by Ace Atkins
“You’re right,” Quinn said. “You never told me that story.”
Jean took a big sip of wine. She shrugged back at Quinn. “Part of it was a pleasant memory,” she said, “if certain folks hadn’t been a part of it.”
Quinn nodded, brought his empty plate to the big farm sink, setting in the stopper and starting to fill it with water. He added in a box of suds and went ahead, starting with the glasses on the counter.
“Leave it.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Leave it.”
“You made dinner.”
Soon, Quinn was elbow-deep in the sink, and Jean was slow-dancing with Jason to “She Thinks I Still Care,” getting ready to put him to bed. After he finished the dishes, Quinn grabbed a La Gloria Cubana and wandered down to the fire pit. He added some branches and dry leaves, and then some busted-up logs, to the ring of old stones. In the fall, he’d cut some trees for firewood and left some large logs on each side of the pit. It had been so cold, he hadn’t had much company lately. Caddy was still at The River.
Halfway into his cigar, a truck pulled into the driveway by the house and he heard the telltale squeak of Boom’s old door. He was a hulking shadow, making his way from the hill, where the farmhouse was perched, down to the stone pit, taking a seat on a log across from Quinn. The fire crackled between them, Quinn poking at it with a long stick.
“Watching a fire sober isn’t as much fun as when you’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk,” Quinn said.
“You like to think on things,” Boom said. “I used to drink to turn all that shit off.”
The right arm of his coat had been neatly cut and pinned at the elbow. Lately, Boom didn’t wear the prosthetic outside the garage.
“You got a smoke for me?” he asked.
Quinn reached into his ranch coat and found another cigar. He stood and passed it to Boom’s left hand. Boom bit off the end and Quinn lit a stainless steel Zippo etched with an America flag.
Boom got the cigar going, blowing out the warm smoke into the cold air.
“I tried you at the office,” Boom said, “but Mary Alice said you were out with Lillie.”
“Went out to see E. J. Royce.”
“That motherfucker is crazy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Left you a message,” Boom said. “Guess you didn’t get it.”
The logs had started to smoke and flames started to rise high off the dry oak as Quinn poked at the edges. The red oak smelled very good and sweet on a cold January night. The cigar smelled of rich, aged tobacco and a cedar wrapper.
“I was working on Kenny’s engine today,” Boom said. “You know he really does need a new vehicle? That Crown Vic has about had it. A true piece of shit, even with my touch.”
“Working on it.”
“Well, I had my head up under the hood, doing my thing, minding my own business.”
Quinn smoked the cigar and watched the fire. The sky above him was big and black, speckled with a million stars. Everything bigger out in the Mississippi hills, wilder in the country.
“Well, I heard Chuck McDougal out in the lot talking to Mr. Dupuy,” Boom said. “I had the bay door open and they didn’t even know I was there or I could hear them.”
“Dumbasses,” Quinn said. “What’d they say?”
“They gonna smoke your ass at the supervisors’ meeting,” Boom said. “Dupuy guaranteed his support to ask you to step down until the DA has cleared you. McDougal is going to say this shooting is an embarrassment to our great county.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Both of ’em,” Boom said.
“Sometimes I wonder why I came back.”
“Sometimes?” Boom said. “Shit, I wondered that from the first moment you stepped foot back in Jericho.”
Boom clenched the cigar in his teeth and grinned. The wind fluttered his empty right sleeve. Quinn took another puff of his cigar and tossed it deep into the fire.
• • •
On the front porch of her old bungalow two blocks from the Jericho Square, Diane Tull kept a collection of wind chimes, now tinkling and twirling in the January wind. Diane was getting ready for bed after spending the last hour talking with her son Patrick, who’d just moved back to Phoenix and found work at a bookshop in Scottsdale. Her other son, David, didn’t call as much. He lived in Nashville, waiting tables during the day and singing for tips outside Ernest Tubb Record Shop at night. Her second husband, their father, had been a frustrated singer/songwriter who thought of himself as the James Taylor of the Southwest, singing about Indians and sunsets. At first, he’d seemed charming to Diane. Later, she knew he was completely and utterly full of shit.
Diane was glad to be in her own home, one of the fortunate folks who’d gotten through the storm with a place to live. A big oak had crushed the roof over her living room, but she’d never had to move out, all the repairs going on under a blue tarp while she was at the Farm & Ranch. She’d even gotten a few improvements to her kitchen with the insurance money: new counters, new sink, and a brand-new dishwasher.
When did her life get so boring that she got excited about a damn dishwasher?
The wind chimes clicked and spun outside, cold wind whistling through windowsill cracks and under the doors, making a bad racket, enough to make people in town nervous, the way they were now, whenever a storm blew through. Diane took off her wet towel and changed into some gray sweatpants and a white tank top, finding a spot on her bed to read a new novel by James Carlos Blake until she fell asleep. She’d be back at work at seven a.m. to sell that feed and seed.
Diane heard the creak of the slats on her front porch and the clunk of boots.
Diane closed the book and stood, listening to the soft-thudding footsteps outside, and then turned off the bedside lamp to see a little better in the dark.
