by Ace Atkins
John Wesley was yelling. “Y’all stop it!” he said. “Stop it.”
TJ wiped the mess off her face and looked square at Little Miss Perfect, holding her forehead, a big old egg already beginning to form. Both of the girls were red-faced and breathing hard, and TJ did her best to listen to her little brother, promising him on the way down that they were now partners in this. Holly is gone. Ladarius is gone. Now it was up to them to see this to the end. “Family,” she had said. “We’re all we got now.”
TJ told him she was sorry. John Wesley just stared at her, putting a finger to his lips and shaking his head. “Don’t you hear it?” he asked. “It goes thump, thump, thump.”
“Damn,” TJ said. “I had the music cranked up too high on the road. That’s Rikki Rockett’s kick-ass drums on ‘Nothin’ but a Good Time.’ I can still hear it in my head, too.”
John Wesley shook his head, a big beach towel up over his shoulders, and pointed up to the ceiling. TJ didn’t say a word and listened.
He was right. Someone was on the roof.
* * *
* * *
“Not that it matters,” Quinn said, riding shotgun as they sped down to Grand Isle. “But TJ Byrd had a solid reason for knocking the hell out of her mother.”
“And where did you receive this bold revelation?”
“Holly Harkins,” Quinn said. “She said TJ was trying to kick Gina Byrd out of their trailer and out of their lives after she kept on bringing one shitbird after another home to beat up her little brother.”
“Holly said that?”
“Yep.”
“Gina did have awful taste in men,” Lillie said. “But I saw Gina after they got into it. TJ left her momma in some bad shape.”
“Apparently all that damage wasn’t done by TJ.”
Lillie didn’t say anything, doing seventy with her hand on the wheel, a straight shot of Louisiana highway in front of them. The gray clouds and darkness across the flatlands, a big-ass plant of some kind in the distance churning up smoke into the sky. Everything was so empty and desolate, they looked like they were on the other side of hell.
“Gina and I were friends for a long while,” Lillie said. “Maybe I should’ve listened to the kid more.”
“I’ve been out there,” Quinn said. “TJ doesn’t make it easy.”
“Maybe you can talk her into joining the Army?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Lillie shook her head, catching a sign pass by, only twelve more miles to Grand Isle. “I was only joking, Ranger,” she said. “The military isn’t for everybody.”
“What worked for you at that age?”
“Me?” Lillie said. “I’ve always had this sunny and sweet disposition. Folks used to call me Little Miss Fucking Sunshine.”
“The truth is you haven’t changed a bit.”
“You, too, Quinn Colson,” Lillie said. “I guess we all had to grow up real quick.”
* * *
* * *
Dusty Nix had shimmied up onto the roof with a crowbar he’d grabbed from his toolbox, going to work on a tin sheet and lifting it up to the rafters. His pockets full of an old shirt and underwear of Daddy’s soaked in gasoline to stick up under the stilts and up and under the tin. Didn’t take long before the fire caught hot and fast while he held on to the satellite dish and giggled to himself.
Daddy was down on the road, smoking another cigarette on that empty street, a dozen houses looking just like the Bloodgood place, all in a pretty straight row, lightless and empty on a cool February morning. The only lights he could see were two streets down by the Gulf. Dusty figured those two girls and that little boy would come running out of that house like a family of scared rabbits.
Dusty waved down to Daddy.
Daddy waved back.
Dusty covered his mouth as he started to giggle some more, gripping that satellite pole, about to monkey down onto a window, when he saw a dark-colored Dodge Charger hauling ass up the main road and come wheeling in hard where Daddy was parked. Goddamn Daddy, deaf as a damn post, kept on waving to Dusty up on the roof until he finally turned and hobbled up toward that Dodge.
The dumb son of a bitch reached for his gun. Dusty yelled for him, but the man wouldn’t listen. He never listened.
The doors jacked open and two folks got out onto the road, a woman yelling for Daddy to put down the weapon. Dusty knew he’d never forget Daddy’s final words as the old man raised his pistol, yelling, “Y’all can suck my damn dick.”
Guns were drawn. Shots were fired.
Daddy lay dead not fifteen feet from that Dodge Charger with its motor still running. Dusty felt all the air leave him as he gripped the drainpipe and lowered his feet down onto a railing. That’s when he heard the shots fired from inside the house and saw the silver tin bucking up wild and free.
Dusty grabbed hold of that pole and pulled himself back up onto the roof. His feet slick as goose shit under him as someone started to unload a magazine full of bullets up into his ass.
* * *
* * *
Three minutes before, TJ asked Chastity: “Where’s your daddy’s gun?”
“Why don’t you use your daddy’s?” Chastity asked. “Since you love him so damn much.”
“My daddy’s gun’s right here on my damn hip,” she said. “But I need that big-ass gun, the one with the american by birth, southern by the grace of god written on it, to shoot the goddamn nuts off whoever is up there setting fire to your place.”
The smoke was already pouring in through the vents and down into the house. She’d told John Wesley to get low and crawl to the door after they’d smelled the smoke. They could hear the cold wind, the crackling of the fire, and footsteps above them. Soon came the squealing tires, the gunshots, the yelling.
