Mississippi Noir

by Tom Franklin

  Humphries couldn’t believe she was thirty-nine. She looked like a girl, like a college kid or something. Like an inspirational young teacher fresh from the academy with a lot of exciting notions about how to change the world. She had a gun.

  “Come on in,” she said.

  “I really need to keep looking.”

  “Could be I have some information about your cat. Sorry. Your wife’s cat.” She said it like she didn’t believe he had a wife.

  “Really?”

  She shrugged.

  Humphries was scared but titillated. He followed her inside.

  The place was dank. It smelled the way other people’s places always do: like the long-unwashed pillowcase of a much-sought-after courtesan—sour milk and violets.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Ovaltine?” said Humphries.

  She turned from him without humor and headed for the kitchen, scratching her ass in an elegant way.

  Humphries sat on the couch where he had seen her sitting. The bullets and pistol were magically gone. The doughnuts remained. There were two flies walking on the doughnuts. He thought the seat cushion felt warm from her, or maybe everything was warm.

  Who was she? Why did she need a cover story? Obviously she knew nothing about Mr. Mugglewump. Chicago was where hit men came from. Something awful was going to happen and Humphries would never be seen again. Part of him thought that would be okay.

  She came back with a couple of Rolling Rocks and handed one to Humphries. It was fairly warm, like everything else.

  She sat catty-corner to Humphries, on an armchair that looked to be upholstered in some sort of immensely uncomfortable material, like tweed. It would make little red marks on the backs of her bare legs, he thought. Fascinating crosshatched patterns.

  “This place is a hole,” she said, then twisted the switch on a shabby lamp. It seemed to have a brown bulb. At least it leaked a brownish light that made things darker.

  “Please, officer, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” joked Humphries. He shielded his eyes as if from the bare bulb of a searing interrogation.

  She didn’t get it.

  When Humphries and his wife were trying to find a place, they had attended an open house for which the realtor had decorated the gates with brown balloons in welcome. Brown balloons! It was an odd choice. It was odd that expensive factory machinery would be put into place to manufacture brown balloons.

  “Stay right there,” she said. “If you ever want to see Fluffy again, ha ha.” She got up and went back to the kitchen. For cigarettes, Humphries assumed somehow. His hands were sweating. There were sexual feelings mingled with terror. He got up and ran out the door, knocking over a small table, clattering.

  He ran down the street. He hadn’t run anywhere since boyhood.

  Thank goodness Mr. Mugglewump came home that night.

  “Where have you been?” Humphries cooed over him, as did his wife, Mrs. Josie Humphries.

  The cat couldn’t tell where he had been. Neither could Humphries.

  Now I have a terrible secret, he thought.

  He lay in bed next to Josie and had private visions of torment.

  It was a small neighborhood. He would run into the mysterious siren. Maybe Josie, who loved a pleasant stroll, would be on his arm when the confrontation occurred! All scenarios were distasteful.

  He couldn’t sleep.

  Humphries read the New York Times on the Internet every day like a big shot. He disdained the local rag. It was a way to get back at his wife, who had moved to this Podunk burg for a job. Humphries was a landscape painter, so he could live anywhere. That’s what Josie said. But what was he supposed to paint around here? A ditch? He stood on the back porch every day and painted pictures of turds for spite. Josie said they were good.

  She was all right.

  She noticed that Humphries had started walking down to the drugstore in the morning and picking up the local paper. She made knowing faces at him. Now that Mr. Mugglewump had survived on the streets, Mississippi was looking okay to her. Humphries cringed and shuddered at her implicit optimism and got back to the paper. He was looking for a story about some local jerk getting assassinated.

  On the third day he almost gave up because he didn’t want to give his wife the satisfaction. But he rose in the first smeary light, while Josie was still asleep, and walked to the drugstore. He didn’t have to bring the paper home. Without that clue, Josie wouldn’t be able to guess he was happy. Because he was happy. He was happy being miserable. He was happy that living in Mississippi would give him a great excuse to be a failure.

  There were some old codgers spitting in a cup for some reason. Humphries stood on the corner reading about Buddy Wilson, who had owned a struggling poster shop. He was a large, fat man who had been found at the county dump, his head nearly severed from his body. Police suspected garroting by banjo string because there was a banjo lying nearby with a missing string.

  It was cool out. Humphries’s palms were sweating. He threw the paper in a trash can and wiped the slippery newsprint on his pants. For the first time, he went back to the house where he had spotted the girl with the gun.

  The window glowed. He could see everything from the street. It was like a different place, draped in fabrics, oranges and pinks, full of light and life. There was a homey smell of bacon in the air.

  A young couple—nothing like the yellow-haired girl with the gun—pulled a twee red sweater over their little white dog. They had a string of white Christmas lights blinking along the mantle, though Christmas was miles and miles away.

  The dirty old glider was still on the porch. It was the only thing to convince Humphries he wasn’t crazy.

  He had a bad day and couldn’t get any turds painted.

