The Forsaken

by Ace Atkins

  “You sure that was Houston you saw?”

  “I got a pretty clear memory of it,” Stagg said. “Probably will my whole life. They gonna turn Jericho into Juárez while the law’s got its thumb up its ass, dealing with family issues and not taking this thing head-on.”

  “But you won’t talk to Colson.”

  “This thing’s gone past him now,” Stagg said, using the remote to raise himself up a few inches. Even handling of the remote making it feel like his sides might split. “Son of a bitch, son. Son of a bitch.”

  “You could ID the ones who did it.”

  “LeDoux called it,” Stagg said. “I want his ass in prison or taken out.”

  “Might could handle both.”

  “You ever get a beating like that?” Stagg said. “I was pretty sure I was going to die. Four grown men coming at me with that iron. They were enjoying it. I could smell that tequila on them, them grinning from ear to ear, thinking ole Johnny Stagg is a redneck piñata.”

  “I have.”

  “Can I ask you something, Mr. Ringold?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That really your name?”

  “No.”

  “Why’d you choose it?”

  “Good as anything else.”

  “And them tattoos,” Stagg said. “You got every inch of your arms covered?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “It tells a story,” Ringold said. “People I’ve known. Men I didn’t who I killed.”

  “I don’t like where we’re at, right now,” Stagg said. “I’m no military man, but our position has been greatly weakened by those pieces of shit out on Choctaw Lake.”

  “What do we do?”

  “LeDoux will undo himself,” Stagg said. “He killed old Hank Stillwell. He tried to kill me. And I figure he’s got Colson on that list somewhere, too, if he don’t want to play ball like Hamp Beckett used to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What was that quote you were telling me the other day?” Stagg said. “When we were talking philosophy while they were cleaning the floors at the Booby Trap?”

  “Make your enemy mad so they act impetuously.”

  “And what’s that last word mean?” Stagg said as the nurse came in with a can of Coke, top popped, and curved straw held to his mouth. He sucked in a little cold Coke.

  “Reckless.”

  “He’s gonna do something dumb and fuck himself?”

  The nurse bit her lip, offered the straw again, and Stagg sucked for a good while. She took the can back and set it on the rolling cart.

  “Pretty much,” Ringold said.

  “And we just wait till he does?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ringold said.

  “They think they got us,” Stagg said. “But ain’t nobody mounting my head on a wall. Or yours. Bring me that phone on the table over there. Yep, that one. I got some calls to make.”

  The pack of bikers rode north, up and around the Jericho Square, and then took the county roads north, past Yellow Leaf and through the hamlet of Carthage and all the way into the National Forest, where Dupuy said they’d find their man. At the edge of the forest, a cop car pulled in behind them from out of the darkness, hitting the red-and-blue lights, Chains slowing and the rest sliding to a stop. The sheriff pulled alongside him and a deputy got out of the cruiser, Jason glad as hell it wasn’t Jean’s brother but instead a banty rooster of a fella, a deputy he’d seen around named Royce.

  Jason closed his eyes and did something he hadn’t done in a long while. He thanked God for coming through for all of them. They would disperse, let the law handle this whole thing, and he could get home.

  He rubbed a hand over his sweating face, it still hitting the high nineties in the middle of the night. Not even the slightest breeze coming through the big old pines and oaks stretching out into the forest. The trees towering above them, dwarfing the men on the bikes, nervous, agitated, waiting for the law to bring more deputies.

  But then the lawman stepped away from Chains, patted him on his back, and got back into his cop car. He turned off the lights on the cruiser but didn’t turn around. He shifted forward, the Born Losers following him deep into the forest.

  He was giving them a goddamn police escort.

  There was a campground set off from the main road with picnic tables and barbecue grills. But few people used this place, especially on the Fourth when it was too hot to camp unless you were near some water.

  The cruiser stopped in a gravel lot. He shined his headlights onto a single tent set off from the picnic tables. It was Army, a one-man. A clothesline strung from the opening, where pants, shirts and socks had been strung to dry. There was a small fire, out and smoldering, and then there was a black man crawling out, holding a forearm across his eyes to block the bright light. He moved toward them slowly, shirtless, with a pair of ragged cutoff pants and unlaced Army boots.

