The Heathens

by Ace Atkins

  “Three days.”

  “Hmm,” Lovemaiden said. “Someone went to a hell of a lot of trouble to slice and dice and fill up this barrel with all that bleach. Why the hell leave the vic’s car on the roadside like some kind of flashing goddamn sign?”

  “Maybe they lured her out here and then planned to move the car?”

  “What’s her people saying?”

  “They say she’s down in Louisiana raising hell with a new man.”

  “You believe that?”

  “No, sir,” Quinn said. “I sure don’t.”

  “Know anyone who might want to do this woman harm?”

  Quinn nodded. “I’m making a list.”

  “See you share it with me, Sheriff Colson,” Lovemaiden said, closing his eyes and letting out a long breath. “I have a feeling me and you gonna be burning up the phone lines between here and Jericho for a while.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Dusty and Flem Nix were often confused as brothers, although Flem was more than fifteen years older and was Dusty’s daddy. Dusty was thirty-four now, Flem about to hit that big five-oh. Them boys thick as damn thieves. Dusty was closer to his daddy than most sons, although old Daddy Flem sure could get on a man’s nerves. Whistling songs ain’t nobody heard of. Grunting instead of making words. They’d been working as roofers for as long as Dusty could hold a hammer. There wasn’t a roof pitched steep enough that he and Daddy couldn’t climb, repair, or cover in Kool Seal. Summer or winter. He and Daddy had fixed metal roofs so hot they’d scald the damn skin off your hands. And some so damn cold that you couldn’t stop your teeth from chattering loose. The Nixes took the hard jobs no one wanted, not even Mexicans, fair money for their hard work, taking what they earned and supporting the rest of the family compound on their ten acres over in Yellow Leaf right behind the Free Will Baptist church. Momma Lennie, who ruled the damn roost in their world, made sure Dusty’s twin sister and various cousins and uncles got tended to while Dusty and Flem took on most of the responsibility and the work.

  Both men were coal-eyed, midget short, and dark complected, although Flem had grown a little more white-headed these last few years. His whole life, Dusty had to deal with people making jokes about him being born under the damn rainbow, calling him names like “squirt” and fucking “peewee.” The only way to get through it, as Daddy told him, Flem being only an inch taller than his son, was to get down and dirty with anyone who gave you some lip.

  They spent most of the summers fishing and winters shooting deer, in and out of season. They Nix boys also owned their own processing shop out on their spread in Yellow Leaf. There wasn’t an animal they couldn’t bleed out and turn into the finest sausage you ever ate. Ain’t nobody in north Mississippi could make a jalapeño venison bologna like the Nix family. You killed it, the Nix boys could butcher it.

  It had been a hard week, and after finishing up at sunset, Dusty and Flem headed down to Shooter’s pool hall to drink some beer and run a few tables before Momma came looking for them. Dusty knew Daddy would do his best to get good and drunk before Momma Lennie came to town and dragged that old man out by his damn ear. Right now, Flem Nix sat propped up in a corner chair, taking hits of a pint of Fireball from inside his paint-splattered Army coat. A cigarette hung loose out his lean face that reminded Dusty of a Halloween skeleton.

  “Daddy,” Dusty said. “Get up.”

  “Huh?”

  “Get up,” Dusty said. “It’s your shot.”

  Flem Nix grunted and got to his feet with much effort, catching the eye of a big, potbellied man in a gray sweatshirt cut off at the shoulders to show off his hairy arms and some bullshit tattoo of the Realtree deer colored in with the Confederate flag. The man’s gut hung far and wide over his work pants, lots of fat spilling from under his chin. The fat boy looked at Daddy and then back at Dusty and shook his head before leaning into the table and knocking two balls into a corner pocket.

  “What you looking at?” Daddy Nix asked.

  “Oh, hell,” Dusty said.

  “Y’all brothers or something?”

  “Who the fuck wants to know?” Daddy asked.

  “Don’t get all pissy, little man,” the fat boy said, reaching up his fist to burp into it. “I just ain’t never seen folks built so low to the ground.”