“Where’s the gun?”
Chastity disappeared and TJ pressed her body around her little brother, believing the girl was finally gone for good. But then Chastity was back and handing over that AR-15 she claimed she couldn’t sell out of sentimental value.
TJ checked the magazine, jacked it back into the gun like she’d learned out at her Aunt Tabitha’s land with all her hippie, lesbo friends hooting and hollering, swilling cold beer from the can.
TJ got off her knees and went to hunting where she heard that sound. She didn’t need any light, moving with the creaking, finding it up close by the window where she saw a man’s old boot dangling off the roof and trying to find some purchase on the porch railing.
TJ raised the gun and squeezed the trigger, hearing an oof and a big thud. More scrambling up above as the man’s boots thudded right up over them, moving crossways over the roof. She raised the gun and shot more, the shots so loud they made her ears go numb and silent, an electric hum in the room after she stopped.
“Quit,” Chastity said, yelling nearly up into her ear. “Stop it now. You’re ripping apart my house.”
“Little too late to worry about that,” she said. “Get John Wesley and get to the back door. We’re getting the hell out of here.”
TJ lowered the big gun, trying to listen for anything. But it was stone-cold quiet again.
“Chastity?”
Nothing.
“Chastity?” TJ said. “Goddamn you.”
Cold air rushed into the room and she looked over to find the front door wide open and hearing more yelling outside down on the street. She started to cough from the smoke spewing out from the vents.
“Chastity,” she said.
When TJ turned back, she saw the man with a gun, holding his meaty little forearm up around John Wesley’s throat. “Get me that Chastity Bloodgood and I won’t blow your little brother’s gosh-dang head off.”
It was the man from the gas station back in Cut Off, blood on his filthy face and across the front of his shirt. As he walked toward her, the little man and Jo
hn Wesley, both about the same height, disappeared in the smoke. TJ felt like she couldn’t breathe as the ceiling started falling down around them.
“You’re the sorry bastard that killed our mother.”
“Better ask ole Chester Pratt about that,” the man said. “We ain’t nothing but hired help.”
“Y’all just did it for the money?”
“When the Nix boys take on a job, we go that goddamn extra mile.”
As the smoke blew past, John Wesley snatched up that man’s stubby little forearm and took a big ole bite right out his flesh. The man yelled and stumbled, John Wesley scurrying back into the darkness of the house, smoke and fire coming out from damn near everywhere.
TJ called out to her little brother while her eyes watered. She could barely make out the face of the little man. He came up fast with a pistol, aiming right toward where she stood looking for where John Wesley had gone.
TJ tried to raise the big gun. But it was too late.
That short little fucker shot her twice, sending her ass reeling hard onto her back, the ceiling roiling and burning like an oven. Son of a bitch. So this is how easy and fast it all goes?
* * *
* * *
Lillie called in the fire as Quinn ran up to look at the dead man. He checked out the surrounding houses for a flicker of movement, looking to all the high wraparound porches, as good a place as any for someone to take a quick and easy shot. It was the old man who was dead, only eleven years older than Quinn, but looking all of eighty with his wrinkled face and white hair, black eyes staring up into damn near nothing. There would be another Nix lurking about, probably the one who’d gone up to set the fire. The smoke trailed up into the morning sky, flames showing from inside the windows.
Quinn pulled his gun, taking the stairs up to the top of the house, yelling to TJ Byrd. The front door was open with a rush of black smoke spewing out. He could feel the heat baking his face and singeing the hairs on his arms.
He rushed inside, calling out for the kids, and hearing nothing. The flames were zigzagging about, painting the walls over half the house. The entire house creaking and bending in the heat, the metal roof pinging and popping above him as he kicked in every door he could find, arm over his mouth, eyes watering and the heat searing his face and scorching off the stubble on his jaw.
When he felt the house was clear and the stilts began to rock under him, he bolted from the door and ran down the steps, finding half his shirt on fire and ripping it off his body, stomping on it good with his boots.
The cold air felt fresh and clean and he bent at the waist to try and catch his breath. He only had on a thin T-shirt now and the wind blew hard at his back.
Lillie walked down the narrow street, while loose sand skittered across the crushed-shell drive like a broken fog. Dusty Nix stood by his old Chevy not forty meters from her.
Quinn couldn’t hear what was being said as he raced from the house to behind a pile of lumber and then over by a sailboat covered in a tarp and set up high on a trailer. He snuck around the side of the boat to where he could see and hear Lillie dog-cussing Dusty Nix, telling the man to lower his weapon or he’d be sprouting a new asshole in his forehead.
Nix stood close to the old Chevy truck, his dead father on the ground between him and Lillie. He pointed a military rifle right at Lillie. Lillie’s headlights shone bright on the compact little man.
“Goddamn,” Nix said, yelling. “Just get out the way, bitch.”
Nix lifted up the AR as Lillie pulled the trigger, the man’s weapon spewing and chewing up the front of Lillie’s Charger, shattering the glass and knocking out one of the headlights.
“Woo-hoo,” Nix said. “Come on. Get you some.”
