by Ace Atkins
Jean sat Boom next to Raven Yancy in the fancy dining room. The two both politely taking the set-up in stride. Maggie had told Quinn that Raven was seeing a cardiologist from Oxford. And Boom was still pining for a hotshit federal agent named Nat Wilkins.
“Not much has changed,” Jean said. “You boys always late for supper.”
“A sheriff can do a lot,” Quinn said. “But damn if I can’t fix the weather.”
“You might’ve called.”
Quinn bowed his head and said a quick prayer over his plate. He cut his eyes over at Boom, and Boom grinned. Quinn mumbling, “Yes, ma’am.”
Maggie looked amused by the situation as she worked on a little salad she’d made, being careful to add a nice helping of the chicken, so as not to offend. She had a big gray cardigan worn over her Lucero T-shirt and blue jeans. Her hair was up in a messy bun and her eyes looked so tired that Quinn didn’t dare complain about his day.
“How’d she do?” Quinn asked.
“Finally sleeping in the next room,” Maggie said. “Thanks to your mother.”
“Maggie needed a little break,” Jean said. “I was glad to help. Halley can’t help that she’s just excited to see everything. Wants to be up every second. Don’t blame her a bit.”
Brandon had already left the table and moved into the TV room. He watched Teen Titans Go! while Quinn updated them a little on his day, asking Raven if she’d heard anything about the boy with the busted leg.
“Leg was broken in four places,” Raven said.
“Damn,” Boom said.
“Doctor was about to set it as I left,” Raven said. “His daddy was mad as hell. He thought the kid had a real future as a kicker for the Wildcats. Broke the good leg, too.”
“Those boys out low riding?” Boom said.
Quinn nodded, taking a bite of the chicken and dumplings, his favorite of his mother’s meals. She made everything from scratch and used whole pieces of chicken. The perfect meal on a cold, rainy night.
“Glad me and you didn’t do nothing like that,” Boom said.
Jean nearly spit out her boxed Chablis. She remembered too many times of calling in favors to her brother after Quinn and Boom would get caught doing mischief out in the county. Jean always had to set things straight, smooth things over with the law or someone Quinn and Boom had mistakenly wronged, before Boom’s daddy, an old-school fire-and-brimstone preacher, found out. Boom’s daddy’s answer to everything had been to “jerk a knot in that boy’s ass.”
“You got a second to talk?” Quinn asked, motioning down to Raven’s empty plate.
“Can’t this official business wait a second,” Jean said. “Did you know Raven hasn’t seen a single Elvis movie? Not even Blue Hawaii?”
“Damn shame,” Boom said.
“He was a good man,” Jean said, smiling sweetly, lifting her wineglass halfway. “That Elvis. Remind me to tell you a story of going up to Graceland with Quinn’s daddy back in ’76. That was a hell of a time.”
“Daddy nearly got killed,” Quinn said.
“Elvis and his boys saved him.”
“Wait,” Maggie said, holding up her hand. Looking as if she might’ve choked on her peach cobbler. “What happened?”
Quinn got up, kissed his wife on her cheek, and motioned for Raven to follow him outside. “You tell her, Momma,” he said. “I heard it all before. Raven and I need to talk a little shop.”
Quinn slapped Boom on the back, reminding him he needed to hear the big story of Jason Colson ’76 once again, and headed outside with Raven. They stood by the back door, the rain blowing sideways across the sloped backyard and up to the old treehouse where Quinn used to play G.I. Joe and Caddy used to sell mud pies. Then it had become Caddy’s son Jason’s Indian fort and now Brandon’s space station, and it wouldn’t be long before Halley would take over that little piece of real estate. Jason Colson had built it on one of his rare stretches home from his work in Hollywood.
“Is that really true?” Raven said. “What your mother was saying about Elvis?”
“Some of it.”
“And the rest?”
“Like my daddy,” Quinn said. “A walking contradiction. Partly truth, partly fiction.”
“And you?” she asked.
