by Ace Atkins
Fannie reached down and grabbed Donnie’s T-shirt and boots, tossing both to him. For the first time in a long while, Donnie couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“You know what kind of woman you’re screwing?” Caddy asked him. “Fannie’s chewed up and used this county since you left. Young girls are nothing but products to her, whether they’re homegrown or brought in from over the border. Remember Tamika Odum, Fannie? Ana Maria Mata?”
Fannie shrugged. “Got a lot of talent down on that stage,” she said. “Can’t blame me for not recalling real names.”
“They never worked here,” Caddy said. “But you sold them through a pipeline up to Memphis. Same thing happened to my son two days ago. You were working with the Ramos Brothers and they stole my son, nearly got him killed. They were shooting at him. He’s twelve. This cesspool you’ve cooked up down here is what did it. If not for you, none of this stuff would happen in Tibbehah County.”
“Sure,” Fannie said. “It was all moonlight and goddamn magnolias when Johnny Stagg ran the Rebel. Isn’t that who recruited you into the life?”
Donnie took a deep breath and turned his head. Son of a damn bitch. He knew what was coming but sure didn’t want to see it. Caddy walked on up to Fannie, seated in her high-backed purple velvet chair, and slapped the champagne glass from her hand. It busted apart on the wall, dripping down to the carpet.
“My son almost died because of you,” she said.
“Caddy,” Donnie said, slipping into his boots. “Come on.”
Caddy turned her finger to Donnie and told him to shut his filthy mouth. That was when that big ole boy called Midnight Man came huffing and puffing up the stairs along with that mean-ass Indian. Caddy Colson was a damn hellcat, but he needed to get her out fast without something bad happening. He reached out and touched her arm, but she shook him off hard. Fannie lifted her eyes to the two men standing right behind Caddy Colson’s shoulder. She leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs, cocking her head and staring right at Caddy. She smirked. “So fucking what?”
“Is your soul that damn black?” Caddy said. “Is that what you told yourself when you had Mingo killed?”
Fannie’s grin melted off her face, her skin seeming to drain of all color. Fannie leaned forward and started to stand.
“Mingo was a decent person,” Caddy said. “Not that you’d understand, but he got right with God before you had him killed. He couldn’t live with himself anymore, seeing what you did with those girls you trucked up through here, packing them in like a bunch of cattle, eyes looking out in the darkness. Needing some help. He stepped up. He did the right thing, and you couldn’t stand that he crossed you.”
“That’s a damn lie,” Fannie said. “I would’ve never harmed that boy.”
“You killed him,” Caddy said. “You made those girls disappear and now you nearly killed my son. Good luck, Donnie. Just watch your back while y’all lay side by side in her satin sheets. I heard she’s a talent with a framing hammer.”
“Liar,” Fannie said, getting on her feet. Her face had turned a bright red.
Caddy walked up on her and slapped the damn taste out of that woman’s mouth. Half of Fannie’s face turned a bright red, a little blood trickling off her lip.
Donnie reached around Caddy’s waist, Caddy kicking and screaming as he picked her up and pulled her from Fannie’s office. Caddy was slight but fighting like hell as he dragged her down that twisty staircase, not giving up until they got to the ground floor. She pulled loose from his grasp and headed straight out the door. Donnie ran after her, calling out to her in the parking lot.
“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” Donnie said. “That wasn’t nothing. Come on now. You don’t get it. You don’t see what’s going on.”
“Letting you in was a mistake,” Caddy said. “You’re as dirty as all of ’em. Don’t you ever come around me or my family again, Donnie Varner.”
“Just a damn second,” Donnie said. “Let me talk.”
“Why don’t you buckle your pants first,” Caddy said, stomping to her busted-ass GMC truck and jumping behind the wheel. She screeched off, blowing up a mess of gravel and dirt, headlights waving wild and crazy through the Rebel Truck Stop until she hit the road back toward town.
Donnie took a deep breath, reached down and buckled his damn pants before pulling on his T-shirt.
