The Shameless

by Ace Atkins

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your dad?”

  “I’d rather not,” Quinn said. “It’s the one thing I’d rather not discuss.”

  “Just like your sister,” Tashi said. “She said you both haven’t heard from him for a couple of years. Do you know where he ended up?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you want to know?”

  “Not really,” Quinn said, looking at his watch. The shadows starting to fall earlier and earlier, even at five o’clock. Hubie Phillips had decorated his door with jack-o’-lanterns and witches, orange and purple tinsel. “I’d rather just stick to Mr. Phillips. Maybe he’ll be a little more forthcoming with me. I took a few of his classes. I liked him. He used to tell me I had more potential than I believed. He was that kind of teacher, always getting us to see beyond Tibbehah County.”

  “If he wanted his students to move away, I wonder why he stayed?” Tashi said, putting her phone down and staring at Quinn.

  Quinn shrugged, watching the narrow little street, all small saltbox houses built end to end at another time, after another war, a little sliver of Memphis that hadn’t changed in a long while. They could be sitting right there at the start of the 1950s, roofs topped with hundreds of TV antennas.

  “Can you tell me the story of how you and Maggie met? The last time.”

  “Why?” Quinn said, leaning back in the driver’s seat, ball cap over his half-shut eyes. “I thought you knew all that.”

  Tashi reached into her satchel and pulled out the microphone, setting it on the console between them. Quinn looked down at the fuzzy mic and turned his head to Tashi.

  “Would be nice to hear your side of the story,” Tashi said. “Maggie already told us hers. She said she knew right away you were going to be together. Did you feel the same way?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “I knew straight off,” Quinn said. “Once we worked out some unpleasant details, we just got right to it. I asked her to marry me on our second real date.”

  “You only knew her for a few months,” Tashi said. “That’s bold.”

  “Long as I needed,” Quinn said. “I wasn’t about to let her go. Maggie is something special.”

  Quinn looked in his rearview, spotting a gray compact car slowing behind them, idling and then parking along the street. Hubie Phillips got out, opened up his trunk, and grabbed some plastic bags, seeming a little confused and hesitant as Quinn got out of the truck and met him in the driveway.

  “Mr. Phillips.”

  Hubie Phillips smiled. “Quinn Colson,” he said. “Didn’t I warn you about staying in Tibbehah County?”

  “Yes, sir,” Quinn said. “Only about a hundred times. You know Miss Coleman.”

  The smile faded as he nodded, holding several bags in each hand, trying to reach for the keys in his pocket. “Come on inside,” he said. “Is there something I can do for y’all?”

  * * *

  * * *

  Caddy had been waiting for more than an hour for Bentley at a Huddle House down in West Point. West Point was about halfway for them both, Bentley saying he couldn’t make it all the way to Jericho today but they needed to talk. He said he’d heard about the trouble at The River. The shelves were bare and the freezers cleared out, running damn-near empty, and they’d be flat-ass broke by Christmas. Caddy tried to argue the point, not wanting to take another dime, but Bentley said keeping The River going was in all their best interests, especially for the folks who really needed them.

  That was this morning. She’d driven straight south to the little glass-box diner off Highway 45, drinking coffee with a little cream and a lot of sugar and watching the cars pass by. A jukebox in the corner pumped out some classic George Jones and Tammy Wynette, “Golden Ring.” Caddy wondering just what Bentley had in mind for The River. He knew a little bit about the operating expenses but not everything. If they could just keep their doors open until Christmas, they could make it. Christmas was the best time for donations, and most of their grants would kick in at the beginning of next year. The last thing Caddy wanted was for Bentley to think she was using him or had been impressed with his family and money down in Pocahontas. If this deal, whatever it was, was to work out between them, they needed to have their own lives. The whole point for Caddy and for those she served was to never be dependent on anyone. That’s a sure-fire recipe for screwing up a person’s self-worth.

