by Ace Atkins
Ringold kept watching the monitor, sleeves pushed up on his black T-shirt, those tattoos covering his arms from wrist to armpit. Stagg wondered if the man even knew what all had been inked on him. He was as tatted up as any of them Born Losers except his tats were eagles, American flags, and military insignias Stagg didn’t understand.
Stagg picked up the telephone, calling Tibbehah dispatch, and told Mary Alice there was some more trouble. “No rush, but why don’t y’all send out someone when you can.”
Ringold nodded and followed Stagg out of the official Rebel office and down a long hallway, through the kitchen, and into the diner. The waitresses and cooks were nervous as cats, craning their necks to see what was to follow after the run-in with the bikers from the other day and finding that poor son of a bitch Hank Stillwell lying facedown in the trash.
There were six of them in his red vinyl booth, the ugliest, stinkiest bastards the Good Lord had ever put on this earth. They were laughing and carrying on and having a big time as Johnny approached his own fucking table, carrying menus and handing them out personal to each and every one of them. “Mr. LeDoux,” Stagg said, “can I get you a complimentary meal? All your boys, too? I’d be honored.”
LeDoux, his arms stretched out wide on each side of the booth, smoked a cigarette in a No Smoking area. He just stared at Stagg, gray-eyed and wild, with the stringy salt-and-pepper beard and long hair. The bald-headed turd who’d come the other day, the one with the tats on his face, looked up at Stagg as if he had some kind of say, grinning like an idiot who’d just shit the bed. Stagg not taking much notice of the other four, couple old, a couple young, tatted and long-haired, wearing their vests and colors like it was supposed to mean something.
“What we do best is still that chicken-fried steak,” Stagg said. “I can guarantee it will make you forget all about anything you got fed in the federal pen.”
He could feel rather than see Ringold behind him, and you didn’t have to be no military genius to recognize the violence of the man. Ringold kept that gun at the ready and not a man in the booth doubted him for a minute.
“Sure,” LeDoux said, lifting his chin. “Bring some for the whole table. And some beer, while you’re at it.”
“We don’t serve alcohol at the Rebel,” Stagg said. “This is a Christian restaurant.”
“But you can get shots of grain moonshine and pussy pie out back?”
Everyone laughed except Stagg and Ringold. What was so funny?
“We are separate establishments, sir,” Stagg said, still grinning. But he was sweating. God damn, Stagg hated when things made him sweat.
And the smell of them fellas—Good Lord, it was offensive in so many ways, testosterone turned to vinegar. Stagg wanted to step back but didn’t want to lose the smile or his welcoming stance. He wanted them to come on in, have a meal, and hear how things worked in today’s world outside the rock walls of Brushy Mountain.
Stagg turned to Ringold, nodded, and Ringold walked over to a waitress.
“Didn’t know if this place was fit to eat at,” LeDoux said. “Finding dead bodies near the kitchen? Next thing you know, a man’s dick will show up in a hot dog bun.”
“Unfortunate, seeing Mr. Stillwell like that,” Stagg said, still standing. He would speak to them, be civil, but wouldn’t take a sit with any of them. You sit with trash and you stink like trash.
“Motherfucker had a big mouth,” LeDoux said. “He liked to talk.”
Stagg smiled and smiled.
“He rode with us a long while,” LeDoux said. “He was a brother. I was at his third wedding. I comforted him when his daughter died. A shame. We’re going to escort the body from the funeral home out to the cemetery.”
“Beautiful thing,” Stagg said. “Y’all zipping around on them scooters. I know he’d be real honored. Just like some kind of show.”
Two waitresses and Willie James appeared with plates of chicken-fried steak, big bowls of mashed potatoes, green beans, and soft white bread. They laid out plates and silverware for the six riders. One of the girls ran off, coming back with a couple pitchers of sweet tea. Another waitress brought some tall plastic cups, her hands shaking. A fine old homecoming for Mr. Chains.
The men, as Stagg expected, all reached across the table like filthy pigs, scooping out and then scraping mashed potatoes and green beans onto their plates, swilling that sweet tea. The bald-headed one lifted a fork to his mouth and Stagg said, “Hold on, sir. You want to join me in a short prayer?”