“What you see is what you get.”
Raven smiled, cold wind blowing across the metal furniture and rain dripping down the awning. She reached into her purse and pulled out a plastic baggie filled with a jagged little piece of metal. “Here you go,” she said. “Nurse who worked on the man said he was real short.”
“How short?”
“Below five feet.”
“Damn,” Quinn said. “That is short. And how old?”
“Fifties,” she said. “Maybe older. White-headed with a white mustache. He was intoxicated, possibly on some painkillers. She said the man kept on begging her to write him a scrip for Oxy. But she couldn’t unless he provided some ID. Said another man had brought him in, just as short, and maybe twenty years younger. She figured they were kin.”
“No names?”
Raven shook her head and handed him a printout from the clinic. Quinn read through it quick by the light spilling from the kitchen window. He nodded, folding the paper and placing it in the breast pocket of his uniform. This was it. This was their man.
“Heard Ladarius got caught.”
Quinn nodded.
“I know he’s hurt,” she said. “But could’ve been a lot worse. Think you might help that boy out when he gets home?”
“He’s facing a bunch of charges.”
“Sounds like someone offered you a hand,” she said. “Way back when. You don’t have to say anything, Quinn. Just keep an open mind. Kid’s got to grow up sometime.”
* * *
* * *
TJ took the last five bucks to grab a burger while Chastity promised to stay put and watch John Wesley. TJ hadn’t been gone all of fifteen minutes to use the bathroom and grab the burger when she returned to find Chastity gone.
“Where’d she go?” TJ said.
It was late, full dark except for under the glow of the tall lights over the big semi parking lot. The wind had quieted down a bit, but every few minutes, a big nasty gust of cold would rattle through the trucks.
“Said she was gonna get us some money,” he said. “So we can get the hell out of this shithole.”
“Which way?” TJ said, tossing her uneaten burger in the passenger seat.
John Wesley pointed into the big maze of trucks. TJ shook her head and grabbed the handle, headed out into the tall semis, the smell of diesel and burnt oil everywhere. Some of the rigs had on their parking lights, glowing hot orange and red, the doors high above the asphalt where she was walking, not being able to see who was inside or where that crazy-ass girl had gone.
Two men stood outside a Peterbilt, leaning against the grille smoking cigarettes, giving her a good look-over as she passed. One of them winked at her. The other asked if she were cold. “Come on and hop up inside my cab,” a rangy old redneck said. “I’ll warm you up right quick.”
TJ didn’t answer them, being used to men like that her whole life. She’d met them at the grocery store and church. He looked pretty much the same as the deacon who offered up bubble gum from his pant pockets in exchange for a hug. They were the men who touched her hair and little rump. The ones that used to come home with Momma, and TJ would wake up to them sitting at the kitchen table Saturday morning, crunching their cereal while John Wesley tried to watch cartoons. Checking out her tight little body in her T-shirt down to her knees, wondering if she wouldn’t be a better and newer model than old Gina. Damn, TJ thought. Why did Ladarius have to go and get his ass caught?
She turned the corner to see a huge purple Kenworth with tall chrome smokestacks and endless custom purple lights across the grille. purple peop
le eater had been airbrushed across the passenger door. Inside the cab she could hear muffled music playing, that old song her grandmomma liked so much. “Fancy” by Reba McEntire. The song so wild and haunting coming from the other side of that truck cab. The purple and green lights glowing on the puddled ground.
TJ kept on moving, along the trailer, still hearing Reba singing, until she heard that first scream. Something knocked hard against the cab door, the whole cab shaking back and forth.
TJ reached up under her flannel shirt and patted the butt of her daddy’s .38. Goddamn it. That stupid girl sure knew how to find trouble. She ran up to the rig, hopped up onto the sideboard, and started banging on the door. “Let her out!” TJ said, yelling. “Goddamn you.”
* * *
* * *
“Mr. Stagg,” Chester Pratt said. “No offense. But do you have any idea of the folks you’re working with now?”
