by Ace Atkins
“I invited you but didn’t invite that dog.”
“Hush, or he might hear you.”
Hondo had already made his way into the living room to lick Jason’s face. Jason was playing with a couple Hot Wheels monster trucks—Grave Digger and Swamp Thing—that Quinn had bought him at the Dollar General, and laughed and rolled on the carpet while holding on to Hondo’s tail.
“She doesn’t really hate the dog,” Anna Lee said. They stood side by side, watching boy and dog roll around together. She smelled like honeysuckle.
“I know,” Quinn said. “She let him sit in Daddy’s chair the other night, and they watched the ’68 Comeback Special.”
“Thought Boom was gonna join y’all?”
“On his way.”
“He driving again?” she asked.
Quinn nodded. Anna Lee wore a dress that looked like a man’s faded plaid shirt over her bulging stomach. She had that healthy, flushed look that pregnant women get, her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. No makeup, but not needing any, either. The ring on her finger shined big and bold in the light.
“Glad you came,” Quinn said. He took a sip of beer.
“I dropped by to see Jason and then started helping out in the kitchen. I promised Luke I’d be home an hour ago.”
“He did a smart thing calling me the other night,” Quinn said. “If he hadn’t, we might not have caught the Torres daughter and seen the situation at that house.”
Anna Lee shuddered and put her arms around herself and over her stomach. She smiled at Quinn, both of them listening to all the commotion going on in the kitchen. Caddy had already gone back to familiar territory with Jean, not really arguing but more of a kind of snapping back and forth. Watch out, Momma. That’s too hot. Come on, move, I need to put the rolls in the dang oven. Anna Lee had heard it for years, and they both laughed at the familiarity.
Hondo followed Jason, running past their legs. Anna Lee snatched Jason up and kissed him on the forehead and set him back, the little boy’s legs staying in motion, hitting the ground running.
“Good-bye,” Anna Lee said.
“Good night,” Quinn said.
He stood at the front window and watched as Anna Lee’s SUV pulled out and drove off. Not two minutes later, Boom’s old truck rumbled into the drive to replace her.
Boom let himself in, like he had since he and Quinn had been kids, and removed his jacket with the pinned sleeve, muddy work boots, and cap at the door. He found his place beside Caddy at the table, and she turned and kissed him on the cheek as he sat down.
“Want a beer?” Quinn asked Boom.
“Sure.”
“Get me one, too,” Quinn said.
Boom smiled and walked back to the kitchen and grabbed a couple, one in his hand and one in the crook of his arm, and sat back down. Quinn forked a couple pieces of chicken and put them on his plate. Boom seemed pretty damn good at eating with one hand, setting down the chicken and using a fork on the potato salad and coleslaw Jean had loaded onto his plate.
“How you doin’, Caddy?” Boom asked.
“You know, we forgot to say the prayer,” Caddy said.
Quinn looked up from his chicken at Boom. Boom grinned but lowered his head anyway. Caddy launched into a prayer about the grace of God and blessedness of family and the sanctity of children before she finally wrapped it up. It sounded like something she had heard someone else say on television.
“Must be good to be God,” Boom said, scraping up some coleslaw. “All these people just telling you how great you are.”
“I heard some people dog-cuss him, too,” Quinn said.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Jean said.
“Didn’t say I did,” Quinn said. “Just said I’d heard it.”
“That’s blasphemy,” Caddy said.
“I know what it’s called,” Quinn said.
“When’s the last time you’ve been to church?” Caddy said.
Jason looked from his mother to uncle to grandmother. He reached for a piece of chicken that had been cut into small bites.
“I go to church when I can,” Quinn said.
“You didn’t go Sunday,” Caddy said.
“Nope,” Quinn said. “We had a man go off his meds and threaten to kill his wife.”
“You can take a break for church.”
Quinn nodded. “Well, next time you’re praying, please tell God to slow down the shitstorm during the Sunday service.”
Boom took a sip of beer. He coughed. “How’d it go with the supervisors?”
“Not bad,” Quinn said.
“What’s goin’ on?” Jean Colson asked.
“Trying to get Boom hired to run the County Barn.”
