by Ace Atkins
“That it?”
Quinn checked out the license plate and nodded.
“I ran the record on that Byrd woman,” Lovemaiden said, spitting into the weeds. “She ain’t exactly president of the PTA.”
Quinn walked up to where the back wheel on the passenger side hung a good foot over the gravel. Lovemaiden pulled on some rubber gloves, opened the driver’s door, and hit the trunk release. It popped halfway open and Lovemaiden walked back to open it all the way. The trunk was filled with a flat spare, a cardboard box of assorted junk, and plenty of fast-food wrappers.
“I poked around a bit,” Lovemaiden said. “Didn’t see nothing of value.”
“Can you send some deputies to walk the woods?”
“Walk these woods?” Lovemaiden asked, grinning. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Quinn didn’t answer, leaving the question hanging.
“Already have,” Lovemaiden said. “Didn’t find nothing but an illegal dump over in that ravine. Folks treating this part of my county like a goddamn toilet. You can smell it from here.”
“You mind if I have this towed back to Tibbehah?”
Lovemaiden shrugged. “Don’t make no difference to me,” he said. “One less car in our impound lot. Figured she must’ve wrecked and called someone to pick her up.”
Quinn nodded. Hondo jumped up on his front paws and tried to get at something he was sniffing in the trunk, scratching at the bumper and whimpering. Quinn pushed him back as the dog barked and barked, looking from the trunk up to Quinn.
“Must be smellin’ them ole French fries,” Lovemaiden said as he reached into the right pocket of his uniform and pulled out a tin of Skoal. He thumped it a few times and opened the lid, pinching a generous piece and plugging it into his lower lip. Quinn was used to dippers. Most Army Rangers he knew chewed tobacco, although he’d always preferred cigars.
Lovemaiden turned his head and spit. “Hell of a thing you went through last year,” Lovemaiden said. “First word I got sounded like you were already dead.”
“Almost.”
“But you sure got ’em,” Lovemaiden said. “Yes, sir. You sure did. That woman marshal shooting down Fannie Hathcock. I laughed and laughed when I heard about that. That Lillie Virgil don’t take no lip, shot that redheaded bitch down like a dog. No offense to ole Hondo.”
“She believed Hathcock was going for her weapon.” Quinn scratched Hondo behind the ears, the dog still wanting to get closer to the car.
“Which one?” Lovemaiden said. “A gun or a damn hammer? Yes, sir. I heard all the stories about Fannie Hathcock. Last few years, our little ole county hadn’t been nothing but a cut through up to that titty bar. Horny kids from State not being able slow down on account of those wild women.”
“That’s all over,” Quinn said.
“For now.”
“For good,” Quinn said. “Place shut down last year. County supervisors outlawed nude dancing in Tibbehah. State took over that old airstrip she’d been running. We just want that mess behind us.”
“Glad to hear it,” Lovemaiden said, slamming the trunk and removing his rubber gloves. He tossed them into a ditch and then turned his head and spit again. “Guess y’all got tired of being the punch line about all that’s bad down south.”
“Come again?”
“Apologies, Sheriff,” Lovemaiden said as they began to walk back to the highway, his arms again slinging to and fro like an ape. The light flickered through the overhead oak branches, buds just forming on the trees. “I know it weren’t easy sliding into your uncle’s boots. I knew Hamp Beckett well and he was a hell of a lawman.”
“He also made a lot of mistakes,” Quinn said. “And one or two moral failings.”
“Sheriff Beckett said sometimes you got to go along to get along. How about that?”
“I heard that a time or two,” Quinn said. “Not exactly original.”
Lovemaiden hitched up his gun belt and nodded, his lower lip poking out. “Maybe,” he said. “But that old man had been around a long time. That age and wisdom ain’t something you can buy. No, sir. That’s something those old boys earned. Your uncle kept that county business contained. That’s for damn sure. You might study on that sometime.”
Lovemaiden winked. Quinn stared back.
“I’ll be sending a truck,” Quinn said.
