The Shameless

by Ace Atkins

  “Sometimes they’re just a goddamn mess.”

  “Can you get me a deal at J.T.’s?”

  “Better ask your Uncle Van,” Boom said, coming back from under the hood, wiping his prosthetic hand with a dirty blue rag. “He and J.T. play in that gospel group with Diane Tull. What do they call themselves?”

  “The Revelators.”

  “Yeah,” Boom said. “Right. I like that name. Diane Tull sounds just like Jessi Colter.”

  His prosthetic hand had been specifically fitted by the VA for his job, holding a variety of tools while he worked. At the moment, he had a crescent wrench fitted snug into its base. He removed the wrench and plugged in a screwdriver, going back in for more. It was early afternoon, a little after one, and the sun was high and hot over the cotton fields, the stalks growing brown and brittle, October and harvest coming soon. You could hear the wind in the dry leaves, rustling like paper, the radio going inside the cab of the truck. Boom had tuned to a station out of Tupelo. Classic country all the time. He and Quinn had a severe hatred for most modern country, Boom calling Jason Aldean the Anti-Hank.

  “How’d it go down in Jackson?” Boom asked.

  The radio station played Waylon singing “Rainy Day Woman,” one of Caddy’s favorites. The old music reminding her of good times on the front porch with her Uncle Hamp and Aunt Halley.

  “Fine.”

  “Just ‘fine’?”

  “Maybe better than that,” Caddy said. She and Boom kept few secrets from each other. She maybe trusted him more than her own brother. Boom knew what it was like to be in the goddamn black hole that could eat you alive. And he was the kind of person who never leveled a judgment against you.

  “OK, then,” Boom said. “No drama?”

  “No drama.”

  “All those rich folks treat you right?”

  “I was surprised, but I liked them,” Caddy said. “They can’t help they have money. Most of them seem to want to do some good with it. They wanted to know all about The River and the work we do in Tibbehah County. I told them about folks who volunteered their time and talents.”

  “Time and talents?” Boom said. “Sounds like I’m not getting paid.”

  “I brought you catfish.”

  “You looking at a whole tune-up,” Boom said. “Front and rear brakes. Only thing I can’t do is the tires. The tires is on you.”

  “I can handle the tires.”

  Caddy watched him work, sitting on the small porch of his cabin. He had a pair of old rusted porch chairs and a glider that used to belong to his grandmother. Caddy rocked back and forth in the glider drinking some Mountain Dew, looking out at the long dirt road running straight and long through the Sugar Ditch bottomland. She thought about Boom staying down here for so long, hiding from town when he got back, healing up after Iraq, taking that job at the county barn and then hitting the road, driving trucks. He got beaten down right where he was standing now. J. B. Hood and Wes Taggart coming onto his land, his world, thinking he’d been the one tipping off those Pritchard boys after they jacked one of their drug shipments.

  “You mind if I ask you a question?” Caddy said.

  “Never stopped you before.”

  It was Kitty Wells now, “How Far Is Heaven.” The song saying . . . let’s go tonight. She just wanted her daddy to hold her tight. Miss Kitty sure knew what country music was all about.

  “Can you ever let it go?”

  “About you not changing your damn spark plugs?”

  “Wes Taggart.”

  “Taggart?” Boom asked, reaching back into the engine and returning with a rubber belt. A cigarette hung loose from his mouth. “No, ma’am. Can’t do it.”

  “But you know he’s dead?” she said. “Holding on to that hate will eat away at you.”

  “What about scars adding character?”

  “The kind of stuff you’re feeling is deeper than scars,” she said. “We both talked about that.”

  “Belts,” Boom said. “And hoses, too. Did you know your heater hose has been leaking like hell?”

  “I knew something was leaking,” she said. “But Big Bertha has been running and I didn’t ask any questions.”

  “Maybe you should have,” he said. “Just because shit’s running don’t mean it’s correct.”

  “I know.”

  Caddy walked up to the truck and stood side by side with Boom. She watched as the big man loosened the strap of the prosthetic and set it with a thud on a bench he’d pulled out for the work. He used a towel to dry the wet nub of his arm. Caddy smiled at him. “How are you doing, Boom?”

