by Ace Atkins
“Feds had surveillance on the motel all day,” Lillie said. “They said it was nothing but truckers and travelers. Cool AC and color TVs with cable. Fannie even had the pool filled in just in time for summer.”
“I don’t know about all that,” Reggie said. “But that place would’ve been the second spot I would’ve hit. Right across the street from the Rebel and Vienna’s. Maybe they’re right. No way she’d go back there.”
“Oh, yeah?” Lillie nodded over to her Charger. “How about we take a little ride, Reggie? Just to satisfy our damn curiosity.”
* * *
• • •
“What do they know?” Fannie asked Nat.
Nat’s face was a bloody mess, one eye closed and lip busted. She could taste the blood in her mouth, metallic and hot, as she turned her head and spit on the motel carpet. The blinds were drawn, slats of light from outside the U-shaped motel shining onto the bedspread and a little grouping of a table and chairs by the window. Over a big queen bed was a full bronze starburst, a relic from the fifties that had survived all these years in this shithole.
“I’m not tired,” Fannie said. “And I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“They’re coming for you,” Nat said. “Won’t be long now.”
“Shit,” Fannie said, grinning. “You really think so?”
When Nat came to that morning, Fannie had pulled on a pair of weighted leather gloves, bragging to Nat how the knuckles had been filled with twelve ounces of steel shot. She said they’d been a gift from some steroid freak cop who used to visit Vienna’s on a regular basis. And man, they sure did pack a wallop. Fannie’s slim hand in that weighted goatskin felt like a big old rock being tossed right in her face with each punch.
“They want just me?” Fannie said. “Or Vardaman, too?”
Nat shook her head, feeling the warm blood and spit run down her chin. The front of her white T-shirt covered in blood as she mouthed the words, “all of it,” knowing it didn’t make much of a difference now. They were on her, fire ants crawling over Fannie Hathcock’s world.
“I fucked up trying to kill the sheriff,” Fannie said. “I’m a big girl. I admit that whole thing had a touch of arrogance about it.”
Nat leveled her good eye right on Fannie and said, “And Hector Herrera.”
Fannie stepped back, ripped the Velcro from her wrist. “That little Mexican man in the Crocs?” she said. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Just what did you hear Vardaman say?”
“I didn’t just hear it, bitch,” Nat said. “I got y’all on damn video.”
Fannie turned her back and then came back at Nat hard, knocking her jaw nearly sideways. Nat shook her head as her mouth filled with more blood and loose teeth.
She turned her head, spit, and smiled. “That all you got, woman?”
* * *
• • •
Holliday drove Quinn at ninety miles an hour over to the hospital in Tupelo. Quinn was out of the car before it even stopped, opening the door and running into the reception desk. His mother, Jean, and Maggie’s friend Raven were standing there waiting, Jean pointing her finger right at Quinn and saying, “There’s the father. That’s him.” She said it like she was accusing him of shoplifting at the Piggly Wiggly.
“Her water broke two hours ago,” Raven said. “Your sister is with Brandon. She didn’t want to worry you.”
“I’m not worried,” Quinn said. “Do I look worried?”
“You’ve been through this before?” Raven asked, leaving Jean and walking Quinn back through security. Raven, a nurse who was also Maggie’s doula, was dressed in hospital scrubs and handed Quinn an ID badge. “Right?”
“Not with one of my own,” Quinn said. “Helped a young girl out a long time ago in a camp out in the woods. We had a doctor with us but had some complications getting to a hospital.”
“No complications here,” Raven said. “Come on in.”
Maggie sat on the edge of a bed, head down, eyes closed, swaying slightly from side to side. A nurse gripped her hand and rubbed her back through the thin, papery hospital gown. The nurse waved Quinn over and gave Maggie’s hand to him. He squeezed it and Maggie finally looked up, surprised to see him. Her eyes were slightly unfocused from pain, but she smiled.
“We haven’t called the doctor in here yet,” Maggie said. “The contractions are too far apart. How in the world did you get here so fast?”
“A federal agent who puts Richard Petty to shame,” Quinn said.