  * * *

  That evening, just before the sun went down, he went back to the odd little duplex. The young couple had put up curtains. The black cat, a fixture of the neighborhood, was back in its place on the soiled glider. The white dog in the red sweater stood smugly on its hind legs between the curtain and the window with its white forepaws on the window ledge, safely behind the glass, staring at the cat with sick superiority.

  CHEAP SUITCASE AND A NEW TOWN

  by Chris Offutt

  Lucedale

  Betsy had been raised to hold grudges forever, but long ago realized it required more effort than she cared to exert. She remembered the very moment when she’d understood that forgiveness had nothing to do with an adversary, but would benefit solely herself. Her entire worldview had shifted, like discovering her house contained a new room full of light, a chamber she wanted to occupy forever.

  Ten months before, Betsy had moved to Lucedale and found work in a breakfast café, becoming the very person she detested most—a woman in a shapeless uniform serving eggs to workingmen, the oldest waitress in the place, alone and not wanting to be, living in a dump and drinking herself to sleep. She was not yet forty. She thought she should know better and felt worse for it.

  An eighteen-year-old girl named Thadine joined the breakfast crew. Betsy envied her youth and vitality, the cheery optimism, her slim hips twitching among the tables. Betsy had been the same as Thadine twenty years earlier in another town and had progressed nowhere. Worse, Thadine actively sought Betsy’s attention, craving approval, trailing behind her like a pup who’d been kicked but never with severity.

  During the midmorning lull before lunch, their side work included refilling salt and pepper shakers, marrying half-empty ketchup bottles, and topping off the sugar containers. Thadine chattered about inconsequential subjects, a running narrative of what lay immediately before her, a commentary on the obvious. Occasionally she tested safe opinions. She laughed readily. The boss liked her and the cooks strove to conceal her errors. In another context, Betsy might have found her adorable—slight and needy in old loafers—but Betsy was reminded of all that she herself had lost: everyone she’d ever loved, a familiar landscape, the security of deep belonging, b
ut most of all the naïveté of seeing life as fraught with promise.

  For two weeks the girl had gotten on Betsy’s nerves. Fed up, her voice hard, Betsy finally said, “Get away from me. I’m your coworker, not your friend.”

  Thadine’s face turned red as if she’d been slapped. Her eyes, formerly as brimful of hope as an egg is of yolk, filled with tears. She hurried to the kitchen and Betsy ignored her during the rest of the shift, grateful for the efficiency of working alone. She counted her tips at the Formica breakfast bar, cashed her change into folding money, and left.

  The incessant heat pressed against Betsy as if she’d stepped into the sea. Though mid-September, there was little autumn to behold. In the parking lot Thadine was leaning against Betsy’s car, her face downcast.

  “Why do you hate me?” Thadine said. “I only want to be like you.”

  Betsy’s knees seemed to give, as if the struts that held her upright had become elastic. Her polyester uniform clung to her skin, smelling of bacon, stained along the perimeter of her apron. She was tired. Perspiration sheened her face. This was the girl’s hometown. She no doubt wanted out, same as Betsy had wanted out of her own. It never occurred to Betsy that seeing her young self in Thadine was a two-way enterprise. Thadine’s life must feel drastic for Betsy’s to appear worthy of emulation.

  The unforeseen arrival of forgiveness relieved Betsy of a burden she didn’t know she carried, an invisible shawl of stone. She’d felt the burn of betrayal many times—lied to, taken advantage of, abandoned—left alone with the numb opacity of loss. But she had done her share of hurting people too. It all worked out in the end. The balance of life was achieved by weighted extremes. She had no appetite for moderation, no patience for people who did.

  With the stunning clarity of sunup after a fierce storm, Betsy realized that her life wasn’t a case of failing to learn from her mistakes, but one of repeating the same patterns again and again. Waitress shoes, a narrow bed, a damaged man. A cheap suitcase and a new town. She wanted to warn the girl, to give her advice Betsy had never received: Don’t let them hit you, don’t drink on an empty stomach, don’t cry alone. But Betsy knew it wouldn’t have done her younger self any good to hear it, no more than it would for Thadine.

  Only two things ever helped in life—love and money. Any love Betsy could muster was reserved for the next reckless man, not this waif weeping in the harsh light. She offered the day’s tips.

  “You’re wrong,” Betsy said. “I don’t hate you.”

  Thadine started to speak, then didn’t. She took the cash.

  “You hate this town,” Betsy said. “Get out before you hate yourself.”

  She got in her car and drove past a fancy house with a large expanse of grass, automatically watered at night. The grass didn’t actually grow, but had been unfurled from trucks and pressed into place. Few people trod upon the slim shards of yard.

  A mile farther she entered her own neighborhood of cement and asphalt, a used-car lot and front yards of weed and dirt. Betsy parked and climbed an exterior staircase composed of premade concrete to her one-room apartment. She removed her greasy waitress smock and cursed herself for the day’s work with nothing to show. What kind of life was she leading? What kind of name was Thadine?

