by Ace Atkins
Anna Lee stepped out, Hondo sniffing at her hand as she turned up the path to the old white house. Quinn met her at the screen door, letting her onto the porch and inviting her to join him.
He hadn’t seen her since Johnny Stagg’s Good Ole Boy, but the same feeling hit him in the pit of the stomach, something that he wished he could control but couldn’t. It had been that way since they were fifteen, taking it all slow and easy as good buddies till it all became rocky and wild and heated, kid promises made. She said she’d wait till he returned and they could marry, but that didn’t last long. A few years later, she found a better situation when Luke Stevens came back from Tulane. And how could he blame her? He’d only been five years into a war that would take him another five to come home.
“Is this OK?” she asked.
“Just watching the bats.”
“Is that what you do all the way out here?”
“Sometimes,” Quinn said. “I don’t have a TV. A few beers makes things more entertaining.”
“Good to see you the other night.”
“Always good seeing you, Anna Lee.”
He offered to get her some sweet tea or water, but she declined. It was cool on the porch, but she fanned her face with her hand, the trip from the car to the porch a little too much. Hondo stood between them, panting and staring up at Quinn.
Anna Lee rested her tall boots on the ledge. She was fair and blond, with delicate features and a long, elegant neck. Besides the bulge of stomach under her long-sleeved brown dress, you wouldn’t know she was nearly due.
“Haven’t seen much of you since I’ve been back,” Quinn said.
“Haven’t been out much,” she said.
“How much longer?”
“Eight weeks.”
“Luke must be thrilled.”
“He is.”
“Sorry we haven’t talked,” Quinn said. “I guess there wasn’t much to say after you got pregnant.”
“I said all I wanted to say after you got shot,” Anna Lee said. “You figure that wasn’t enough?”
“You didn’t say anything.”
A silence cut between them for a moment, the only sound Hondo’s panting and then the violent scratching of his back leg on his ear. The chain on his neck jingled as he worked. He went back to his bone.
“I put out a steak for supper,” Quinn said. “I can make another.”
“I can’t stay, Quinn,” she said. “How the hell would that look?”
“You came to see me.”
“I came to talk to you about Caddy.”
“I’m done with Caddy.”
“How can you be done with your own sister?”
“After a while, you quit trying.”
“Can you try for Jason?”
Quinn nodded. He watched two young calves playing in the pasture, head-butting each other and tossing their rear ends up in the air. The big cows grazed around them, chewing and eating, the big bull standing on the far hill, looking tired and old. He’d been the bull for as long as Quinn could remember, but his ribs were starting to show, and his eyes had taken on a yellow cast.
“She’s been lying to Jason,” Quinn said. “She’ll promise to come see him and never make it. How’s that look to a kid?”
“She’s back now.”
Quinn didn’t say anything.
“Just got back from your momma’s,” Anna Lee said. “I watched Jason while your mom shopped. Caddy came in after I fed Jason.”
Quinn nodded. “Twenty-four-hour hero,” he said.
“She unpacked,” Anna Lee said. “I think Caddy’s home for good.”
13
CADDY WAS THE CIGARETTES-AND-COFFEE CADDY THAT QUINN HAD SEEN a thousand times before. She’d sit in their father’s old recliner and read the Bible or books of inspiration or some Christian romance novel with women and horses on the cover and begin reciting back things she’d read as if they were her own ideas. She was pale and skinny, with dark-rimmed eyes and bad hair. She’d stripped off all the makeup she took to wearing when she was all full of herself and toned down the sexy dress with a pair of jeans and a large T-shirt that hit her at the knees. She lit up and reached for a Diet Coke, finding her place in a book called The Shack, a novel Quinn had heard about that told the story of a man who meets up with Jesus in Oregon and talks it out.
When Quinn walked into their mother’s house, she jumped up and hugged him as if they’d last left things in great order. Quinn recalled a shouting match in a Memphis parking lot where he told her to get her shit together. Caddy had been working for dollar bills at a gentlemen’s club by the airport.
“Big brother,” Caddy said, and kissed him on the cheek.