He walked off and helped Hondo back up into the Big Green Machine. The dog could get out fine, but the getting in had started to be a problem. Quinn started the engine and U-turned on the back road, a cold breeze blowing through the truck as he looked in his rearview. Sheriff Lovemaiden hung by his patrol car and waved him a pleasant goodbye.
* * *
* * *
“Where the hell you been?” TJ Byrd asked.
Ladarius, being Ladarius, didn’t answer. He just walked on into her trailer, opened the refrigerator, and helped himself to a gallon of milk. He drained half of it, wiped off his short mustache, and turned back to her. “Doing shit.”
“Doing shit mean you can’t answer your damn phone?”
He shrugged and leaned against the kitchen counter, playing with the keys in his hand and refusing to look her in the eye. Ladarius McCade was a good-looking kid and damn well knew it, having been with TJ off and on now for the better part of the year. They met at the church revival out at The River, both of them coming back to the cross after a few side roads over the years. Like TJ, Ladarius had left school as a sophomore, throwing in with his Uncle Dupuy down in Sugar Ditch, doing things and running games he didn’t talk about. Over the summer, he’d tried to cut it flipping burgers over at the Sonic and that had all gone south after a week, the manager calling Ladarius no-good and lazy after catching him listening to Yo Gotti and smoking a blunt in the bathroom. Ladarius took it all in stride, saying weed made him a better cook. He could feel the right time for the flipping, make sure they were crispy and juicy at the same time. Just like the sign out front promised.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ladarius asked.
“What’s wrong with me is that the sheriff showed up with one of his deputies last night,” TJ said. “They drove up a little past midnight, giving me hell, waking up John Wesley and asking about when I saw my momma last.”
Ladarius nodded, stroking his thin wispy goatee. Cool, taking it all in. His hair shaved tight at the sides and the back, the top fade styled big and bleached blond.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you,” Ladarius said. “What’d you tell them?”
“You know,” TJ said. “Just like we talked about. I told him she was mud riding and partying down in Colfax, Louisiana. I said she’d gone and met a new man.”
“And who might that be?”
“Sheriff didn’t ask,” TJ said. “But if he would’ve asked, I’d’ve said it wasn’t none of my damn business. Or his damn business. Folks around here know how my momma is. She ain’t happy until she’s kicking one boyfriend out and hooking up with a new one.”
“Ain’t it the truth.”
“Ladarius?”
“Yeah?”
“What did I say?”
“You said you can talk about your momma but I can’t,” he said. “It’s cool. I get it. I get it.”
A door down the hall opened and they both turned to see John Wesley rubbing his eyes and wandering into the bathroom. That boy had stayed up late playing Fortnite and chatting with his friends. He’d been asking a lot about when he was going to go back to school and TJ made up some kind of bullshit answer about not until Momma got home and could get things straight with his teachers. He believed it. He was always causing trouble, fighting and talking back, getting sent to the principal’s office. The principal had offered to tan his hide with a big wood paddle. TJ, stepping in for her momma, told the principal that if he even thought about it, she’d break that damn paddle across his s
kull.
“You okay?” Ladarius asked.
“Yeah,” TJ said. “I’m fine. You get me some cigarettes like I asked?”
Ladarius reached into his T-shirt pocket and tossed her a pack of Kool menthols. “You the only white girl I know who smokes Kools.”
TJ lit a cigarette and took a seat in front of a small television they had set up on some plywood and four concrete blocks. She closed her eyes and inhaled, trying to get her mind right and make sense of all that had happened in the last forty-eight hours. It hadn’t been pretty. Almost like something out of a crazy dream or nightmare. But at least John Wesley hadn’t seen what they’d done and didn’t know anything about it.
“What in the hell are you watching?” Ladarius said.
“That’s Van Halen, dipshit,” she said. “We’ve been over this before.”
“That little nerdy kid in the glasses?”
“That little nerdy kid is Waldo,” she said. “Those cool kids are actors playing Van Halen. Eddie and Alex. Michael Anthony on bass. That’s David Lee Roth right there. He’s the lead singer. When he quit, they replaced him with Sammy Hagar. My daddy called that time Van Hagar. He said the music was still pretty good but he didn’t like him as much as David Lee. This is classic stuff. The big hair, the spandex, that smoking guitar.”
