by Ace Atkins
Boom walked up at his flank, Quinn walking with the Remington pump in hand, pockets loaded down with the extra magazines for the 9mm he wore on his belt.
“Donnie’s dead,” Boom said.
“Sounds like it.”
“This gonna get you in trouble with those Feds?”
“They asked me to let them go,” Quinn said. “I got to respond to shots fired.”
“Part of your job.”
“Thanks for coming.”
“I’d been pissed if Lillie hadn’t called.”
“What were you doing?”
“Wide-ass awake,” Boom said. “That’s the bitch of not drinking yourself to sleep.”
Quinn judged the distance before they’d stop. He radioed Lillie and within seconds heard her call down the ravine with a bullhorn for the men to put down their weapons and put up their hands. The reply came in assault weapons, zipping a continuous stream of bullets up onto the ridge.
Quick, loud, cracking rifle shots responded from the deputies. The men by the trucks ducked for cover and fired up to the ridge with their automatic weapons. Quinn was at a quick run now, Boom, Kenny, and Ike following, ready to sweep in behind the men and take control of the Varners’ land.
“Now?” Boom asked, Ike at his side. Kenny huffing up behind them, stifling a cough in his jacket.
Quinn held up his hand. He shook his head.
He watched the men taking the fire from the ridge. He waited until the sound broke slow and ragged, some spacing out their shots, some changing out ammo. He ran hard and fast to the rally point where they’d regroup before heading toward the trucks. But at the edge of the clearing, standing on a path to the gun range, Quinn spotted two big men. He slowed and stopped, the men not hearing him, and walked forward with the shotgun jacked full of deer slugs.
46
THE BIG MEN HELD UP THEIR HANDS AND DROPPED TO THEIR KNEES, A damn teenage kid walking from the shadows, sweaty palms up, yelling in English in a thick Mexican accent for Quinn not to shoot. Quinn shifted the Remington pump to the men and the boy, Boom and Kenny kicking the men to the ground, searching them for weapons. The boy pleaded with Quinn, as shots echoed through the ravine, telling him he was not a part of this, he was a friend to the owner of the gun range. Up behind the men, an 18-wheeler sat parked with its lights off and the back trailer doors wide open.
“Who’s with you?” Quinn asked.
“Two men inside the truck,” the boy said. “I don’t know their names.”
“You know Donnie Varner?”
The boy shook his head, not hearing him with all the shooting going on. During a lull, Quinn asked again.
The boy motioned up to the Airstream on the hill, Christmas lights strung from a ragged canopy to four-by-fours poking out of the ground. Quinn told Kenny and Boom to zip-cuff the men and the boy while he moved toward the big open doors of the 18-wheeler, shining a Maglite held next to the barrel of the shotgun into the open mouth, seeing two Anglo men turn, both sweating, dirty, and out of breath, slowly looking to Quinn like their asses had just been busted. “God damn,” Tiny said. “You made me shit my drawers, Colson.”
“Y’all get the hell out of there,” Quinn said. “Who’s got Donnie?”
“Them crazy-ass Mexes,” Shane said. “Shit, Quinn. Donnie said for us to go on in case this mess got started. You mind?”
“Who are these two men? That boy?”
“They work for Donnie’s girlfriend,” Shane said. “They’re just good folks.”
“I bet.”
Shane dropped his head and walked out with Tiny’s big ass, jumping to the ground first and then helping Tiny out. Both of them had big pistols on their waists, and Quinn took the weapons, stepping back and making his way back to the clearing. He heard the shooting every thirty seconds or so, volleying back and forth from inside the ravine.
“You stand with us, and the judge might make things easier on y’all,” Quinn said.
“For what?” Tiny asked, trying his best to look confused.
“Tiny, outwitting a man has never been your strong suit.”
The gunshots through the ravine went from the quick hard shots of the deer rifles to the rat-ta-tatting of assault rifles. Quinn moved around the wide berm of dirt littered with clay pigeons, beer cans, and tattered pieces of paper targets. The assault rifles flickered hot and orange in the night, the outline of the shooters standing behind their trucks clear and clean in the moonlight.