  She spotted Bentley’s SUV pulling into the empty lot and watched him walk toward the diner. Caddy liked watching him move. He was a tallish, goofy guy with shaggy hair and nice blue eyes. The kind of a man who had good manners, said “yes, ma’am” and “yes, sir,” and held the door for her when they went out. Although that didn’t happen often in Jericho, Caddy not quite ready to step all the way into public.

  “Is that Tammy Wynette?” he asked.

  Caddy nodded as Bentley sat down at the booth.

  “Did you know she was from Mississippi?” he asked.

  “Tremont,” Caddy said. “Right up the road from Jericho. Some real country music royalty around here.”

  “My mother said her music always made her cry,” Bentley said. “And your dad used to tell her she’d been a dear friend of his. He said her manager had been a real son of a bitch.”

  The waitress refilled Caddy’s coffee as Bentley asked for a burger, French fries, and a Coke. Caddy reached for a folder she’d brought in with her and spread it out on the table. She’d highlighted some of the money coming in and circled the deficits in red ink. “This was really sweet of you,” Caddy said. “I know you’re busy as hell. But you were right. I’m not even sure we can keep on the lights into next week. The folks at the co-op board have been a lot more patient than they should have been. We’re two months behind. If we could just keep the lights on, maybe hit the operation budget for November, I think we can do it.”

  Bentley smiled, reaching out for Caddy’s hand on all the bills, receipts, and the running list of high-priority items: canned goods, diapers, baby formula, shampoo, soap, razors, shaving cream . . . She looked up from all the paper into Bentley’s eyes. He didn’t look like he’d shaved that morning, sporting a nice-looking dark shadow on his jaw. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just got right down to business.”

  Bentley leaned back into the booth and held out the palms of his hands. “Please,” he said, reaching into his sport coat for a leather-bound checkbook. “It’s not a big deal. How much do you need for the rest of the year?”

  “I don’t need for the rest of the year.”

  “But if you did?”

  “Bentley,” Caddy said, shaking her head. “Please.”

  “I’m serious,” he said, scribbling on a check, lifting his eyes. “I’m going to write in a figure on a foundation check. If it’s too much, I’m sorry. Just put it in savings. It’s not a gift. OK? An investment. Besides, if we left y’all high and dry for the winter, my mother just might have my ass. She says hello, by the way. She was really taken with you. Said you’re very easy to talk with. That’s high praise. Did I tell you what she used to call my girlfriend at Ole Miss?”

  Caddy shook her head, drinking a little coffee. It was bitter and needed more sugar. How the hell her brother drank this stuff all damn day and night was beyond her. Quinn’s blood type was dark roast.

  “OK?” he said.

  He slid the check across the table. She looked down at the number, squinting to make sure she saw it right. There looked to be a few extra zeros in the figure. She looked back up, shaking her head, a rock forming in her throat. “Too much.”

  “Did you meet those assholes in Jackson?” he said. “They spent more than that on their damn party. I won’t even tell you how much my father paid for that group out of Nashville. You’d think we were all insane.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “
Don’t think of yourself,” Bentley said. “Think of how many people you can help.”

  Caddy closed her eyes for a moment and opened them, nodding, picking up the check, the paper feeling thick and heavy in her hand as she folded it and placed it in her purse. The waitress returning with Bentley’s cheeseburger, asking if he needed any ketchup.

  “No, ma’am,” Bentley said. “Appreciate it.”

  The check in her purse felt like a damn boulder had been lifted off her back. She breathed a little easier, already running down what she needed to do once she got back to Tibbehah. First order of business was to pay the electric and propane and then maybe ride on up to Costco past Olive Branch for some much-needed supplies. Maybe even pay the contractors to finish dozer work behind the new outbuilding. This was too much. But exactly what she needed.

  “Just promise you won’t put on any role-playing exercises,” Bentley said, holding the burger with both hands and taking a large bite.

  “Like Delores Taylor in Billy Jack?” she said. “Sure. I can imagine getting Skinner and the supervisors out to The River to explain ethnic diversity and other words those old boys can’t spell.”

