by Ace Atkins
“Christmas wasn’t what we’d hoped for.”
“Christmas ain’t never what a man hopes for,” Stagg said. “Life ain’t all candy canes and cute little elves tickling our nutsacks. You came to me as one businessman to another. Besides, you see that lot out back?”
“You mean the Booby Trap?”
“Booby Trap’s long gone, son,” he said. “I’m gutting that old cathouse that Fannie Hathcock called Vienna’s Place. Took me nearly two weeks to fumigate the smell of dead shrimp and sardines from there. What I’m proposing is a world of family fun and adventure. Do you like the Old West, Chester?”
“Sure.”
“With a name like Chester I would hope you would,” Stagg said. “Ole Dennis Weaver. Man, he was something. Come on. Let’s go take a walk. Time for me to stretch my legs and for us to figure out some kind of payment plan to get you straight with me and my associates.”
Pratt didn’t answer as Stagg stood up and came around the desk. Stagg wore pleated khakis, a plaid button-down shirt, and a blue Ole Miss sweater-vest, as he was good friends with the new chancellor. Stagg had lobbied hard for the man to get the job even while he was still serving time in federal prison for tax evasion, bribery, drug dealing, prostitution, gunrunning, and several other crimes that Pratt couldn’t recall at the moment. Despite his time in jail, some people around here still claimed he’d been set up.
“We’re gonna call it Frontier Village,” Stagg said, clasping Pratt on his hurt shoulder. “Ain’t that something?”
* * *
* * *
When Quinn returned to the sheriff’s office, he found Lillie Virgil back in the jail talking to Kenny about why north Mississippi didn’t have a barbecue joint worth a shit. Kenny, a big-bellied, bald-headed jokester, was always happy to discuss country music or southern cuisine.
“Come on up to Memphis and I’ll show you around,” Lillie said. “Ever been to Payne’s?”
“Can’t say I have,” Kenny said.
“Then you haven’t lived,” Lillie said, sitting sidesaddle on the long desk at intake. She was flipping through some paperwork for a check forger named Boyd Hunnicutt who was wanted in federal court in Memphis. “Howdy there, Sheriff. How’s it going at home? I’d absolutely love to see you feeding that baby and changing diapers. That would truly make my day.”
Kenny snickered and then caught himself. Lillie raised her eyebrows.
“Stop by the house anytime, Lil,” Quinn said. “I’d be glad to demonstrate.”
“And just why do you have one of your best deputies on jail duty?” Lillie said. “Kenny needs to be back on patrol.”
Quinn looked to Kenny, whose eyes widened as he quickly shook his head. He in no way wanted Quinn to tell Lillie Virgil, of all people, that he’d been suffering with hemorrhoids for the last two weeks and the thought of crawling into a squad car brought tears to his eyes.
“Just giving him a break is all,” Quinn said, handing Kenny the paperwork Lillie had already signed. “All my deputies rotate duties.”
“What’s that thing on your seat?” Lillie said, nodding to the donut cushion in the office chair. Kenny had stood up when Quinn had walked back into the jail.
“Nothing.”
“Say no more, Kenny,” Lillie said. “Had a problem with that myself. I would hate to see you try to patrol out on County Road 177. Until the supervisors fix the roads around here instead of spending their kickbacks at Dollywood, you’re in for a real hard ride.”
Lillie patted Kenny on the shoulder and followed Quinn through the secured door and down a long hallway with linoleum floors and fluorescent lights back to his office. It almost felt like old times, when Lillie had been assistant sheriff, working with Quinn those first few years after he’d come home and taken over after his Uncle Hamp died. She’d been a good friend and solid mentor as he made the transition from the Army into law enforcement.
“I was only messing with you,” Lillie said. “Having kids is the best damn thing in the world. I don’t know what in the world I’d do without Rose. Can you believe she just turned ten? I would’ve invited y’all up to Memphis for the party, but Maggie said you’d been shorthanded around here. Do you need me to come back and get these sorry bastards back in line? I feel bad for Kenny, but you can’t let a man slide off his duties just ’cause he has a sore ass.”