“You got ammo for those M4s?” Quinn asked Tiny.
Tiny shook his head.
“Well, that’s no help,” Quinn said.
He handed the pistols back to Tiny and said, “Your mother taught me in kindergarten. You shoot me in the back, Tiny, and she sure is going to be disappointed in you.”
ONLY TONY THE TIGER AND RAMÓN were left with Donnie and Luz. Tony walked around with the AK dropped in his left hand while Ramón found a spot on the couch to change out his bandage and scream a little bit, face turning white, eyes rolling upward some. Luz held a wet towel to Donnie’s face, crying, gripping his hand and saying everything was gonna be just fine. It reminded Donnie a bit of his mother as she was dying, telling him stories about tap dancing in heaven and ice-cream socials up in the clouds.
“How you like Tibbehah so far, Tony?” Donnie said.
Tony turned to him and pointed the gun at them. He was really an ugly son of a bitch, in his forties, with sandpaper skin and fat jowls, looking for all the world like damn Wayne Newton playing Roy Rogers.
Ramón kicked his foot up and down, yelling some more, biting down on torn strips of sheets, saying some kind of crazy-ass prayer.
“I think God’s taken you off the short list,” Donnie said, feeling Luz squeeze his fingers, closing her eyes tight, waiting for that final shot. A damn war cracking and popping all down the range, sounding tinny and compact in the old Airstream.
Ramón kicked and screamed again, pleading for Mother Mary and Jesus, and, damn, if Tony didn’t open up that AK and finish the job that Luz had started. Ramón Torres dropped hard and fast, lights out, sliding down on the couch.
“Déjale vivir y voy en paz.”
Tony agreed with what Luz said and reached for that long black hair and yanked her off her feet, away from Donnie and toward the door. Donnie yelled at Tony’s back as he found his feet and rammed the chair against the wall, breaking free of the rope. The thin Airstream door hung wide open, battering off the wall of that ole tin can. He looked down to Ramón Torres, dead and bloody, and felt sorry for him for a good two seconds before finding a .45 in his jacket pocket. Donnie ran to the mouth of the door, seeing Tony dragging Luz behind him, his neck thick and hairy under that cowboy hat.
Donnie’s shaking hand lifted that .45 as they moved down the hill, spitting blood to the ground and squeezing the trigger.
QUINN GAVE THE RADIO SIGNAL for Lillie to change the field of fire, the shots coming on stronger now but Quinn knowing they’d swung north, clearing the southern land between the berm, an outbuilding, and those boys hiding behind their luxury trucks. Quinn moved up and over the berm, the men following him across twenty yards to a metal shed, not even catching their breath before they all spread out side by side and headed right for those trucks, opening up fast and hard. Quinn squeezed off slug after slug at the center of shadows, falling one, two, three. Shots came from his side, zipping from the muzzles of the rifles, sparks of firelight, more cracking shots off the hills. Man after man falling, time stopping, heart racing, mind heading back to a rocky crag of some outer edge of hell in Kandahar, a plan to drag back a couple dead pilots before the sandpeople torched their bodies and carried off plane parts and weapons to use against Joes trying to rebuild a nation that wasn’t worth two shits in the first place.
In the periphery, Tiny jogged forward, yelling a war cry, two pistols in his hands, before being cut down to his knees. The shots now popping from a couple rifles. Two shadowed people, darting between bullet-riddled trucks, Quinn g
etting within thirty, twenty, fifteen meters. The shotgun was spent and empty of all twelve rounds, and he tossed it to the ground, pulling the Beretta, finding the lick of fire from the rifles and quieting both.
Two, three more cracks from up on the hills, and then that strange silence that follows battle. Boom and Kenny ran ahead, Kenny finding some kind of need to shoot a couple more times, probably from nerves. Ike McCaslin walked slower, falling in step with Quinn and asking, “You got any of them cigars left? They shore smelled good.”
DONNIE MISSED TONY THE TIGER three times before shooting the ugly bastard three times in the back, Luz falling from the man’s grip and tumbling down the hill. The guns went silent. A short pop-pop-pop, and damn nothing but cold Mississippi wind. His eyes were good and fucked up, and he knew he’d cracked at least two ribs, but Donnie made his way down to Luz, the girl trying to find her feet in the mud, a solid shiner below the left eye, black hair fallen wild from the ponytail and covering her face and busted lip.
