The Shameless

by Ace Atkins

  “What the fuck you talking about?”

  Sam finished his cigarette and ground it out under his pointy-toed black cowboy boot. He lifted his eyes and gestured, letting out a long stream of smoke.

  “Only car I see is a cop car,” Toby said. Sam leaned against the wall in his undershirt and underpants, nothing else on but his pair of boots.

  “That’s the one.”

  “You must be crazy.”

  “Shut up and follow me,” Sam Frye said, moving toward the motel room and walking inside. He unzipped a black canvas bag and tossed the tan uniform with all the patches on the bed, pulling out a pair of spit-polished lace-up shoes. “I wear this.”

  “And what do I wear?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Sam Frye said. “You’re the prisoner.”

  “The fucking what?”

  Sam Frye pulled out a pair of handcuffs and tossed them on the bed. He looked at his Timex. The wind kicked up outside, blowing open the motel room door, a hard rain coming back in and hammering the parking lot. He walked over and closed the door with a soft click.

  “I don’t understand,” Toby said.

  Sam pulled off his T-shirt and slipped into the cop uniform shirt, pinning a star on his chest. He strapped on the gun belt and shook his head at the kid. “You don’t have to,” he said. “Just stand there and watch me. And keep this gun in your boot. When I say shoot, you shoot. OK?”

  TEN

  Caddy parked her truck outside the Southern Star just as the storm really picked up, the big oak branches on the town square whipping about, a mean rain hammering the sidewalks of downtown Jericho. She had her radio set to the local country station, Merle and George Jones singing “Yesterday’s Wine,” one of her all-time favorites. She thought about her and Jamey Dixon listening to that song as they worked on the old barn at The River, both of them dusty and worn-out, feeling like they were really getting to the heart of something good. She could still see the thick scar on Jamey’s shoulder where an inmate in Unit 23 had tried to kill him for not joining up with the Aryan Brotherhood. Damn, she missed that man.

  The windshield wipers knocked back and forth as she waited for the reprieve in the rain that wasn’t coming for a while. She got out of the truck and made a run for it, up to the metal awning outside the bar. The front door was open, spilling cold air out onto the sidewalk, a couple of men standing outside smoking cigarettes. They checked her out, taking sideways glances at her ass as she passed. One of them asking her, “Baby, where you been all my life?”

  It was cool inside, damn-near cold, the light dim and neon-soaked, a dozen or so folks toughing out the storm with bottles of Bud and Coors and shots of Beam and Jose Cuervo. The bar had opened when she’d been up in Memphis, and most of the time since she’d been home, she’d had little use for it. Caddy Colson did her best to stay out of places like that. They called to her. She could smell the whiskey and cigarettes, the jukebox blasting in the corner, playing a song about voodoo queen Marie Laveau.

  She spotted Boom at the end of the bar, his big head down resting on his huge left forearm.

  Caddy shook her head and took a deep breath, hands in her jeans pockets, walking toward him.

  “Caddy?” a woman asked behind her. Caddy turned and saw Tashi Coleman and that other girl she’d met at the Barn. What was her name again? Vanessa? Jessica? Something like that. A couple of Yankee girls trying to soak up some local culture down in Tibbehah County.

  “Can we buy you a drink?” Tashi Coleman asked.

  “I don’t drink.”

  Tashi looked confused, and much younger than when they’d first met. She had her black hair pulled into a ponytail and she’d ditched the funny-looking glasses she had on the other day. She wore jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, showing off a spindly little tattoo on her forearm. Authentic hipster shit.

  “Want to join us?”

  “I’m not staying.”

  “Did you hear about the tornado warning?” Tashi said, smiling. “The bartender said this is the safest place in the whole county with all this brick.”

  “He would say that,” Caddy said. “I guess it’s safe until the place falls in on you. Sorry. I’ve got to go.”

  “Maybe next week, then?” Tashi asked. “We need to talk.”