That federal agent Jon Holliday never promised this shit was easy. But damn if Donnie thought he wouldn’t have been better off still at FCI Beaumont. Putting your ass on the line and getting your heart shattered wasn’t no damn picnic.
* * *
• • •
“I left Brandon with my mom,” Quinn said. “What the hell happened?”
Maggie sat beside him in Boom’s old truck. He’d picked her up near the emergency entrance of the hospital and circled to the far corner of the parking lot so they could talk in private. She’d changed back into her street clothes, a maternity top that was stretched nearly to its limits. Quinn wishing like hell she’d take a few days off, slow down until the baby came.
“It had been called in as a gunshot victim,” Maggie said. “The doctors were prepped. But he was dead when he got here. He’d been shot a bunch of times, the front of his shirt and his face a bloody mess. I didn’t even make the connection until an hour ago. We were told not to say anything by the sheriff’s office since they were trying to notify his family back in Texas.”
“They say anything else?”
“To me?” Maggie said. “No. But they definitely tried to keep his identity quiet. They didn’t want a bunch of media attention. It wasn’t but thirty minutes later, the state people showed up and took the body.”
“Was Ophelia Bundren here?”
“Nope.”
“They can’t release the body to the state unless Ophelia signs off on it.”
“They did,” Maggie said, face half hidden in the shadow of the truck cab. “The body’s gone.”
“I met Herrera a couple times,” Quinn said. “He was stand-up.”
“Poor Caddy,” Maggie said, playing with the bracelets on her wrist. “She’s already been through enough.”
For the first time in weeks, rain started to fall, pinging the windshield and across the dusty hood of the Ford Highboy. It rained quiet and soft for a few moments and then began to fall in great, thick sheets across the parking lot, slanting into the lamps along the edge of the hospital.
“What is it that you wanted to tell me?” Quinn asked. “That you couldn’t say on the phone?”
“I heard they’re saying it was some shoot-out,” Maggie said. “That’s the word around town.”
“Yep.”
“Only thing I know is that man was killed at close range,” Maggie said. “I don’t need any medical examiner to tell me that. Someone put a gun right between that man’s eyes and blew the top of his head clean off.”
19
Don’t you want to touch it?” old Zeke Coldfield said to Donnie Varner, licking his cracked, dry lips and holding the antique sword up to the dim light inside Zeke’s Value City. It was early morning with just a few overhead lamps on, the only illumination coming from the old wood display cases glowing in the dark. Coldfield sat at the head of a long dinner table situated up on a display platform, wearing a worn-out kepi cap and a moth-eaten cape over a pinstripe suit. “It’s a piece of living history. Taken from the hand of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s brother as he lay dying, not five miles from where we stand.”
“No shit,” Donnie said, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth. “Ain’t that something.”
“That’s what spurred Forrest to run those goddamn Yankees out of Tibbehah County,” Coldfield said. “He held his brother in his lap, saying ‘Poor Jeffrey,’ and then mounted his horse Roderick, the way Forrest always did, standing tall in the saddle, saber raised as he busted right thro
ugh a line of Union soldiers that was trying to link up with that rotten bastard Sherman.”
Donnie took the sword, spewing smoke from the side of his mouth, finding it surprisingly heavy, blade dull and tarnished. Damn if it wasn’t much nicer than those samurai swords they sold to the truckers out at the Rebel.
“This one was made by Mansfield & Lamb up in Rhode Island,” Zeke said, his cataract-blue eyes shiny with excitement. “My granddaddy bought it off a nigger man up in Memphis whose daddy had stolen it from the Forrest family. He was using it to cut the heads off chickens out back of a fillin’ station. Can you imagine the disgrace of such a prestigious piece of our heritage? Exactly what we were all fighting for. If we’d had more men like the Forrest boys we’d have won that war.”
“Me and some of my buddies used to go hunt for Minié balls down in the creeks in Sugar Ditch,” Donnie said. “Found me a bayonet once. Guess there’d been a lot of action down that way.”