  The last time she lived in a house had been in Alabama. She’d gotten mixed up with a man who’d spent three years hand-building a stone enclosure of water for koi fish. He was proud of his project, which Betsy considered a lot of work simply to maintain overgrown carp. In the afternoons they drank beside the pool. He liked to talk and she didn’t like to be alone. He fired a BB pistol at neighborhood cats that skulked about, attempting to prey on his fish. Betsy asked him to stop and he set wire traps instead. One trap caught a gopher, which drew a coyote that ate all his precious koi. He blamed Betsy. She left him and quit living in houses, returning to single rooms.

  In her apartment, she poured vodka and drank it, facing a fan in her underwear. The AC was a window unit that didn’t actually cool the air, just barely cut the heat and blew dust that made her sneeze. After two drinks she laughed at herself—she’d gone from saving cats in Alabama to giving her money away in Mississippi. She closed her eyes. Awhile later she awoke disoriented from a dream she’d had consistently since childhood—lost in a vast house, wandering long halls, opening doors and encountering people she’d met in different places. They were quite friendly with each other, but ignored her as if she was a ghost. She ran down a long hall, trying to ward away the awareness that something serious was amiss.

  Betsy sat in the chair, blinking herself fully awake until the imagery faded. Each time she had the dream, the house was bigger, as if her continued existence furthered its renovation. After a shower she ate leftover food from the refrigerator. She packed her clothes, loaded the car, and left for New Orleans.

  Each time she began a new life she momentarily wished she had a pistol, a small one. She didn’t know why. She supposed it was about confidence and fear. If she’d bought one, she’d have pawned it by now. Someone else would own it, and no telling what they’d do with it, who they’d shoot, maybe Thadine. Betsy hoped the girl would get out before someone did. It could happen easily. Anything could.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award–winning author of seven novels, including Dare Me, The End of Everything, and The Fever, winner of the ITW and Strand Critics Award for best novel and chosen one of the best books of 2014 by Amazon, NPR, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times. Her stories have also appeared in Queens Noir, Phoenix Noir, Wall Street Noir, and Detroit Noir. Her latest novel is You Will Know Me. Abbott served as a John Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi in 2013–14.

  Ace Atkins is the New York Times best-selling author of nineteen novels, including The Redeemers and Robert B. Parker’s Kickback. He has been nominated for every major prize in crime fiction, including the Edgar Award three times, twice for novels about former U.S. Army ranger Quinn Colson. A former newspaper reporter and SEC football player, Atkins also writes essays and investigative pieces for several national magazines including Outside and Garden & Gun. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his family.

  William Boyle is the author of the novel Gravesend and the story collection Death Don’t Have No Mercy. He is from Brooklyn, New York, and currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

  Robert Busby was born and raised in north Mississippi. He has worked as a band saw operator, a produce clerk, a bookseller, a driving school instructor, and a satellite television technician. His stories have appeared in Arkansas Review, Cold Mountain Review, PANK, Real South, and Surreal South ’11. Currently he lives, writes, teaches, and eats much barbecue in Memphis, Tennessee, with his wife and their two sons.

  Jimmy Cajoleas grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. He earned his MFA from the University of Mississippi, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  Dominiqua Dickey, a former stage manager, paralegal, and deputy court clerk, was born in Chicago, raised in Grenada, Mississippi, and became an adult in Los Angeles. Her Southern upbringing and West Coast affinity are reflected in her work, as well as her love of history and its effect on common folk. She is pursuing a MFA at the University of Mississippi while applying the finishing touches to a short story collection and mystery novel.

  Lee Durkee drives a cab in Oxford, Mississippi. He is the author of the novel Rides of the Midway (WW Norton), and has published short stories in such places as Harper’s Magazine, Tin House, Zoetrope: All-Story, and the New England Review.

  John M. Floyd’s work has appeared in more than two hundred different publications, including the Strand Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Best American Mystery Stories 2015. A former air force captain and IBM systems engineer, he won a Derringer Award in 2007 and was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2015. Floyd is the author of five books: Rainbow’s End, Midnight, Clockwork, Deception, and Fift
y Mysteries.

  Tom Franklin is the author of Poachers: Stories and three novels, Hell at the Breech, Smonk, and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for mystery/thriller, the Willie Morris Prize in Southern Fiction, and the UK’s Gold Dagger Award for Best Novel. His latest novel, The Tilted World, was cowritten with his wife, Beth Ann Fennelly. They live in Oxford, where they teach in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.

  Michael Kardos is the Pushcart Prize–winning author of the novels Before He Finds Her and The Three-Day Affair, an Esquire best book of the year, as well as the story collection One Last Good Time, which won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for fiction. He grew up on the Jersey Shore and currently lives in Starkville, Mississippi, where he codirects the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.

  Mary Miller is the author of two books, Big World, a short story collection, and The Last Days of California, a novel. Her second story collection, Always Happy Hour, is forthcoming from Liveright/Norton. A former James A. Michener Fellow in fiction at the University of Texas, she most recently served as the John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss.

  Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, a former mining town of two hundred people in the Appalachian foothills. He is the author of two memoirs, The Same River Twice and No Heroes; two collections of short stories, Kentucky Straight and Out of the Woods; and one novel, The Good Brother. His latest book is My Father, The Pornographer. He lives on fourteen acres in Lafayette County, Mississippi.