  He held his big hands wide in an open gesture, confused at all the headlights aimed his way. Hank Stillwell was on him first with a lead pipe and the skinny black man was down on the ground, a crew of the Born Losers taking their turn on him. Jason sat on his bike as the lawman, Royce, wandered over with a plug of tobacco in his mouth.

  He eyed Colson with some suspicion.

  “Ain’t you gonna have some fun?”

  “Where’s the sheriff?” Jason said.

  “Transporting a prisoner to Tupelo.”

  “Aren’t you gonna stop this?” Jason said.

  Royce looked at him, spit, and shrugged. “Stop what?”

  The man no longer looked like a man but some kind of ragged, bloodied creature. His eyes had swollen shut, teeth knocked from his head, and he was limping, bent at the waist, unable to take in a breath, as they dragged him to the patrol car and tossed him in the trunk.

  Chains circled his index finger in the air, got on his bike, and they rode south again. The air felt good and cool on Jason’s sweating shirt, him thinking again some sense had come to Royce and that they’d had their fun, taken out their rage, and they’d leave the man at the county jail.

  They’d done what they wanted.

  But at the town square, the patrol car turned, headed west, away from the sheriff’s office and the jail and heading straight down Jericho Road where those girls had been taken earlier that night.

  The city turned into the county, crossing a creek, and then there were wide stretches of cleared land and pastures and farms. All along the road, there were a few trailers, some old houses, but a lot of blackness and green rolling hills empty except for the cattle and crops.

  The car stopped several miles into the middle of nowhere. The bikers parked on both sides of the highway, everyone dismounting, waiting for Royce to pop the lock so they could hoist the man from the trunk.

  Jason would ride away. He’d ride away now and be done with this.

  Hank Stillwell walked up to him. He was still not Hank. He was white-faced and speaking so fast it was hard to understand much of what he was saying other than “Gonna hang him.”

  “They can’t.”

  “They are,” Stillwell said. “I wanted that man to bleed. But I don’t want this. I can’t talk to Chains. You talk to Chains. He’s power-crazy. He got the law with him and everything.”

  They were parked off road, by an endless stretch of barbed wire on cedar posts. There was half a moon, enough light to see the bikers pulling the black man through the cow field toward a big dark farmhouse set off from the road. There was no light in the house and the windows looked to be boarded-up.

  But there was a tree. A single thick oak that had probably been there since Reconstruction.

  “He won’t listen to me,” Jason said. “Let’s just go.”

  “Big Doug,” he said. “Talk to Big Doug.”

  “Let’s just g
o,” Jason said.

  Stillwell was shaking as if it were winter, arms around himself. Big Doug sat on the cop car, smoking a joint. He held a coil of rope in his hands, coolly looking out at the pasture, joint in his big, thick fingers, taking in the whole scene as if it were a beautiful night.

  Stillwell and Jason walked to him. They asked him to stop it all.

  “Too late, brothers,” Big Doug said, thick and strong, shirtless under that leather vest flying the colors. “It’s been decided.”

  “‘It’s been decided’?” Jason said. “Jesus, this isn’t Dodge City. Give him up to Royce.”

  “Royce wants him hung,” Big Doug said. “The deputy said if we don’t get it done now, white folks will make a big deal of his innocence. He ain’t innocent. He had the cross. That cross was a fucking sign.”

  Jason left them and hopped the barbed wire and grabbed Chains hard by the arm. The look in the biker’s face was beyond wild and mean, it was ecstatic. His gray eyes shined with such excitement and pleasure that he grabbed Jason back by the arm and pulled him in for a hug. “This is it,” LeDoux said. “Get the booze.”

  They brought out the jelly jars of birthday cake moonshine taken from Dupuy in the Ditch, passing around hits of the bright yellow stuff. More cigarettes and joints were lit, men told jokes and laughed.

