The Shameless

by Ace Atkins

  “We know about what happened to Sheriff Beckett,” Jessica said, blurting it out a little too fast for Tashi. “Some have suggested he might have felt some guilt for what happened to Brandon.”

  “What?” Caddy said. “What in the hell are you talking about? Y’all get here for a couple days and listen to a bunch of gossip and innuendo and think you got this jerkwater town figured out. First off, I’ll have you know my uncle didn’t kill himself. Someone murdered him. I don’t give a damn what anyone else has told you. Have y’all managed to look into the swamp of criminals who were here before my brother came back from the service? My uncle had gotten old and weak and someone took him out. They didn’t want him making trouble.”

  “Could the same thing have happened to Brandon?” Jessica said. “Been involved with these same people?”

  “My uncle was the county sheriff,” Caddy said. “Brandon Taylor was just some punk kid. Nice kid. But still a country punk. Like us all. Who brought my uncle into this mess?”

  Tashi pursed her lips and didn’t say anything. Jessica combed her fingers through her blue hair, waiting for Caddy to continue, Tashi not sure either of them should comment on a source.

  “I’ve told y’all all I know,” Caddy said, standing up and walking over to the trailer door and holding it wide open. Hot air blew in from outside, scattering the little AA pamphlets across the room. “But rumor and lies aren’t facts. You come back to me when y’all want to talk about something sensible. I don’t have time for this. I have mouths to feed.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “How was your day?” Quinn asked.

  “Interesting,” Maggie said. “Had a woman come to the ER with a cell phone stuck in a very private place. The whole time the doctor was trying to get it out, it kept on buzzing. Her ringtone playing ‘Turn Down for What.’ I bet you don’t know that song.”

  “Is it by Waylon or Willie?”

  “Lil Jon.”

  “Then probably not,” Quinn said.

  “Probably sounded better when it’s not coming out of the woman’s privates,” she said. “Not exactly a Bluetooth speaker.”

  Quinn held up his hand as Maggie stood in the doorway, dressed in light green hospital scrubs and clutching a bottle of wine from the new package store off the Square. She set the bottle down on the coffee table, where he and Brandon had been watching Red River. Quinn had felt part of his education was to make his new son fully versed in both classic movies and books. At night, he’d been reading him White Fang before Brandon went to sleep. The shelves in the study and Quinn and Maggie’s bedroom sagged with paperbacks and old hardcovers: hunting and fishing books, classic novels, adventure and frontier stories, and thick books on Greek myths and plays. Quinn loved Homer about as much as he did Louis L’Amour.

  “You want another beer?” Maggie said, nodding to the Coors can on the table.

  Quinn shook his head, Brandon engrossed in the scene where Montgomery Clift helps out Joanne Dru while being attacked by Indians. “You’re shooting too high, aim lower,” Clift tells her from behind a wagon.

  “Dinner’s in the oven,” Quinn said. “I picked up some fried chicken at Annie’s. There’s some greens and cornbread in the refrigerator I can heat up.”

  Maggie disappeared and Quinn followed her into the kitchen. He was still dressed in his uniform shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and crisp dark Levi’s, but had left his boots on the front porch and locked away his sidearm. A can of Coors came flying from Maggie and Quinn caught it in midair as she forked out some greens into a bowl.

  “Sometimes I think we have a competition to see who’s had a stranger day,” Maggie said, setting the bowl in the microwave. “One day you have a crackhead dragging his butt down Highway 9 and other days I have a patient who’s stuck a toilet plunger up his backside. Kind of makes me wonder who in the world are we trying to help.”

  “Protect and serve,” Quinn said. “Hearts and minds.”

  “I still hear the Lil Jon song in my head,” Maggie said, pulling her long reddish hair into a ponytail. “Good God. I can’t get it out.”

  Quinn whistled the theme to Red River. “That woman had to be embarrassed as hell.”

  “If she was, she sure didn’t show it,” Maggie said. “Just kind of annoyed her boyfriend kept on calling her, knowing the damn thing was stuck.”

  “Make a plate and come sit down with us,” Quinn said. “Brandon did his homework at my mother’s and he’s ready for bed. I think we can finish the movie. You’ll like this one. I promise.”