The front porch light had already been turned off and at first she thought it was Hank Stillwell again, drunk as a goat and not having any sense of decency about the time. But even in the darkness, she could tell it was a young man with long hair and a beard, walking from end to end on the front porch, reaching up and touching a glass wind chime, making the sound stop for a moment and then start again as he moved away. He leaned toward the window to her living room and peered in for a long moment.
Diane Tull kept a loaded J. C. Higgins 12-gauge under her bed and knew how to use it. She got to her knees, reached through the boxes to find it, and pulled it up on top of her thighs, squatting there and listening.
The man walked off the porch and down the steps. She stood and peered through lace curtains again, seeing nothing of him, wondering if maybe he’d been at the wrong house looking for the wrong person. Since the tornado, lots of folks didn’t know one end of town from the other, all the wayfinders and landmarks ripped out in a few seconds.
She caught her breath and walked back to the kitchen, shotgun in right hand, for a cold drink of water. The wind blew violent as hell outside, Diane wishing she’d never collected so many of those damn chimes, people always bringing them to her now from vacation spots. There were wind chimes from New Orleans, Gulf Shores, and even a set from New York City, with little chimes hanging beneath the Empire State Building. Now all she needed was a goddamn cat to let the town know she’d gone crazy.
She laid the shotgun on the kitchen table and drank the cool water. The wind knocked hard outside, tree limbs brushing the window. And then there was a sharp buzz and flickering of light and her damn power was out.
“Son of a bitch.”
She lit a candle, finished her water, and had turned back to the bedroom when she saw the bearded man looking through the back door window straight at her.
She dropped the glass, it shattering to the floor. Diane reached for the shotgun as she heard the rattling and twisting of the knob.
Quinn slipped
out of bed with Ophelia at midnight, finding his creased Levi’s and stiff khaki shirt folded across a chair. She stirred from the bed, ran a hand through her dark hair, and rose up to look at the clock. She was still naked, the covers only concealing her from the waist down.
“Stay,” she said. “It’s raining.”
“I got to be up in five hours.”
“What happened to your toothbrush?”
“I already brushed my teeth.”
“Or razor?”
“You told me to hold off on the razor.”
“God damn you, Quinn Colson.”
Quinn pulled into his jeans and slipped on his shirt with the star stitched on the sleeve. He sat on the bed as he worked the buttons. The rain pinged the tin roof of Ophelia’s house and wind shook the shutters. In the dim light, he could see his badge and gun on the nightstand. The television still flickered in the living room, where they’d watched about five minutes of Man of the West before making their way back to her bedroom and getting down to business. The routine of it all had been quite pleasant.
“You really pay fifty dollars for a pair of panties?” he asked.
“You think they’re worth it?”
“Didn’t keep ’em on that long.”
Ophelia smiled at him, not trying to cover up her full breasts with their large dark nipples, and watched him. She lay sideways, elbow on mattress and head crooked in hand.
“Until a few months ago,” Quinn said, “I never knew about that ruby in your belly.”
“I’ve had that since high school,” she said. “You wouldn’t know because you were already gone.”
“Maybe I would’ve come home more often.”
“Maybe so.”
“You probably had lots of women at Fort Benning.”
“I knew a few girls in Columbus,” Quinn said. “One girl in Phenix City wasn’t too bad.”
“What happened?”
“She took little pride in her underwear.”
Ophelia rolled on her back and laughed, tucking a pillow up behind her head, stretching her arms high. “Come back.”
“Five hours.”
“I thought Rangers could work on little sleep, no food.”
“That’s true.”
“Why don’t you consider me a test?”
“Kind of like doing PT?” Quinn said.
“Exactly.”
The wind was pretty damn violent and the rain sounded like pennies hitting the metal roof. He started to unbutton his shirt again when he heard his phone buzz by his gun. The screen flashed on, lighting up the room. Ophelia just shook her head and said, “Shit.”
Quinn picked it up and got Kenny, who was on night patrol. “Sheriff, dispatch just got a call from Diane Tull. She’s got a creeper around her house. I’m headed that way now, but I’m clear up to Fate.”
“Roger that,” Quinn said. “Meet you there.”
Quinn stood and rebuttoned his shirt and scooped up his gun, badge, and pair of cowboy boots as he walked to the living room. Ophelia followed, slipping into the tight black T-shirt she’d had on earlier with those high-dollar lace panties. She kissed him at the door and he walked out into the rain.
He paused for a moment.
Six houses up, on top of a hill, was Anna Lee Stevens’s big Victorian, the low green light shining from her screened-in porch, half the house ripped away and now rebuilt with unpainted wood and brand-new windows. But that side porch was the same. And that damn green light that shined every night all night.
Quinn looked away and sped off in the opposite direction. Glad not to have to study on that too long.
• • •
She saw the man and he saw her. And then he was gone. In the darkness and by candlelight, she lifted the phone off the hook and called 911, saying she had a creeper, a fucking pervert, wanting to see her naked. But as soon as Diane put down the phone, she was filled with such a goddamn almighty rage that some son of a bitch had invaded her space, her home, her yard, that she went out into the wind and the rain with the J. C. Higgins to make sure the bastard damn well knew.