  Caddy pushed on past the shorter woman and headed on over to Boom, shoving his shoulder, trying to get him awake. Boom’s muscles thick in her hands as she rocked him back and forth, a half-dozen shot glasses in front of him. The bartender, a man named Cooney who used to run a barbecue joint when she was in high school, smiled at her. “What’s your poison?”

  “You served him?”

  “Sure,” Cooney said. “Is that against the law?”

  “You know who this is?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know Boom. He’s an old friend of mine.”

  “If he was such a good friend, you wouldn’t set those shots in front of him. How many has he had?”

  “Oh, hell,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “Idiot,” Caddy said.

  “Hey,” Cooney said. “I thought your brother wore a badge. Not you.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Fine words, preacher.”

  Caddy leaned in and looked at Cooney’s wide, pockmarked face and gray, thinning hair and said, “For the last damn time, I’m not a preacher. Now, how about you get around here and help me walk him out.”

  Cooney just laughed and wandered down the bar, shaking his head, leaving Caddy with Boom, who’d just come alive. He looked up at her and smiled and said, “Damn good to see you.”

  “Oh, Boom.”

  Caddy didn’t weigh a third of what Boom Kimbrough did, but if she could get him on his feet, she might be able to offer a little support and help him back to her old truck. She could call Quinn, but that would only lead to more problems. Quinn’s patience with Boom had thinned a little lately, never understanding how some folks could get weak sometimes. Quinn the Ranger. Quinn the damn crusading sheriff who woke before dawn and lived on black coffee and cigars.

  “Can you stand?”

  Boom’s eyes were bloodshot and glassy. “Not really sure,” he said. “Ain’t tried it in a long while.”

  “I parked right outside,” Caddy said. “We don’t have far to walk.”

  “One foot in front of the other.”

  “That’s it,” Caddy said. “That’s just right.”

  Boom shoved up onto his feet but lost his balance and reached fast for the bar, holding himself there, wavering, until he sat back down on the barstool. The two men she’d passed on the way in had come up on them, standing off a few feet and hovering, smirking at each other. They were having a time watching the show.

  “Excuse us,” Caddy said. “Y’all please step the hell back.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “I don’t like this,” Toby said. “They will have surveillance cameras. They’ll see my face. Even if we get into the goddamn jail, kill that motherfucker, and get out, they will know who did it.”

  “Do you have priors?” Sam Frye asked.

  “Off the Rez?”

  “Yes,” Sam Frye said, already knowing the answer. Already planning out every step after talking to two trusted friends who’d spent a few days at the jail.

  “No,” Toby said. “Shouldn’t we wear masks or something?”

  “Nothing will be left when we’re gone,” Sam Frye said. “They keep the monitors in with the dispatcher. We lock up the jailer, the dispatcher, or anyone else who gets in our way, and destroy the equipment. Every deputy in this county is out on a call. Look at that stop sign. See the way it’s blowing? It looks like a damn toy.”

  “You don’t give a shit,” Toby said. “You don’t have long to live and can be reckless. Not me. I have my whole life ahead of me. The little girl I was with toni
ght was some kind of mystic. She said she saw great things for me. Said she could feel my aura.”

  “Keep your head down,” Sam Frye said. “When I unlock your cuffs, you reach down and grab your gun. I’ll have a gun on me, too.”

  “Of course you’ll have a fucking gun,” Toby said. “Fucking Sam Frye. Big goddamn Indian. You’re dressed as a damn cop. I’m the one they’ll shoot first.”

  “The man we want is named Wes Taggart,” Sam Frye said, driving the police cruiser around the town square, the rain pelting the windshield. “OK? Wes Taggart. We kill him and no one else.”

  “What if someone tries to kill us?”

  “I hope it won’t come to that.”

  “But it could.”

  Sam Frye lifted his eyes in the rearview mirror and didn’t answer. He damn well knew the answer but didn’t want any more trouble than was necessary. They were bad men hired to kill another bad man. You don’t kill a police officer unless you have to. But this rain, this storm, was a blessing for all of them. He spotted the sheriff’s office and the jail coming up on the right side. Sam found the burner phone and dialed in to their dispatch. He breathed as the phone rang and rang into the static.

