The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  “I’m loyal,” Quinn said. “Thanks.”

  Wash followed them back to Lillie’s Cherokee, parked near the service department. The man hadn’t shaved in a few days, his weak chin bristling with white hairs. He sniffed, rubbing a finger under his nose, and stood splayfooted for some more news about Milly he might be able to share with some cable news hosts. He’d fast become a late-night favorite, commenting on everything from gun rights to his personal hopeful in the presidential election. Online, there had been a movement of Wash Jones for President in deference to his straight talk and outrageous sayings.

  “Did your son ever tell you he’d been molested?” Lillie asked. Lillie never being one for small talk.

  “What?” Wash asked, looking even more dumbfounded than if he’d been slapped across his ruddy face. “What’s Brandon got to do with nothing?”

  “We believe Milly wanted to expose his rapist.”

  “Where did y’all get that trash?” he asked. “Dang. He wasn’t more than sixteen when he died. He wasn’t raped no more than me.”

  “Your ex-wife said he’d confided in her,” Quinn said.

  “And your daughter,” Lillie said. “She said y’all took him to get counseling in Tupelo right before he killed himself.”

  “My boy didn’t kill himself,” Wash said. “Holy moly. Everybody knows that boy got injured while chasing a twelve-point buck. How’s this helping? How’s this supposed to do a goddang thing but throw muck at my family? I spent most of my life as a hardworking American knee-deep in shit, but this sure do take the cake.”

  A portly woman wearing a MILLY JONES IS MY GUARDIAN ANGEL shirt walked up to Wash and without a word gave him a long, deep hug, saying she’d be praying for him. He patted her back and smiled, saying he sure did appreciate her support and that she could find out more tonight on Nancy Grace at eight Central.

  “Milly had Brandon’s old cell phone,” Quinn said. “We unlocked it this week and found hundreds of texts between Brandon and an older man. Brandon wanted to tell the truth to everyone, but the man threatened his life and the safety of your whole family.”

  “Trash,” Wash said. “Nothing but trash. I don’t want to hear a word of it. Do you know what I’ve been going through, a first-class trip through the depths of hell? Brandon has been gone a long while. We healed up on that. Do y’all think the Jones family hasn’t suffered enough?”

  Lillie put her hands on her hips, looking to the carnival set up in front of the showroom window, kids playing around in a jump house, a clown making balloon animals, and the owner of the dealership handing out sacks of popcorn and free hot dogs. The air smelled of a county fair.

  “Before high school, Brandon was a manager for the football team,” Lillie said. “He helped out with the equipment, chasing down footballs, running water out to the players.”

  “You bet,” Wash said. “Done that for two years. Coach Bud respected him so much, he took him on road trips. You know how many young kids wish they had an opportunity like that? Made him feel part of the team.”

  Quinn looked to Lillie. Lillie said, “How’d he get to and from the games?”

  “On the dang bus,” he said. “Sometimes, he rode with Coach. Just what are y’all getting at?”

  Lillie’s radio on her hip started to squawk with Kenny working an accident scene over on County Road 221. She turned down the radio, tilted her head, eyes against the sun, and said, “This isn’t for public consumption,” she said. “Especially for Nancy Grace tonight. But those text messages were coming from Coach Mills.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Afraid not.” Lillie shook her head. Quinn stood ready if Wash Jones wanted to show his true self right there at the Chevy dealership among the sales folks, kids, and clowns. But Wash just hung back, mouth wide-open, breathing in and out, eyes unfocused and fuzzy, trying to make sense of just exactly had been said.

  “Coach Mills is a hero,” Wash said. “Without him, y’all would have never splattered Nito Reece’s black ass all over that damn cotton compress.”

  Quinn shook his head. “Milly wanted him exposed,” he said. “The last call she made was to Bud Mills, thirty minutes before that trucker found her on fire.”

  “A lie,” he said. “Y’all are lying. Ole Job never had to suffer words and horrors like this.”