She’d never looked prettier than when she brushed past Donnie, lit up good from the Christmas lights, and walked up to Tony’s worthless body. She kicked him good and proper in the face, taking that flat-crowned cowboy hat from the ground and twirling it on her finger, a souvenir.
Luz tripped down the hill, hat in hand, and met Donnie down on the footpath to the gun range. She wiped the mess of his face and said, “Can you still drive?”
LILLIE AND HER THREE DEPUTIES emerged from the skinny pines and thick oaks at the base of the ravine. Quinn had hit the headlights on a couple trucks, lighting up the seven fallen bodies, one draped through the open window of a truck.
Two enemy men were alive. Kenny called dispatch.
Tiny was dead, lying facedown in a mud hole with his big flannel shirt riding up, showing off his wide, naked white skin and the spot where the bullet went clean through. His camo baseball hat floating in the dark water.
“Where are we, again?” Boom asked.
“You want to check on Donnie?” Quinn asked.
“Nope.”
Lillie moved up to them, rifle in hand, confident, and lifted her eyes up to the trailer on the hill lit up in all those multicolored lights, a setting from a country music video but silent and still. “Nice trailer,” she said.
“I’ll call on Luther,” Quinn said.
“Maybe he’s still alive,” Lillie said.
“I should have pressed him.”
“Donnie sought out these folks,” Lillie said. “He brought them here.”
“He didn’t bring Ramón Torres,” Quinn said, moving up toward the hill, light silver and bright and strong. Moonlight shed across the hill and soft rolling mounds of man-made berms, sloping, giving space and height along the length of the gun range. Quinn reached into his pocket for a fresh cigar, listening to the strange sounds of the pumping accordion music coming from one of the shot-up cars.
“Can you do me a favor?” Lillie asked.
“Turn off the music?”
“I sure would love to be with you when those ATF folks find out what happened,” Lillie said. “You know the word ‘conniption’?”
Quinn fired up the cigar, sorry for what happened to Tiny. He’d known Tiny since they’d played Little League football together, but somehow couldn’t recall Tiny’s real name. Even as a kid, he’d always been looking for trouble, the bar fighter, the sore loser at pool, working as a landscaper, a roofer, a fella who’d never be worth more than a sidekick to Donnie Varner.
“Feel like home, Quinn Colson?” Lillie asked.
“Ain’t we all gonna live forever?”
“Come on,” Lillie said, nodding her head up the hill to Donnie’s Airstream. “Both of us will go.”
Sounds in the night become magnified. A snapping branch is a gunshot. Night birds can pierce the darkness. And the sound of a rumbling, grumbling motor of a Peterbilt in a skinny ravine can sound like a crackling, booming summer storm. Quinn saw the headlights, the brightness slicing down that narrow gravel road that Luther Varner had laid twenty years ago, growing closer. Quinn squinted and then ran with Lillie in step back down the hill, watching that length of 18-wheeler roll, big and bold, bumping and running, heading straight for the mess of Mexican trucks. Its headlights crisscrossed over dead bodies and deputies scurrying out of the way, who pulled out their still-warm guns and aimed at the truck, barreling right toward them. The Peterbilt scattered and twisted those big pickups, twirling, dumping one truck on its side, and running for hell and Highway 45, a long tooting whistle of “Fuck you” as it jostled and rolled on out.
Quinn reached out on the radio, calling dispatch to get the highway patrol to stop that truck.