Stagg stood beside his cherry red El Dorado, the shadow of the metal hull of Frontier Village looming behind them. The trees blocked the view of Highway 45, cars and semis blowing past the bright white light of the grand Tibbehah Cross. Ole Man Skinner’s legacy to the wretched of this world before kicking the bucket last year.
“I got to be getting home,” Stagg said. “You got something to say, go ahead and say it. Or else just hold on to your peter till the morning.”
“The Nixes ain’t like people you normally deal with,” Chester Pratt said, a little out of breath, his hand shaking while trying to light a cigarette up under his umbrella. “These men don’t have any honor. They couldn’t spell honor if they tried. They’re both more like animals. I got took by ’em. I paid them for a job and then they tried to shake me down. Trust me now. They’ll do the same to you.”
Stagg stood, car door open, rain tapping down his pompadour. He grinned big and wide at Chester and told him how much he appreciated his concern.
“Why’d you send them?”
“Didn’t they ask you nothing?” Stagg said.
“They want me to set up a meeting with TJ Byrd.”
“Well, all right, then.”
Stagg had on a cowboy slicker bought at a Western wear shop over in Calhoun City, stiff and waxed, water pebbling off the canvas. Chester Pratt looking at him, holding that umbrella, like a child who’d lost his way.
“Don’t know what you want me to say,” Stagg said.
“You gonna kill her, too?”
“No,” he said. “That’s not the plan.”
“What is the plan, then?” Chester said. Goddamn crying now. “Do you know what those boys did to Gina? Just for trying to fight back? They cut her up like a side of meat, stuck her over in that trash barrel in Parsham. Good Lord, Mr. Stagg. Ain’t none of this shit worth it.”
“That business ain’t none of my concern.”
“Thought we were partners.”
“This ain’t about liquor,” Stagg said. “Now is it?”
“And what about your boy Bishop?” he asked. “What became of him? He’s deader than hell, ain’t he?”
The thought of it brought to mind that bloody sack of sausage the Nixes delivered. The smell of Cajun spices and jalapeños still hot in Stagg’s nose. He looked at Chester, wetter than a duck’s dingaling, feet ankle-deep in water with half his sniveling face in shadow.
“Boy, this game ain’t for you,” Stagg said. “You want to run with the big dogs, run a liquor store? To get things done, you got to deal with some unpleasantness. Hell, I’ve been dealing with unpleasantness since I opened up the Rebel. Just last night, two old boys tried to steal an ATM from me and nearly tore out my wall. But you move on. You do what needs getting done. And if that means working with some folks like the Nix boys. Well. I guess that’s how that old song goes.”
“Even if I knew,” Chester said. “I wouldn’t tell you where those children are at. I guess I just don’t have it in me.”
Stagg nodded and crawled into the El Dorado. The big car door still wide open, rain pelting the black interior as Chester Pratt walked up to the door.
“Those kids ain’t safe out there,” Stagg said. “If the law don’t get to them, something else will eat them alive. Those boys will bring ’em back. Get things settled the way they should be.”
Chester swallowed and nodded. “TJ,” he said. “She knows. She knows all about the money I took from her momma. Won’t be long till the law will be coming for me, too. You get that. Right?”
Stagg shut his door, cranked the ignition, and let down his window just a crack.
“A damn shame,” Stagg said, knocking the ElDo in drive. “You stay dry out there, Chester. You hear?”
* * *
* * *
TJ banged on the truck cab with the flat of her hand as she heard more yelling from inside. She was about to give up and run for help when the door opened hard and fast, sending her flat on her back. A huge man, one of the biggest goddamn men she’d ever seen, stepped out on the sideboard. He had a shaved head and a handlebar mustache, a large old belly and only one good eye, the other covered in a black patch like some kind of redneck pirate.
TJ scrambled backward. The one-eyed man was shirtless, with reddened skin covered in white hair across his stomach and over his arms and thick neck. Inside, she heard Chastity’s voice, begging for help.