Quinn nodded and hung up his hat by the door. Anna Lee had followed in her car and closed the door behind them. She smiled at Caddy, both of them obviously catching up earlier, and she walked outside to join Jean, who was playing with Jason on a tire swing hanging from an old pecan tree.
“You still got the eyes for Anna Lee, knocked-up and all.”
“She said you wanted to see me.”
“You could’ve come tomorrow.”
She sat back down in Jason Colson’s recliner, the one they should have taken out and burned the day he packed up his shit and moved to California for good. She pulled on her cigarette and grinned at him in a knowing way, as if it were Quinn with the goddamn problems. Not Caddy, who’d moved home because she’d hit rock bottom with nowhere else to go.
“Anna Lee says you’re sticking around awhile,” Quinn said.
“Momma needs help.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And I’d been missing Jason, with work and all,” Caddy said. “It’s ninety miles to Memphis.”
About a hundred and fifty replies popped into Quinn’s mind with that one. But he stayed silent, knowing a man never got himself in trouble by keeping his mouth shut.
“Sheriff Colson.”
“I was sheriff last time you were home, too.”
“Don’t recall much of that trip.”
“No fooling.”
“It’s not the same,” Caddy said. “Not now.”
Quinn nodded and walked back to the kitchen to snatch a beer that his momma kept in the refrigerator just for him. He popped the top on a Budweiser and returned to the TV room, knowing Caddy was a hell of a lot easier to take with a beer in hand.
“You know, you can let your hair grow out,” she said. “You don’t have to go with the high and tight.”
Quinn shrugged and drank the beer. Caddy turned to the sliding glass door and watched Anna Lee and Jean pushing Jason between both of them. Jason laughing and kicking his legs, both women making sure that he didn’t veer off path or go too high. Jason screamed with laughter.
“It’s good to be home.”
“You make it hard on him,” Quinn said. “You just make it that much goddamn harder every time.”
“You won’t spoil this for me,” Caddy said. “You hadn’t walked in the door five minutes.”
“You want to tell me how now is different?” Quinn asked. “Because Momma and I are going to have to clean up the mess when you get gone again. You ever try reading books to a child while he’s crying?”
She nodded. “I’ve been meeting with a counselor,” she said. “Three times a week. He wanted me to come home, address my issues with my family.”
“You blaming us now?”
“We grew up in a shitstorm.”
“I figure you wouldn’t want that for Jason.”
“I don’t want to fight,” Caddy said. “Momma’s picked up dinner, and I thought we could all sit down together. I’m trying, Quinn. I am. I’m clean.”
“How long?”
“Three weeks.”
Quinn nodded. He’d heard it before.
“What happened to the new boyfriend?”
“He’s a piece of shit.”
“I think I told you that,” Quinn said, the words out of his mouth before he could stop them. But Caddy
still smiled at him, feeling something in the room that Quinn didn’t. She was looking at all of Jean’s stuff, and the sight of that ugly green couch and slick dining room table that they didn’t use except for Christmas and Thanksgiving and even those old Elvis movie posters brought her some kind of happiness.
“You ever think that Momma might have done it with Elvis?” Caddy asked.
“Nope.”
“You know she was a groupie, driving up to Graceland with her girlfriends in her short shorts and waiting for him by the gate. Daddy knew him. He knew Elvis through karate and all that. I don’t know. I just think there’s something strange about pining for a dead man.”
“Maybe she likes his music.”
“And the movies?” Caddy said, whispering. “Who likes the movies?”
Quinn shrugged. He’d yet to sit down. Anna Lee, Jean, and Jason were making their way down the hill, Jason between them, the women with one of his hands each, swinging him up high into the air.
“I just don’t want him hurt,” Quinn said. “He’s doing good. He’s in school. He’s doing good.”
“I’m his mother.”
“And you remind us of that all the time,” Quinn said. “He needs something stable.”
“I am stable,” she said. “That’s why I’m here. I’m here this time. It’s over.”