  “Fine and dandy,” Boom said.

  “Come on,” Caddy said. “I know you.”

  “You want to check my house?” Boom said. “I tossed out all the liquor last night. Two full bottles of whiskey. Poured both out into the ditch.”

  “You’re going cold turkey.”

  “Why not?” Boom said. “Gonna try and wrangle those snakes in my head without Jim Beam helping. See how it works.”

  “Can we pray?” she said. “Can I least do that for you?”

  “I would, Caddy,” Boom said, turning his back to get back to work. “But every time I close my eyes, I see those bats flying down on my head. I’d just as soon skip that part.”

  SIXTEEN

  Thanks for trusting me,” Maggie said. “I know this is crazy as hell.”

  “You and I decided to get married four months after we met,” Quinn said. “I’d say we’re a long way past just trust.”

  “No more secrets,” she said. “I promise.”

  “I know,” Quinn said, sitting at the wheel of a Jeep Cherokee Lillie Virgil used to drive. They’d removed the sheriff’s office paint and stickers at the county barn and now it was an extra vehicle to use when Quinn didn’t want to announce his presence. They were about twenty miles from the Tennessee state line, heading up to the Flying J Truck Stop in Olive Branch. He’d called ahead to the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office and they agreed to have a nearby unit on standby. Just in case.

  “How’d you see past all my damn baggage and bad mistakes?” Maggie said. “That crazy son of a bitch Rick Wilcox would’ve scared off most sane people.”

  “I’m not sane,” Quinn said. “I also liked your pretty freckled face and your cute little ass.”

  “Now, that’s true love.”

  Quinn reached across the shifter and squeezed Maggie’s leg. She looked nervous as hell that morning, no makeup on her sun-flushed skin, playing with the bracelets on her wrist the whole drive north. Her reddish hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing a sleeveless David Bowie tee with ragged jeans and sandals. The Best of Lee Hazlewood in the CD player, “The Night Before.”

  A new letter had arrived two days ago, again signed FOB—Friend of Brandon—promising EXPLOSIVE DETAILS and SHOCKING REVELATIONS. Quinn had told Maggie he didn’t know if they were dealing with a confidential informant or a writer for the National Enquirer. The only thing he’d asked is she not make a move without him, with the questionable suicide, the old body found, and Tashi Coleman stalking her around Tibbehah County.

  “I’ve been having dreams about my father lately,” Maggie said. “They are so damn real I sometimes feel he’s still alive. Daddy was the first one to tell me about Brandon, waking me up at five a.m. before school and saying he’d been found. He asked me what he could do for me and I asked him to drive me up to Jericho. That man canceled a big run he had that week to Dallas, unhooked his trailer and we hopped in his semi, The Blue Mule. I felt safe in that truck, riding so high up, Daddy listening to Jerry Reed and Ray Stevens. I woke up this morning humming ‘Everything Is Beautiful.’”

  “As long as it wasn’t ‘The Streak.’”

  “You don’t like Ray Stevens?”

  “Of course I like Ray Stevens,” Quinn said. “Somet
imes I forget how little time we’ve spent together and how little we know each other. We both have a lot of catching up to do . . . Do I like Ray Stevens? . . .”

  “I never questioned what we’ve got,” Maggie said, reaching down and placing her hand over his, her short nails painted black and a tiny tattoo on her inner wrist. “Ever.”

  “Don’t give this meet too much thought,” Quinn said. “There are a lot of cranks out there. Some folks just wake up in the morning devising ways to mess with people’s minds. I don’t know how this person got those old letters, but that doesn’t mean they’re sane. It might mean they’re dangerous as hell.”

  “You can’t go in with me.”

  “I know,” Quinn said. “But I won’t be far. You go in the restaurant, take a seat, and I’ll be out here watching. If this person asks you to go outside with them or if they say they have something for you in their vehicle . . .”