“They were trying to protect that breadbasket of the Confederacy,” Coldfield said, taking the sword back from Donnie’s hand and sliding it into its leather scabbard. “Sherman wanted everything south of Jericho plundered and burned. The wheat, the corn, and cotton. They say when our boys were tearing into those Yankees, there was smoke and fires as far as the eye could see. Ole Forrest and his boys greeted by hoots and hollers of folks on the town square as he sought out that coward Sooy Smith for the Second Battle of Jericho.”
“Second battle?” Donnie asked. “Just when was the first?”
“Biblical times,” Coldfield said. “Our boys were as mighty as the Israelites that day, blowing their trumpets, attacking that weakling and coward Sooy Smith. Hee-hee-hee. Must’ve been a sight to see him and thousands of them troops turn tail and run up the road to Pontotoc.”
“All this stuff must be worth plenty,” Donnie said, looking about the cavernous darkness, the display cases glowing a hot white light. “Ever think about selling out and maybe taking a cruise down to Mexico or down to the Bahamas? Some of them Princess cruises have discos and waterslides, too.”
“Why on earth would I do that, son?” Coldfield asked. “Third-world countries are filled with crime and vermin. I seen it all on Fox & Friends. And that was plenty for me.”
Donnie nodded, watching the old man at the head of the table unwrapping a Nutty Buddy. He shoved the whole damn thing in his mouth, mawing it up with his dentures clicking and slipping. He wasn’t sure why the old man was wearing the musty, tattered Confederate garb and didn’t ask, Coldfield meeting him at the front door with that shit on as if it was normal and expected.
“Well, you boys are in luck,” Donnie said. “Looks like I’ll take delivery over the weekend and we can go ahead and seal this here deal by the start of the week. How’s that sound?”
“Good, good,” Coldfield said, licking his fingers clean. “You’re a fine man, Mr. Varner. Ever think of maybe joining our ranks? We sure could use someone of your military experience for the upcoming battles.”
“Come again?”
“The upcoming battles,” Coldfield said. “Damn Yankees want nothing more than to come back down here and finish us all off. Take our statues and our heritage. Forrest headed them off then, and later when he organized the Klan. Now it’s up to the descendants of those brave souls to stand our ground. We don’t need none of what they’re selling. Jigaboo music, diet lemonade, and Hollywood homos. Just the other day I seen two men kissing each other in the Walmart parking lot like they was Ozzie and Harriet. That’s the last time I’ll go to that place and get me my treats. You don’t see none of that mess at the Piggly Wiggly.”
“No, sir,” Donnie said. “The Pig offers a more wholesome clientele.”
“If any of those sonsabitches try and take that statue off the town square, I’d chain my old bones to that ole soldier standing guard over our values,” he said. “Yes, sir. Ain’t no way Zeke Coldfield would lose his history without putting up a good fight.”
“Glad I could be of service, sir.”
“This is a grand time to be alive,” Coldfield said. “I never thought we’d see the likes and fiber of a man like J. K. Vardaman again. His ancestor was a great man, a grand figure with a vision of the past and the future. I swear to the Lord, our current governor is the spitting image. That’s the man we voted for and that’s the man who’s gonna see us through.”
“You Watchmen are a damn supportive crew.”
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Zeke Coldfield said, standing up and hobbling off the steps from the display. He hit a few more hidden switches on the walls and walked on through the tiny spotlights. “Governor Vardaman is a founding member of our society. He’s one of us. Hell, he’s gosh-dang family.”
“Just exactly how many of y’all are there?” Donnie asked.
“Son, if I told you, you wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “You couldn’t throw an old shoe at the statehouse without hitting one of our brothers in arms right in the damn head.”
* * *
• • •
“Did Herrera call you or tell you anything?” Quinn asked.
“Nothing,” Caddy said. “The last time we spoke he said he was working with the law school at Ole Miss, hoping to get those folks out of jail. Maybe help get them some work visas.”