  “Thank you, Quinn.”

  The microwave dinged and she grabbed the greens, the fried chicken and cornbread warming in the old gas oven.

  “For what?” Quinn said, smiling. He moved in close and wrapped his arms around her waist, leaning down and kissing her on her freckled nose.

  Tashi Coleman

  Thin Air podcast

  Episode 3: THE SEARCH PARTY

  NARRATOR: The days after Tim Taylor found the old Chevy truck on County Road 334, everyone was looking for Brandon. Family, friends, church groups, volunteer firefighters, Boy Scouts, police, and game wardens. Even a psychic from Tupelo. The psychic’s name was Miss La Tonya, a palm reader and fortune-teller who claimed she spoke to Native American spirits who roamed the Big Woods. Those spirits, she said, had seen Brandon—alone, tired, hungry, and calling out for his family. WREG in Memphis covered the story from the start, Brandon’s parents appearing haggard and worried on their front porch in the bright lights of the cameras.

  RHONDA TAYLOR [SCRATCHY TV AUDIO FROM 1997]: I just want my baby home. I know he followed that dang big buck way too far and got himself turned around.

  NARRATOR: A week later, a National Guard unit was dispatched to Tibbehah County. Helicopters with spotlights flew overhead as searchers worked eighteen-hour days. Dog handlers were brought in, the baying of bloodhounds ricocheting off the distant hills. The sheriff at the time commented on a radio interview about the scene.

  SHERIFF HAMP BECKETT: This whole thing has been a nightmare for this family. I just pray to God we find the boy alive. If someone has heard something or seen something, please let us know. Right now, y’all just keep us in your thoughts and prayers. These workers haven’t rested a wink since that boy went missing.

  NARRATOR: For the searchers, everything meant something. A broken branch, a footprint that might’ve come from Brandon’s shoe, a discarded wrapper from Brandon’s favorite candy bar. Which, by the way, was a Nestlé Crunch. Or a windblown tarp spotted covering a fallen tree, a spot some thought might’ve been used as a shelter.

  The searchers worked in the wind and the rain. The nights were cold and wet that November, many in the county recalling another boy like Brandon who’d been lost in the woods almost a decade before. This interview came again from WREG in Memphis in 1997.

  TEENAGE BOY: When I was lost, I just kept walking. I knew I’d cross a road or see someone. Everything was real dark.

  REPORTER: Weren’t you scared?

  TEENAGE BOY: No, ma’am.

  REPORTER: And how old were you then?

  TEENAGE BOY: Ten.

  REPORTER: How did you eat? How did you live?

  TEENAGE BOY: I carried a .22 with me. There were plenty of squirrels and birds to eat. A rabbit, if you got lucky. I know Brandon will do the same.

  NARRATOR: That was the voice of Quinn Colson as a seventeen-year-old high school senior, before he joined the Army. He would later come home to replace his uncle, Hamp Beckett, as sheriff of Tibbehah County. Colson liked to hunt even more than Brandon Taylor—that’s something we’ll revisit in future episodes. Despite what the sheriff told us, some said he might have been the very last person to see Brandon Taylor alive.

  SEVEN

  Three days later, Quinn was behind his desk at the sheriff’s office listening
to Reggie Caruthers run down the overnight events: a bad wreck on County Road 229 with minor injuries, two domestic situations involving the same man and two different women, and an attempted robbery at the Dixie Gas out on Jericho Road. When Quinn had asked why the robber didn’t get the money, Reggie explained the kid who walked into the store had been bluffing. He only had a pocketknife and a bad attitude and the clerk had chased him out of the store with her .357.

  “And who was the clerk?” Quinn asked, drinking his third cup of coffee that morning. Still waking up, trying to get Reggie off shift and back home to rest.

  “Miss Peaches.”

  “Peaches?” he asked. “When’d she quit Varner’s Quick Mart?”

  “Must’ve been three months back,” Reggie said. “She and Mr. Varner got into it over her cut with the kitchen. You know how the woman can cook.”

  “Damn straight,” Quinn said. “That’s why I haven’t seen her lately. I gained five pounds just by walking in the door and smelling what was for lunch.”