  Bentley finished chewing, looking at the waitress to bring him more Coke. Charlie Rich now on the jukebox, My baby makes me proud . . . “Behind Closed Doors.” The album so damn familiar as it was only second to anything Elvis Presley recorded in the Colson household. She saw Jean standing in the kitchen, washing dishes and humming the song.

  “I had another reason for seeing you.”

  Caddy reached under the table and pinched his knee. She was smiling so big Caddy felt her face might just freeze that way. She should really slow this down, make some sense of it. Six years’ difference.

  “I don’t know any other way to say this but to say it,” Bentley said, putting down his cheeseburger and leaning into the table. “Your brother needs to watch his back,” he said. “He’s in some danger and needs to know about it.”

  Caddy stopped smiling, a tense feeling spreading across her neck and shoulders, looking up at Bentley. She started to speak but stopped herself, her breath caught.

  “Please don’t ask me to explain how or why I know this,” he said. “But I do. Quinn’s making trouble for some important people. He understands better than anyone how just lies and rumors can muck up the water.”

  Caddy swallowed.

  “People I know,” Bentley said. “I know people.”

  “What people?”

  “Come on, Caddy,” he said. “Jesus. Don’t make me sit here and spell it out. I like you. I like you a whole hell of a lot. Does it matter how any of this started? All that matters now is I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you. I don’t care about Daddy or his damn friends or the age difference. I want you, Caddy.”

  “Hold on,” Caddy said, sitting up straight, blood pulsing in her temple. “How this all started? What in the hell does that mean? Did you come up to Tibbehah County to spy on me?”

  Bentley didn’t say anything for a long while, his eyes dropping like he just might tear up. When he finally did speak, he reached out for her hand again. “I’ll tell you,” Bentley said. “I’ll tell you every dirty little detail. But please, please know one thing. I love you. One doesn’t have a thing to do with the other.”

  Caddy pulled back her hand, setting it in her lap, listening.

  * * *

  * * *

  “E.J. Royce is dead?” Hubie Phillips asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What a shame,” Mr. Phillips said. “I didn’t see it in the news.”

  “Tibbehah County sometimes doesn’t make the Memphis news.”

  “Unless there’s a shoot-out with some bank robbers out at the Booby Trap,” he said, smiling.

  “Yes, sir,” Quinn said. “That made national news. Only it’s called Vienna’s Place after Johnny Stagg went to jail. Really classed the place up.”

  Quinn, Tashi, and Mr. Phillips sat in his living room, with its dark wood paneling and blue shag carpet, a thousand pictures on the wall of Phillips’s time back in Tibbehah, his aging mother at church, his students working on the yearbook, down at Choctaw Lake waterskiing. And several awards from his time as a teacher, both in Jericho and later in Memphis. A sliver of light split the room from a pair of thick baby blue drapes, the air smelling musty and pent up, like the inside of an old trunk. Mr. Phillips sat with his legs crossed in a hard wooden chair as he spoke, looking much older than Quinn recalled, with thin white skin and receding white hair. He had on a neat blue button-down shirt with faded jeans and white sneakers without socks.

  “We’re having a hard time finding Ansley Cuthbert,” Quinn said. “We were hoping you kept in touch with her.”

  “Ansley?” he said. “Oh, Lord, no. I haven’t heard from her since I left Jericho. Does she have something to do with Brandon Taylor? Now, that little girl was trouble. So fast.”

  Quinn kept on looking around the room, the endless pictures and framed movie posters: Intruder in the Dust, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cookie’s Fortune.

  “I got that Cookie’s Fortune poster signed by Robert Altman himself,” he said. “I think I would’ve gone crazy a long time ago without movies. Next week, I’m taking one of those TCM cruises down the Caribbean. I went a few years ago, back when Robert Osborne was still alive. I met Eva Marie Saint and Ruta Lee. She was in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

  “I remember you used to talk to me a lot about Westerns,” Quinn said. “I think you were the first person to tell me to watch Red River.”