She followed the short steps off the door from the kitchen and out into her backyard, turning to the right and left, shotgun tucked up under her right armpit, raised and ready to scatter some buckshot.
The wind chimes were going wild on the front porch, rain coming down hard now, falling sideways, making things tough to see in the night, as she took a wide berth around the side of her old house, looking from the tree line to the crepe myrtles and azaleas. Even thought it was deep winter, some of her daffodils had started to barely poke from the front lawn, now crushed under her bare feet as she moved onto the driveway, which seemed a lot longer than usual. She didn’t see a thing along the street, all the other houses in darkness, as she made her way to the mailbox. She dropped the shotgun down for just a moment to use her forearm to wipe the rain from her eyes.
She knew all the cars and trucks on her little street. She worried for a half second about what she looked like, in pajama bottoms, a man’s tank top, barefoot, and cradling a gun.
She was turning back to the house when she saw the man dart from the hedges on the other side of her house, running for the road, as she picked up the gun, leveled it at him, and yelled for him to “Stop, you stupid son of a bitch!”
Of course he didn’t listen.
“I said, fucking stop, you fucking bastard.”
She squeezed the trigger, the man running off from the blast from forty, fifty feet away. Diane felt like she was in a trance, moving past her black mailbox hand-painted with curving colorful flowers. She jacked another shell into the breech and leveled the shotgun again and fired again. And then again. The shotgun ramming hard into the crook of her shoulder.
The man was gone. Diane just stood there in the rain, on the road, trying to catch her breath. Lights flicked on in all the houses down the little street. Dogs barked.
From down the road, two little streets down, she heard a motorcycle kick to life, making a great noisy racket, kicking into gear, the engine growling as it turned into her street. Diane just saw that single taillight as the rider rushed past, too far away for another shot, and made it up and over the hill.
She walked back toward her house, waiting on the police, when she noticed what he’d done. The son of a bitch had slashed her tires, the rims lying flat and hard on the ground.
And the fella had also decided to spray-paint a few words on the driver’s door and the truck bed.
In sloppy, loose letters, the message read SHUT YORE GD MOUTH.
God damn it, Diane thought, shotgun resting up on her shoulder. If she could’ve just gotten a little closer, she might have taken a nice hunk out of his ass.
Shut your GD mouth.
Now, that was fucking original.
• • •
“You’re soaked,” Quinn said.
“So I am,” Diane Tull said.
Quinn kept his eyes front and center on her forehead; her man’s tank top was wet to the point of being translucent.
“Let’s head inside, ma’am.”
“I thought we covered the ma’am thing,” Diane said, giving a nervous laugh. Hair in a ponytail, black, with that one silver streak hanging down loose. “I can’t take that shit tonight, Sheriff. You say that again and I’ll punch you.”
Diane was still holding a shotgun and she seemed agitated and quite nervous. The wind and rain had grown worse, blowing across the headlights of Quinn’s still-running truck. His dispatch radio squawked inside the cab.
“Do you mind, Miss Tull?” Quinn said. He opened his right hand and Diane handed over her shotgun. An old J. C. Higgins, the house brand of Sears & Roebuck. His uncle and his dad had similar guns. He studied the gun, mostly in an effort to keep his eyes averted from her chest.
They walked back in
to her driveway and she showed him what he had done to her truck. Quinn shined a flashlight across the driver’s door.
“Well,” Quinn said, “he can’t spell worth shit. Who spells your like that?”
“Some dumb shit.”
“And your tires?” Quinn said, shaking his head. “That’s just plain mean.”
“Seeing that bastard’s face in my kitchen window was enough to give me a start.”
“I bet,” Quinn said, following Diane out of the rain, around her old white bungalow, and up some steps and into her kitchen. She had a candle going, on account of the power being out, and she lit two more and found a little battery-powered lantern to set on the kitchen counter.
“You get a decent look?” he asked.
“Hell no,” Diane said. “He was a white man with a scraggly beard and long hair. He had on jeans and a red flannel shirt. That could be half the fucking rednecks in north Mississippi. Fifty people on a Saturday at Walmart in Tupelo.”
“How tall?”
“A little shorter than you.”
“Less than six feet?”
“Just under.”
“Build?”
“Skinny.”
“Age?”
“I can’t say for sure,” Diane said. “Not old. Not young.”
“Thirties?”
She nodded. “Sure,” she said, “I figure.”
“Eye color?”
She shook her head.
“Hair color?”
“Could’ve been lighter, but it seemed brown,” she said. “He was wearing a ponytail and his hair was wet. Oh, hell.”
Quinn nodded. The kitchen was very small and intimate, Diane Tull standing on one side of the counter in front of the stove, Quinn sitting on the other side, writing into his notebook. He noted the time of her call, her address, her Social Security number, and the basics of what had happened before she had discovered the man had vandalized her truck.
“And he just ran?”