The Lost Ones

by Ace Atkins

  Alejandro, who hadn’t said a goddamn word, muscled by him and picked up the Mossberg 930 and snicked open the breech, knowing how to ghost-load extra rounds. The other two men and the boy joined him, studying the fresh weapons in the light and smiling.

  “Who’s Junior?” Donnie asked.

  Luz stood back, arms folded over her chest. She didn’t answer him.

  “Damn, he doesn’t look old enough to wipe his ass.”

  “Watch him shoot.”

  “That Mossberg he’s got was voted 2009 shotgun of the year,” he said. “A five-hundred-member academy made it so. Just don’t want him knocked on his ass.”

  “You can bring your friends out if you wish,” she said.

  “What friends?”

  “The ones in the woods.”

  “That’s all right, darlin’,” he said. “Excuse me if I don’t trust y’all just yet.”

  She walked back to the Escalade and leaned against the grille, watching the Mexicans shoot shotguns and automatics in the light rain and bright artificial light. She had a graceful way about her as she stood with her hips forward, completely at peace in the middle of a gun deal. Donnie followed and offered her a smoke.

  “How ’bout you and me get a cheeseburger at the Sonic after this deal is made?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  Alejandro let out six fast, thumping shots from the Mossberg, blowing thick holes in the cardboard target of the black robber Donnie had set up. He looked up the hill to nod his approval of the gun, but his smile faded when he saw Donnie close to Luz.

  “You and Tattoo Boy?” he asked, lighting a cigarette with a Zippo.

  “Alejandro works for my boyfriend.”

  “And your boyfriend ain’t no preacher?”

  Luz didn’t answer. Man, it sure was raining.

  QUINN STOOD WITH JASON on the weathered dock as the rain came in. The little boy took his fishing seriously. Quinn smoked a La Gloria Cubana, Hondo sleeping at their feet.

  “What do you want for dinner?”

  Jason looked up at him and smiled. “Waffles?”

  “I can make some waffles,” he said. “How about I fry some chicken, too?”

  Jason nodded. “Chicken and waffles?”

  “Sure,” Quinn said. “Why not.”

  He’d inherited the property and the family farm late last year after the death of his Uncle Hamp, the former sheriff who’d died in disgrace and turmoil. Most of the acreage had been overgrown with scrub pine and privet bush, but in the summer, he and his friend Boom had reclaimed a lot of the land, putting in a new well, rebuilding a barn that had been burned by some thugs, and cutting trails into his woods. The old house had been repainted, floorboards mended, and a new stove bought from Sears. He’d planted corn, tomatoes, and hot peppers.

  Quinn’s deep freezer was ready for the deer he’d kill after Thanksgiving. It wouldn’t take much to supplement what he’d shot and grown. He bought his whiskey and cigars in Memphis.

  “How ’bout we head on in?” Small drops of water flecked the shoulders of his khaki shirt.

  “Watch TV?”

  “You know I don’t have a TV.”

  “Scooby-Doo?”

  “We can read books.”

  Jason checked his line. A crappie had taken the cricket. He didn’t seem too worried when he turned to Quinn and handed him the cane pole and empty hook. “Call Momma?”

  “Soon,” Quinn said. “She’s been askin’ about you.”

  God damn, he hated to lie.

  “SO WE GOT A DEAL?” Donnie asked, looking into Alejandro’s screwed-up face. The wiry little guy just stared back and nodded before walking back to the Escalade.

  He returned thirty seconds later and tossed Donnie a manila envelope crammed full of cash. Donnie opened her up and poured out the money. He started to flip through the bundles of twenties and hundreds, and in a few minutes he knew it was all there. The rain hit hard on the tin roof of the range.

  Donnie offered his hand to Alejandro. The little man shook it.

  “Y’all want a drink?” Donnie asked. “I got a bottle of Jack in my truck.”

  Luz shook her head. “They don’t drink.”

  “Not even tequila?”

  “No.”

  “Signs and wonders.”

  The boys and the kid gathered the guns and ammo and packed the car.

  “A true pleasure,” Donnie said to Luz.

  “He wants more,” she said.