  “I’m not stupid, Quinn,” Maggie said. “Like you said, I doubt they’ll even show. Whoever this is probably just wants some money. Why the hell else would they reach out to me now, after all these years? Doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”

  “Well,” Quinn said. “It’s nice being together. First day in a while we’re not on the wrong ends of a shift. You on night or me on days or the other way around.”

  As Quinn turned off Highway 78, he spotted a big sign raised high above the road reading T-BONE STEAK, BAKED POTATO, SALAD & A DRINK. ONLY $11.99.

  “It’s your lucky day, Maggie Colson,” Quinn said. “A day off and a T-bone steak.”

  “If only I ate meat.”

  “You heard from Tashi Coleman again?”

  “Not since she showed up at the farm,” Maggie said. “I think I made it pretty damn clear she wasn’t welcome.”

  Quinn turned right into the truck stop parking lot, driving around back of the restaurant, near the trucker entrance by the diesel pumps. He parked out of sight and switched off the ignition, arriving a half hour earlier than the letter asked. “I wish you’d kept that gun in your purse.”

  “No thank you.”

  “Not much to it,” Quinn said. “Just aim and squeeze the trigger.”

  “I know how to shoot,” she said. “I prefer healing people, not bloodying them up.”

  “I prefer not bloodying them up, either,” Quinn said. “But that’s their call.”

  Quinn turned on the radio while they sat there in the parking lot waiting for the time Maggie would step into the truck stop and meet someone who promised probably a lot more than they could deliver. He and Maggie didn’t speak for a while, Hazlewood now singing, “Cold Hard Times.”

  “Did you love him?” Quinn asked. “Brandon?”

  “Very much,” Maggie said.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Maggie Colson is done,” Tashi said, driving with Jessica out County Road 150, map in hand because the GPS stopped working south of the Big Black River. “We might as well mark her off the source list. When I asked her about knowing her husband when they were teenagers, she literally slammed the door in my face.”

  “Ouch,” Jessica said. “We never accused the sheriff of any wrongdoing, we’re only asking a few sensible questions. I mean, Jesus. This is one fucked-up county. Everyone is one degree of separation. Like a goddamn Greek tragedy.”

  “I told her we weren’t blaming him,” Tashi said, the windows down in the rental, her drinking the last bit of a Diet Coke. “But she saw us as taking sides, E. J. Royce over her husband. E. J. Royce is super-gross. He looked at me like he was imagining me naked, smiling with those crooked yellow teeth, licking his lips. But what if he’s right? He was there. We can’t just ignore it.”

  “Did you tell her we came to town with no theories or ideas of what happened?” Jessica asked, blue hair scattering across her face. “As far as we knew, Brandon really did shoot himself and all this work would go nowhere. At least we know he wasn’t conflicted about being gay. Maggie was quite clear on that detail.”

  “How do you think the sheriff’s gonna like hearing about his wife losing her virginity?”

  “He seems like a grown-up,” Jessica said, looking down at the map spread against her thigh. “The story isn’t tacky or sordid. Sounded nice really, driving out to Choctaw Lake, taking her cotton panties off in the back of a pickup under the stars.”

  “‘Shameless’ playing on the radio,” Tashi said.

  “That’s right,” Jessica said. “It’s going to be a bitch getting the rights to that song. But we have to have it, don’t we? Garth Brooks is super-nineties.”

  Tashi nodded but was already taken in by the strange structure up on a grassy hill and through a thicket of trees. The old Tibbehah School stood just as the woman back at the clerk’s office had told them. Tashi slowed the car onto a gravel road sprouted with weeds. They drove as far as they could until the weeds got higher than the hood, small trees poking up through the gravel.

  “You have to be fucking kidding me,” Jessica said.

  “This can’t be right.”

  “This is where they said,” Jessica said, opening her door and reaching into the backseat for her backpack and laptop. “I mean, why the hell not? They said all of the old boxes and file cabinets were taken out here in 2001. With any luck, we might find something.”

  “Not exactly climate-controlled.”