“She’s coming, Quinn,” Maggie said. “She’s ready. She just wanted to come on out a little early.”
“I’m here,” Quinn said. “Everything is going to be fine. Just relax and breathe.”
“Really?” Maggie said, eyes closing lightly. “Relax? Do you really think I can relax?”
Quinn reached up and brushed the bangs off her forehead. He leaned down and kissed her on her freckled cheek.
“Everything’s OK back home?” Maggie asked. “Brandon’s OK? Our farm is OK? Right. Everything is right where we left it? They burned Caddy’s barn. They tried to kill her, Quinn.”
“Don’t worry,” Quinn said. “All that’s over. We’ve got everything in hand.”
* * *
• • •
“If you lie to me,” Lillie Virgil said to the front desk clerk at the Golden Cherry, “I swear to God, you’ll be bunking with the biggest, nastiest gangbanger in Parchman, buddy. No swimming pools or movie stars down in the Delta. Just long nights, a lot of pain, and that damn freight train hammering on home to Memphis.”
“She’s here,” the little man said. “Room twenty-three.”
He was old, skinny, slack-jawed, and gray, wearing a Hawaiian shirt two sizes too big open at the collar with tan Sansabelt slacks and flip-flops. Living his best goddamn life out on Highway 45.
“Don’t you dare touch that dial and warn her ass,” Lillie said, reaching for the key. “Or my offer still stands. I know motherfuckers in that joint who’d fuck a rhino cross-eyed.”
She looked over at Reggie. Reggie shaking his head but grinning, too, well aware of Lillie’s light touch, friendly approach when getting close to a suspect. They walked out into the hot night, and Lillie popped the trunk of her silver Charger, pulling out her favorite shotgun. A sweet Mossberg 590 Shockwave, heavy-duty and quick-loading. Lillie grabbed a handful of shells, thumbed in a few, and packed the others into her U.S. Marshal’s vest.
From where she stood, Lillie spotted a dozen or so sheriff’s cruisers from surrounding counties and several news trucks in front of the Rebel. The entrance onto Highway 45 still blocked off by the highway patrol, blue lights flashing in the dark.
“Shouldn’t we wait?” Reggie asked.
“For what?” Lillie said. “A goddamn invitation? Come on, let’s go snatch up that bitch.”
* * *
• • •
Fannie reached down and touched Nat’s bloody face, gripping her chin and moving her head from side to side. She may have actually done it. The woman was breathing, but just barely, and not saying a goddamn word. Little bloody bubbles formed at the corner of her mouth.
Fannie walked over to the queen bed, where she’d spread out another change of clothes: a Lilly Pulitzer beach dress, strappy leather sandals, and a big wide straw hat. She’d already packed her trunk with everything she’d pulled out from Vienna’s Place and would get on the road just as soon as those state troopers opened up Highway 45 south. She’d head on down to Mobile and then west to New Orleans. She had lots of friends and lots of business in New Orleans. That would be a fine place to regroup and see exactly what happened to Vardaman. She only half-believed the shit Nat had told her while doped up. She had to be lying when she said Vardaman had admitted he wanted Herrera dead. Fannie had been damn careful never to talk about that side of business. She didn’t say anything to Vardam
an. Did she?
She walked past Nat, duct-taped to the plastic chair, and into the narrow little bathroom. She checked her new hair, dyed jet black against her pale skin with no eye makeup or lipstick. Just plain ol’ Jane trucking on down to the beaches. Nobody would ever imagine she was still in town. The hounds howling all about the woods while the fox patiently waited.
Fannie held on to the sink and closed her eyes. Just one more thing to do.
Fannie reached into her purse and found a lovely silk hankie. Turning back to Nat in the dim light of the motel room, Fannie held the hankie and the flat of her hand to the woman’s mouth while pinching her nose shut. Nat shot awake for a moment, pulling at the tape on her wrists and ankles and screaming into Miss Fannie’s hand. But Fannie had it. “Shh, baby,” Fannie said. “Just hush.”
It was then the motel room door splintered off the fucking hinges and in walked a big-ass woman with broad shoulders holding a shotgun.