  “OK.”

  “You said you could get M4s.”

  “It’ll cost you.”

  “That’s not an issue.”

  “How many?”

  “A hundred.”

  Donnie laughed, feeling a smile creeping up. “Really?”

  “Can it be done?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You will find out?”

  “You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen.”

  “You will see about the guns? Military grade. Not Chinese rip-offs.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Sure about that burger?”

  Luz’s eyes wandered over his sorry ass. “You can call later if you wish.”

  She walked off in the tall cowboy boots and got inside the Escalade, the wipers working overtime. A broad swath of headlights turned and passed over his face before disappearing in the rain.

  Shane and Tiny emerged from the woods. Shane was country skinny, with a goatee, and wore a Toby Keith T-shirt. Tiny wore Carhartt overalls, and was as big and fat as a guy named Tiny should be. Both of them had served with him in the 223rd on his first visit to the Shitbox.

  “Crack open the beers, boys,” Donnie said. “Tiny, go get that bottle of Jack in my truck.”

  Donnie fired up a Spirit and tossed them both a wad of money. “And y’all thought I was a liar when we were back in God’s Armpit.”

  Them boys sure could grin.

  5

  QUINN GOT THE CALL AT TEN AND DRESSED, PULLING ON HIS TIBBEHAH Sheriff’s jacket and official ball cap as the farmhouse door slammed behind him. His mother had picked up Jason earlier, and he was glad of it, hearing the urgency in Lillie’s voice when she called. Ten minutes later, he was nearing the black section of Tibbehah County called Sugar Ditch and the infamous Club Disco 9000 juke. He braked in the gravel lot, beaten jalopies and battered trucks parked at crazy angles around him. The juke wasn’t much more than rusted tin and scrap wood.

  Lillie waited for him as he climbed out of his truck, already walking toward the front door and the sound of driving blues guitar.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Spam’s pissed.”

  “Spam’s always pissed,” Quinn said. “Property damage?”

  “Yep.”

  “Anyone hurt?”

  “You know it.”

  “This makes for how many?”

  Lillie held up three fingers and kept walking. The inside of the juke house was lit with Christmas lights and a few red bulbs swinging from the ceiling. An old black man sat down while playing a guitar on stage. His drummer, also black, looked about eighty. A gaunt white man in a trucker hat took a guitar solo as Quinn made his way to the bar through the overturned tables, busted chairs, and broken beer bottles. Behind the bar was a poster of a black woman in a bikini holding a Mickeys Big Mouth.

  Boom Kimbrough wobbled on a stool, nursing a forty and dog-cussing a man hiding behind the bar. The man was bleeding, holding a bloody towel filled with ice to his cheek. Spam, the bartender, stood in front of the man, making a real show to Quinn and Lillie about pointing out Boom on the stool down the way. At six-foot-five and two hundred sixty pounds, Boom wasn’t too hard to spot.

  “You better get his ass outta here,” Spam said, slamming shut the register. “His crazy shit ran my crowd out of here. Damn if he didn’t beat up four of my best customers. Got damn.”

  Boom rambled on with some more nonsensical words. He laughed a bit at what he�
�d said and tipped back the forty-ounce with his good arm. His other had been lost in a roadside explosion while he’d been delivering water out of Fallujah.

  “Next time he come in and act a fool, I’m gonna shoot him. I swear to it, Quinn.”

  “No you won’t,” Quinn said. “Boom?”

  Boom wobbled and looked at him with glassy eyes. He smiled back at him in a wavering and unknowing way. Lillie stepped up and put her arm around him. She whispered in his ear. He nodded. Boom kept drinking.

  “How’d it start?” Lillie asked.

  Spam twisted up his mouth. He shrugged. “Shit, I don’t know. I think one of them dumbasses said something to Boom about how at least he got one hand to jack his monkey. And that shit just kinda set him off. I don’t think they meant nothin’ by it. They was just sayin’ it was a good thing he got one arm left.”

  “For monkey jackin’,” Quinn said.

  “We was jes playin’, man,” said the bleeding man.

  “Shut up,” Lillie said.

  Quinn nodded. “Boom gets testy when he drinks.”