Jason, Jean, and Anna Lee were on the back deck and making their way to the glass door. Quinn looked to Caddy and massaged the back of his neck, knowing how the next few weeks would play out and knowing how it would affect his nephew.
“We got to talk, Quinn,” Caddy said.
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
DONNIE HAD RETIRED for the night at his trailer at the gun range. Stagg dropped him off after they got back to Jericho, Stagg not saying a word on the ride back, still pissed about Donnie and Mr. Campo getting along so good. Stagg just turned up that Don Ho hula shit, cracked the window, and smiled at all the scenery passing. When Donnie would ask him a question, he’d just nod deep in thought and answer him with a nod or shake of his head. Guess the comment about the suit had really chapped old Johnny’s ass.
Donnie lay on a pullout sofa mattress, smoking cigarettes and watching The Magnificent Seven with a bottle of tequila and a bag of chips for dinner. He’d promised his daddy that he’d be back at the Quick Mart at five a.m. to start cooking up sausage and biscuits for the farmers and truck drivers before church. Donnie was so goddamn tired of the smell of that place. Even good shampoo and Lava soap couldn’t wash it out. He kicked back more of the tequila, Yul Brynner telling that dumb kid to clap his hands, “Fast. Fast as you can.” And the kid not having the speed or the smarts to see how Yul was playing with him. So what does the kid do? He just gets piss-drunk and tries to shoot Yul. But it all works out in the end; he meets a nice señorita and lives it up in high tail. Donnie smiled with the thought and punched up a phone number he’d written on the back of a napkin.
“Yes?” Luz asked.
“You sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“We need to talk.”
Luz was silent.
“In person,” Donnie said. His tongue feeling a little fuzzy, but, damn, if he didn’t sound straight in his head. “Can you come on?”
“Is there a problem?”
“We got to talk, and phones make me a mite nervous.”
“Where?”
Donnie told her to come on back to the gun range and clicked off the phone with a big shit-eating smile on his face. He walked on outside the old Airstream and plugged in a string of Christmas lights that he’d hung up through the pines and oaks surrounding a little fire pit he’d made from old bricks and river stones. He tossed some brush and logs into the fire and soaked it good with some diesel, lighting the son of a bitch up.
He’d found some fallen logs and arranged them around the fire pit. A hell of a good place to sit and drink and look at the stars. But, god damn, he was getting tired of Shane’s jokes and Tiny’s farts. That’s about all those boys offered in way of company, corn and gas. But the boys had been with him every day after he’d gone up and nearly turned into a crispy critter. It was Shane who’d had the sense to reach for the morphine needle in his pack and stab Donnie with it after the explosion, when Donnie couldn’t see worth shit with blood in his eyes and his damn hearing was nothing but a high-pitched electric sound.
After an hour, or maybe two, he saw a big truck roll down the dirt road and park down at the range. Luz was just a shadow in the moonlight, but he could tell it was her and her alone, no crazy-ass Alejandro or the kid shooter or those three crazy muchachos. She sure had a confident strut about her. Donnie wondered just where the carnival had ended up tonight.
He warmed his hands over the fire, facing the trail that she’d followed after seeing the Christmas lights and fire up on the hill by the old Airstream.
Donnie sure had to grin when he saw her. She wore a fitted red snap-button shirt and tight dark jeans with a straw Stetson set over her long black Indian hair. She looked clean and fresh-scrubbed, and he noticed the big turquoise bracelet on her wrist before he noted the Colt slid into her belt loop.
“Where were y’all tonight?” he asked.
“Place called Water Valley.”
“Ain’t shit in Water Valley.”
“Tonight, we brought the carnival.”
“So how does that work?” he asked. “Y’all do that full time and the guns on the side? Or is it some kind of cover for y’all while you buy guns?”
“We work for the carnival, and we have other business.”
“I like your hat.”
She nodded at him.
“You ride?”
She nodded again. “I grew up in Saragosa, Texas.”
“No shit,” he said. “That makes you a citizen.”
“What do you want, Donnie?”
“I got the deal,” Donnie said. He smiled. “It’s all set up. And we got those extra fifty M4s just like y’all wanted. Be here next week.”
