by Ace Atkins
“If it come to that.”
“Appreciate that, Johnny,” Quinn said. “Still can’t figure out why he came to you.”
“The Rebel ain’t exactly a secret location,” Stagg said. “He probably wanted to hijack some trucker and get gone.”
“Maybe he did.”
“No,” Stagg said. “I think he’s still around.”
“And you want me to shoot him down.”
“Man killed two U.S. Marshals,” Stagg said. “Who’s gonna be singing ‘I’ll Fly Away’ for that son of a bitch?”
“And Leonard?”
Stagg sucked on his tooth, smelling of enough cheap cologne and breath mints to cover up something truly rotten inside. “Use your judgment,” Stagg said. “Sometimes Leonard ain’t what I call a thinker.”
Quinn nodded and walked by Johnny to the door, standing in there, trying to facilitate Stagg moving on. Plenty of folks coming in and out the front door to the SO, the road outside filled with fire trucks, electric company bucket trucks, and big trucks filled with men and women with axes and crowbars, trailers loaded down with bulldozers and backhoes. The parking lot and on down the road lit up with red and blue flashing lights.
“Can we do anything for Kenny?” Stagg said, letting himself out and into all the chaos. “I’d be glad to round up a collection.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“He really go back on patrol?”
“It was his idea,” Quinn said. “How he operates.”
“Boy’s got sand.”
Stagg popped in another peppermint and walked out in the SO to shake hands and show his deep and sincere appreciation.
• • •
An old couple from Alabama who brought over a donation of fifty gallons of water, twenty cases of Coca-Cola, and two rounds of hoop cheese had given Jason a dollar bill. He’d been proud of it, carrying it soggy and crumpled for the last hour, until he thought on it for a while and said, “I don’t need nothing, Momma.”
“No, we don’t,” Caddy had said back. “You want to add it to the collection?”
Jamey took the dollar from Jason and kissed him on the top of his head before adding it to the coins and cash in a five-gallon Home Depot bucket. He’d been sitting with a black family of four who’d lost everything in the tornado. As Jason walked away, Jamey held hands with them and prayed.
“Where are we gonna live, Momma?”
“I’m not sure,” Caddy said, getting down on one knee and hugging him. “Where would you like to live?”
“Disney World.”
“Besides Disney World.”
“With Uncle Quinn and Hondo.”
“Besides there.”
“Always with you,” Jason said, proud of himself for giving away the dollar. “I just want to be with you, Momma.”
She hugged him tighter and picked him up, carrying him outside the barn and down a short, worn path to a ragged trailer Jamey had rented along with the property. The trailer was white and blue, rusted at the edges, the official place where he was supposed to live had he not shacked up with Caddy. They had power in the old trailer, most of Tibbehah County not being able to see or flush the toilet, but somehow they’d gotten power in that tin box.
She and Jamey had set up a small office in the kitchen of the trailer and cleared off a bed and changed the sheets for Jason. He had not once asked about his Matchbox cars or stuffed animals or the train set he had collected, piece by piece, for good behavior reports each week at preschool. The boy was tired, yawning and following Caddy as if in a daze but unable to sleep. She put him down on the bed and told him she’d be right back. But he reached up and grabbed her by the neck, holding on even tighter, not wanting to be apart for a second. So she carried him with her, Jason hanging around her neck, and took a seat at the kitchen table, where Jamey had set up a laptop, trying to get Wi-Fi through his cell phone, share the day’s stories with his outreach, without luck.
Caddy absently hit the refresh button on the computer, wondering how she would ever get Jason to sleep seeing what he had seen, without her crawling in bed with him. And Jamey needed help. She needed to be with him, working with the church, sorting clothes, stacking food and water, keeping up with the donations, praying with the survivors.
The quiet in the trailer was strange, her ears still filled with the tornado and with big trucks and bulldozers scraping away half the town. It had seemed like a hallucination, standing there at the edge of Jericho Square and finding everything she’d known and expected to just be gone. She held on to Jason very tight and kissed his cheek. “Hold on a minute, baby.”