Quinn looked at his sister, standing there on the farmhouse porch, the rain not letting up since the other night, drenching the pasture and pouring off the tin roof. Caddy leaned on the porch railing while Quinn stood in the doorway.
“These people are so reckless and arrogant,” she said. “They can do whatever they want to anyone. It doesn’t matter. No one cares.”
Quinn nodded. He hadn’t told his sister everything about the shooting. The details about Herrera’s body had been between him and Maggie and now him and Jon Holliday. Quinn took a puff of his Liga Privada and let out a big cloud of smoke.
“We care,” Quinn said.
“That chicken plant is back open,” Caddy said. “It’s been working behind locked gates for a week now. I don’t know who they’ve hired or where they’re coming from. Do you know anyone who’s gotten a job there?”
“Caddy.”
“You want me to slow down?” she said. “Leave it alone?”
Quinn shook his head. He watched Caddy drop her head into her hands and start to cry. He moved from the doorway to a porch swing and took a seat. The rain blew across the front yard and over the dirt bike Brandon had left in the front yard. Hondo wandered out the front door from the kitchen where he’d been sleeping and looked at the rain, bending down deep into his front paws and lifting his butt up to stretch.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said.
“Hector was a very good man,” she said. “Maybe one of the best.”
“Momma told me about those dreams you’ve been having.”
“They’re not dreams, Quinn.”
Quinn nodded, cigar smoldering in his hands. He was barefoot, cowboy boots muddy and placed by the front door. Hondo looked up and dropped his head on Quinn’s knee. Quinn scratched the dog’s old gray head, Hondo making pleasant grunting sounds. Rain dripped down off the sharp edge of the metal roof and patted onto the thirsty flower beds. The pink four o’clocks had been nearly dead.
“I didn’t tell you this,” Caddy said. “But the other night, right after I got Jason home, I drove out to Fannie Hathcock’s place. I couldn’t stand it, Quinn. I had to face her or I felt like my insides would explode.”
“That was a bad idea, Caddy,” Quinn said. “You should’ve called me.”
“Wouldn’t have mattered,” Caddy said, wiping her face. “Even Jamey couldn’t talk me out of it. He tried his best to get me thinking right with scripture.”
Quinn didn’t say anything, watching his sister speak, hoping that she knew this was all crazy talk. But she didn’t let on, going on and on about her conversation wi
th a dead man inside that old barn at The River. She never even stopped for a moment to put stock in what she was saying.
“I slapped her,” Caddy said. “All that big talk I make about loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek got thrown out the window like trash onto the highway. I didn’t give a damn. I wanted to hurt her. I slapped that damn bitch so hard I made her mouth bleed.”
“She’s a dangerous woman,” Quinn said. “Maybe even worse than you think.”
“I hope it hurt,” Caddy said. “I hope it hurt like hell. For Jason. For Ana Gabriel and those girls. For Mingo and Ana Maria and Tamika. And now for Hector Herrera. God, Quinn. All of this for what? All of those lives for some greedy and godless men in Jackson to gorge on the north Mississippi trough. It’s got to end. Right? When will it end?”
“Soon,” Quinn said, standing and placing a hand on Caddy’s shoulder. “I promise.”
She wiped her eyes again with the back of her hand and stared out into the pasture, the air thick with the smell of mud and manure. A mess of cattle huddled together in the center of the field, their legs and hooves coated in mud and shit, shifting and swaying, looking for some kind of solid ground. Hondo barked at them from high on the porch and then ran faster than he had in a long while to gather a few strays from the herd.
“That old dog’s still got it,” Caddy said, wiping her nose.
“Damn straight.”
* * *
• • •
“Sam, why won’t you drink with me?” Chief Robbie said. “Just one drink. A toast to our future, or a toast to look back on the past. We have come so far. Look out there, look at all those people giving us their money. Do you remember the government trailers? The worn-out secondhand clothes the white people handed down to us when we were kids? Now we control two hotels, the casino. I’ve even been taking lessons to fly my own helicopter. That way I can get down to the Coast, when Takali is built, and back within less than an hour. Think of it.”