“Offer is appreciated,” Quinn said. “But we’re doing just fine.”
“Boyd Hunnicutt,” Lillie said. “Son of a damn bitch. These white-collar criminals give me the damn creeps. Give me an honest meth head or moonshiner, house creeper, or car thief anytime. At least they put some sweat into it. A man like Hunnicutt isn’t even honest in his thieving. He does almost everything from his desk and behind a computer. I call that being a weak-ass coward.”
“It’s gonna be a long ride back to Memphis for Mr. Hunnicutt.”
“I’ll do my best to explain it all to him,” Lillie said. “And I’ll drive slow.”
Quinn walked over to crack his window, the office overlooking a small parking lot and a chain-link fence around the prisoners’ exercise yard. His office was simple and utilitarian: an old wooden desk, a rickety swivel chair, and locked rack with shotguns and rifles under a framed American flag. Since he’d come back on the job late last year, he’d barely had time to put everything back in its place. The interim sheriff, a full-time shitbird named Brock Tanner appointed by that criminal Governor Vardaman, had stepped into the job as if it would be a permanent position. After Tanner was arrested, Quinn had tossed everything the man owned into a dumpster out back.
“What’s on your mind, Quinn?”
“How’d you know?”
“You got that sullen, kind of quiet way about you today,” Lillie said. “Like someone pissed in your morning coffee.”
“When’s the last time you spoke to Gina Byrd?”
“Oh, hell, I don’t know,” Lillie said, checking out new rifles in the rack along with the old. She ran her fingers over each one, a true connoisseur of firearms. “Before I left Tibbehah County, I found her walking the wrong way home from town one night and nearly ran over her. I drove back to her trailer and helped her get settled. Why? What’d she do this time?”
“She might be missing.”
“Either she’s missing or she’s not.”
“Her daughter says she’s down in Louisiana mud riding and raising hell.”
“Sounds about Gina’s speed.”
“Chester Pratt filed a missing person report on her last night,” Quinn said. “Earlier today I was over in Parsham County with Sheriff Lovemaiden. They found her car ditched on a back road. Looked like she’d wrecked it and maybe got someone to pick her up. No one seems to know where she’s gone.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Her daughter swears everything is fine and dandy,” Quinn said.
“Christ Almighty,” Lillie said. “You know the trouble I’ve had with her daughter. Don’t trust a word that girl says.”
“Last night Reggie and I found a burn pile out back of their trailer,” Quinn said. “Chester Pratt said he’d seen some bloody clothes and sheets in it when he went out there looking for Gina.”
“Oh, hell,” Lillie said. “That’s not good, Quinn. One of the last times I checked on Gina, TJ had beaten the shit out of her momma. There were bruises all over her. Why’s Chester Pratt checking on her?”
“They’ve been seeing each other.”
“God help that woman,” Lillie said. “He’s old enough to be her daddy. I thought he’d moved up to Oxford and opened some kind of luxury steak house.”
“He did,” Quinn said. “Closed after six months and he stiffed the landlord. Now he’s back and he’s got a liquor store out by the highway.”
“Finally something that even Chester Pratt can’t fuck up.”
“Give him time.”
“So Chester thinks TJ might’ve hurt her mother.”
“That’s the insinuation,” Quinn said. “We’ve been looking for his sorry ass all morning. But can’t find him.”
“This makes me sick as hell,” Lillie said, checking her watch and moving toward the old frosted-glass door. “But I’m not surprised. That daughter of hers is an absolute wildcat. I know Gina probably isn’t a great mother. And we both know about her daddy. But damn, Quinn. What kind of teenage girl beats the crap out of their own momma? I’d hoped all that had stopped. TJ’s been waiting for a trip down to Central Lockup in Pearl since she came kicking and screaming out of her mom’s coot.”
“I’d never give you advice, Lillie,” Quinn said. “But maybe you should clean up your language? Some folks may find a way to twist it and use it against you.”
