it over his shitter at the County Barn.
The hospital was a mile north from Jericho up on Main Street once it became County Road 352, or as most folks knew it, Horse Barn Road. He bumped up and over the edge of a parking lot for what had been the old ammunition factory but now was the city baseball fields. Someone had decided to light up one of the fields with railroad flares burning as bright as the sun in the crisp spring night. Lillie just stood by her Cherokee with a bemused expression. Quinn got out of his truck and spotted Chief Leonard yelling at his three officers to get the fucking area clear ’cause they had shit to do.
Lillie shook her head and looked down at the ground.
Without a word, Quinn walked up to Leonard and asked what exactly he was trying to accomplish.
“Don’t it look clear?” he said. “I’m setting up a landing zone to fly folks out to Jackson. What’d you think, I’m taking tickets for a movie show?”
“And whose idea was it to get railroad flares?”
“You got to light up the zone,” Leonard said. “Damn. Thought you’d know that, since you always the one bragging about your time in the service.”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When have you ever heard me talk about my time in the service?”
“Can we fucking get on with this thing?” Leonard said, wearing his blues and a ball cap that read CHIEF. “I got hurt folks need to be on their way.”
“You’re gonna have more if you try and use that ball field as an LZ,” Quinn said. “You set up traffic cones that could be sucked up into the prop wash along with those hot flares that could ignite the liquid oxygen. You sure you thought this through, Leonard?”
“I got this,” Leonard said, turning his back to Quinn. “You worry about the booger woods while I take on Jericho.”
Quinn put a firm hand on his shoulder, Leonard spinning around, walleyed and red-faced, lip dripping with snuff juice.
“In times of emergency, county sheriff takes over all jurisdictions,” Quinn said. “Now get those flares and those cones out of the field and move your vehicles back another hundred meters. You hear me?”
Leonard stood, face contorted, not much else to do but spit on the ground.
Quinn walked in a step, not an inch from Leonard’s face, and Leonard blinked, choking a little bit on that Skoal when he saw something in Quinn’s eye that let him know there was nothing to discuss.
Quinn stood there while Leonard moved toward his officers, asking them why they had been so goddamn almighty stupid as to put out hot flares in a landing zone. “Clear that shit up. Right fucking now.”
“Lucky to have men like him,” Lillie said.
“Makes you proud.”
“We got Bennett Dickey on this flight coming in,” Lillie said. “You know Bennett? Has that custom cabinet shop.”
“I know his wife,” Quinn said. “She’s secretary at Jason’s school. Sells jams and jellies at the farmer’s market.”
“That’s the one,” Lillie said. “She thought her husband was dead when she found him, knocked out cold. A flap of skin from his forehead coming down and covering his eyes like a hood. Luke says there’s some brain damage but can’t see with the facilities he’s got here.”
“I’m glad Luke was here,” Quinn said.
“Me and you both,” Lillie said. “He’s stand-up. He’s got no requirement to be pitching in but was at the hospital maybe five minutes after the storm passed through. Front of his scrubs looks like he’s been in a bloodbath. Didn’t Anna Lee tell you?”
Quinn shook his head. He walked side by side with Lillie toward the hospital.
Off in the distance, Quinn heard the helicopter and looked south for the lights. He pointed to the night sky.
“You sure?” Lillie said. “I don’t hear it.”
Quinn nodded, got in his truck, drove up onto the ball field, and turned on his headlights and KC rack. He got out of his truck, ordered the deputies and officers to stand back as the beating of the helicopter blades kicked up the dirt of the infield.
Mary Alice had set a battery-powered hunting lantern in Quinn’s office, the generators working to keep the dispatch desk and a little light in the conference room going. He’d spent the last hour slicing up sections of the county for all the law enforcement and emergency heads who’d be working side by side with the local folks well into the night and the days to come. Quinn pulled the Beretta and the leather holster off his belt and set it on his desk next to a paper plate of purple-hulled peas and cornbread. It wasn’t much, but it would keep him going. He took a bite and stared out the back window of the office, down into the parking lot jammed with cars and a darkened jail lockup luckily empty except for three drunks and a hold for Lafayette County on failure to pay child support.
Quinn sat on his desk and ate until the door opened and in walked Johnny Stagg. Stagg had his hair swept back like an old-time preacher, hands in the pockets of a blue Windbreaker with the official seal of Tibbehah County. “My heart is aching, Sheriff.”
Quinn put down the cold plate.
“I heard about Kenny’s momma,” he said. “Lord. How is the family doing? Ken Senior and all.”
“Kenny is back on patrol.”
Stagg shook his head in wonderment. “That boy has some sand.”
“What is it, Johnny?”
Johnny smiled, bemused as hell, taking his hands from the Windbreaker pockets and showing Quinn his palms. “I heard you and Leonard really got into it over them helicopters landing.”
“That’s not true.”
“Leonard said you threatened to whip his ass,” Johnny said, nodding.
“Nope.”
“Whether you like it or not, Quinn, in situations like this, we have to delegate some authority,” Stagg said. “And in the city limits, Leonard is the police chief. We can’t be having our county sheriff charging in like a bull
and threatening to take a man’s head off.”
“You need to check out the law,” Quinn said. “In times of natural disasters, I’m in charge. And what Leonard told you was a lie. Whether I would have whipped his ass or not is beside the point. I told him he didn’t know shit about setting up an LZ. He had spotlights aiming to blind the pilot and railroad flares that could have been sucked into the wash and caused a real mess. He also had too many cars and trucks crowding the zone and shit that was going to make it tough on the pilot.”
“Let’s just let Leonard run things in Jericho,” Stagg said, smiling. “OK?”
“Nope.”
“Nope?”
Quinn took the paper plate back and began to scrape up the peas and eat a bit of cornbread. You ate when you found yourself with a second of downtime. You slept if possible. You kept yourself running right, so you could hit it hard when the time called.
“Listen,” Stagg said, hands back in his pockets, one coming back out with a breath mint. “We got more problems than just the storm. We still got ourselves a crazy-ass murdering convict running wild.”
“Maybe he’s dead or left the county.”
Stagg shook his head, smile dropping, crunching on the mint. In the shadowed light from the lantern, Stagg’s satyr features became more pronounced. The long pointed nose and chin, rounded goat eyes. Quinn half expected to see the tips of horns pointing from his slick, rockabilly hair.
“He ain’t gone,” Stagg said. “He busted into my office, forced an employee of mine to remove some glass from his eye. He dropped blood all over my desk and carpet, drank down some fine whiskey, and even used my commode.”
Now Quinn smiled. “And why would he return to the Rebel, Johnny?”
“Looking for money,” Stagg said. “Who the hell knows? But I just want you to know something. You have my full support in these turbulent times to use your own judgment if you run across this fella. If it come down to it and you need to make that call, you have my backing.”
Quinn finished with the plate of peas and dropped it into the trash. He reached for his gun and set it back on his hip. He sat down on the edge of his desk, a couple feet from Stagg, crossing his arms and nodding. “Shoot to kill?”