  “Varner is one tough old nut,” Reggie said. “Miss Peaches left and took all her business on over to Dixie Gas. You know Varner is regretting it now. But you know how the old man can get.”

  “What’s she have for lunch today?”

  “Hamburger steak and butter beans,” Reggie said, flipping through his notes on the attempted robbery. “Don’t you want to know who did it?”

  “Pookie Williams.”

  “Damn,” Reggie said, closing his notebook. “Just how’d you know that, Sheriff?”

  Reggie had left the 10th Mountain Division three years ago, already married with two kids at home and needing work. Since then, he’d turned out to be the best deputy Quinn had since Lillie left. Smaller than Quinn, muscular and tough, and good with the people out in the county. A black man born and raised on a farm, he could talk with rednecks up in Carthage or black folks down in the Ditch with equal ease. Everyone liked and respected Reggie Caruthers. He had a God-given cool, easygoing way about him.

  “I heard Pookie’s mom tossed him out,” Quinn said. “He’s been sleeping on his sister Latasha’s sofa, smoking weed and playing video games. His momma called me and told me he’d be doing something stupid again soon and to please not shoot him.”

  “I went over to his sister’s last night, but she said he was gone,” Reggie said. “She kicked his ass out.”

  “Won’t be hard to find,” Quinn said. “Pookie doesn’t have a car anymore. Ran the damn thing into a tree. Probably just hanging out at the Ditch. Maybe you could check up on it? Down at the gas station or at Club Disco?”

  “Yes, sir,” Reggie said, standing and stretching, tucking his notebook in the back pocket of his uniform. “Still trying to make some headway with Wes Taggart. Brought him a sack of burgers and fries from the Sonic last night, just like you said. He ate the burger, but wouldn’t say two words to me. I tried just to shoot the breeze, talk about the weather and where he was staying down on the Coast. But he wouldn’t even look at me while he ate. Looked like something rough was on his mind.”

  “Man’s looking at a long stay at Parchman.”

  “I seen that look,” Reggie said. “Wasn’t it. This man looked scared as hell. Real nervous about me just standing close to his cell.”

  “Keep working on him,” Quinn said, standing now, too, and reaching for his ball cap and what was left of his cigar. “I backed way the hell off the other day. If Lillie hadn’t been there, I would’ve taken his head off.”

  “Probably what he’s scared of.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where you headed, Sheriff?”

  “Something’s come up,” Quinn said. “Headed out to see Rhonda Taylor. I guess you know all about that story.”

  “Some,” Reggie said. “I was just a kid when the boy went missing. You think there’s anything at all to some kind of cover-up?”

  “In Tibbehah County?” Quinn asked. “Hell, yes. But I got too much on my plate right now to reopen a twenty-year-old probable suicide. Wes Taggart knows the goddamn road map from those crooks on the Coast on up here to Vardaman. Maybe he’ll break.”

  “You think?”

  “I haven’t met many crooks not willing to save their own ass,” Quinn said. “He’s all about money. Vardaman and his people are after something else.”

  “But they go hand in hand?”

  “Long before you and I got home from the Sandbox.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Miss Hathcock,” Old Man Skinner said. “One of your waitresses—the surly woman named Christy—said you had some issue with me putting out a donation box for the Tibbehah Cross.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it now?” Fannie said, taking a seat in a red vinyl booth across from him at the Rebel Truck Stop. “Has a real ring to it. Almost like y’all have a real purpose to this whole damn project.”

  “Sounds like you disapprove.”

  “Thought the supervisors might concentrate on fixing our shit roads and broke-down bridges before rolling out the welcome mat for His Second Coming.”

  “That’s not what the cross is about,” he said. “And as far as county projects, our work is limited to state and federal funding. For a poor county like Tibbehah, I think we’re making a fine effort. We’ve poured more than a million dollars into improvement projects since I became head of the supervisors.”

  Fannie blew out some smoke and ashed the tip of her cigarillo in a tray. “I’ll let my mechanic know,” she said. “Last week I dropped my brand-new Lexus into a crater the size of the fucking Grand Canyon, busted an axle and about knocked my transmission loose.”