  “Do you know who the fuck I am?” Flem Nix said.

  “Give me a minute,” Fat Boy said, rubbing the whiskers on his chin. “You kinda look to me like that little fella used to be on that show with Johnny Knoxville, always getting shot out of a cannon or having his nuts knocked with a sledgehammer.”

  “Keep on talking like that and I’ll knock your goddamn nuts with my fist.”

  Dusty ambled up by his daddy at the pool table and grinned, turning up a cold Budweiser. Thank the damn Lord that folks could drink in Jericho these days. He was already feeling good as hell after taking a couple of those back pills Momma give him and washing it down with some beer and a little cinnamon whiskey.

  “Come on now, Daddy,” Dusty said. “This blubberbutt ain’t worth your trouble.”

  “What’d he just say?” the fat man said. He turned to a black fella sitting nearby, smoking a long cigarette under a Bud Light neon sign. The black man’s eyes bugged out his head, his teeth as brown and crooked as an old rake. Although he didn’t speak, the black man blew out a big plume of smoke.

  “I wouldn’t make my daddy mad,” Dusty said. “He may be little, but he’s fierce as a motherfucker.”

  The fat man didn’t say a word, only walked around the table to size up another shot. His black buddy sat close to the far wall, leaning back in a chair, front legs off the ground and rocking up and down as if watching a damn reality show in motion. The air was smoky down in the basement pool room.

  “Maybe you ought to apologize,” Dusty Nix said.

  Their own table hadn’t been touched, the balls racked slick and still in the center of the scarred-up green felt. Dusty took a hit of the cigarette and waited.

  “That’ll be the day,” the fat man said.

  “You don’t have to mean it or nothin’,” Dusty said. “Just tell my ole daddy you’re sorry.”

  “Y’all are the two weirdest mothers I seen outside the goddamn circus,” the fat man said, knocking the holy shit out of the cue ball and sending two direct and hard in the pocket. “Fuckin’ freaks. Both of y’all smell like someone shit their damn drawers.”

  Daddy Flem shook his head as if the fat man was a sorrowful sight. Dusty knew his daddy could whip both of those boys on his own, but as his daddy leaned into the table to take a shot, he winced with pain. That’s when Dusty noticed the stitching and bandages had come undone on his daddy’s right side, dark blood staining through his work shirt.

  “You okay, Daddy?”

  Daddy Flem didn’t answer as he busted those balls with a tall and mighty crack, scattering all of ’em across the table, a couple solids into two separate pockets. He’d been playing soft and easy all night, but those boys and the pain of his unfortunate injury coming undone had pissed him off. Dusty finished his beer, knowing that hell was about to come if they didn’t get out of here and get home. His daddy had a look in his eye like he wanted to tear that fat boy apart like a field-stripped deer.

  “Better get you fixed up,” Dusty said.

  Daddy Flem didn’t answer, leaning into the table again and knocking in an orange solid. He chalked up his cue and walked around the table, looking for a good shot, eyes switching from the green felt up to the fat man. The fat man must’ve seen it, definitely felt it, standing there with his arms crossed over his big gut, a smile on his face saying, “come on and get you some, old man.”

  “Ain’t nothing,” Daddy said.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Just a busted seam.”

  Fat Boy looked to the bug-eyed black fella
and laughed. “The short ones always give you the most trouble,” he said. “Short ones always got the most to prove. Like a little runt dog nipping at your heels.”

  Oh, hell. Dusty stood up, pretty damn sure that Daddy was about to run the damn table, but also knowing that he might break that pool cue against the fat boy’s skull. He reached out and touched his daddy’s arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s git.”

  “Bullshit,” Daddy Flem said. “I paid my time.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  “Shit.”

  “He ain’t worth it.”