“We will bring the money,” she said. “Good night.”
“Can’t you stay for a bit?” Donnie said, grinning. “Please.”
“You live here?”
“It ain’t a mansion, but—” Donnie said, laughing. “But it ain’t a mansion. Pull up a stump and have a cold beer or some tequila, and you can go on. All right?”
She looked at him like he was crazy but joined him by the fire pit and accepted a drink from his open bottle of tequila. God damn, he loved a girl who could take a swig off an open bottle.
“Down in Saragosa, that where you meet up with your boyfriend, the bad motherfucker?”
“Let’s not talk.”
“You kind of hold a lot of interest for me, Luz,” Donnie said. “I mean, we’re kind of in this together now, long down the road, me and you. I figure we could at least get to know a bit about each other. Ain’t no harm in that.”
She nodded and took another hit from the bottle.
“Where’d you get those scars?” she asked. “The ones I saw on your back.”
“Some little shithole outside Baghdad that don’t have no name.”
“Were you in battle?”
“I was patrolling a goddamn bazaar.”
“Is that why you came home?”
“No,” Donnie said. “I went back, next time to Afghanistan, after I healed up. I guess my head is hard that way.”
“Did you love it? The war?”
“I loved that paycheck.”
They watched the fire, the crackling of the dry brush and logs, sparks flicking up into the Christmas lights and treetops. Donnie thought it didn’t look too bad at his place, kinda like a Kenny Chesney video if they were at the beach and not in Tibbehah.
“You got to go back to Mexico when you get the guns?”
“I don’t know.”
“Up to your boyfriend?”
“Why do you ask so much?” Luz asked.
“I just don’t understand why you’re with those people,” Donnie said. “Your buddy Alejandro looks like he should be living in a cage. No offense.”
She nodded. She drank some more.
“You will do what you say?”
“I promised,” Donnie said. “Say, how do you like the ole trailer? Belonged to my granddad. He bought the fucking thing in the fifties so he could go to the Grand Canyon. Son of a bitch had a heart attack right before he pulled out onto the highway. Whole time I was growing up, it sat under a tarp in our garage.”
“That’s very sad.”
“But kinda funny.”
“How?”
“The way God can bite you right in the ass.”
“Sometimes you bite back,” Luz said. She stared very hard into the fire. The night had grown cold, and Donnie just noticed their shoulders were touching as they leaned into the warmth. He turned and smiled at her, catching her eye. She didn’t smile, looking downright sad to him, but not breaking away, either. Son of a bitch if he didn’t have to do it, but he reached around her with his arm and pulled her close. The front of that western snap-button shirt looked like it was about to go and bust, and he caught a peek of a little lace on a black bra.
“Just how bad of a motherfucker is your boyfriend?”
Luz turned to him and kissed him long and hard on the mouth. When Donnie kissed her back, there wasn’t nothing but air, and he opened his eyes with her standing above him. “Don’t show affection in front of Alejandro,” she said.
He held up his hand in a solemn promise.
“And you won’t talk of me to your friends.”
“You Catholic girls are damn superstitious.”
He reached for her hand. She looked at him with a lot burning in those eyes, but he pulled her in close and hooked his fingers into her leather belt, pressing her hard against him and knocking her hat up so he could give her a decent kiss.
He felt her Colt digging into his forearm as he hugged her, but it didn’t bother him a damn bit.
14
FOUR DAYS PASSED, AND QUINN FOUND HIMSELF AT THE FILLIN’ STATION diner, drinking black coffee and working on a plate of fried eggs and grits. The rains had blown in from Texas the day before, and with dark skies came a chill. It wouldn’t be long until the heaters would cut on, and he’d smell burning dust and propane that reminded Quinn of long, bare winters. Mary, a tired old waitress who used to shack up with his Uncle Hamp, refilled his cup. Quinn wondered if his wearing Hamp’s old rancher coat bothered her. She’d been with Hamp until the last, spending his last years taking trips to Tunica and down to the coast. When they buried him, the honor guard folded the flag and handed it to her.