  His uniform and the vehicle would show they were coming from Lafayette County. All they had was a simple drop-off of a man wanted on a warrant in Tibbehah County. Just some friendly cooperation between the two counties.

  He explained it all to the woman on the phone as he turned behind the jail, the road running down below street level and stopping at a tall concertina fence.

  “I don’t know nothing about no prisoner transport,” a woman said. “Where you coming from again?”

  “I have the paperwork with me,” Sam Frye said. “Let us in the sally port and I’ll hand it all over.”

  The wind and rain shook the car, the wipers working a slow, steady rhythm.

  “Son of a bitch,” Toby said. “This is a terrible idea.”

  Sam Frye didn’t answer. The patrol car idled by the wide chain-link gate. He noticed the lights flickering off in the jail yard but then flickering on again.

  The gate started to roll open and Sam Frye drove inside.

  * * *

  * * *

  Reggie peeked into the dispatch to let Cleotha know he was headed up to County Road 380 to check on a fallen tree. Cleotha sat at the control center wearing her headset, watching the computer screen, sipping on a jumbo sweet tea from Sonic. She waved Reggie away, telling someone that she didn’t know a damn thing about some prisoner coming in from Lafayette County.

  “What?” Reggie said.

  “You heard about some man named David Allen Joy being brought over from Oxford?” Cleotha said. “Deputy said we got warrants on his ass for exposing himself to a gospel choir.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Man’s insisting on it,” Cleotha said, pointing to her screen. “He’s waiting outside in the rain right now, said he got transport papers and all that mess.”

  Reggie slipped into his rain slicker, ball cap down in his eyes. He knew he’d hate like hell to have made this ride down to Tibbehah in all this weather for nothing. He looked at Cleotha, who stared at him, aggravated as hell, with that tired look Cleotha liked to give, until he said, “OK. Send ’em in. Unlock the gate. I’ll meet them outside and see what’s up.”

  “If it ain’t one goddamn thing,” Cleotha said. “You know what I’m saying?”

  Reggie didn’t listen to the rest as he got buzzed into the main jail door, meeting a trusty named T. J. Burgess who’d been at the jail for the last two years. He couldn’t last a day on the outside, getting arrested within hours of leaving the jail. It wasn’t so much that he was a career criminal, he’d admitted to Quinn, he just didn’t trust himself on the outside. He said he liked the routine of jail, knowing what time he was getting up, what time he was eating, and helping out with chores. T.J. was a good kid but had a serious mental defect.

  “What we got?” T.J. asked. He was mopping the floor in the intake room, a slick checkerboard pattern of black and white linoleum tiles.

  “Lafayette County’s bringing in some man named Joy,” Reggie said. “You heard anything about a man exposing himself to a gospel choir?”

  “That’s some sick shit, Reggie.”

  “Deputy, T.J.,” he said. “Deputy. How many times I got to tell you?”

  Reggie stood by the sally port, watching the man get out of his patrol car and walk around the side of the vehicle. The Lafayette deputy was a big man in a uniform, a ball cap down over his eyes, his wide, hatchet face in shadow. The prisoner was short and muscly, half hidden in a hoodie so you couldn’t tell if he was Latino or black. He had his face buried down in his chest as he walked.

  “What kind of man exposes himself to a choir?” T.J. said behind Reggie Caruthers. “Was it the whole choir? Or was it just one or two or three of ’em?”

  “You missed a spot,” Reggie said, pointing to the slick checkerboard floor. “Go on. Do your damn job.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Reggie unlocked the side door and waited for the deputy to bring in the prisoner. He held the door and asked how the weather was looking on the drive over. The big deputy made kind of a grunting noise and pushed the man ahead, his hands cuffed behind his back. Reggie still not able to see his face as he worked, thinking it was odd they hadn’t removed the hoodie.