“Why?”
“I got to tend to business.”
The laptop refreshed to the homepage for The River, and with Jason on her lap, she got into the church’s e-mail account, noting pages and pages of e-mail notifications that donations had been put into the church account via a PayPal button that they never thought anyone would use when they set up the site. Jason squirmed in her lap, wanting to go back to the barn to play tag with all those homeless kids, Caddy telling him to hold still for a moment as he rested his head on her shoulder.
Caddy logged in to the church’s bank account where the donations had been made. She stared at the screen and then hit refresh as if thinking she was having eye trouble.
“Jamey?” she said, calling out through the open door. “Jamey?”
She helped Jason off her knees and pushed him along. “Go get Jamey and tell him to come quick. Oh, Lord. Tell him to come quick.”
“What’s wrong, Momma?”
“No, sir,” Caddy said. “Nothing’s wrong at all. It’s just as Mr. Jamey told us it would be.”
Caddy sat back down slowly in the aluminum dinette chair, hand over her mouth, seeing all those zeros and shaking her head in wonderment.
Quinn broke free at 0300, riding north with Ophelia up toward Providence and the old farm that had been in his mother’s family for generations. Ophelia leaned against the big truck door, a light coat spread over her thin body, staring out into the darkness, most of the action around Jericho and off to the east, nothing out in the country and along the National Forest but darkness. They didn’t talk much, Quinn knowing he may not find much, didn’t expect to find much, but hoped at least he could come back to the office with Hondo. He loved that old house, but he loved the dog more.
“They think they can get the power back on at the Rebel Truck Stop and a couple of the gas stations.”
“What about school?”
“It’s going to be a while,” Quinn said. “A lot of damage, walls of the cafeteria about caved in. Thank God they didn’t. There were two hundred people inside.”
“We didn’t get anything,” Ophelia said. “Not even at my mother’s house. Not a tree, not a loose shingle.”
“Count your blessings.”
“What’s your momma gonna do?”
“Some workers put a tarp over her kitchen,” Quinn said. “But she insists on staying. She’s got nothing out there but a little Honda generator and has to flush the toilet using a bucket of water. I tried to get her to come with me. But she’s got neighbors and friends, and she’s looking out for Lillie’s daughter while Lillie works.”
“Your mom is a good woman.”
“Most positive woman I’ve known, and I can’t figure out why.”
“How old when your dad left?”
“Ten.”
“You seen him since?”
“Once,” Quinn said, concentrating on the yellow centerline. “I was sixteen and drove to Memphis where he was signing autographs at a Hollywood memorabilia show. It was at some Holiday Inn by Graceland, and he’d been advertised as ‘The Man Who Made Burt Look Good.’”
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing,” Quinn said. “He signed his name on a picture of him and Burt Reynolds with that director, Hal Needham. Didn’t even look up as I was standing there.”
“And Caddy?”
“I don’t
know,” he said. “I think he and Caddy corresponded for some time. I think he has a new family now. Tries to keep his past life separate. It broke Caddy’s heart. She idolized him.”
“Your father sounds like a real asshole.”
“You said it.”
They passed Varner’s Quick Mart, oddly still and dark without the soft glow of night lights on by the coolers, and up past Hill Country Radiator Shop and Blake’s Used Tires and a little old house where a family sometimes opened up a karaoke and steak restaurant. No lights in the trailers or the houses on into the curving of Highway 9 and past signs for Fate and Providence, the founders of the county obviously having some fun with the loggers and moonshiners who’d settled up into the hills. Most of the early folks had lived in tight families, little clans, and not much had changed, most folks not asking where you lived but who your people were.