LeDoux snorted. “Preach, Brother Stagg,” he said, clapping. “Preach.”
Stagg closed his eyes. “Dear Heavenly Father,” he said. “Please bless the soul of Hank Stillwell. He was a good man, if not a smart man, and knew the Devil’s ways. May he find comfort in your bosom and be reunited in death with his daughter.”
“That’s beautiful,” that bald shitbird said and then belched loudly. He and the rest of the crew started to eat.
“Fucking nobody eat yet,” LeDoux said, smiling. His teeth were yellowed and piss-stained. “I got a prayer, too.”
Stagg nodded at him.
“God,” LeDoux said, “vengeance is mine and I will repay.”
“I knew you got some learning in the pen,” Stagg said. “Amen. Amen to us all.”
“Sit down,” LeDoux said. “Break some bread. I’m too old to fight. Fuck it, man. Just fuck it all to hell and back.”
“You sit down with your brother, Mr. Stillwell?” Stagg said. “Before y’all said your good-byes?”
“C’mon, sit down, Stagg,” LeDoux said. “I know you tried to keep me inside. But, shit, no harm.” LeDoux offered his hand across Stagg’s own table. Stagg saw all his own people, all those good and famous folks who’d sat there before Chains: Tim McGraw, Brett Favre (right before he showed his pecker to the world), Mary Ann Mobley, and Jamie Lynn Spears. People who’d made something of themselves.
“No, sir,” Stagg said. “Y’all enjoy your meal.”
LeDoux shrugged and shoveled some food into his mouth. Outside, Stagg saw a sheriff’s office cruiser pull up and roly-poly Kenny Whatshisname get out, talking to the two waitresses who’d brought the dinner. Stagg nodded to the group inside and walked away with Ringold, wanting to make sure that the law knew everything was just fine. Yes, sir. Everything is fine.
“You can’t civilize a barbarian,” Ringold said. “I tried to do that for six years of my life. A barbarian will look you in the eye, shake your hand, and then shoot you in the back. Or blow himself up.”
“Hell,” Stagg said. “I don’t know.”
“That man won’t be happy until he’s finished you off,” Ringold said. “I’ll follow you again tonight in my vehicle. You need to talk to Colson about getting some folks to watch your home.”
• • •
“That woman is unstable, crazy as hell, threatening to shoot my pecker off?” E. J. Royce told Quinn. “Holy shit, you gonna stand for that?”
“And why would she threaten you?”
“Because she’s on her damn moon cycle or just hates men,” Royce said. “I ain’t no psychological doctor. All I know is, I offered her some sensible advice and she done pulled a gun on me. You can’t have women pulling guns. What kind of fucked-up world is this?”
They were standing outside Royce’s house, his coonhounds milling about, sniffing tires and stretching their long legs. Royce had called Quinn on his personal cell number, Quinn not sure how he got it. He said he had a goddamn emergency that needed to be addressed right now.
“She must’ve felt threatened,” Quinn said.
“Whose side are you on?” Royce said. “God damn. I worked for your Uncle Hamp before you were even born and later while you were shitting your britches.”
“True enough,” Quinn said. “Do you want to file charges?”
“Yes,” Royce said. “Hell, maybe.
I don’t know. I just want you to talk some sense into the woman. You can’t just start whipping out a twelve-gauge on a man.”
“What kind of advice were you offering?” Quinn said.
Quinn had his hands deep in his uncle’s old ranch coat. The coat, the farm, the job, were the property his uncle willed to Quinn before he took his own life, neck-deep in debt to Johnny Stagg. Sometimes the coat itself felt heavy as hell.
“Shit,” Royce said, nearly spewing the words. “She’s trying to kick up all this business about that nigger being killed a hundred years ago. That doesn’t have nothing to do with her and I was telling her to go ahead and leave it well enough alone.”
“I think it had plenty to do with her,” Quinn said. “They lynched the wrong man.”
“Who the hell said it was the wrong man?” Royce said. “Seems like the right fella to me.”