Damn if it wasn’t Lillie Virgil.
* * *
• • •
“I can’t do it,” Maggie said, screaming through gritted teeth. “Holy hell, y’all. Jesus. I have to stop. I just have to stop.”
“Can’t stop,” Quinn said. “She’s ready. She can’t wait any longer.”
Maggie was surrounded by Raven and a trio of nurses, the doctor down between her legs, ignoring her and telling her to keep on pushing. She had Quinn’s hand, gripping it tight, breathing in and out, trying to be cool and relaxed like the books she’d been reading and all those natural childbirth classes she’d taken before Brandon had been born. But the pain was crushing her whole body. She knew there was no way her body could get through it without ripping apart. She’d have to split apart to get the baby out. The panic started rising and she grabbed Quinn’s hand, looking down between her raised knees at the doctor, the doctor again telling her to push.
“I’m doing this natural,” Maggie said.
“I know.”
“That means I’m in an awful lot of pain.”
“Of course.”
“Goddamn it, Quinn Colson,” Maggie said. “Are you hearing what I’m saying?”
Maggie screamed. Raven had told her to scream low down in her belly, not high, because high screams make you panic and hyperventilate. Maggie screamed so low she growled. The doctor looked up from down below and shook her head. Raven told Quinn they needed Maggie on her feet and they needed his help.
“You can’t shake that baby out?” he said.
The doctor pulled down her mask. “Yes, sir,” she said. “We sure can. Come on. Grab her up under her arms.”
Quinn and Raven helped Maggie slide off the table, feeling as if she’d entered another damn time zone with the pain, her head lolling around, her whole body untethered. Maggie had never even considered taking an epidural, saying she hadn’t with Brandon and that it hadn’t been that bad. Quinn may have been shot in the back, stabbed, dragged behind a moving truck. But he never in his life had gone through something like this. If he told her to Ranger Up, she felt she just might smack him.
Raven put Maggie’s arms around Quinn’s neck and showed him how to hold her, Maggie’s legs hanging loose, barely touching the floor, almost feeling like she was floating.
“Push,” Quinn said.
“Goddamn you, Quinn Colson.”
“Push,” Quinn said.
“You did this,” Maggie said. “You put this in me. I can’t do it. I can’t push.”
But she did. She pushed, her arms dangling from Quinn’s neck at first but then planting her feet in the floor and pulling downward with all the force she could. She could feel her baby’s head finally inch past her pubic bone.
Quinn and a nurse, a heavyset woman in scrubs with pink flowers, helped Maggie get back on the birthing bed, the doctor down below calling for her to push some more. Push. Push. Push. Damn, she was pushing, feeling like she just might split in two.
“I see her,” the doctor said, as calm and easy as could be. “Your baby is coming, Mrs. Colson. I see her little head. You’re almost there.”
* * *
• • •
Lillie didn’t say a word moving into the motel room, dim from the artificial light outside the plate-glass window, slats of white across the bedspread and over a slumped figure in the far corner.
The woman standing in front of her was Fannie Hathcock but sure didn’t look like Fannie. She had black hair and a plain, simple face, wearing a black tank top and tacky-ass sweatpants. She stared at Lillie as Lillie moved forward, the Mossberg up on her shoulder.
“And here we are,” Fannie said.
Lillie cut her eyes briefly over at the slumped figure, not seeing more but knowing it was Nat. Lillie looked back up at Fannie, who was smiling, confident and cool with a shotgun in her face, a deputy in the doorway, and state troopers blocking every exit out of town.
Lillie was careful to listen, to watch, to make sure no one else was in the room with them. She moved around Fannie and nodded over to Reggie to check the bathroom. He walked in and out fast, heading back to his place in the doorway. All was clear.
“Don’t suppose y’all would be interested in a few million bucks in the back of my car?”
“What did you do to her?”
“Y’all help yourself and let me be on my way,” she said. “Easy transaction.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Y’all think you were so fucking smart,” Fannie said. “Busting up in here, crashing my party, and shitting my damn bed. How about we talk in a few months. Once Governor Vardaman gets hold of your ass, you’ll be writing tickets on the Jericho Square, doll.”