Quinn turned onto his road, County Road 233, twisting along the scraggly pines planted to harvest and a big, wide-open piece of land that Johnny Stagg had recently clear-cut as a settlement on a debt with Quinn’s Uncle Hamp. The empty, eroded hills looked like a moonscape.
“You miss the Army?”
“Sometimes.”
“You ever wish you’d stayed?”
“I don’t think I had much choice.”
“Because of Johnny Stagg?”
“Nope,” Quinn said. “Lots of things.”
“Your family,” Ophelia said. “You came back to look out after them?”
“Ten years is a long time,” Quinn said. “The last six I never got home.”
“What exactly did you do in the Army all that time?”
“Jumped out of planes and killed people.”
Ophelia turned from the window and laughed. Quinn glanced at her, expressionless.
“Seriously?” she asked. “How’d that feel?”
Quinn had started to slow and turned over the small wooden bridge that crossed Sarter Creek, switching on his high beams and KC lights and shining up toward his home. A huge oak that had been planted as a shade tree maybe a hundred years ago lay sideways in front of the house. Quinn got out of the car, leaving on the lights, and walked up the stone path, finding everything intact. He turned the corner, Ophelia walking with him now, fitting herself into a short jacket, hands in her jeans.
Behind the house, the big Genco generator he’d installed before the winter hummed with a quiet efficiency. It was enough to run his freezer and refrigerator, lights in the back of his house, and the pump that worked his well. He and Ophelia made their way up to the front porch, Quinn opening the gate for her. She came up first, stepping on the big metal feed sign he’d set near the door. The creaking metal sound made her jump a little bit as if she’d seen a snake, and she turned in to Quinn. Quinn had been walking forward and caught her as she turned, wrapping an arm around her, smiling and pleased everything was pretty much the way he’d left it.
He turned, Ophelia still in his arms, and whistled and called for Hondo. Only a sharp wind answering back from the wooded acreage.
“He’s OK.”
Quinn nodded.
“What’s that?” she said, pointing to the rusted sign for Purina feeds under their feet.
“Homemade security.”
“You expect many people to sneak up on you?”
“You bet.”
Ophelia shook her head, the porch darkened and silent, unable to see Quinn’s truck over the huge tree lying on its side in the front yard. He turned and pulled his arm away, but Ophelia grabbed him by the wrist and tilted her chin upward and closed her eyes, kissing Quinn hard on the mouth.
She held it a good moment, letting her arms fall but reaching for Quinn’s hand. She held him at length and studied him, biting her lip.
“Hello,” Quinn said.
“Hello,” she said. “God, it’s been a hell of a goddamn day.”
Quinn nodded.
“When I was a kid, I used to come out here with my grandfather and climb trees while my granddad and your uncle would sit on this porch and drink whiskey and smoke cigars.”
“Planning the future of Tibbehah County.”
“They did a pretty shitty job of it,” she said.
Quinn nodded again. He whistled for Hondo, reaching for the keys in his pocket and unlocking the front door, leaving it wide open and airing out as they walked inside. Ophelia held his hand as they made their way through the space.
“Hardly any furniture,” she said. “No pictures.”
Quinn shrugged, looking for signs Hondo had been inside.
“Quinn, I think this is the emptiest house I’ve ever seen.”
• • •
“Is that real money or pledged money?” Jamey said, looking over Caddy’s shoulder in the trailer.
“It’s already into the church’s account.”
“It must be on account of those news people,” Jamey said. “That interview with Tupelo went out on CNN.”
“Well, it’s real.”
“I just took the reporter around The River,” he said, shaking his head. “Showed them the food and water we’d stockpiled and where people could sleep, take a shower, and get a hot meal. I showed them how we were helping people who didn’t have any insurance, talking about how we would help them get resettled. I didn’t ask for any money. I didn’t say anything about us needing money.”
“But we do need money.”
Jamey nodded, scruffy and tired, walking with a bad limp. He had on a Haggard T-shirt and faded jeans with no shoes. “Good Lord.”
“Yep.”