“Who the fuck are you?” the man said.
“I came for my friend.”
“Your friend’s busy,” he said. “Her mouth’s full.”
TJ, halfway soaked from the puddle, pushed herself up in the dark. She reached across her to her left hip and grabbed her daddy’s .38 and aimed it square at the man’s pecker.
“You don’t get down from there and I swear to Christ, mister, I’ll geld your fat ass in one shot.”
The man’s work pants were unbuckled, hanging down below his big belly. The sagginess nearly made him trip as he dropped to the ground. TJ raised the pistol toward his chest now, knowing he wasn’t about to stop. She just might have to kill the son of a bitch.
Behind the man’s shoulder, Chastity appeared in the open door. She had blood across her face, one eye snapped shut. That frilly little white shirt ripped away, exposing a hot pink bra.
“I’m sorry,” Chastity said, sobbing. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“Step away, mister,” TJ said.
The man buckled his pants, not bothering to zip his fly, moving on toward her with his hand out, grinning. He walked slow and heavy, breathing rough, red smears of blood across his saggy chest. “Give it here, little girl,” he said. “And I’ll let you suck my peter, too.”
“Shoot him!” Chastity said, screaming. “Kill the bastard!”
TJ walked backward, feet splashing in the water glowing purple, gun raised up on the man until he was damn near close enough to touch. He reached back and slapped TJ hard against the face and sent her reeling. The one-eyed man reached out, trying to take her daddy’s gun. The slap just like a thousand damn stings from all those last-call dates her momma brought home from the Southern Star. Damn near taking Gina piece by piece until there was barely nothing left. TJ had the horrible thought that maybe whatever Chester Pratt had done was an act of mercy. That her mother had been gone for years.
TJ could taste the blood in her mouth as she pointed the gun at the man’s chest and fired twice. One hit him in the mouth, the other tore at his belly, the huge one-eyed sack of shit still reaching out for her as he collapsed down on one knee and then the other until he gagged and fell face-first into a puddle.
“Holy shit,” Chastity said. TJ walked over to her and offered her a hand. “Holy shit. You did it. You really did it.”
“Are you all right?”
Chastity began to cry some more, trying to hold her frilly shirt together over her little bra in the dim light and cold wind. Her face and hair a mess, the top of her fancy blue jeans ripped, with claw m
arks all up and down her stomach.
“Did he?”
“I just asked him for a twenty,” Chastity said. “A lousy goddamn twenty dollars. He said he wanted a hug. Wanted to talk. He told me I was as pretty as his daughter.”
TJ pulled at Chastity’s arm as she hovered over the man’s body, staring down at him, face-first in the puddle. Chastity kicked hard at him a few times, crying and sobbing, until she stopped cold, reached down, and plucked the man’s wallet from his back pocket.
“We need to run,” Chastity said, wiping at her face with her tattered shirt. “Right now. And real fast.”
TJ pulled at the girl, stashed the gun into her jeans, and headed back to the stolen car and John Wesley. Her feet sloshed through the puddles as the gunshots rang in her ears.
Not much farther. Not much farther and they’d be safe.
TWENTY-THREE
It was a full forty-eight hours later before Lillie saw the footage of TJ Byrd and Chastity Bloodgood at the truck stop. She and Charlie Hodge had concentrated much of their efforts in Texarkana at the lovely Tri-State Motel and multiple visits with Ladarius McCade. But that kid, God love him, would not break. Whether true or not, right or wrong, he would not give up his girl. When she did ID TJ and Chastity from the security video, she and Charlie were off, only eighty miles south to Shreveport, Louisiana, or what Lillie liked to call the armpit of the South.
The witness was most surely dead, a prime specimen of man named Floyd Eugene Hicks. Most of the folks at the truck stop didn’t recall the girls, either, besides a woman named Gladys—why the fuck were waitresses always given names like that?—who recalled Chastity Bloodgood being a surly little bitch who told her to mind her own damn business and didn’t even leave a tip.