“Hands up,” Lillie said. “Against the wall.”
Lillie couldn’t help but look down at Nat’s slumped head, bloody and bruised, one eye snapped shut, blood all down the front of her T-shirt. When she glanced back to Fannie, Fannie hadn’t moved, the woman peering over at something on the nightstand.
In the dim light, Lillie couldn’t tell what it was. To her, from where she stood, it might’ve been a gun.
“Can y’all at least let me snag a smoke,” Fannie said. “It’s been one hell of a long goddamn day.”
“Nope,” Lillie said. “Hands up against the fucking wall.”
“What are you gonna do, Lillie Virgil?” Fannie said, dead-eyed and staring. “Shoot me? Oh, hell.”
Fannie turned and walked over to the nightstand, Lillie trailing her with the barrel of the shotgun as Fannie Hathcock blocked whatever she was reaching for with her back, leaving Lillie to yell at Fannie to drop it and turn around. Fannie spun around quick and hard, that silver object caught up in her hand just as Lillie squeezed the damn trigger and knocked that bitch back hard against the far wall, toppling the lamp off the nightstand and sending her sliding down the wall, blood across her chest and on the bed, on the carpet, and goddamn near everywhere.
“Shit,” Lillie said, lowering the shotgun, smelling the smoke and seeing the mess.
Reggie not paying any of it any mind, only running to Nat and checking on her. He put his face up close to hers and then reached for his radio. “We need an ambulance right now.”
“She’s breathing?” Lillie said, feeling the tears run down her cheeks.
Reggie nodded, taking a folding knife from his uniform and cutting Nat loose from the chair. Lillie took a few steps forward, the fallen lamp casting a strange light up across the bloody wall and the toppled body of Fannie Hathcock. Queen of Mississippi.
Fannie’s mouth hung open, eyes glassy, and fingers topped with long red nails splayed open. A few inches away was a small silver case, tiny little cigars scattered across the motel room floor. Lillie could just barely make out the etched inscription. FROM RAY WITH LOVE.
“I warned you, woman,” Lillie said. “I’ve always warned you. But you wouldn’t h
ave it any other way.”
28
Did you tell him that you loved him?” Sancho asked. “Perhaps kissed him on the mouth and promised yourself to him? I understand that in Mississippi you could marry at sixteen. That isn’t long, Ana Gabriel. So very exciting.”
“Where do you learn this stuff?” Ana Gabriel said. “Why do you talk this way? You’re too young to understand any of this.”
Sancho shrugged. “I am truly wise beyond my years.”
She and Sancho again found themselves in Atlanta, living with their father, going to a new school and trying to figure out what was next. Which road do they take? Which way is home? Would they go back to Mexico? Or stay here with these Southern people and lose their culture and their language, melt into that long drive of strip malls and fast food. Never escaping. Every big city looking the same, so forever and anonymous that it felt to Ana Gabriel as if it all might swallow her whole.
“Or did you take off your necklace and press it into his hand?” he asked. “The good one from our grandmother. The crucifix made of gold. That would mean something. That would show that you loved Jason Colson forever.”
“You’re such a silly boy,” Ana Gabriel said. “I text him. We have talked on the phone. OK? Is that what you want to hear?”
Sancho nodded, sipping on a Coca-Cola in the back booth of a Mexican buffet out on Buford Highway. El Toro. The bull. Their father had taken a job as a cook and their new stepmother was a waitress, the winter setting in, the night coming on faster. It was only five but already dark outside the restaurant. Their stepmother working to fill up the big buffet with meat, cheeses, tortillas, green Jell-O, and fried fish heads. There was a taco station and a dessert bar, but despite the big feast, it was empty.
It was early, she and Sancho sitting in that last booth working on their homework, waiting for the time when they would close and they would all go home to the apartment they shared with their stepbrothers and stepsisters. They would watch soccer or bull riding and then fall asleep to the sound of cars zooming along the busy roads. Sometimes Ana Gabriel missed the quiet of the Frog Pond Trailer Park, the woods and creeks they had to cross on their way to school.