Jean nodded and ate. She looked over at Jason and smiled at him. He smiled back. He’d yet to touch the carrot or potato salad. Jean would have to bribe him to eat anything beyond the chicken. She’d done the same when Quinn was a boy.
“Heard supervisors shot you down,” Boom said.
“They tried,” Quinn said. “But I put things in perspective for Stagg.”
“So you got a county job?” Jean asked.
“Depends on how this town reacts to tomorrow’s paper.”
“Hope it works out,” Jean said, winking at Boom. “Would y’all like some more to drink? We got plenty of chicken, too.”
“Quinn, let me ask you a question,” Caddy said, looking up from her sullen place at the end of the dinner table. She’d tied her hair in a red bandanna and wore an old gray sweatshirt and jeans. “If you died tonight, are you sure you’d be walking tomorrow with our Savior on the streets of heaven?”
Jean stopped by the door to the kitchen and waited.
Quinn put down a drumstick and wiped his mouth. “If you’re asking if I’ve ever considered my mortality, you might want to consider where I’ve been for the last ten years. I thought about it every waking hour.”
Caddy looked back down at her plate and ate a little potato salad. Boom looked to Quinn and raised his eyebrows. Jean went back to the kitchen for more food.
“How’d you do it?” Caddy asked.
“Do what?”
“Stop the man from killing his wife.”
“I arrested him.”
Caddy nodded. “You coming to church Sunday?”
“If I can.”
“What’s the most important thing to you?” Caddy asked. “If you made a list.”
“Right now?” Quinn said. “Probably eating some fried chicken in peace.”
“Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God.”
“Appreciate that, Caddy,” Quinn said. “Now, would you please pass the goddamn chicken?”
Caddy picked up and threw down her plate and ran for her bedroom. Quinn kept eating. Jason bowed his head at his plate. Boom kept eating, too, and drinking beer. Quinn didn’t even bother to look at his mother, who’d come back to the table, knowing the scorn that would be there.
“Caddy said you hadn’t talked to her since she’d come home,” Jean said. “That’s what she’s mad about.”
“I talked to her enough.”
“She doesn’t feel welcome here,” Jean said.
“Because I’m not going to church regular?” Quinn asked. “I’m sorry, Momma. But this new Caddy is going to take some adjusting to.”
Quinn put his arm around his nephew and kidded with him a bit while they ate. Caddy didn’t return to finish or to help with the dishes. Quinn and Boom tried to get Jean to sit and relax while they cleaned up, but she said they’d probably put everything in the wrong place and insisted on helping. Nearly an hour passed before Quinn and Boom walked outside so Quinn could smoke a cigar.
“When did Caddy get right with the Lord?” Boom asked.
“Pretty sure it was last week.” Quinn looked up at the sky, a cool, clear, crisp night. “Boom, let me ask you a question. Have you seen Donnie since the other night?”
Boom shook his hea
d.
“What about that girl he was with?”
Boom shook his head again.
“I know he hangs out with Shane and that fat kid, what’s his name?”
“Tiny.”
“Ever see him with any other Mexicans?”
“Only at the El Dorado.”
“Donnie’s into some shit,” Quinn said. “Lillie and I are working on it. Maybe you can ask around a bit without people knowin’ you asking.”
Boom nodded. “How deep?”
Quinn pointed to right under his chin.
17
THE SOUTHERN STAR BAR HAD BEEN OPEN FOR AS LONG AS YOU COULD buy beer in Tibbehah County, which was nearly two years. The Baptists fought hard to keep Jericho dry, but in the end, the loyal voice of the redneck spoke up and passed the resolution by six votes. Quinn wasn’t back home then but had heard that signs outside the various churches protested the change by saying the road to hell was littered with beer cans and drunkenness. Every town needed a bar. One of the first buildings in Jericho had been a saloon, as pointed out during these hearings. The Southern Star was packed most nights, except for Sundays, of course, when Tibbehah went back to being dry for the Baptists’ sake. Saturdays were the most crowded, when dispatch would have to call deputies to break up a fight or find the poor drunk bastard who’d walked out on his tab. Almost always it was a regular, a friend of the bartender, who swore he’d get good with it next week.
