The Heathens

by Ace Atkins

  She’d been so certain about telling TJ, Ladarius, and poor John Wesley to grab what they could and jump in the minivan two nights ago. They’d all figure it out on the road. Right? That’s what she was thinking, that maybe they could just go somewhere for a while until folks figured out that TJ would never hurt her mom and they could head on home with everything like it used to be. But last night, while everyone was asleep, she scrolled through that new phone they’d gotten at the Walmart and saw what big news they’d all become. This wasn’t some small personal shit. Everyone, and she meant everyone, was talking about them.

  TJ and Ladarius had been charged with murder. Holly’s name was in the stories, too, talking about her like she’d been an accomplice in whatever happened to Gina Byrd.

  How the hell had everyone gotten things so damn wrong? Maybe they should have stayed in Tibbehah to explain everything. Running had made them all look guilty as hell. Stupid, Holly. So damn stupid, just like always.

  Maybe it had something to do with her being an only child. Her mother always wanted her to be perfect. There had been dance lessons, and when they realized Holly was too clumsy, she went to the violin. When the violin became too much trouble, there had been ice skating all the way up in Olive Branch before she broke her ankle. And then it was her grades. She couldn’t just be an A/B student, but all A’s, damn well better be on that honor roll. And church. She sang in the youth choir and helped with Sunday school. When she’d been offered a job at the Captain’s Table, her mother worried that might interfere with the Wednesday Bible study. She couldn’t even imagine that maybe a teenage girl didn’t want to sit through a second service in the middle of the week, listening to their two-bit preacher talk as if he’d been intoxicated by his up-close-and-personal relationship with Jesus H. Christ.

  Now that she was gone and Tibbehah was in the rearview, Holly wasn’t so sure she wanted to go back ever again. Standing there at the edge of the lake, mist rising from the surface, it seemed to be the first time she could breathe in a long while. Soon TJ would get smart and drop Ladarius or Ladarius would head back home. Then maybe she and TJ could find somewhere new to live, try dyeing her hair again, and think about some new names. She and TJ could even raise John Wesley like he was their own. Maybe Florida. Maybe down at the beach somewhere. And that would end all the days and nights at that musty church or with pimply-faced boys with a thousand hands feeling up under her sweater, praying to God that she would feel something stir inside of her. But she never did.

  The only time she’d felt like that had been with TJ, two summers ago, out there in the inner tube on Choctaw Lake. They’d reached out and touched hands, held them for a long while as they watched that sunset, and Holly knew there was no other place she’d rather be.

  Holly stood at the end of the pier, her breath clouding before her with a thick blanket around her shoulders. Up the hill, she heard John Wesley call her name. She’d never seen that kid so excited in her life. A big pile of trucks and toys by the television, more food than he could ever eat. “Breakfast,” he said, yelling. “Ladarius stole us up some steak.”

  Holly knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t stop smiling. She only wished they could all just stay in that big house forever. Still, she knew that wasn’t the way things worked out for kids like them. They were nothing but intruders into someone else’s world.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Heard you were looking for me, Sheriff,” Ronnie Pratt said, standing at the doorway of Quinn’s office. Hands in his pockets, sunglasses up on top of his gray head. He was a chunkier and shorter version of his younger brother, wearing khaki pants and a blue golf shirt with a Ford emblem. Quinn had left him a message at the dealership as he headed back to town.

  “I was about to head your way, Ronnie,” Quinn said, standing and shaking his hand. “Appreciate you coming in.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to call,” Ronnie said. “Chester said you might be checking up on him.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ronnie said, taking a seat across from Quinn’s desk. His ass nearly too wide for the arms. “Damn shame what happened to Gina. First woman Chester had ever been seeing that was worth a shit. She was a damn fine-looking gal, too. Makes me sick to my stomach to hear what happened to her. Chopped up into little pieces by her own child. I don’t have to tell you that’s what happens when we take God out of schools. Replace ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ with all that rap music.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ronnie said. “You grew up here. Is it like it was back in the old days?”