  “Nothing is climate-controlled in Mississippi,” Jessica said, walking up the hill through the weeds and little trees to the abandoned brick school. Windows covered with plywood spray-painted with pictures of penises and satanic symbols. Words sprayed in streaky paint letters: CHRIST FORGIVES. LOVE YOU FOREVER, PATTI. STAY IN DRUGS/DON’T DO SCHOOL. SUCK IT PUSSIES. 21-17.

  “They’d have been better off burning everything,” Jessica said, heading up to what had probably been an entrance, the wide expanse of sun-curled and faded plywood in the shape of a door. They’d brought along a crowbar, but the closer they got, they knew they wouldn’t need it. A large section had been torn back, the sunlight shining into a hallway.

  “That doesn’t smell pleasant,” Tashi said.

  “Nope,” Jessica said. “It sure doesn’t. How about you go first? You brought the flashlight.”

  Tashi didn’t answer, only stepped inside out of the sunlight and moved into the brick structure over a spreading puddle and what had been a long hallway. Lockers collapsed down the expanse, busted boards and pieces of the ceiling fallen into heaps on the old linoleum.

  “Did she say where they put the file cabinets?”

  “Nope,” Jessica said. “More like a tip. I heard they might have this kind of thing. God. Smells like a dead animal in here.”

  “Seems like the perfect place to get murdered,” Tashi said, laughing, flicking on the flashlight with her thumb. “Right?”

  They walked the hallways, stepping over fallen bricks and soggy insulation, more lockers, and broken glass. It looked like a few people had started small fires, empty bottles of cheap booze and cigarette butts everywhere. Shoes, boots, some old clothing, underwear. More graffiti along the inside walls, Tashi reading it aloud for the recording as they continued to wander. ARM THE TEACHERS and EVERYONE IS DEAD.

  “Here,” Jessica said, calling out. “In here.”

  Tashi followed her voice to another classroom, this one filled with dozens of four-drawer filing cabinets. Some neatly aligned against a far wall, others toppled onto the floor, the contents scattered into dirty puddles from the leaky roof. Tashi waved the flashlight over all the cabinets and loose papers, not knowing where in the hell they should begin.

  Jessica, being Jessica, had already started, rifling through the top drawer of the first upright cabinet. A swath of daylight cut into the center of the dark room like a white-hot laser. Kudzu had started to crawl and grow between the broken slats of plywood over the windows. Water continued to drip from
above. “Jail records from 1982,” she said. “That’s something. I’ll take this first row and you take the next. Let me know when you hit the nineties.”

  Tashi turned off the flashlight, her eyes adjusting to the dim light, and reached down to an upright cabinet, her foot nearly stepping on what she thought was a big black rubber hose. And then the hose moved and raised up its thick, squat head. The snake’s skin a dark color, the air smelling of a musky scent. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit!”

  “What?” Jessica said, walking up. She gripped Tashi by the arm and pushed her back behind her. Jessica picked up a fallen piece of wood and went straight for the snake, clubbing it with a rage Tashi didn’t know Jessica had. She finally stepped back, blue hair scattered, face and long, bare arms glistening with sweat. Jessica’s eyes were wide. “Damn,” she said. “Glad you saw it coming. It was a big one.”

  “Oh my God,” Tashi said. “Did you really kill it? You did. You killed a fucking snake.”

  “Yeah?” Jessica said, breathing heavy, looking as if she’d surprised herself. “I guess I did. I killed the bastard. OK. Now let’s get back to work.”

  “Were you recording?” Tashi asked.

  “We’re always recording.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Quinn moved the Cherokee out front where he could watch Maggie seated at a booth in the truck stop, studying the menu, not even contemplating that fine T-bone steak deal. He’d shifted Lee Hazlewood out for some Tyler Childers, listening to the new song, “Honky Tonk Flame,” spotting the DeSoto County SO marked unit cruise the pumps and then roll toward a nearby strip mall. Quinn let down the window and started up a cigar, watching the front door and the back, getting a decent view of the wide entrance feeding into the restaurant. Maggie still alone, sitting behind the fogged glass, waiting for some crazy person who probably wouldn’t have the guts to show. If she felt in the least uncomfortable, she’d hit the call button on her cell. But if not, she’d sit there and listen to what this person had to offer.