  “God, I love that movie.”

  “And She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.”

  “John Ford,” Mr. Phillips said. “I pegged you for a John Ford man right off. I think about people like that. Who are their directors. I don’t know you well, Miss Coleman, but I think you’d really like W. S. Van Dyke. Penthouse, Manhattan Melodrama. Ole One Take Woody, is what they called him. Some of my favorite films are from the Depression. So much realism. Cynical but with hope. Like your stories.”

  “So you’re not sure where we can find Ansley Cuthbert?” Tashi said, reminding Quinn of Lillie. Enough with the small talk, getting right to the point.

  “I haven’t seen her for twenty years,” Mr. Phillips said. “I do remember she and Brandon were very close. It was obvious they were boyfriend and girlfriend, always spending a lot of time in the darkroom. Hours and hours. He took a lot of pictures but never printed many photographs. I knew what they were doing in there but didn’t want to make any trouble for them. Kids will be kids. All those hormones. I remember you, Quinn. What was your girlfriend’s name?”

  “Anna Lee Amsden.”

  “Anna Lee,” Mr. Phillips said. “Of course, of course. She was lovely. She had that whole icy blonde Hitchcock thing. No wonder you were crazy about her.”

  “Icy blonde,” Quinn said. “That’s about right.”

  “I do have something for you,” Mr. Phillips said, standing and disappearing to a back room. He returned with a small filing box and set it down on the coffee table. “When I first heard from Jessica about the podcast, I went through my files. I kept the last few batches of photos Brandon left at the lab. When he died, I couldn’t imagine throwing them away. I can’t see any way in the world they would help you. Lots of pictures of the woods, artsy stuff. But here you go. Have at it.”

  Quinn nodded and offered his hand. Mr. Phillips shook it, the bones in Phillips’s hand seeming thin and brittle, light, in Quinn’s fingers. “Appreciate it, sir.”

  “I will warn you, Quinn,” Mr. Phillips said. “I said some horrible things about your uncle and Deputy Royce. I told them all about those first days after Brandon disappeared and the way they treated me. Even though they’re both dead now, I still don’t know if I forgive them.”

  “They had no right,” Quinn said. “I’m sorry.”

  “
Brandon did not kill himself,” Mr. Phillips said, still holding on to Quinn’s hand. “I know it like I know my own name. Maybe Ansley Cuthbert can help you. Lord, I hope so. Funny how the mind works. I recall how she and Brandon came to class one day, hand in hand. She had this little silver necklace. A locket? Or maybe a heart? She kept on playing with it, running the chain through her fingers. You could tell how much it meant to her. I think they were very much in love.”

  Quinn picked up the box and tucked it under his arm. Tashi stood and looked up at Quinn. “We found her,” Tashi said. “And spoke to her. But since then it looks like she left Memphis.”

  “I just pray she doesn’t head back to Tibbehah County,” Mr. Phillips said, walking them both toward the door. “No offense, Quinn, but I can’t imagine why anyone would stick around there. I did a long time for family, history and all. Why’d you come back?”

  “That’s a long story, Mr. Phillips,” Quinn said. “I guess I got offered a job.”

  “Town sheriff,” Mr. Phillips said. “What did I say? John Ford. Have you seen My Darling Clementine?”

  “Maybe a hundred times.”

  “I knew you had,” Mr. Phillips said, opening the front door, afternoon light spilling into the entryway. The welcome mat read GOD BLESS THIS HOME. “It’s good to see you, Quinn. Keep up the good fight. You are absolutely nothing like your uncle. He kept a boot on each side of the times, straddling Southern history. So many people down there don’t want to see anything change, only looking backward to what we’ve been. Or an idea of what they thought we’d been. Gone with the Wind? Lovely Technicolor and costumes and all, but an absolute steaming bucket of ahistorical crap. Keep moving ahead, both of you. Mississippi needs you. God love you for answering the damn call.”

  * * *