DONNIE GAVE A REBEL YELL as he rammed through the trucks and cleared the path, that old Dodge van shooting out from the fire road in his rearview as he hit the county road, Donnie turning south and the van turning north. Donnie took a cut up and around Jericho and found a service road out to Highway 45, smiling big as shit when he hit the highway south, wondering for a good long while if he hadn’t pulled the son of a bitch off, planning to meet up with Luz and her boys down in Meridian at the truck stop they’d discussed. He drove from Jericho out of Tibbehah and then into Monroe and Lowndes County, finally seeing those flashing lights in his side mirror, laughing a bit, thinking of making a run for it, maybe hitting a country road and bailing out where there was a good mess of woods, calling Tiny to come pick him up, finding another way down to Mexico. But, damn, if there weren’t more asshole troopers blocking the road up by a filling station, flares in the road, chains with spikes and all that shit, and what is a man to do but tap the brakes, slow a bit into the early light, and find his license and proof of insurance.
He finally stopped a good ten yards short of the roadblock, light coming on a pale purple about six a.m. Donnie was tired and ragged, worn out, hungry and thirsty and flat-ass busted. Donnie rolled down the window to a thick-necked trooper meeting him with a Glock pulled out straight in his hands.
“Was I speeding, Officer? I swear to Christ I was in the flow of traffic.”
“Hands up,” the thick-necked trooper said, opening the door. “Hands up.”
“I get the idea,” Donnie said, hopping down to the asphalt, a couple troopers being first-class assholes and wrestling him to the ground just ’cause they could. They dragged him to his feet and pushed him toward a cruiser, Donnie asking if they would mind if he smoked on the way. The troopers didn’t answer.
“You boys sure love to work out,” Donnie said as they nudged him along. “Y’all do that together?”
47
“YOU’D LET ME KNOW IF I GOT A POSTCARD, OR PHONE CALL OR SOMETHIN’?” Donnie asked.
“You bet,” Quinn said.
“It’s the law. A prisoner got rights, too.”
“I heard about that, Donnie.”
“You know, this jail is a real shithole,” Donnie said, touching the bruises turning yellow and blue on his face. “Don’t you think it’s about time to rebuild? Hell, this thing was built back in the fifties.”
“Sixties,” Quinn said. “Nineteen sixty-one. Maybe you can ask your pal, Johnny Stagg, about funding that project.”
“He’s not my pal.”
“Don’t you care how he rolls in shit and comes out smelling like a rose?”
Donnie shrugged.
“Or that he was the one who turned on the Memphis folks,” Quinn said. “You ever met a man named Bobby Campo? Feds just raided two of his strip clubs.”
“You know, jails don’t have metal bars like this anymore,” Donnie said, absently lighting a cigarette, staring up at the ceiling, while Quinn stood above him. “You get locked solid doors and stainless steel commodes. This looks like that jail in El Dorado. Maybe I could whistle for Hondo and have him bring me the keys to the lock.”
“He’s too smart to throw in with you.”
“Guess you’re right.”
Quinn waited for Donnie to get up to escort him out into the
yard to talk to Luther through the chain link. It was Saturday, visitors’ day, and already the yard was filled with the drunks, drug abusers, and honky-tonk brawlers telling their families they were about to change, that tomorrow was going to be brighter.
“You know what I see in my mind?” Donnie asked, not turning once to Quinn, lying there in a dream state as he had for the last week.
“Love to hear it.”
“I see Luz on a beach somewhere,” he said. “Like in that movie Shawshank, and she’d be like that fella that escaped prison. The one working on his boat.”
“Tim Robbins.”
“Yeah, but good-looking. Like, she’s in a bikini, drinking a Corona, feet in the sand, and waiting till I get that postcard and find her. Maybe a Kenny Chesney song playing at some bar made out of driftwood, looking over the ocean.”
“From what you told me, I don’t think she was the bikini type,” Quinn said. “That little town where she was headed, the one up in the mountains, is pretty much dead center of a battle zone between those cartels. It’s an ugly scene, partner.”
“You mind letting me have my dreams?”
“Sure, Donnie.”
“But you’d tell me about a postcard if it came?”
“I’d deliver it in person.”
“Would those Feds tell you if they caught her and the boy?”
“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “I’m not exactly one of their favorite people.”
“Where’d they find that old van of mine?”
“Queen City truck stop outside Meridian.”
“That on Highway 20?”
“Yep.”
“So they were cutting over to 55?”
“Looks like it.”
“And they stole a truck?”
“They did.”
“Where’d y’all find that?”
“New Orleans.”
“And that truck?”