“Diane Tull said it was the wrong man,” Quinn said. “She was the victim. She was there. You’d think she’d know better than anyone.”
“You being a smartass, son?” Royce asked, cocking his head like a rooster does, standing there in his grassless yard in front of his shack and amid his pack of dogs. “Your father was a smartass, too. You really want to bring all this out? Your daddy was right in the middle of it all.”
“Tell me about it, then, Mr. Royce,” Quinn said, one hound lifting his head up into Quinn’s hand and looking for some kind of appreciation. “I’d like to know.”
“You think you know more than me?”
“No, sir.”
“You think your uncle was a crook ’cause he fell in with Stagg and I might be a crook, too?”
“Nope.”
“You can do what you like,” Royce said, “but I’d stand back and let nature take its course. Johnny Stagg is a rotten son of a bitch. You believe that he’s the savior of Jericho? Bullshit. He’s lining his pockets and looking for ways to cornhole us all.”
“Probably.”
The wind ruffled the man’s thin white hair, shining his red cheeks. He wore a dirty white T-shirt and open canvas jacket.
“You know, I’ve always enjoyed watching them animal shows on the television,” Royce said. “See how one animal group takes over another. You got the fella taking the pictures, standing back, and watching that lion eat that antelope. He could intervene, but why would he? It’s just the way of the world.”
“And the way of the world is to side with Chains LeDoux?” Quinn said. “Never mind he lynched an innocent man.”
“What happened to you in the Army?” Royce said. “You’d sell out your own father for some damn worthless black. A man whose own people served him up.”
“How’s that?” Quinn asked, the friendly dog trotting away. A bright cold wind swept across the hill where Royce stood, battering his door. The old man, standing sure-footed and mean, wrinkled, brittle-boned, and frail.
“I ain’t talking no more,” Royce said. “No, sir. Doesn’t matter. You won’t be sheriff much longer. People say you’re finished.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
“You’re too quick on the draw.” Royce said. “A good lawman needs to think before he acts. You ain’t thinking right now worth a shit, Quinn. You really want to look out for the interests of the man who killed your uncle?”
They came for Johnny Stagg two nights later, fifteen minutes after he’d left the Rebel and was driving home in his maroon Cadillac El Dorado listening to Conway Twitty on a local station. Ringold was following him in his black Suburban, as he had for the last several weeks, making sure Stagg’s house was empty and safe and often sitting on the house through the night so Stagg could get some sleep. But he hadn’t gotten but a mile down County Road 382 when four pickup trucks came up on them fast, getting between Ringold’s vehicle and the ElDo and boxing him in good. Stagg nearly mashed the brake flat when that jacked-up truck with the Mexican flag and a gold eagle on the tailgate crossed in front. The back glass slid open and a gun slid out, taking aim right for Stagg’s windshield.
Stagg decided to just slow it down, drop the accelerator, keep the pace, and see where they were wanting to take him and how the hell Ringold would get him out of this bullshit and earn his pay.
There wasn’t much on 382, as most of the land Stagg had logged out. For five hundred acres, the earth shone scarred and barren in the moonlight. Nobody living out on this busted-up land. Stagg had taken out all the trees until he got his ranch house set up on a hill and surrounded by twenty acres of scrub pine, which was plenty for him and the wife he used to have before she left him for a queer hairdresser from Madison.
He dropped down to thirty and then twenty miles per hour, and then the trucks in front, behind, and beside him slowed down. In his rearview, he could see another truck with three fellas in the bed aiming automatic weapons at Ringold’s SUV.
Ringold was good. But ain’t nobody that good. Goddamn Mexicans.
The El Dorado’s engine hummed as Stagg reached under his seat for a shiny .45 with a turquoise grip to aim between the eyes of the first sack of shit who popped up in the window. He’d slipped it to his left side, right beside the driver’s door, using his other hand to let down the window and some cold air in.
The entire road and some cedar fence posts and barbed wire glowed white hot and red from the head- and taillights. Maybe forty feet ahead of him, two deer turned to stare, glassy-eyed, from the roadside and then crossed over fast, jumping over the barbed wire fence, tails twitching as they bounced over the barren hills.
Four men approached the open window.