The black-and-white video for “Hot for Teacher” played off an old DVD. She knew every bit of it by heart from the time Waldo’s mother sent him on that bus crowded with all those crazy kids until Playboy Playmate Lillian Müller showed up in a bikini and wearing that beauty pageant sash.
“God damn,” Ladarius said.
“My granny said Daddy had her centerfold in his room,” TJ said. “He thought she was the most beautiful woman that ever set foot on God’s green earth.”
“How old is she now?”
“Now?” TJ said. “Shit. I don’t know. Probably a great-grandma by now. This was a long time back. Daddy said back then folks made good music. Before he died, I remember he used to tell me rock ’n’ roll was dead and that no one could rock it out like they did back in their day.”
“You remember all that?” Ladarius said. “You couldn’t’ve been five or six.”
“I remember every damn word that man told me.”
TJ blew out a big plume of smoke as the video headed into that epic drum solo by Alex. She still had every cassette tape her daddy owned, playing them in his black Monte Carlo SS they had out in the barn. That thing couldn’t run yet but could still play tapes off the new battery. She had ’em all. Van Halen. AC/DC. Poison. Ratt. Lots of GNR. Man, how she loved GNR. While most girls her age were mooning over Kane Brown and that dipshit with the face tattoos, Post Malone, she was steeped in the classics. Damn, she sure missed her daddy. Wish she’d known him more. The cab of that Monte Carlo was still crushed in good where he’d flipped it down in Sarter Creek when she was only five. The local law back then, Sheriff Hamp Beckett, rolling up on him first, seeing her daddy trapped inside and letting him die. Drowning in not a foot of water.
“TJ?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“What needed doing has already been done.”
“I mean about Chester Pratt.”
“I’m thinking on that,” TJ said. “Sheriff didn’t say nothing. Only that Pratt said Momma was missing.”
“You think he knows all the trouble she caused?”
“Hush,” she said. “Don’t say another goddamn word.”
Ladarius walked over to the couch and pulled a NASCAR blanket up over his shoulders and around his neck like he was Superman or something and came on over next to her. He wrapped her in the blanket and nuzzled his head up into her neck. TJ didn’t move an inch, sitting there straight and watching those boys dressed up as Van Halen rocking the hell out. She wondered what happened to those kids in the video. They couldn’t be much younger than Daddy. Probably old and gray now. Or maybe dead, too.
“We did good with those clothes and all that mess,” Ladarius said. “Right?”
“Yeah.”
“Burning that shit was smart.”
“Cleaned up the shower with bleach, too,” TJ said. “Scrubbed it till my hands bled.”
“I love you, TJ,” he said, reaching his hand up under her T-shirt and pulling her close, reaching for the hook on her bra. The toilet flushed and John Wesley wandered out. He had on that freeze warning T-shirt that they got from Goodwill. That T-shirt not worth a dime to Ole Miss after the big Christian football coach got caught calling up some hookers. The Goodwill must’ve had a hundred of them new and still in boxes.
“TJ?” John Wesley said. “Why’d the police come over last night?”
“Looking for Ladarius,” TJ said, lifting up her chin and blowing out smoke. “They’re gonna put his black ass over in Parchman for good.”
“That shit’s not funny,” Ladarius said.
“It’s kind of funny,” John Wesley said, walking toward the kitchen. TJ knew all they had left was a half box of Cap’n Crunch and whatever milk Ladarius hadn’t drunk. “Van Halen. Hell yeah.”
“See?” TJ said, removing Ladarius’s hand from her stomach. “That kid’s getting a damn fine education.”
“When’s Momma coming home?”
“Won’t be long now, John Wesley,” TJ said. “Momma called this morning and said how much she loves you.”
She took a deep breath, stood up, and held out her hand for Ladarius’s keys.
“Where the hell you going?”
“Getting some more milk at the Dollar Store.”
“No, you ain’t,” he said. “You’re going for Chester Pratt. After all the shit’s that happened, you ain’t gonna let it go.”
“No way,” she said. “No how. Like I always say, fair is fair.”