  “Tibbehah County has never had the makings of a Cracker Barrel menu, Mr. Pratt,” Quinn said. “Time has a funny way of twisting your memory.”

  Pratt didn’t like the answer, resting his hands over his prosperous stomach. He removed the sunglasses off his head, blew on a lens, and began to polish them with his shirtsleeve.

  “Y’all caught ’em yet?” Pratt asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “How far can a bunch of kids run?” he said. “I saw that girl hooked up with some nigger boy. I guess that’s how it all starts.”

  “Mr. Pratt, I came to you for assistance,” Quinn said. “But I don’t care for that kind of talk and if you use that word again, I’ll see to it you leave by the window.”

  Pratt snickered at that. Quinn just stared at him from across the table until he stopped. He placed the glasses into the V on his golf shirt and swallowed. “Shoot,” he said. “I guess y’all elected officials got to be all politically correct these days or the media will be coming for your damn nuts.”

  Quinn didn’t dignify him with a response. He’d nearly forgotten how much he disliked the whole Pratt family. They kept a well-worn kind of cockiness, like they were too good for Tibbehah County. The kind of people that would brag that they were the descendants of plantation owners and Confederate generals while everyone knew their granddaddy, like most everyone else, had worked the fields and owed the commissary come harvest time.

  “Weren’t you and Chester supposed to be partners in that liquor store?”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “You want me to come down here and stab my own brother in the back. Holy damn hell.”

  “No, sir,” Quinn said. “Just need to know why he went at it himself.”

  Ronnie Pratt rubbed a hand over his jaw, stubbled with little white hairs. Quinn had heard that every time he sold a car, the manager at the dealership would ring a little bell and Ronnie Pratt would take a nip from a flask inside his coat. Quinn kept waiting for the man to pull it out while they talked privately.

  “Chester didn’t need me no more,” he said. “I reckon he got the money somewhere else.”

  “Like where?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I figured when Chester came to me, wanting me to throw into the pot, he’d already gone to every dumb son of a bitch in north Mississippi with his hat in his gosh-dang hands.”

  “How much money did he need to borrow?”

  “That’s a private business matter, Sheriff,” Ronnie said. “I don’t know if I should be saying all this without my attorney present. You do know ole Sonny Stevens?”

  “Best lawyer in the county while he’s drunk,” Quinn said. “Second best when he’s sober. Yeah, I know Sonny. He’s my lawyer, too.”

  Ronnie Pratt started to chuckle again. “I guess y’all need lawyers these days with all this anti-police stuff. You sometimes got to get a little rough with prisoners. Make sure their heads hit the bars on the way in. Har. Har.”

  “Nope,” Quinn said. “I shot three men dead, including a former sheriff’s deputy, out at the old airfield a few years ago. You might’ve read something about it.”

  Pratt’s smile dropped. He again pulled out his sunglasses from his shirt and began to study the lenses in the overhead light. Not liking w
hat he saw, Ronnie Pratt blew on them once more and began to polish with the edge of his shirt, flashing his big hairy belly.

  “Altogether, Chester said he needed to come up with right around fifty thousand dollars,” Ronnie said. “Give or take a nickel.”

  “And you were prepared to give it to him?”

  “Had to loot my savings for my part, about twenty-five thousand, but who wouldn’t want to be co-owner of the only liquor store in three counties?” Pratt asked. “Seemed like the kind of thing that even my baby brother couldn’t fuck up.”

  “Did Chester tell you where he got the rest?”

  “No, sir,” Ronnie said. “He did not. I hadn’t spoken to him since our partnership fell through. His call the other night came out of the blue and I was still sore about him screwing me over. But given the tragedy he’d endured, I didn’t want to bring up an old grievance.”

  “Your compassion is overwhelming.”

  Ronnie Pratt shook his head, sucked a tooth, and stood up on his little fat legs. He looked at his watch. “My lunch break’s nearly over, Sheriff,” he said. “Got a woman driving down from Oxford wants to see a real special Expedition. One of them big ones with all the trimmings.”