  The condemned sat bloodied and beaten, Indian-style, under the tree. The man could not see, eyes completely closed.

  Jason walked over to him and knelt. “Did you do this?” he said. “Did you rape that little girl, kill her friend?”

  “Sir,” the black man said, “I just found a purse in the trash. That’s all I did. I ain’t even from around here.”

  “You a soldier?” Jason said.

  “Yes, sir,” the busted man said.

  “My father was a soldier,” Jason said. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  Jason caught the eye of Hank Stillwell and they moved over to where LeDoux stood with Big Doug and Royce. Big Doug had fashioned a noose and had tossed it over his own head, laughing and sticking his tongue out sideways.

  “This isn’t what Hank wants,” Jason said. “That man is a drifter. A soldier like you. He just found that girl’s stuff in the trash.”

  Chains didn’t say a word. Royce, plug still in his jaw, just stared at him as if he were speaking in tongues.

  Jason touched Royce’s shoulder and said, “Do your job.”

  He hadn’t noticed the deputy had his pistol out, cold-clocking Jason on the temple, sending him to the ground. Stillwell bent down to help him. “Y’all stop,” Stillwell said. “You got to stop. My baby is dead. My baby is dead.”

  “Then be a fucking man,” LeDoux said.

  “Not like this.”

  “This is the old way,” LeDoux said. “The old way.”

  Big Doug removed the noose from around his neck and walked to the ancient tree, tossing the rope up high over a fat branch. Some of the bikers had ridden their Harleys out in the field and lit up the trunk of the oak. More followed, as Stillwell knelt down to Jason, helping him to his feet. More Harley engines gunned and bumped up and over the rolling hills to that old tree, lighting it up bright in the early hours.

  Chains rode up last, taking his chopper across the cow field to the tree, turning around and rolling the bike back by digging his boots into the earth.

  Jason and Stillwell walked to the black man. Stillwell asking, “Did you kill my Lori? Did you push her into your car?”

  Blind, the man just muttered, “You see me with a car? I don’t have nothing.”

  Big Doug, fat-bellied and serious, walked over to the black man, tossed the noose around his neck and tugged on it to find the proper fit. All the engines gunned and gunned around the big lone oak. Lights now shined high up into the branches, the old house dead and silent on the hill.

  The end of the rope was tied to the sissy bar on back of Chain’s Harley.

  Jason closed his eyes. He touched Hank Stillwell’s shoulder, who was shuddering and crying. More fireworks exploded as Chains throttled his big engine.

  They met before dawn in the parking lot of the sheriff’s office with a plan for arresting Chains LeDoux. With Jason Colson’s eyewitness account, they had enough to pick him up and charge him with the murder of the nameless wanderer. The tough part, as Quinn explained to his deputies, was the getting.

  “And he admitted to it?” Kenny said as they waited. “Said he saw Chains put the noose around him, tie the rope to his bike, and ride off?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s some fine police work,” Kenny said.

  “All it took was for my momma to shame him.”

  “Whatever works,” Kenny said. “Hell, we got some results. You gonna eat that last sausage biscuit, Sheriff?”

  Quinn shook his head, offering him what was left in the sack. He had six deputies riding in three vehicles to raid the Born Losers clubhouse on Choctaw Lake. As soon as he met with the state trooper captain, they could move out, hitting them hard a good hour before the sun came up. They’d get the troopers to stage a roadblock on Jericho Road just in case any broke free or if they needed some help at the clubhouse.

  As Quinn told the deputies, “Don’t plan for what your enemy might do, plan for what they can do.”

  “They can fuck us up pretty good,” Lillie said.

  “Then we plan for that.”

  Quinn and Lillie had checked out the wooded area around the clubhouse, the distance to the woods and boat landing and the old trailer where LeDoux had been sleeping since being released. They had a lot of No Trespassing signs on their five-acre parcel on the lake. But the way into the compound was a public road, and, walking the ground near the clubhouse, they spotted only six bikers. Most of his crew worked other jobs, had families and shit to do on weekdays. Being a full-time biker wasn’t for most, not unless LeDoux could accomplish what he wanted in Tibbehah and snatch it all away from Stagg.