  “No shit,” said the bleeding man.

  Quinn just stared at him.

  “Would you please get his ass outta here?” Spam said. “Maybe I can at least pay the light bill. Ain’t good for business to have this crazy-ass nigger charging like a bull.”

  Quinn nodded. Lillie gripped Boom’s arm and whispered again into his ear.

  He shook his head.

  “Come on, Boom,” Quinn said.

  “Naw.”

  “It’s Quinn.”

  “No it ain’t,” Boom said. “You the law. Quinn Colson ain’t no law. Quinn Colson a crazy-ass motherfucker.”

  “Now he’s both,” Lillie said.

  Quinn looked to Lillie and Lillie grinned. She hooked her arm within Boom’s and tried to lift him from the stool. He shook his head and kept drinking. A thick scar shone at the base of his skull, hair growing unnaturally around it.

  Spam raised his eyebrows to Quinn. “If it was up to me, I’d say tase his ass.”

  Quinn reached out and gripped Boom’s belt and pulled him upward. Boom shook his head and swung at Quinn’s head. Quinn stepped back, feeling his face fill with heat, but also seeing that day when they’d chased rabbits down by Tom Cat McCain’s place, Boom helping him waist-deep out of a frozen creek. Boom built a fire and dried out Quinn’s boots while Quinn sat there chattering and shaking in Boom’s dry jacket.

  Quinn put down his hands and took a step back. Boom lunged for him, toppling over a chair and spinning in a half whirl before landing flat on his ass and passing out.

  Lillie walked up to Quinn’s side. They both stared down at their pal.

  “I guess that works, too,” Lillie said.

  Boom snored.

  “You want to carry him?”

  “I’ll pull around the cruiser,” Lillie said. “Get some help.”

  “I got it,” Quinn said, studying the thick scars on Boom’s face. “You get a statement from Spam and whoever else you can find.”

  “Just how I wanted to spend my night.”

  “Why are you all dressed up?”

  Lillie wore a tight black V-neck under her sheriff’s jacket, nice jeans, gold earrings, and her good boots. Quinn smiled, taking her in for the first time.

  “Hard to believe,” she said, “but I have a life.”

  “You have a date?”

  “I’ll get the statement,” she said. “You take your buddy to jail.”

  “Just how I wanted to spend my night.”

  6

  “QUINN?”

  “Yep?”

  “What are we doing?” Boom asked, raising up in the passenger seat and looking out at the acres of newly planted pine trees.

  “Riding around.”

  “Why?”

  “Waiting till you sober up.”

  “What happened?”

  “You beat the crap out of four men at Club Disco,” Quinn said. “Spam wanted me to use a taser on you.”

  “Why?” Boom asked. He rubbed the back of his head and let out a long breath.

  “One of ’em told you that it was a good thing you could still jack your monkey.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Boom asked.

  “Don’t know,” Quinn said. “But for some reason, you seemed to take some offense.”

  “You gonna take me to jail?”

  “Nobody seems to remember shit,” Quinn said, watching the long gentle stretch of gravel road open up in the hills. He could only see as far as the headlights. “Lillie took statements from two guys who were bleeding pretty bad. Both of them said they’d tripped.”

  Boom nodded. “Folks don’t care too much for the law in the Ditch.”

  “Hearts and minds,” Quinn said. “That’s where we’ll find ultimate victory.”

  “Shit.”

  “You been to see your counselor at the VA?” Quinn asked, taking a cut-through road down to 9W and south to Jericho.

  Boom stayed silent, his head lolling with every pothole and crack on the back highway. “Stop it, man.”

  “I’m not busting your balls,” Quinn said, “but we had an agreement you’d go up to Memphis twice a month.”

  “Naw, man,” Boom said. “I mean, stop the motherfucking truck.”

  Quinn hit the brakes, and Boom had the passenger door open even before they stopped rolling. He vomited out most of the night’s beer and then hopped to the ground to relieve himself on an old oak tree.

  After a bit, Boom hopped back in the truck. “I could eat.”

  Quinn shook his head and popped the truck into gear.

