The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  “I don’t know if he’s on board with the whole idea of it,” Jason said. “Buying up all that land and some more property. But he said he wouldn’t stop me if I wanted to go ahead and get the ball rolling with Stagg.”

  “That’s terrific,” Bentley said, giving a little crooked smile. “Really great. But there may be a little trouble with that.”

  Jason added a little cream and a lot of sugar to his coffee, stirring with a sanitized spoon. The waitress came over and set down Bentley’s large sweet tea. The boy shook the glass, getting it nice and cold, and took a long swallow.

  “Mr. Stagg says he’ll only deal with one Colson,” Bentley said. “That being Quinn. I got the feeling some hard feelings were left between them and he’d like your son to show a little respect.”

  “‘Hard feelings’?” Jason said. “Shit, yeah, there were some hard feelings. Quinn helped put Johnny Stagg in federal prison and stripped away that whole redneck Game of Thrones he’d started. I’d call it a lot more than hard feelings. Quinn tore that playhouse down to the studs.”

  “It does seem like Mr. Stagg has respect for Quinn,” Bentley said. “Mr. Stagg, at heart, is a true Southern conservative who respects our veterans. That means something if we want him to sign off on the deal.”

  “So you talked with Stagg direct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bentley said. “I sure did. I didn’t know that Stagg had only owned the land for four years. The way y’all were talking, I thought it was the old home place or something.”

  “Johnny Stagg’s people never had a home place,” Jason said. “They crawled out of a shithole like some kind of swamp creatures from a B movie. Stagg’s daddy ran a manure truck between New Albany and Jericho. Didn’t pass a pile of shit he didn’t stop to pick up.”

  “Ha,” Bentley said. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Just how much did your daddy tell you about Johnny Stagg?” Jason said.

  The waitress coming back again, smiling at both of them, but, being closer in age to Bentley, smiled a bit more at the boy. She was wondering if they’d decided on lunch and they had. Not much to figure out at the Waffle House. Bentley wanted that patty melt with no onions and Jason was about ready for breakfast, as he’d yet to eat since fried chicken last night with Quinn. Hash browns, scattered and smothered. Two eggs, runny as hell.

  “When I was coming up, Stagg was a joke,” Jason said. “A lackey for the old supervisors who’d stripped the guts out of the county, skimming off road projects, clear-cutting timber. I’m not exactly sure, but I think Stagg worked as some kind of orderly at the old folks’ home. The devil can be charming. And he charmed a lot of dying people out of their property while draining the shit and piss from their bedpans. Him and his daddy were true artistes when working with human excrement.”

  “That’s how he built the Rebel.”

  “The Rebel was already something when he bought it,” Jason said. “But it’s fair to say he built it up. Brought in the Booby Trap, started making connections on all those side projects. Did a lot hand-in-hand with ole Larry Cobb, who’s also now in prison. Pretty much ran the good, honest bootleggers like the Colson family out of business.”

  “Y’all were really serious bootleggers?”

  “Damn straight,” Jason said. “My daddy made the most gorgeous stuff you ever smelled in your life. He’d hide it up under floorboards of our house, each bottle clear and pretty, swaddled in cotton so it didn’t shake when you walked over it.”

  Bentley drank some sweet tea and seemed to be thinking long and hard on something. The Waffle House was set off from the highway, sitting smack-dab in the middle of what used to be a planting field. A half mile away there was a Tractor Supply, and down a ways along the railroad tracks sat a wide-open space advertising spots in a development to rent or own.

  “My daddy thinks it’s good to have some friends in Jericho,” Bentley said. “With all this mess with this girl, I don’t think Fannie Hathcock is going to last long. Just saw on the news that the girl was dancing at her titty bar. No one minds a whore dead in the alley, but if she’s walking the street, people will complain.”

  “Did your daddy say that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sounds like your old man.”

  “Everyone says he sure is a piece of work,” Bentley said, long brown hair falling over his left eye, pushing it away to see. “If you can make this deal with Stagg, it would be nice to know we still got some good friends in Jericho. I heard your son might even run for office.”

  “Oh,” Jason said. “He’s not running. He’s just taking on a little work before he heads back overseas. He’s trying to sort out a complicated personal relationship.”

  “More than anything, Mr. Stagg wants to know his interests are being stoked,” Bentley said. “He does you a favor by releasing that hundred acres and maybe you do him a favor on down the line. And so it goes.”

  “Your daddy and him are buds?” Jason said.

  “They are,” Bentley said. “For a real long time.”

  The waitress set down the two platters and ripped the check from her book. Jason had never seen anyone as quick as Bentley when it came to snatching it right up. “Oh, no, sir,” he said. “This one is on us.”

  • • •

  Lillie parked out on the county road and followed the gravel drive down a curved path to four trailers packed side by side. The trailers were older models, faded greens and a mustard yellow from back in the 1970s. No one had bothered to build steps, only laid some concrete blocks at the front doors. The dirt mess of a yard littered with old plastic toys, rusted car parts, and discarded furniture. Just in case you didn’t know, these folks wanted you to understand they just didn’t give two shits.