  “You almost feel sorry for Stagg?” Lillie said. “Lying up in that hospital bed, unable to move, looking nearly a hundred years old?”

  “Nope,” Quinn said.

  “Me neither,” Lillie said. “Just wanted to know if you’d gone soft.”

  “I think if we go in hard and quick, LeDoux won’t have his pants on yet,” Quinn said. “Did you see all those beer cans around that trash barrel? I think they had a throwdown last night and we’d need a goddamn marching band to wake his ass up.”

  “Or he’d know we’re coming and wait in the woods.”

  “LeDoux’s too arrogant,” Quinn said. “He doesn’t plan. He reacts.”

  “We knock or we enter.”

  “We got an arrest warrant,” Quinn said. “He doesn’t come out, we go in and get him.”

  “I’m not real fond of busting in a trailer,” Lillie said. “Up close isn’t my specialty.”

  “Just like we practice in the shoot house,” Quinn said. “No different. I’m in first, then you, Art, and Kenny follow. We arrest LeDoux. And any shitbird that gets in our way.”

  “Almost sounds simple.”

  “Yep,” Quinn said. “Any riders follow us into town and the troopers pick them up.”

  Lillie nodded. The radio squawked and Quinn reached inside his truck to catch it. The trooper captain was on his way.

  • • •

  “You want LeDoux to make it to jail?” the Trooper asked Stagg.

  They were alone in the hospital room. The only light shining from the bathroom, spread out on the floor, where they spoke in whispers.

  “I’d like him to face what he’s done,” Stagg said, licking his dry lips. “That was always my goal.”

  “I hate what they did to you, Johnny,” the Trooper said. “Jesus Christ, they could’ve killed you.”

  “Got pretty close,” Stagg said. “Thank the Lord for
Mr. Ringold.”

  “We got a problem with those same folks in Vardaman shaking down the sweet-potato workers,” the Trooper said. “MS-13 with all those crazy jailhouse tattoos and enough guns to take over the state. This ain’t the world me and you were born into.”

  “No, sir,” Stagg said.

  The hospital was very quiet at this hour, the Trooper sneaking in a few moments before, taking a seat by Stagg’s bedside and telling him what he’d heard about LeDoux’s arrest. “Colson took his goddamn time,” the Trooper said.

  “His father is a real piece of work,” Stagg said. “I’m surprised he manned up and told what he knew.”

  “But you don’t want us to interfere,” the Trooper said, “right?”

  “No, sir,” Stagg said, mouth feeling dry as hell, that cracked, raspy breathing making it tough to talk. “Just let him get what’s coming.”

  “And if there’s trouble at their clubhouse?” the Trooper asked.

  In the far corner by the hallway door, Ringold was just a shadow leaning against the wall. Staying, but giving the Trooper and Stagg a little space and privacy to talk about those next moves. Stagg wanted some water, needed some water, but felt weak for asking the men. He wanted a woman nurse to bring it to him, with the straw.

  “You mean if LeDoux wants to go out in a blaze of glory?” Stagg asked.

  “Could happen,” the Trooper said. “Colson wants us to back up their play.”

  Ringold shifted a bit on the wall, Stagg not able to see his face, only the outline of his body and head, the muscular, compact form of the man.

  Stagg opened his mouth, licking his lips. It hurt to swallow and prep his words. “I wouldn’t get involved,” he said. “I don’t need Colson no more. Let him clean up this shit now.”

  Ringold hadn’t moved. The door showed a sliver of light across the floor and up onto the face of the Trooper’s square jaw and gray crew cut. He nodded and stood, dressed in full uniform with shield, gun on hip. Protecting and serving the highways of Mississippi.

  He walked away, past Ringold, and out into the hall without a word.

  Stagg needed water more than ever but couldn’t move, calling out to Ringold to get him a cup and straw. But when he’d turned back, the man was gone.