  Daddy breathed in a lot of air through his nose and nodded. He leaned into the table, surveying his options and decided on a shot that put his back toward the fat boy. The fat boy drank some beer and looked away, and that was when Daddy reared back the cue hard and fast right between the fat man’s legs. Damn, he got that boy good in the nuts. The man made a high-pitched sound, like a hurt dog, throwing him against his pool table and then coming full out on Daddy, Daddy turning the cue into a club and whacking that man hard and fast across his skull. Somewhere out front, the owner of the pool hall started to yell, saying he was gonna call the cops. But it was too late, the black man was out of the chair and on his feet heading toward Daddy with a malt liquor bottle raised over his head. Dusty saw him, too, and jumped up high on the man’s back, punching at the back of his head and biting a nice chunk off his ear. Dusty could taste the gristle and blood in his mouth, spitting it onto the floor, Daddy now having that big fat boy down on his knees where he kept on whacking and whacking like that fat man wasn’t nothing but the stump of a stubborn oak, the cue just an old mattock that would tear those roots apart.

  The spit and blood went flying until that big ole boy finally fell. The black man already loose and free from Dusty. He had his hand on his bleeding ear, screaming that he was gonna kill both those short motherfuckers. The black man walked to the wall, going for the gun that was most surely in his coat.

  But the man was too slow. Dusty had a revolver up into the man’s sweating neck, whispering into his bloody ear, “You damn blacks taste just like chicken.”

  There was the fuck yous and all the threats about how they’d find them and kill them. Just a bunch of wind and bullshit. Dusty wasn’t in any mood to get down and dirty but that fat man had played it when he’d disrespected Daddy Flem.

  The pool room was still and silent. You could hear the men shift on the old buckled wooden planks. The two or three other tables had stopped cold, all eyes on Dusty and Daddy Flem. Daddy having the grace to take the bloody and broken cue and place it neatly and orderly in the rack. The Nix boys slid into their coats, Daddy doing it with a lot of pain, so much blood on his right flank that Dusty knew the whole damn thing had torn loose. Smoke hung around the low-hanging lights. Whatever soul music had been playing on the jukebox was gone. It was like something out of one of those old-time Westerns Daddy watched before falling asleep in his La-Z-Boy.

  “Momma will sew you up.”

  “She always does.”

  “You okay?”

  They passed by all the eyes and the whispers, the black-as-night owner of the pool hall already on the phone with Johnny Law. They made it out back and into the night and the cold. Daddy leaned on the passenger door before Dusty helped him inside. The sky was endless and dark, a million pinpricks of light winking above.

  “It wadn’t about him,” Daddy said. “I’m still mad as hell at that goddamn bitch who stuck me.”

  “Do you ever get tired of teaching folks a lesson?”

  “I reckon I don’t,” Daddy said. “Some folks just have it comin’ and I’m glad to send them on their way.”

  SIX

  Holly Harkins knew the fella at table eight was going to be trouble, slow, steady eyes on her chest and on her backside when she took his order for the fisherman’s platter with double fries and extra tartar sauce. When she’d delivered his food, he’d asked her about the freshness of the fish and whether it had been frozen. She’d wanted to say, “Of course it’s been goddamn frozen. How many shrimp and clams do you think you could catch out on Choctaw Lake?” But she’d just smiled and said she didn’t know, saying they got shipments twice a week from down on the coast. He’d listened to her, eyes taking in her breasts in the tight blue Captain Table’s T-shirt, as he reached for a French fry and dabbed it into the tartar sauce. “Mmm,” he said. “I just love fresh young things.”

  The man stuck around to nearly closing time, Holly finding herself looking out the big windows to the parking lot to see if TJ had come back with her momma’s minivan. Most nights TJ was there fifteen, twenty minutes early just in case things got slow and the manager let Holly go. But TJ wasn’t there, probably making out with Ladarius somewhere, listening to her Cheap Trick or fucking Quiet Riot, telling tall tales about how her daddy had been a folk hero and things might’ve been different if her momma had stayed with him and made him a better man.

  “You mind me asking you something?” the pervy man asked. Holly looked away from the window and back toward him. He had the corner booth, a table that could seat six, situated right under an old fisherman’s net seeded with conch shells, starfish, and rubber turtles. The man had his right arm extended over the back of the orange vinyl seat as if putting an arm around a ghost.