  “Good luck,” Quinn said, nodding to the door.

  “You, too,” Ronnie Pratt said. “Sure hope those kids go down in a hail of bullets. Now that’d be better than a sweaty ole Fourth of July. Wouldn’t it?”

  * * *

  * * *

  Ladarius McCade did not care what anyone might have heard, he was no damn criminal. He was slick. He was good at what he did. And sure, he may have taken a few things over the last few years. But that wasn’t a crook. A crook hurt people, stole from hardworking folks and families. He’d never done that in his life. Rich folks had so much stuff laying around that they barely even missed it. And if he happened to take their vehicle and drive it over to that chop shop in Byhalia, insurance would pay them back. All he was doing was plying the trade that his great-uncle Dupuy taught him.

  Ladarius pulled out another steak from the counter, getting softer but still frozen most of the way through. He tossed it into a black skillet, the meat starting to heat and burn, wishing he now had one of those cold beers damn Holly poured out in the yard.

  Yeah, this was all right. Maybe they could go home once the law stopped harassing TJ. Until then, TJ needed good people around her, looking after her and little John Wesley, letting her have some time to heal up after what happened to her mother.

  Ladarius couldn’t stop thinking about what TJ had told him, about her mother coming home from the Southern Star that night, her shirt soaked in some man’s blood, telling TJ that she’d killed a man out back of the bar. Gina Byrd said she had no idea why she was attacked, but TJ had too much experience with Gina Byrd’s lies and deceit. That woman was out back doing something that she shouldn’t been doing. Maybe trading some of that booty for some pills or to smoke a little of that crystal meth. Whatever she did didn’t much matter now. TJ should’ve gone and trusted Sheriff Colson to find out the truth. Wasn’t no doubt in any of their minds, Miss Gina was killed in some kind of revenge. At first, she’d said one man. And then there were two. TJ said her momma was so damn fucked up she barely knew her own damn name. Talking nonsense. Slurring her damn words.

  Ladarius forked at the steak, still frozen solid but burning a bit on the other side, smoke coming from the skillet. He turned over the meat and hit the fan, the last thing they needed was for the whole damn Hot Springs Fire Department to be rolling up on their asses. This was gonna be one fine place to hole up for a few days, kick back, eat some good food, and watch some TV. Maybe, just maybe, TJ would start feeling a little better and might let Ladarius do what he’d been wanting to do since they started dating. That girl always slapping his damn hand from her pants when things were getting good.

  The only thing that worried him was the law coming, finding them when they didn’t expect it. From what he was seeing on the news, folks seemed to be blaming him for what TJ never did. Folks weren’t looking for them anymore to ask questions, he and TJ had been damn charged with murder. TJ didn’t seem to be bothered by the news, but in Ladarius’s world, getting charged with a crime wasn’t no joke. Shit. He’d been charged with breaking and entering, theft, assault, and possession. The possession charge had been real bullshit as he was only holding some weed for his cousin Ricky. But murder. Shit. This was serious-ass business that was drawing a big old target on his black ass. Come knock-knock time, there wasn’t gonna be any time to explain jack shit.

  Ladarius turned over the steak again and forked into the middle, good ole blood oozing out into the pan. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to cook them steaks after all. He was glad that he’d grilled TJ’s good and well done, nearly burnt.

  Man, there had been a time when he thought he’d be known for something better. Athlete, rapper, actor. Some shit like that. When he was a kid, folks at his church used to tell him he looked a lot like Will Smith, and that pleased him to no end as he’d been a big fan of those Bad Boys movies. Even thinking maybe he’d go straight and become a policeman, too. Back two, three years ago there was still time. But now? Shit. Wasn’t no way he was headed back. They were headed down the road the preacher called that long, dark path.

  The steak was burning and smoking from the pan and he turned off the gas. He used a towel to pick up the skillet and set it down on the marble top of a big island.