“Fuck ’em all,” Lillie said. “And wait and see. You’ll see I’m spot-on about TJ Byrd.”
“I saw her last night.”
“And?”
“Not much of a conversation,” Quinn said. “She walked out onto the porch pointing a twelve-gauge at me and Reggie.”
“What did I say?”
“Isn’t it the boyfriend or husband almost ninety-nine percent of the time when something happens to a woman?”
“That Byrd house is a tinderbox, Quinn Colson,” she said. “Trust me. I’m just surprised it hasn’t blown up sooner.”
FOUR
Saw that Pratt fella came crying to you,” Bishop said.
“Seemed more concerned about those whiskey bottles you broke,” Stagg said. “Not the interest he done owed me.”
“Can’t do much about the man’s intelligence,” Bishop said.
“Chester Pratt ain’t dumb,” Stagg said. “Only shiftless. Lazy and crooked as a tomcat’s peter.”
“Don’t think I ever saw a tomcat’s privates.”
“Damn things look like a bent-up corkscrew.”
Johnny Stagg stood with Bishop in the hollowed-out sheet metal shell that used to house Vienna’s Place. The only thing he’d kept was an antique bar Fannie Hathcock owned that had once been in a saloon in Kansas City, Missouri, and was shipped to Tibbehah County piece by piece. That’s where they’d serve Coca-Cola, fruit punch, pizza slices, cookies, and candy. Little kids getting into all that wholesome family fun with their very own cowboy hat, a mess of them he’d bought special from all the way over in Hangzhou, China.
“On Monday, they start building the town,” Stagg said. “We’re gonna have a general store and a saloon. The livery stable is gonna be the game room where they can play Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Whatever the hell kids are into these days. Only thing I was sure about was having some Skee-Ball and maybe a few of them air hockey tables. In the middle will be the Gold Mine, an inflatable set of tunnels and slides where those children can go buck-ass wild.”
“Quite an idea, Mr. Stagg.”
“Don’t patronize me, son,” Stagg said. “I know what you got on your mind. Chaos, dissension, and anarchy. But sorry, there’s not gonna be no second Civil War. I’ve known for a long time that ole Zeke Coldfield should’ve been institutionalized. Man got his first hard-on watching Mary Pickford at a picture show. All he did was rile you boys up that you were gonna be able to turn back the clock, reset things back to the good ole days when colored people worked the fields and y’all could ride around the Square on horseback. Your head held high while toting an AK-47.”
“It was a lot more than that,” Bishop said. “Hell of a lot more.”
Stagg laughed and shook his head. “Come on now,” he said. “How about me and you get back to the real world for just a few moments? If folks believe the only way of making a dollar in Tibbehah came from jiggling titties and fifty-dollar pecker pulls, they never imagined the markup on that good ole family fun that’s gonna churn out of this place. I see water parks and Ferris wheels and Putt-Putt golf. Enough wholesome entertainment for the whole goddamn Mid-South. Chief Robbie and those Indians sure gonna be pissed when they see I got ’em beat.”
“You gonna need me for anything else?” Bishop asked.
“Today?” Stagg said, reaching into his windbreaker and pulling out a comb. He walked over behind the old bar, the only thing left standing in the big metal shed, and began to style his hair, glad to have it grown back long and proper. “No, sir. Stay close, Mr. Bishop. May have something for you a little later. Ever think about going into the likker business?”
“I don’t drink likker, Mr. Stagg.”
“ ’Course you don’t,” Stagg said. “Man like you got too many ideals and convictions to go down that whiskey river. Just how many of your brethren got killed last year?”
“Just the one,” Bishop said. “Colonel Silas Pierce. A true American hero. Quinn Colson nearly cut him in half with a twelve-gauge Winchester. Bled out in that truck wash. Then they arrested twenty-two from our militia. They actually believe that done it. That they shut us all down.”
“The Watchmen Society?” Stagg said. “Hmmm. Real-life boogeymen. I know y’all’s type.”