  “We’re bringing in the coach for raping Brandon and other boys,” Lillie said. “If you know something, now’s the time. This man may be responsible for the deaths of both of your children.”

  “Y’all have an agenda of filth,” he said. “And I ain’t going to that fuckin’ circus.”

  He spit on the ground, eyed Lillie and Quinn up and down, and shook his stupid head sadly and theatrically. “You don’t want Nito to be the one.”

  “Come again?” Lillie said.

  “Y’all just can’t stand that some poor ole nigger boy murdered an angel of this world,” he said. “You got to tear us all down, make us no better than the blacks, to work on whatever weak tea liberal-ass agenda you got.”

  “It’s not just Brandon,” Lillie said. “There’s a long list. Milly’s the hero. She’s the only one with guts to stand up to him.”

  Wash shook his head. “Get the hell out of here,” he said. “And, god damn, you ain’t the nephew to Hamp Beckett. That man is doing somersaults in his grave right now, hearing ‘The World Turned Upside Down.’”

  “I expect you’re right, Mr. Jones,” he said. “Uncle Hamp kept a file on Bud Mills, thick as two phone books. Years of young boys like Brandon. Last night, I found it in the mess I inherited and we’ve been calling up victims all day. I wouldn’t have known where to look if it hadn’t been for Milly.”

  “Good Lord Almighty,” Wash said.

  “Thank the Lord, the apple fell damn far from the tree,” Lillie said. “You’re right. Milly was a special woman.”

  • • •

  What the hell do you want?” Ordeen Davis asked. “You want to try and fuck with me some more?”

  “Everywhere I go today,” Quinn said, “I make friends.”

  “Y’all wanted Nito and you got him,” Ordeen said. “I wasn’t about to help with that bullshit. You had it in your mind to kill his ass and that’s what you did.”

  Quinn didn’t have an answer, as he had killed Nito. He’d rushed right into that small box of a room, seeing Nito Reece grinning ear to ear while running a pressure wash gun up the rectum of three-time Mississippi Coach of the Year Bud Mills. D. J. Norwood raised a .32 pistol at Quinn and Quinn blasted a hole through Norwood with his twelve-gauge, turning to Nito as he pulled a gun from his jeans. But Wash Jones had been wrong. Quinn had shot Nito not once, but twice.

  Ordeen stood with a soapy sponge in hand, a bucket full of suds, and a garden hose running down his driveway. Nito Reece’s electric-blue Nova, sporting twenty-inch spinning silver rims, was parked out in front of Ordeen’s mother’s brick ranch house a few miles outside town. Same tag reading HERE KITTY KITTY.

  “We think Nito might have had some help killing Milly Jones.”

  Ordeen tossed the sponge in the bucket, walked over to the spigot, and turned off the water, suds and bubbles raining down off the slick blue hood and shiny silver rims. He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “I wondered how long till y’all were going to start bird-dogging my ass on this.”

  “I’m not looking at you, Ordeen,” Quinn said. “You have my word. I just need to know what Nito told you about Milly Jones.”

  “Nito said y’all was trying to set him up,” he said. “And that Coach Mills helping y’all out. Telling a bunch of lies.”

  “You might be right.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Ordeen said. “Y’all found his Nova up in Memphis and checked out every damn inch. You know, it’s clean as hell.”

  “He sold it to folks who run a
detail shop.”

  “I paid them cash for this car,” Ordeen said. “They didn’t want it no more. I’m gonna drive it out of respect for Nito. I’m putting his name on the back window. He’s a damn victim in this thing just like Milly Jones.”

  “Nito may have been coerced,” Quinn said. “But he helped.”

  “Bullshit, man,” Ordeen said. “You try to play some head games with me? Everybody loves Coach’s ass for bringing in the law to string up my boy. Y’all were too happy to kill some black folks. But I ain’t playin’ that. I don’t have nothing to do with nothing.”

  “We just arrested Coach Mills,” Quinn said.

  “Bullshit.”

  “He’s been molesting kids for a long time,” Quinn said. “Milly Jones was going to out him for what he’d done to her brother.”