  The door opened before she could knock and a teenage girl made her way down the steps. She wore a strapless white dress, no shoes, and held a toddler in her arms.

  “Are you Nikki Rowland?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said. The girl had a hoarse voice, looking tired and beaten. She had bloodshot eyes and her chin shook when she spoke.

  Lillie put her hands on her hips, trying to look like she’d yet to notice she was standing in someone’s personal junkyard. The sun was directly overhead and hot as hell. “Need to ask you few things.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nikki said, taking in a long breath. “I’d invite you in, but things are kind of a mess.”

  “I have a child, too,” Lillie said. “I understand how things can get.”

  “All this,” Nikki said. “This is all temporary. My folks own these trailers. They’re letting me stay here until I go back to work.”

  “What do you do?” Lillie said, squinting toward Nikki in the hot white sun. Cicadas up and running as it was high past noon.

  “I work in the food service industry.”

  “OK.”

  “Well,” Nikki said, walking closer to Lillie, smiling. “I roller-skate and serve burgers and shakes at the Sonic.”

  “Need to talk to you about Milly.”

  “I was waiting for you,” Nikki said. “Amber Jones just called and said you’d be heading this way. I’ve been crying so damn much, I think my insides have emptied out. I smoked a little weed to calm down my nerves. Hope you won’t judge me on that.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “She was my best friend.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “Ain’t no one deserves what she got,” Nikki said. “I don’t know if I can make it through this. If it weren’t for my boy, I think I’d just crawl into a hole and die. You see what they did to her? God. I don’t know if it’s worse up close or just to imagine it.”

  “It was pretty bad up close,” Lillie said.

  Nikki was a pretty little girl, with apple cheeks, dark skin and eyes, and that two-tone black-and-blonde hair girls wore these days. The tops
of her shoulders were sunburned and freckled. She looked like a girl who took care of herself and needed to grab her baby and run far, far from this place. She snuffled a little bit, big ole tears running down her cheeks until she wiped them away with a fist. Her bloodshot eyes refocused on Lillie.

  “When did you see her last?”

  “At the ball game.”

  “She came to the football game?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nikki said, the little boy crawling high up into his mother’s arms but turning back for a few curious glances to Lillie. “We always went to the games. We agreed to support the squad even if we weren’t on it no more. We both cheered for the Wildcats.”

  “Nikki, I need to know every single thing Milly told you Friday night,” Lillie said. “Both big and small. Even if you think it’s not important, I need to know. She was your best friend and you might be the best thing we’ve got.”

  Nikki nodded, the little boy even more intrigued by Lillie now, reaching out, touching Lillie’s face and then turning back, quick and shy. Flirting.

  “She was only there the first half,” Nikki said. “We mainly watched the squad, talked about what they were doing right and doing wrong. Some of the girls really half-assing what they were supposed to do. Sometime in the second quarter, Milly told me she was leaving Jericho for good.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Nikki said. “She couldn’t make money in town. Had busted up with the love of her life.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Joshua Pitts.”

  Lillie nodded, she knew about Joshua. He was up next, but Lillie didn’t expect much as they’d been apart for more than a year. Most of the time, he’d been living in Nashville. The kid had never had so much as a speeding ticket. But there’d be countless emails to go through, phone calls to check on.

  “She’d had it out with her daddy,” Nikki said. “Hold on. Hold on. Hush. Hush. Jon-Jon. Come on. Let go of Momma’s hair.”

  “He tossed her out?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nikki said. “She’d been living in a car. I think she got some help at the hippie church out on Jericho Road.”

  “The River.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nikki said. “That place. You might want to check with them? I think she was out there a couple days. I offered for her to stay here with me, but she said she had some things to do. She needed to get some things straight before she left town.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Nikki,” Lillie said, softly and with great patience. “I could really use something to go on.”

  The little boy had a good wad of the girl’s hair, pulling it and stuffing it into his mouth. Nikki set him down and the toddler began to walk on shaky legs around the various sharp metal car parts and busted bottles. Lillie smiled at Nikki, picked up the child, and told her how much she loved kids and that her own daughter, Rose, was about to celebrate her fourth birthday.

  “I love that little boy more than I love myself, but I sure wasn’t ready.”

  “Never are,” Lillie said.

  “Milly had to take a job dancing to make ends meet.”

  Lillie nodded, bouncing the child up and down in her arms. He had on nothing but diapers and small red tennis shoes, chocolate stains around his mouth and down his fat belly.

  “She’d only been at it a week when she decided to leave town,” Nikki said. “I think she made enough money to take her to wherever she wanted to go.”

  “And where was that?”

  “She didn’t want to tell me,” Nikki said. “She said she’d call me when she got settled. I figured it was somewhere down in Florida. Or on the coast. Milly loved the beach.”

  “What’d you think about her dancing at Vienna’s?”

  “I didn’t look down at her or nothing, if that’s what you’re asking,” Nikki said. “I make eight dollars an hour plus tips. Milly said she was making over a thousand dollars a night.”

  “Maybe I should start working the pole.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Nikki said, smiling a little. “You’re somebody. You’re the damn sheriff, Miss Virgil.”