* * *
* * *
Chester Pratt didn’t get back to Tibbehah until dawn, after an unsuccessful trip up to Memphis to borrow money from an Ole Miss frat buddy who sold used cars over in Germantown. He knew he’d wasted his time when his buddy started witnessing to Chester at The Half Shell about getting his life in order and shunning alcohol and drugs. Chester tried to explain to him that he wasn’t a drunk, he was only in the liquor business and had gotten behind a few bills. His pal wouldn’t hear it, so damn superior sucking on an O’Doul’s and handing him some leaflets for a big megachurch run by Pastor Ben Quick. Pratt had known Quick his whole damn life and wasn’t in the mood for any light shows and praise music to get him through the night.
He didn’t need Jesus. He needed cash.
Pratt didn’t even think about heading back to Bluebird Liquors that bright and shiny morning, and instead drove right across the street to the Rebel Truck Stop. It was a busy day at the Rebel, the pumps jammed up with eighteen-wheelers waiting to get filled up with diesel and plenty of pickup trucks and cars pulled tight near the diner to feed on the “Best Chicken Fried Steak in Mississippi.” Pratt had eaten the chicken-fried steak. It wasn’t anything to write home to Momma about.
He parked and walked through the main shop with aisles filled with beef jerky, soda pop, candy bars, NoDoz, and Red Bull. They sold cowboy boots and samurai swords and had a walk-in cooler with the coldest beer within fifty miles. He was nearly back to the toilets when he saw the big black dude who worked for Johnny Stagg, Midnight Man, coming out of an unmarked back door. He had an apron stretched tight over his denim utility suit, blackened and stained with barbecue sauce and soot. The man must’ve weighed four hundred pounds.
“Is he in?” Pratt asked.
Midnight Man grunted. He turned around to the door and knocked twice, Midnight Man telling the man inside that someone wanted to see him. Someone? Midnight Man knew damn well who he was. Chester Pratt was Somebody in Tibbehah County.
“Come in,” the familiar gravelly and countrified
voice said.
Johnny T. Stagg sat behind his desk, talking on an old tan landline phone and smiling. His hair had grown back into the familiar gray pompadour he’d worn before spending the last five years in a federal facility in Montgomery, Alabama. He was little older, a little craggier, but with the same odd-shaped skeletal head and ruddy cheeks and nose that made his face appear like an old wooden puppet.
He winked at Chester and motioned for him to take a seat.
Stagg’s desk was cluttered with paperwork and framed photographs, a silver bowl filled to the brim with peppermint candies.
“Yes, sir, yes, sir,” Stagg said into the receiver. “It’s gonna be quite a place. I haven’t stopped thinking about the Wild West since I was a kid. You know, all that stuff we growed up on. Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy. Dang Lash LaRue. Reason I came to the idea was that one of my grandbabies, Marla’s boy, had never even heard of Jesse James or Cole Younger. Even kids growing up behind us had the Gunsmoke and Bonanza to watch. They got a little bit of our culture and heritage in them shows. This will be a place to display it while offering the young’uns a safe place and some real wholesome family fun. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I sure do appreciate that. Mmm-hmm. Well. When you get as old as me, you start looking on things, and figuring out how a man might make a real difference in his community. Yes, sir. Mmm-hmm. Sure do appreciate it. Yep. You have a blessed day, too.”
Stagg kept on smiling until he put down the phone and turned to Chester Pratt. The smile dropped. “Glad to see you, Mr. Pratt,” he said. “You got my goddamn money?”
“Almost,” Chester Pratt said.
“Almost ain’t no answer,” Stagg said. “Looks like you got my message.”
“Yes, sir,” Pratt said, touching his forehead where that man Bishop had pistol-whipped him. “I don’t think all that mess was necessary. That crazy-ass monkey destroyed some valuable inventory.”
“If this here deal was just between you and me, it wouldn’t be of any great concern,” Stagg said. “But what you asked for called for some special favors from Jackson and even help from some boys down in New Orleans. You know I don’t like to name names. But they’re not exactly the patient type. Consider me sending over Mr. Bishop just a friendly reminder of how late you’re getting on what’s come due.”