  He’d just found a fork and knife and was about to dig in when a pretty little blonde girl busted into the room and pointed a gun right at him. Damn, this shit was just getting better and better. Big blue eyes with curly blonde hair.

  “Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in my house?” she asked.

  “What’s a pretty little thing like you doing with a big gun like that?” Ladarius asked, smiling. Trying to do his best and most charming Will Smith.

  “If you don’t put up your hands and step away from the T-bone,” the blonde girl said, “you sure as hell are gonna find out.”

  FOURTEEN

  Lillie had a rare few hours off and had taken Rose and their new pit bull, Jerry Lee, down to Tom Lee Park along the Mississippi River. She knew at any moment the marshals might get a lead on those kids and anxiously walked the riverside with her phone in her hand. They hadn’t been at the park fifteen minutes when Quinn called, Lillie hoping this would finally be it, that someone down in Tibbehah knew where they’d gone over in Arkansas.

  “Let me guess,” Lillie said. “Those little bastards came down to the SO and turned themselves in?”

  “No such luck,” Quinn said. “But I am hearing a few things that trouble me.”

  “Troubling you?” Lillie said. “If you don’t know where they’ve run off to, I don’t much give a damn.”

  “You need to hear this.”

  “Oh, hell,” Lillie said. “You think TJ Byrd may be innocent. Right? May I remind you I don’t give two shits. You investigate. I bring ’em in. And it’s not up to either of us whether they’re guilty or not. Damn. I sure was hoping you were Charlie Hodge. He’s been running down no-tell motels in West Memphis while I get a little time with Miss Rose.”

  “And how is she?”

  “More beautiful and perfect than her momma deserves,” Lillie said. “She also eats like a horse and cusses like a sailor. Fluently, I might add, in two languages.”

  “Wonder where she gets it?”

  Lillie had on a Redbirds ball cap and a puffy black coat. It was colder than a witch’s tit along the Mississippi, but the sun was high and bright, not a cloud in the sky. Rose ran in circles with Jerry Lee, that muscly dog wanting back the rope bone she’d been tossing to him.

  “Okay,” Lillie said. “I’ll bite. Tell me why you called, Sheriff. Won’t make a damn difference to me, but I’d be glad to listen while I spend precious family time with my daughter
and our dog.”

  “When did y’all get a dog?”

  “Christmas,” Lillie said. “From the shelter. You’d like him. Big, brindle-coated pit named Jerry Lee. He’d tear a man’s nuts off as quick as I can snap my fingers.”

  The wind blew hard across the bluffs, scattering dead leaves down around the wide-open grassy spaces and causing static on her phone.

  “Listen, Lil,” Quinn said. “Ronnie Pratt just left my office. He said a few months back, Chester needed him to partner up on that new liquor store. But then all of the sudden Chester told Ronnie he didn’t need his money. Ronnie says he has no idea where his brother came up with that kind of cash.”

  “How do I ever get by without knowing that good ole cornpone gossip?” Lillie asked. “I wonder if Li’l Abner’s still poking Daisy Mae behind the woodshed.”

  “These kids ran because they’re scared,” Quinn said. “Not because they’re guilty.”

  “I know ninety-nine damn percent of the time when a woman gets killed it’s the boyfriend or the husband or Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with his dick in his hand,” Lillie said. “But then there is the unlucky fucking one percent who give birth to an evil little shit like TJ Byrd. Who just happens to want to knock boots with a crook like Ladarius McCade.”

  “Hear me out, Lil.”

  “I appreciate you hopping on the due diligence trail,” Lillie said. “I really do. But seriously, who cares about Chester Pratt’s business? I doubt he’d let Gina Byrd anywhere near his till. A blind man would’ve made better change.”

  “What if I told you that the Byrds recently came into a nice insurance settlement,” Quinn said. “And might’ve been flush for the first time in their lives?”

  “If Gina Byrd found twenty dollars on the street, it would be up her goddamn nose in ten minutes.”