  The cicadas boiled up loud and wide across the evenly planted pine trees. Lillie reached into her pocket for a handkerchief and began to wipe the boy’s face. She just couldn’t help it. The boy was small but had a lot of weight, heavy in her arms.

  “You came and talked to our class once,” Nikki said. “When we were freshman. You told the girls that the world wasn’t a boys’ club.”

  “I said that?”

  “You sure did.”

  “Hmm.”

  Nikki took back her baby and held him close. “I just wish me and Milly had listened up better.”

  “When’s the last time she and her boyfriend spoke?”

  “A year,” Nikki said. “That’s a waste. Joshua’s one of the sweetest people I ever met.”

  “How about Wash Jones?” Lillie said. “How mad was her daddy?”

  “Mad as hell,” Nikki said. “Called her a whore and threw her things out in the yard. He’s a sick man. I wish she hadn’t gone back there. But she didn’t have a heck of lot of choices.”

  Lillie nodded. “What do you think happened?”

  “That girl bragged to me she had plenty of money,” Nikki said. “I offered to let her borrow sixty dollars and she turned it down.”

  “All from dancing?”

  “I never set foot in that place by the highway,” Nikki said. “But I think Milly took something that didn’t belong to her.”

  “Did she seem like she was in a hurry?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” she said. “She was headed somewheres.”

  “She say anything else?”

  The girl looked like she had something right in her mouth but was holding it with clamped jaws. Her eyes darted away from Lillie and she simply shook her head. “I loved Milly,” she said. “We were sisters.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “About Milly?” Nikki said. “No, ma’am.”

  “You think on it, Nikki,” Lillie said. “And you call me. OK?”

  The child reached out and grabbed the gold star on Lillie’s chest, trying to pull it away, until Nikki stopped him. “Sheriff,” Nikki said, clutching the boy’s tiny hand. “Wow. Damn, that’s cool. I’d love to see a woman get the man who did this.”

  Lillie put on her aviator sunglasses and nodded, pretty damn sure now it wasn’t a man who did it at all.

  • • •

  Wash Jones flushed the commode, stood by the bathroom sink, and started to run some cool water from the spigot. He waited a good minute before things got cold enough, flushing that hot stuff from the pipes, before he could lean down and splash his face. Reaching into the cabinet, he grabbed hold of a pill bottle and downed a couple trusted white ones with a handful of water. The water ran clean but smelled a little like sulfur, since their well didn’t go down as deep as he’d like. You go any deeper and it’d cost you a few more thousand.

  He’d thought about putting on his Sunday suit and had dressed in all that heavy gray wool but found it too hot for August and a little too high-dollar for what he needed to do. Instead, he picked out the same clothes he’d wear on a work interview and set them on his bed. He had a good pair of brown Carhartt pants, a thick blue T-shirt with a square pocket, and a pair of Georgia boots, the lowers made of rubber in case he had to do any septic work. Wash steadied his hands on each side of the sink and looked at his saggy face, seeing one spot he missed while shaving and taking another swipe with the razor.

  As he waited for the pills to get going, he smoked a cigarette and pulled on his pants.

  He was going to wear a brand-new ball cap proclaiming Christ Is King but then at the last minute switched it out for the one he’d just gotten in the mail fr
om the NRA. If any of them sonsabitches was watching, he wanted them to know he was packing.

  Wash’s chest was slick with sweat, with heat, with worry, as he turned on a table fan set on the dresser to get himself dry. He put on some of that Axe Bodyspray, tugged on his T-shirt, and set his pack of smokes in the pocket. The NRA hat was a good touch. He wondered if he might wear a gun on his hip, too, although they’d taken away his open-carry permit after he tried to make a citizen’s arrest of that woman at the Tupelo mall for shoplifting.

  “Wash?” Charlotte said from the family room. The trailer was a neat little single-wide, carrying sounds through it like an empty coffee can.

  “Huh?”

  “You about ready?” Charlotte said. “Everyone’s waiting.”

  “Yes, god damn it,” Wash said, pulling on his work boots, using a soggy towel to clean off the dirt. “I’m comin’. Shit.”

  He sat on the bed for a minute. The mattress had grown real soft in the center where the dog slept. He put his face into his hands, feeling the weight of it start to pressurize and fill inside him. The damn grief of it all came spurting on up in a blubbering mass. He sat there crying alone for a couple minutes until he could feel those pills kicking in and everything softened a bit. He didn’t even see Charlotte filling up the doorway, tears in her eyes now, the shit spreading from person to person like a flu, as she looked in on him.

  “Wash,” she said. “Oh, Lord.”

  “I said, I’m comin’.”

  He hefted off the bed, the center of the trailer dark as Hades, blinds rolled down, nothing but the TV giving off a glow. Dr. fucking Phil. All that commotion buzzed around the trailer, and Wash felt a sickness in his chest as he tried to pass by Charlotte, the fat woman clutching him and hugging him close like she was his momma or something.

  “All right. All right. Hell. Let’s go.”

  “You want me with you?”

  “That’s why I done told you to put on makeup and a nice dress.”

  “You think I look OK?”

  “Sure,” Wash said, not even seeing what she’d put on. It was a dress of some sort. “Why wouldn’t you?”