Quinn popped up around the side of the boat with his Beretta 9 and shot the man four times. He dropped hard and fast. The house fire grew with the wind, chewing up the house, flames higher now and shining down onto where both Nixes lay dead by the old truck.
“TJ and John Wesley?” Lillie asked.
Quinn shook his head, still tasting the soot in his mouth. “House was clear.”
“That Dusty Nix sure had a way with words,” she said. “It’s killing me not to know what he was about to say next.”
“He told you to get you some.”
“And I was fixing to when you popped up and shot his ass,” Lillie said. “Damn. Can’t you let a woman have a little fun?”
Quinn was still catching his breath while Lillie walked up to the old Chevy and opened up the driver’s-side door. Inside, they found a young white girl with a blonde ponytail shivering in the backseat. When Lillie placed a hand on her shoulder, she jumped as if being zapped by a live wire. Her lip was split and her face was a mess of makeup that looked to have been melted away by the fire.
“Chastity Bloodgood?” Lillie asked.
The girl nodded and Lillie offered her a hand to pull her out of the beaten old truck. As Quinn stood by, he glanced over Lillie’s shoulder and down the road as a black SUV started up and sped out fast back toward the bridge.
“All that girl knows how to do is run,” Chastity said.
“She can’t get far,” Lillie said.
“Go to it, Marshal,” Quinn said. “I’ll make sure everything gets sorted out here.”
Lillie ran to her Charger and cranked it, the car revving to life with one headlight. She fishtailed out in the busted shells and sand following TJ Byrd. Chastity stared down at the dead men and then up at the burning house, the stilts under it creaking and groaning.
“Daddy’s sure gonna be pissed.”
She wore no expression at all.
* * *
* * *
They headed back up the way they’d come down, a straight shot north on Highway 1 driving back to the interstate. Only this time John Wesley was behind the wheel, the driver’s seat pushed as far forward as he could, TJ laying down in the back pulling a torn piece of blanket around her leg. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but she wasn’t about to stop, not with the law coming up behind them looking to put her away for two killings and now the burning mess they’d left back on Grand Isle. She just knew they’d blame her for that, too.
“Am I going too fast?” John Wesley asked.
“You’re driving just right.”
“Does it hurt much?”
“Don’t hurt at all.”
“Where we going?”
“Don’t know,” TJ said. “But we’ll sure know it when we get there.”
TJ bit down hard as she tied that cloth as tight as it would go, knowing the bone wasn’t broke but she was bleeding like a stuck pig. She hadn’t seen all that had gone on back at that stilt house, the dead man lying in the street and that stinky midget dragging Chastity Bloodgood out from under the house. Lillie Virgil and Quinn Colson so focused on the burning house and the Nixes that they didn’t even see her and John Wesley make their way from house to house along that canal until they could cross back behind them and get in Graham’s Land Cruiser. She didn’t know where they were going, but they sure as hell weren’t going back to New Orleans.
The pain didn’t really get to her until they got about ten miles outside town to somewhere that looked like nowhere with no buildings, no signs, no trees, nothing but big ole factories belching smoke up into the gray skies. It was then that her daddy come to her, sitting just as clear as day down by her feet, smiling across at his little girl in all that hurt, his golden mustache and mullet damn near perfect.
One more mile to go, Bug.
I’m worn out.
Your old daddy got worn out, too, and got hisself drowned hanging upside down in a crik.
Why’d you leave me? Momma wasn’t cut out for this.
Like Bret Michaels sang, “every rose got its thorns.”
I love you.
Love you, too, Bug. And don’t you ever for
get it.
TJ closed her eyes and tried to push away all that pain, thinking they’d head west now and take 90 over to Morgan City and on to Lafayette. They didn’t have no one, didn’t have any money, but maybe she could connect with folks to help on her phone. They had three hundred thousand TJ Byrd supporters out there; at least one or two had to live around Lafayette.
“TJ?” John Wesley said.
“Keep driving,” TJ said. “You’re doing fine.”
“Someone’s been bird-dogging our ass since Leeville.”
“Is it that old beater truck?” TJ asked.
“It’s a gray Dodge Charger with one headlight busted out,” he said. “Damn thing looks like it’s winking at me.”
“Don’t stop,” TJ said. “Whatever you do, don’t stop for nobody. Drive like hell.”
* * *
* * *
If that kid hadn’t been so damn stupid and would check her Insta messages, TJ might’ve known all Lillie wanted to do was talk. She’d written her as clear as fucking Doris Day that Tibbehah County had arrested Chester Pratt and was charging his sorry ass and the Nixes with murdering her momma. come on in, tj. it sure is cold out there. What the hell else could she do? Write that shit across the sky?
Now Lillie was following that kid Graham’s Land Cruiser straight up Highway 1, TJ Byrd driving not like a teenage hellcat but like a fussy old woman out for a Sunday drive, not hitting fifty miles per hour and swerving back and forth, crossing that center line so many times she couldn’t count. Lillie kept on flicking her high beams at the Land Cruiser, but it didn’t seem to make a difference—TJ had no intention of quitting. Now it was just a question of where she might be headed.