“I heard you knew Brother Gowrie.”
“Sure,” Stagg said. “I may have heard of him.”
“Y’all did business at one time?”
“I may have sold him some supplies,” Stagg said. “Once or twice. That’s as far as things went.”
“He’s a true patriot,” Bishop said. “His writings are what brought me to Colonel Pierce and the rest of my brothers.”
“Ain’t that something,” Stagg said. “In my few dealings with him, I never knew Gowrie to be a literate man.”
Stagg placed his comb back into the jacket pocket. He leaned back onto the bar and studied all the empty space, the possibilities, and how it would soon be filled with clapboard houses, wooden sidewalks, and the booming laughter of children. He looked up and wondered if they couldn’t do something about the metal beams and tin roof. Stagg recalled going to visit the Orpheum Theater up in Memphis when he was a kid and how the ceiling had been painted like the night sky, complete with blinking stars and moving clouds. Surely they could figure out something like that for Johnny Stagg’s Frontier Village. The possibilities just tickled him to death. And maybe, just maybe, it would be something that his son would find to his liking and take an interest. It was gonna be damn hard for the boy to stay away now.
“I better be getting back,” Bishop said. The man had a long beard that came down to his chest and wore dark sunglasses all the damn time.
“See Midnight Man,” Stagg said. “He’ll get you paid and fill up your tank on your way out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Mr. Bishop?”
Bishop stopped, ramrod straight and serious like the military man he’d never been. A damn redneck playing dress-up.
“How about you lose the bullshit about the South rising again?” Stagg said. “I’m getting too old for all that mess. If you and me get that straight from the git-go, the better we gonna get along.”
Bishop didn’t answer, turning on his black military boots and heading for the door.
* * *
* * *
Quinn liked early mornings on the Jericho Square, right as businesses opened and activity started to buzz in the small downtown. When he’d first come home ten years ago, most of the Square was boarded up, maybe one or two places still alive. Any business left had moved out along the highway, the old movie theater turned into a wayward church with a mentally deficient preacher, the drugstore and hardware stores that been open for decades shuttered. One of the worst sights was of old Nat Sherman’s menswear shop, windows busted, ceiling and floor caved in, with kudzu and weeds growing through the floor and pressing against broken glass. No one had the sense or pride to condemn or raze the building, letting the store return to nature in an old town that resembled something from a third wor
ld country. But a lot had changed for the better since then.
As Quinn drove counterclockwise on Main, turning toward the Western shop, the old PO, and laundromat, he spotted Luther Varner raising the flags by the town gazebo. He was there every morning at nine a.m. to make sure all was clear and orderly by the veterans’ memorial. And he was also there at sundown to lower the flags and return them to Lipscomb’s Drugstore, where he was rewarded twice a day with a free cup of coffee at their antique soda fountain.
“Rain’s headed this way later on,” Quinn said, walking down the path toward the memorial.
“A real shitstorm from what I seen on the TV,” Mr. Varner said. He and Quinn shook hands and he returned to securing the ropes on the pole.
“You heard from Donnie?”
“Not since last week,” Luther said. “You know he quit that job driving a beer truck? Says your daddy got him some work with a film company shooting in Austin. Can you believe that?”
“Your son and my dad working together?” Quinn said. “Yep. Two of a damn kind.”
“Yes, sir,” Varner said. “God’s own truth.”
“Caddy seems happy,” Quinn said. “Jason likes his new school and he’s looking forward to spring football practice. Caddy’s already working for some nonprofit in the city.”
“Your sister ain’t one to keep idle,” Varner said.
Quinn and the old man followed one of the paths that spoked from the center of the Square toward the crosswalk to Lipscomb’s. The bell jingled as they stepped into the drugstore and emporium. Most of the store now filled with home accents and small gifts, purses and wallets, decorative rugs, fancy bathrobes with matching slippers, and all kinds of gift bags and candies for the Valentine’s Day season. Lots of the stuff decked out in glitter and fake jewels with words like faith, family, football.