The man in the middle was the tatted-up, bald-headed biker who called himself Animal. Stagg thought about raising that .45 fast and hard in the dark and aiming right for where he’d inked that dreamcatcher on his throat. But that’d leave three, Mr. Ringold being out of the picture, and Stagg could never fire quick enough to stop them from taking his old ass out.
Stagg breathed in a long sigh as they came up on his window, a few more Mexicans on the passenger side, staring at him, reminding him of a safari ride where you could get real close to the beasts.
Animal reached into the Cadillac, across Stagg, and turned off the key. “Get out.”
“I’d rather sit right here,” Stagg said, holding that gun, “if it’s all the same.”
“Nope,” Animal said, in that broken, messed-up voice. He punched the unlock button on the door, popped the handle, and pulled Stagg out by the front of his Ole Miss sweater-vest, balling it up good and tight in his hand, and throwing him hard down into a dug gulley filled with old leaves, branches, fast-food wrappers, and busted beer cans.
“We got your attention?” Animal said.
Stagg was flat on his back, the wind knocked out good and hard from his lungs, getting his breath back as he lifted up on his elbows, ass still on the ground. He nodded. Wasn’t no use fighting.
Animal aimed a pistol at Stagg down in the ditch. All the truck engines still chugging around them on the barren road. Bright lights showing the faces of brown-skinned Mexes and filthy white men in leather jackets and jean vests. Money sure does make for some strange bedfuckers.
“We got a couple options for you,” Animal said, “and only one of them keeps your old ass above ground and breathing.”
• • •
Quinn had gotten the call as he was reaching for his jacket and cap and leaving the sheriff’s office for the night. He had an unlit cigar in his teeth and a laptop computer in a green protective shell under his arm. There were some reports he needed to finish, but he was headed over to Ophelia’s for supper first. She’d bought some T-bones, sweet potatoes, and cold beer. She would make a salad and Quinn could cook the steaks and bake the potatoes on the grill. It had sounded fine with him and even better with Hondo, who had a sixth sense about such things.
“You wanted to talk?” Chains LeDoux had asked.
; Quinn had been looking for the man since they fished Hank Stillwell out of the dumpster. The clubhouse had been empty, as well as the trailer he’d registered as his new address with the Department of Corrections. No one had seen a Born Loser in Tibbehah, and Quinn had heard from an informant that they had planned on a week-long ride along the Gulf Coast.
“Where?” Quinn had said, walking to his truck, Hondo trotting beside him.
They’d agreed to meet right up the road at the Jericho town square. Quinn wouldn’t need backup, and if Chains tried to make a move, there’d be dozens of witnesses.
Quinn drove to the Square, parked at the curb, and walked up to the big white gazebo that sat in the center by the veterans’ monument. A new brick path had been laid since the storm, names of donors etched on each brick, and small rosebushes had been planted for the spring, deep in rich mulch and covered with pine straw. The night was full-on and teenagers circled the Square, as they had since kids started driving cars, keeping that feeling of the Jericho Square not being a town center but a carousel with lots of honking horns and yelling. Kids jumped from truck to truck, car to car, Quinn knowing he could stop any one of them and probably find a couple beers, maybe a joint.
But he didn’t have time or any inclination to roust some high school kids, knowing what he’d been like at the same age.
He turned as he heard the growling of the motorcycle pipes. Chains LeDoux, wearing sunglasses but no helmet, rounded the Square one full time before parking on the opposite side of Quinn’s truck. He dismounted the Harley, took off his glasses, and walked with a slight limp up into the gazebo where Quinn had taken a seat. Small Christmas lights winked and sparkled over the latticework.
Chains walked up the few steps and sat down across from Quinn. He wore leather chaps over jeans and had unzipped his leather jacket, showing a printed black T-shirt that read An American Legend.
Quinn did not stand or offer his hand. Chains leaned forward, elbows across the leather on his thighs. He seemed more interested in goings-on around him than speaking what was on his mind. After a good thirty seconds, he reached into his jacket and fished out a pack of Marlboro Reds. He popped one in his mouth and with monkey-like quickness turned the box toward Quinn, offering him one.