  The words struck Ordeen, standing there, nodding and listening, in his white wifebeater shirt and low-hanging jean shorts. His braided hair looking wild and unkempt as a lion’s mane. All of sudden, he started to shake his head and burst out laughing. He wasn’t faking it, laughing so hard he dropped his hands to his knees like he’d just finished up a long series of wind sprints. “Like I said,” Ordeen said, “bull-fucking-shit. Ain’t nobody can take down Bud Mills. He’s bigger than any law or politician in Jericho.”

  “Did Nito ever tell you about him and Coach?”

  “He told me enough.”

  “I mean, when he was a kid,” Quinn said. “Did he ever talk about being with Coach while his momma was out working late, getting arrested for drugs and hooking? I found an old report from my uncle that said his mother believed Nito had been molested. But nobody took her seriously.”

  “I ain’t getting into this mess,” Ordeen said. “I’m done. I’m done with all this shit. I don’t trust you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you the same as everybody else,” he said. “Your uncle kilt Nito’s father and you kilt Nito. And now you ain’t gonna rest till I’m dead, too.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “I need you to stand up.”

  “‘Stand up’?” Ordeen said, laughing again. “Bullshit, man. Bullshit.”

  “Bud Mills raped children,” Quinn said. “He raped Nito and he raped Milly Jones’s little brother and probably a hell of a lot more boys. I think you heard something from Nito after he got pulled into this mess. I think you need to quit hangdogging it and feeling sorry for yourself and stand up and act like a man.”

  “Just like Coach,” Ordeen said. “You sound just like Coach.”

  “Why would you want to stick with him?” Quinn asked. “After what he did to Nito? Why don’t you go ahead and let everyone keep believing Coach Bud Mills shined the light on the black drug dealer who raped and murdered an angel?”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  “Listen up, man,” Quinn said. “I never liked Mills. He was a bully and a walking freak show. But I need you to stand up. What we got isn’t strong enough.”

  “What you got?”

  “An old phone and the word of a dead kid.”

  Ordeen walked back over to the spigot and turned on the water, rinsing off his dead friend’s ride, taking slow, special care on the hood and windows, sluicing with soapy water. He kept shaking his head, muttering to himself. “Ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You send Coach Mills to prison and then folks around here gonna have to start looking at themselves. Since when has that shit ever happened? Even a goddamn tornado and the hand of God on this county couldn’t rattle that cage.”

  “Help us out, Ordeen,” Quinn said. “Putting a Fly High sticker on that old Nova won’t do shit for Nito.”

  Ordeen stared at him for a long while. Then he nodded.

  • • •

  Jason Colson met Bentley at a cigar lounge down in Jackson after the kid stopped returning his phone calls and emails. Bentley swore nothing was a-matter, he’d been doing a lot of work for his father and for a Washington lobbyist who’d given him an internship straight out of Ole Miss. Jason walked into the smoke-filled room lined with brown leather couches, easy chairs, and framed prints of women with big jugs in seductive poses with cigars between their teeth, thinking this was going to be it. He could finally seal the damn deal and hustle on back to Jericho to get on the bulldozer, clear the lands, and plan on that big beautiful barn that would sit on top of that stark, naked hill.

  The kid offered him some twenty-three-year-old Pappy Van Winkle that had been a personal gift from the governor. But Jason refused, telling him that it had been a while since he drank but he had no trouble being around it. “I ain’t no Seventh-day Adventist,” Jason said, clutching an accordion binder under his arm, pearl Stetson down in his eyes. “I just have too many miles on my liver and don’t have the time nor inclination for it to expire.”

  “Glad you came down,” Bentley said. “I was just remembering all those crazy stories you used to tell me. I finally got around to watching Sharky’s Machine. I loved it. Was that really you that fell out of that hotel in Atlanta?”

  “It was actually my friend Dar Robinson,” Jason said. “He fell two hundred and twenty feet, although the actual fall wasn’t used in the film. They only showed the first part of the gag, Dar falling backward out of the window with the glass breaking. Last I checked, it still held the record for the longest free fall in a movie. Dar was a pistol. Ended up getting killed when he drove a dirt bike off the side of a cliff. Before that, he never had so much as a broken bone.”