The building had been a hardware store when Quinn was a kid, and some of the old nail bins still hung on the far wall. It was a narrow shot of space, with the bar running down the long left side. There were a lot of neon beer signs and mirrors, a few deer heads, and even a stuffed wildcat displayed by the bathrooms.
Donnie Varner wasn’t hard to find, perched at the corner of the bar, drinking a draft beer and talking to a curvy girl in tight-fitting blue jeans, black halter top, and boots. Lillie walked with Quinn as they approached them, and the curvy girl turned to study Lillie head to toe.
“Lillie Virgil, what the hell you doin’ here? I paid that goddamn ticket.”
Lillie nodded without emotion. “Go make yourself scarce, Dwana. We’re here to see Donnie.”
The only thing worse than impugning the honor of the redneck male was to impugn the honor of the redneck female. Dwana put her hands on her hips, stuck out her large breasts, and lifted her chin. “Just ’cause you wear that badge doesn’t mean you have to be such a dyke bitch.”
Donnie winced and drank his beer. Lillie took a step forward, smiling sweetly.
“Dwana, why don’t you give your pussy a rest tonight,” Lillie said. “Or you out to break some kinda record?”
Dwana stepped forward to meet her toe-to-toe. Lillie stood her ground and looked down at Dwana, who was quite a bit shorter. Donnie pulled her in and whispered something soothing in her ear, something that made sense to Dwana’s honor, and she turned away with a flash of her highlighted hair.
“And here I thought you mighta mellowed since high school, Lillie,” Donnie said.
“Girl deserves it,” Lillie said. “That’s what she gets for being born the preacher’s daughter.”
Quinn looked up and showed the bartender two fingers, letting Donnie know this was social. He was drinking beer and didn’t come wearing his star or gun. “Heard you opened the gun range back up.”
“Got to make money somehow,” Donnie said. “Lost my job driving when the Guard called me back. Don’t care to sell Cheetos and Marlboros the rest of my life.”
“How’s that going for you?” Lillie asked.
“All right, I guess,” Donnie said. “Sellin’ pistols, deer rifles, and all. You know I got permits. It’s legal.”
The bartender set down a couple Budweisers. The jukebox in the corner started up, playing that old David Allan Coe song, “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.”
“I heard this song maybe a million times and still love it,” Donnie said, drinking, reminiscing about good times. “Y’all remember how tore up we used to get out on the Trace at those field parties? Alma Jane would put those kegs down in the creek, and me and Colson here would be there till they’d emptied out.”
Quinn smiled.
“Probably should be careful drinking a beer in public now that you’re a servant of the people and all,” Donnie said. “Won’t sit right with some.”
“I’m not changing who I am.”
“How long you known Quinn, Donnie?” Lillie asked.
“My whole life.”
“And what the hell did you expect?” she asked.
Donnie smiled and turned back into the bar, obviously a few beers and shots ahead. He was a little glassy-eyed and smirky and pretty much the way Quinn had hoped to find him. Quinn drank his beer, and David Allan Coe sang, most of the bar joining in to sing the part about “the perfect country-western song” at an ear-pounding volume. Nobody could talk till the jukebox settled into a downer from Dolly Parton about growing up poor and shoeless.
“All that groundwork for nothin’,” Donnie said, looking at Dwana, who’d settled in with her pink drink at a table with two guys not too far out of high school. “Dang it, Lillie. I’d already bought her two goddamn drinks. Those beach drinks ain’t cheap, either.”
“Well, think of how much I saved you on penicillin.”
“God damn, you rough, girl,” Donnie said, lighting up a smoke. “You are rough.”
Lillie shrugged.
“What happened to that good-looking girl I saw you with the other night?” Quinn asked.
Donnie narrowed his eyes, doing his best to look confused, tilting his head in thought a bit. “That little brown-eyed honey?”
“You got that many girls, Donnie?” Lillie asked, saddling up to a spot that opened up next to him. Quinn took the other side, the three of them facing their reflection in the bar mirror. The bar growing smoky as hell and thick with perspiration and bullshit.