“To say the word makes it not seem as special.”
“A miracle?”
Jason turned from over Caddy’s shoulder. Caddy had thought he was asleep. “What’s a miracle?”
“We’re going to help out a lot of folks,” Caddy said. “It’s going to happen.”
Jamey smiled, but there was hesitation in his face as he stared back at the computer. Caddy couldn’t quite place it, but it seemed as if he was trying to come to some kind of decision on something that didn’t seem to be a question.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, baby.”
“What’s wrong with the money?”
“Nothing.”
“Why won’t you look at me?”
Jamey turned away from the screen and ran a hand over his exhausted and scruffy face. “I guess we all been broke so long that I’d grown comfortable with it. Having money and means makes me nervous, is all.”
“As your commitment to helping people?”
“When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others,” he said. “I guess I feel like a hypocrite.”
“You didn’t sound a trumpet.”
“Cable TV news is the modern trumpet.”
“Then we just get rid of it fast,” Caddy said. “OK?”
Jamey turned again, face half hidden in shadow, with no smile and a short nod. Caddy walked into the back room and laid Jason onto the bed. His eyes were hooded with sleep, but he asked, “What if it comes back? Where do we go?”
“It’s all over, sweet baby,” she said. “Close your eyes.”
• • •
Esau Davis mingled with all the twister survivors and helped himself to a plate of cold fried chicken big enough to reassemble the whole bird, and a big, fat portion of beans and potato salad, and walked back to the truck he stole. He had the radio on and a half bottle of Percocet and a nearly empty bottle of Turkey. He listened to a song by Miranda Lambert and thought of Becky, glad she was out of Mississippi and safe and waiting on him at a motel in Birmingham. She had wanted to double back and come for him when she found out about Bones. Damn if the woman didn’t cry, making up stories about how Bones had been a good man and a handsome man and a friend who had showed nothing but love. Horseshit like that.
Esau upended the Turkey bottle and studied the backside of the old barn Dixon
had turned into a church. A barn church made a lot more sense to him than a church in prison. How had he ever bought into Jamey’s lies about redemption and change when the bastard couldn’t even work a miracle on himself? Esau’s face grew red with shame at the memory of Jamey laying his hands on his head and talking about being washed clean with the blood of the Lamb.
He drank some more, took another Percocet, and studied his bad eye in the rearview. He still was looking a hell of a lot like old Quasimodo. But half-drunk, he was looking better and better.
Twice he had spotted Dixon.
Once he had spotted Dixon’s woman and her nigger kid.
He wondered how much of his money Dixon had used for all those piles of clothes and food and portable showers and shitters. He clenched his teeth, the radio playing a song as a tribute to the survivors of that terrible storm that had hit Jericho, Mississippi. Miranda again. “Safe.”
Esau turned off the radio, searched into the old GMC’s glove compartment, and found some cheap gas station sunglasses. He had on a new black silk shirt, embroidered with roses on his shoulder like some Mexican pimp, and jeans so tight that his business looked bold and exposed. That crazy stripper nurse brought him fresh socks and a new pair of boots that creaked and squeaked when he walked. A pack of Marlboro Reds in his breast pocket and a loaded .357 on his hip.
“Fuck, yes.”
He wasn’t leaving this town, torn to shit like him, before getting what he had earned and what he had been promised. The Marshals, the police, and the FBI could fill him with more holes than Bonnie and Clyde, but his ass wasn’t leaving till this got right. But to make that happen, he needed to push Dixon and make him want him to settle up, come to him. But Dixon didn’t seem to give two shits about his own life, letting them turn him into a human piñata, being beaten and humiliated, pissing down his leg, and still keeping the secret of the deal safe with him. Had Mr. Stagg not shown Esau the light and the truth, he’d still be chasing his pecker in circles.
Get the money. Call Stagg. And then get gone.
Just like that.
He called Becky.
“You sound like shit,” she said. “Just come on.”