  Reggie picked up a clipboard to fill out the information. “Heard you got his paperwork with you?”

  “Sure do,” the big man said, turning and pulling out a big black revolver and pointing it at Reggie’s chest. “How ’bout you walk me back to dispatch and no one gets hurt. I always hate blowing a hole straight through a man.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Are you going to puke?” Caddy said.

  “You gonna tell Quinn?”

  “Doesn’t exactly answer my question,” Caddy said, driving with her left hand, taking Main Street on down to the turn to Sugar Ditch and Boom’s house. Her radio was playing low, weather reports out of Tupelo. Sounded like the worst part of it had passed. A few more tornadoes had been seen over on the county line, well away from them.

  “Quinn doesn’t have to know,” she said. “You always call me. Don’t you ever try and do something stupid and drive.”

  “I just wanted one goddamn beer,” Boom said. “And things kind of went south after that.”

  “That’s the way it goes,” Caddy said. “Did you call your sponsor?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But he’s down at the beach with his momma. I guess I could’ve tried Mr. Varner, but I knew he was probably asleep.”

  “How’d you know I wasn’t asleep?”

  “’Cause you don’t sleep, Caddy,” he said. “And you told me the Bentley fella was in town. Where’s he at anyway?”

  Caddy didn’t answer, peering into the darkness ahead, lightning cracking off down in the bottomland, just a good eight to ten feet shining ahead of them, the broken yellow line heading on out of town. She hit her high beams and looked for some kind of mile marker.

  “Remember how you used to always drive me and Quinn?” he said. “You’d always show up at the end of Alma Jane’s keg parties, telling us it was time to go. You always knew we’d get stranded because Quinn and Anna Lee had been drinking. And when they’d been drinking, they’d get into it. I’m really glad he didn’t marry that woman. I don’t think she’s bad. Just not right for Quinn.”

  “You mean how she lured him into an adulterous affair?”

  “Lured him?” Boom said. “Shit. You think that’s how it worked?”

  “How are you for money?” Caddy said.

  “Fine.”

  “No, you’re not,” Caddy said. “You haven’t worked since your accident.”

  “Accident?” Boom said. “Shit. Now who’s the one not
talking straight. Ain’t a damn thing accidental about what happened to my ass. What happened to me was pure goddamn stupidity. I walked right into that shit.”

  “That’s crap.”

  “No it ain’t,” Boom said. “I replayed this thing in my mind a thousand times. I didn’t have to walk toward those men, seeing what I had coming to me. Both of them cocky motherfuckers standing there with baseball bats and my ignorant ass thinking I could take them both. I look like Luke Cage to you?”

  “Who’s Luke Cage?”

  “A big, mean black man made out of steel.”

  “Is he bulletproof?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Boom said, sliding across the seat and into the window. “Damn. Watch those curves. Ain’t no rush.”

  “Maybe I want to get home.”

  “To Bentley,” Boom said, kind of laughing. “Bentley Vandeven. Now there’s a goddamn name for him. Might be the whitest damn name I heard in my life.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Oh, hell no,” Boom said. “Just suspicious.”

  Caddy drove a while, taking the turn off the main highway, heading down the gravel road through the endless cotton fields, dark and stretching out forever beyond the forked creek. “What bothers you most about getting hit?”

  “That I can’t do shit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One of those motherfuckers is dead,” Boom said. “And the other one is under lock and key. I wish Quinn would’ve given me five minutes with the man. But you know it won’t happen. So what I got?”

  “That stuff will eat up your soul,” Caddy said, both hands on the wheel, hitting a bad pothole and rocking the old truck. “Hate. Revenge. I’m not trying to preach. But hand it over to Jesus, Brother Boom. You know?”

  “I wasn’t raised like that,” Boom said. “What’s getting to me is the not doing.”

  “You can’t live your life that way,” Caddy said. “Revenge will eat you alive.”