“Oh, hell,” Donnie said. “That wadn’t nothing. Just making some time.”
“She from around here?” Quinn asked.
“Nah, just some little Mex,” Donnie said. “Hey, y’all want another beer? I’m buying.”
“She speak English?” Lillie said.
“’Course.”
“Thought that might be some kind of advantage not to understand you,” Lillie said.
“What you driving at?” Donnie said, grinning and stubbing out his smoke. “That I can’t pull some tail unless they don’t know what I’m saying?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Rough,” Donnie said. “Just rough.”
“So she’s not your girlfriend or anything?” Quinn asked.
“Nah, man,” Donnie said.
“Reason I’m asking,” Quinn said, “is that she looks like someone connected to a fella I’m looking for. You heard about Ramón Torres?”
Donnie shook his head.
“Ramón and Janet and all those kids,” Lillie said, turning on her barstool. “Don’t you read the goddamn paper, Varner?”
Donnie nodded. “Fat Janet? I didn’t know that Mex she was married to. What they’d do, kill that child?”
“They skipped town,” Quinn said.
“Your girl live here?” Lillie asked.
Donnie shook his head. He asked the bartender for another shot. “How about some tequila for my old high school buds? They got this thing they made up here the other night called a Bloody Maria. It’s like a Bloody Mary, but it’s with tequila, and a raw egg. So much hot sauce, it’ll set your asshole on fire.”
Lillie winced. “I’m good with beer.”
“Beer,” Quinn said.
The bartender cracked open a couple Buds and started into Donnie’s Bloody Maria.
“What else you know about the girl?” Quinn asked.
“Just met her the other night.”
“Where?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t want her to get in trouble or nothing,” Donnie said. “You guys ain’t
with border patrol last time I checked.”
“Just trying to find the Torres couple,” Quinn said. “Where’d y’all meet?”
“She come into the VFW Hall with a couple gals from the nail salon,” Donnie said. “I bought her a corn dog. That ain’t a crime.”
Donnie laughed, leaned forward, and took a sip of his drink. Lillie looked over to Quinn and nodded for him to keep driving at him, push him a little. There was nothing like a drunk at the bar to open up all his problems to his world. When Quinn had needed to investigate a fight, a theft, or some bullshit with his Joes, he’d usually catch them at the bar, after hours and off base, and they’d get to the heart of it.
“You get that girl’s number the other night?”
Donnie shook his head.
“She work at the nail salon, Donnie?” Lillie asked.
“Y’all seem to know more about her than I do,” Donnie said. “Shit. I was just trying to get sweet with her. But she wadn’t having none of it.”
“Where’d you drop her off?”
“Nowheres,” Donnie said. “She got mad after I touched her dang knee. Walked home from the Sonic. Thought I was trying to get into her pants.”
“Were you?” Lillie asked.
“Sure,” Donnie said.
“You are a real romantic,” Lillie said.
“But you’ll ask around,” Quinn said.
“Sure, sure. Y’all gonna drink some tequila with me or not?” Donnie said.
Quinn shook his head. Lillie didn’t bother to answer.
Donnie wandered off, right to the dance floor where Dwana was slow-dancing with another woman. He wrapped his arms around both of them, one hand full with the Bloody Maria and the other with a lit cigarette. Quinn figured he was having quite a time.
“You gonna check the nail salon?” Quinn asked as they walked out.
“Why? Son of a bitch is lying his ass off.”
18
SUNDAY MORNING CAME EARLIER THAN DONNIE WOULD’VE LIKED, HARD sunlight through the window of his Airstream and a loud knock on the door by ole Luther himself. His daddy only knocked, figuring Donnie mighta had a girl, but once he knew it was clear, he turned on the television and made a pot of coffee in the percolator. Donnie showered and shaved while Luther watched the news out of Tupelo, the old man suited and carrying a rebound leather Bible that he’d owned as long as Donnie had known him. Donnie didn’t feel much like religion today. He downed a couple Motrin and a cup of coffee, following the old man out to his old Chevy pickup, kicking the son of a bitch in gear and heading into Jericho and the Calvary Methodist.