  “No, sir.”

  “How’d you get so damn fine?”

  Holly shrugged, having about enough, and not being able to help herself. “Genetics?”

  The man reached a finger into his mouth to pry loose something in his back teeth. “Sure your momma and daddy didn’t have nothing to do with it?”

  Holly shook her head, taking in a long deep breath, as the man stood up and patted her on the rear, reaching into his wallet and leaving a twenty. The meal with tax had been nineteen dollars and some change. He winked as he zipped up his hunting coat and tugged on an orange ski cap and headed for the door.

  As he walked out, cold air rushed in, past the two other waitresses and Phil Jr., the son of the owner of Captain’s Table. The little group was huddled around the register and staring at a small television that they usually only turned on for Ole Miss games. Phil Jr. had the till pulled from the register, the till just sitting there while he stared up at the screen. Some woman from the Tupelo station talking in front of a stretch of yellow tape, the flashing lights of police cars down a dark, dirty road. Body found in Parsham County.

  “Has everybody quit but me?” Holly asked. “We got two tables need busing.”

  “You see this?” asked Becky, one of the older waitresses who’d worked at the Captain’s Table since Holly was little. Becky was tall and thick, with arms as big as Christmas hams and a soft, wrinkled face with lots of loose skin around her throat. She wore perfumed powder and makeup, her dark hair dyed and teased high in what looked like a football helmet.

  “I don’t have time.”

  “Looks like someone got themselves kilt,” Phil Jr. said. The truth never lost on Phil Jr., as being number two at the Captain’s Table made him the king of useless information. Make sure you smile if you want a tip. Make sure to wash your hands after you use the commode or you’ll make a customer sick. Always clean and dry your official T-shirt before coming to work or you’ll look sloppy. Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain. Ever!

  “How does a person get themselves killed?” Becky said.

  “Drugs,” Phil Jr. said. “If it happened in Parsham, it’s got to be drugs.”

  Holly shook her head and lifted a pack of wintergreen gum from the counter while Phil Jr. and Becky weren’t looking and slid it into her jean pocket. She was about to turn and head back to the dirty tables when she saw the footage of the blue car being loaded onto the back of a wrecker and being driven away. There was no mistaking it for a blue Nissan just like the one Gina Byrd drove. Something in Holly just gave out at the sight of it, her legs feeling like they might bu
ckle, as she reached for the phone in her back pocket and speed-dialed TJ.

  The phone rang and rang.

  Where was that damn girl?

  * * *

  * * *

  The black deputy named Caruthers had picked TJ up on the Jericho Square, where she’d been cruising with Ladarius, going round and round, playing her old CDs and waving to friends, after grabbing a strawberry cheesecake shake at the Sonic and riding past the old high school. At first, she thought it had something to do with the business from the other night, but the way the deputy had approached the minivan with such a sad humble face had placed a rock in her stomach. He didn’t even need to tell her that something had happened to her momma. But all he said was there had been some trouble and some concerns and that the sheriff needed to talk to her. She’d left Ladarius there with Holly’s minivan and rode with the deputy to the sheriff’s office, the man not saying two words to her until he walked her inside and told her to take a seat in a big empty conference room with a windowed wall. She must’ve stayed there for thirty minutes until Quinn Colson walked in with two men who said they were from Parsham County, Sheriff Lovemaiden and his special investigator Bobby Peden. Lovemaiden looked like a big blimp, the special investigator kind of doughy, with brown hair and a short goatee that did a poor job at hiding his weak chin. Both of them wore tan uniforms.

  “We found your momma’s car, TJ,” Lovemaiden said.

  “And Momma?”

  Lovemaiden looked to Quinn Colson and then back to her, not being able to say whatever was on his mind. He took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and shook his head.

  Quinn Colson walked over to the table and put a hand on TJ’s shoulder. “We found a body,” he said. “We don’t know if it’s your mother. But we wanted to let you know what was going on.”