  THE SONIC LIT UP the south end of Main Street, a couple blocks down from the Town Square, in red-and-yellow neon. Teenagers took nearly every parking slot around the drive-in, wandering from car to car as an old Tanya Tucker song played on the loudspeakers. Girls in tight jeans and cowboy boots mixed with the FFA boys in their camo ball caps and football players sporting their letterman jackets. Six girls sat together at a table in front of the kitchen, huddled against the wind and smoking cigarettes.

  “Man, this shit takes me back,” Boom said.

  Quinn ordered a couple hamburgers, fries, and black coffee.

  “I don’t drink coffee,” Boom said.

  “Maybe it’s time to start.”

  Boom nodded. The waitress rolled by on skates and passed along their burgers and coffees. They sat there for a while, watching the high school kids and listening to the sheriff’s radio.

  “What set it off?”

  Boom drank some coffee and made a face. “I can’t drive.”

  “You don’t have a car.”

  “I tried to drive my daddy’s truck to the co-op for some feed and something happened.”

  Quinn nodded. He unwrapped a cheeseburger and started to eat.

  “Hard to explain.”

  “Try me.”

  “I seen something on the side of the road.”

  “So you pulled off?”

  Boom nodded. He hadn’t touched his food.

  “What was it?”

  “Goddamn trash bag.”

  “But you thought it was an IED,” Quinn said.

  Boom nodded again. He reached into the bag for the fries and burger. Quinn kept eating. One of the girls at the smoking table opened a small flask for whiskey from her purse and poured into a couple other girls’ cups. Quinn remembered being the one who’d go to Tupelo with his Uncle Van and buy quarts of Jack Daniel’s for field parties. He hardly seemed the right man to try and stop it now.

  “You remember how my Uncle Van used to get us beer and whiskey?”

  “Got me weed, too,” Boom said.

  “You think that’s wrong?”

  “He got paid.”

  “You’re right,” Quinn said. “Had to give him twenty bucks a run.”

  “Good to get the beer,” Boom said. “Makes this town more interesting.”

  “Try not to make it too interesting,” Qu
inn said. “I can’t keep doin’ this shit. People will talk.”

  “That’s all we got in Jericho, Miss-ippi.”

  A silver Toyota Tundra with a roll bar and Edelbrock dual pipes circled into a slot across the way. The glare of the lights and the neon across the windshield made it tough to see. But Boom didn’t seem to have a problem, swallowing half the cheeseburger and pointing. “You know Donnie was back?”

  “Heard something about it.”

  “Last time I seen his country ass was at Camp Anaconda,” Boom said. “We played cards and drank some rotgut shit some of his Guard boys had made. Rough, rough shit.”

  Boom was out of the truck first, with Quinn following. The teenage girls went quiet as Quinn passed, heads bowed, cups under table. Quinn hung back and watched Boom lean into the driver’s side of Donnie Varner’s Toyota and shake hands. There was a woman with him, and Boom nodded at the woman. They laughed.

  Quinn walked over to the window.

  “God damn, Sheriff Colson,” Donnie said. “The world’s been turned upside down.”

  “What’s up, Donnie?”

  “My daddy sent me newspaper clippings about what happened,” Donnie said. “Holy shit. Meth dealers, crooked-ass preachers, and here comes you, bigger ’an shit. Can’t say I was surprised about Wesley. But hey, man. Sorry to hear about your uncle. He was a good man.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Got to forgive, brother,” Donnie said, grinning wide. “That’s what the preacher man says.”

  Quinn walked closer and noted the woman seated beside Donnie. She was very dark, eyes and hair both almost black. She had done little to acknowledge Donnie’s friends besides stealing a momentary glance. Her delicate bone structure and wide eyes reminded Quinn of something you’d see in a very old painting with women wearing black and lace and holding fans. Something almost regal about her.

  “Who’s your friend?” Boom asked.

  Donnie’s face colored a bit. He took a sip of his milk shake. “This is my friend, Luz. Luz, these are my boys Boom and Quinn. See that star? This son of a bitch is the goddamn sheriff. Used to be people in this town locked up their trucks and their daughters when he was around.”