  “Well, it was impressive as hell,” Bentley said. “You stuntmen are a different breed.”

  “Appreciate that, Bentley,” Jason said. “And I think you know how I feel about you and your dad. Y’all looked out for me for a long while. I was kind of a mess when I got back to Mississippi.”

  Bentley smiled, a puff of smoke over his face, looking much like the sun going behind a cloud and then returning much paler than before. He tipped the ash of his cigar, Jason thinking about all the times he’d seen Quinn do the same thing. But the big cigar looked odd in the kid’s hands, the smoke too large for his little fingers, almost like something that Emmett Kelly would have plucked in the side of his mouth as a joke.

  “I tried to call you, Mr. Colson,” he said. “I guess you didn’t get my messages.”

  “No, sir,” Jason said, holding that smile so long his mouth hurt.

  “I tried and tried, but I couldn’t get that arrangement figured out,” he said. “I even talked to my daddy, but he said it would be a hell of a risk for some stripped-out land.”

  And it seemed for a moment that time just kind of stuck right there in the leather-padded room with all that fine wooden furniture and happy big-titted women. It was much like that time in a gag where you’re free-falling or jumping your motorcycle over some cars when you could hear the wind in your ears but nothing else, everything working ’round and ’round in slow motion, until you stuck that landing or tumbled with bones sticking from your arms or legs.

  “Y’all had promised.”

  Bentley shook his head, waving away the smoke. “I promised to try,” he said. “You’re a good friend of the family. I never even got up on a horse before I met you. Daddy said you did a hell of a job keeping his barn in top shape. Feeding and shoeing our horses.”

  “Appreciate that.”

  “I’m sure you got a lot of options,” Bentley said. “Did you think to try a bank in Jericho? They might have something more to work with since y’all are close by. Maybe you can put up that ole relic from Hooper on eBay? I bet some crazy movie fan would empty his pockets for that. How far did that car jump?”

  Jason dropped the smile. He took off his Stetson and waved away the smoke, standing and looking down at Bentley comfortable in the back room, a nice bottle of whiskey sitting within arm’s reach. The kid, just a little bit high, had both of his palms
set loose on the armrests.

  “I didn’t make the jump,” Jason said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it was in the movie,” Jason said. “But it never jumped that river. No car could ever do that. It was just movie magic. The prop boys made a model of it. It wasn’t any more real than a spaceship in dang Star Wars.”

  “But you said,” Bentley said, still smiling but now looking a little superior.

  “It was a just a funny story for a kid,” Jason said. “You’re too old to be believing that kind of crap. I ain’t Santa Claus.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said. “Sure then.”

  “I better get goin’.”

  “Well, good luck, Mr. Colson.”

  “As my daddy used to say, ‘Wish in one hand and shit in another,’” Jason said. “Go and see which one gets filled first.”

  Bentley slapped his knee and laughed, walking Jason Colson to the door, before turning back to his buddies in the lounge.

  32

  Can we make it fast, Reverend?” Lillie asked. “It’s not the best time for some fellowship.”

  “Came to talk to you about Coach Mills,” Reverend Zeke Traylor said. “I am horrified and shocked about these things being said about him in the press. He’s been a member of my church for more than twenty years. My wife and I just discussed the matter over breakfast at the Huddle House. We both just knew our sheriff was out to keep a fair and balanced look at the situation.”

  Lillie had been up all night with Mills, the coach still in their custody with bail being set by the judge in the morning. He’d spent hour upon hour denying allegations about Brandon Jones, Nito Reece, and the three other boys—now men—who’d stepped forward when they heard the charges against him. He was nervous, sweating, muttering to himself, when they talked. He kept on referring to himself in the third person, telling her and Quinn that Coach would never do such a thing. Coach is a man among men. Christ Almighty.

  “If you want to be a character witness,” Lillie said, “save it for the trial.”