  “I’d prefer you not using profanity,” Skinner said. “I’m not some of your employees next door. I don’t mind working with a woman, but she needs to understand how to discuss matters in this town.”

  Two of her waitresses, Christy and Ruth Ann, stood by the cash register, trying to eavesdrop on her little meet with Skinner. They disliked the big, lumbering son of a bitch more than she did, with his reptilian eyes, bald head, and slow way of speaking. An affectation of Southern bullshit trying to dominate the conversation, to show he had an understanding of all things.

  “I’ve complied with the law at Vienna’s Place,” she said. “And I’ve even made a donation or two to your reelection campaign. However, I draw the goddamn line at raising money for some Bible-thumping monstrosity that will block the view of one of the most famous signs in the Mid-South.”

  “What sign?”

  “Vienna’s Place,” she said. “Or haven’t you noticed the curvy mud flap girl done up in blue and red neon. I’ll have you know the sign was featured on both the Travel Channel and Playboy After Dark. It’s a damn Mississippi landmark.”

  “Of iniquity.”

  “Come again?”

  “That means ‘evil,’” Skinner said, reaching for his half-finished cup of coffee and slurping up what was left.

  “I know what it means,” she said. “But I really thought you were a realist. A businessman who wanted to put Tibbehah back on the map, like you said. The first thing you try to do is shut me down, cover up my only advertising, and now put out a tin cup in my business to fund the plan to make it happen. You must think I’m stupid as hell.”

  “No, ma’am,” Skinner said. “I’ve never thought you stupid. But I’ll offer you a fair warning. Times are changing around here, Miss Hath-cock. I figure you know that, but the only reason I was called back into public service was to help turn back the clock on the immorality and stain on this county. There’s a hot wind of change blowing across Mississippi.”

  “I’ve seen the goddamn commercials,” Hathcock said. “Your buddy Vardaman.”

  “A fine Christian man,” Skinner said. “He sees the sword coming against the land and sounds the trumpet to warn the people.”

  “The Watchmen,�
�� Fannie said, leaning back into her chair. “I’ve heard that bullshit, too. A real interesting group of kooks, kind of like the Jaycees without the sense of humor. I get talk radio on my ride up to Memphis.”

  “Maybe you should just stick to that town,” Skinner said. “Tibbehah won’t be to your liking next year.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’ll leave a donation bucket at the front,” Skinner said, not budging an inch from the best booth in the entire truck stop, a catbird seat’s view of the diesel pumps and of Vienna’s Place off to the side. “I’ll get my folks to check on it next week.”

  “Can I get you anything else, Supervisor?”

  “Not a thing, ma’am,” he said, reaching in his pocket for a fifty-cent tip. “It’s a fine and glorious morning. I do feel truly blessed. I’ll be praying for you, Miss Fannie.”

  “You do that, Skinner,” she said. “Just don’t pray too damn hard and give yourself an aneurysm on the can.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Mrs. Taylor?” Quinn asked.

  Rhonda Taylor had her door cracked, seeming surprised to see Quinn, although he’d called ahead earlier in the morning. The chain was on the door and a small dog yipped from inside. Somewhere a television was playing the news out of Memphis. Two people shot at a tire dealership in south Memphis. Lots of rain in the future for the Mid-South. Details ahead.

  “You mind if I come in?”

  The woman didn’t answer, but unchained the door, Quinn stepping onto thick white carpet and following her through a small living room and into a kitchen and family room area, an old-fashioned portable TV playing on a long counter. A little girl turned to him with a spoon in her hand filled with colorful cereal.

  “That’s Cassidy,” she said. “Shaina’s daughter. She’s at work and I watch her all day. You want some coffee, Sheriff?”

  “If it’s no trouble.” Quinn had removed his hat as any decent man would do inside a building and set it beside the little girl. She stared at him in a curious way, looking down at his polished cowboy boots, Beretta sidearm, and up to his face. She smiled when she got to the face, with its sharp planes and angles, and Quinn winked at her. A commercial played on the TV for a car dealer out of Tupelo featuring a blonde woman named DeLois Price and a Mexican man in a sombrero called Peso Little. The commercials had been on for decades and hadn’t changed a bit. Even the same actors.