The Broken Places

by Ace Atkins

  “I still don’t know why you had to go and shoot Dickie,” Becky said, kind of dreamily, studying more on it than cussing him.

  “Did you like Dickie?” Esau said.

  “Not especially.”

  “Then why the hell do you care if I shot him?” he said. “I never intended for him to come here with us. You’re the one who brought him here.”

  “You didn’t have to kill him,” she said, kicking a little bit with her feet in the water.

  There was thunder. Esau didn’t see no lightning. He sipped his beer and thought some more about Florida.

  “You think he would have gone nice?” Esau said. “Without making so much noise that we got caught?”

  “People know we’re here,” she said. “You left a waterlogged Wells Fargo truck out by a pond with some dead men inside.”

  Esau took a sip of beer. Hell, she had him on that.

  Bones was blowing through the beer, taking all the hunt lodge’s owner’s guns from the rack and playing with them a bit on an umbrella-topped table. Bones was always thinking about making money. Didn’t matter they’d need to get gone within a few hours, Bones was thinking on what he could take with him.

  “Nice house,” Becky said. She kicked her feet a little bit.

  Sometime in the morning she’d traded out the red bikini for a camo one.

  “We can’t stay,” Esau said.

  “Maybe we could come back?”

  “I’m never coming back to Mississippi for the rest of my life,” Esau said.

  “Don’t say things like that.”

  “You want to stay in Coldwater?” Esau said, crushing the beer can and launching it into the deep end. “You go right ahead. I’ll call you from the beach sometime.”

  “I still say Mexico or Jamaica.”

  “Jamaica ain’t nothin’ but blacks,” Esau said.

  “Bones is black.”

  “Bones ain’t just some black,” he said. “Bones and me got a history.”

  “So, where is this place?” she said. “What’s it called again?”

  “Indian Rocks Beach,” Esau said. “I got a buddy of mine runs a trailer park down there. He said he can get us some jobs tending bar or renting out boats. We live down there making some money, not drawing too much interest but the whole time having money for whatever we need. I want some sand. Florida is sand. Mississippi ain’t nothing but mud.”

  “What about Bones?”

  “He’s coming, too.”

  “What if we can’t get the money?”

  “That’s not an option.”

  “Shit,” Becky said, sliding up onto the raft, nearly toppling them both. Esau grabbed her and pulled her up by his side. “Didn’t you just say we got a place to live and jobs? Why don’t we just take that? Longer we stay here, the easier it’s going to be to find you boys.”

  Now there was lightning. That forever black cloud blocking out the sun, pine trees shaking in that warning wind. There was electricity in the warm air.

  “Let’s go on inside,” Esau said.

  “We’re already wet.”

  “I don’t care for lightning,” he said. “We can take a shower and get all soapy.”

  “Together?”

  He swatted her butt with his hand, looking back under that umbrella, Bones burning down a cigarette and toying with a collector’s-model Winchester. Maybe she was right. But if he left without getting his due, what kind of man was he? He’d just go on and let Jamey Dixon steal what was rightly his?

  “Does Dixon know you’re coming for him?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Was his girlfriend pretty?”

  “If you like skin and bones.”

  “What do you like?” Becky said.

  “I like a big-ass country girl who knows how to handle a shotgun,” he said. “That girl was scared to death.”

  “Money or not, we got to leave tonight.”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t want to see you and Bones go back,” Becky said. “I can’t handle the smell of the visit house on me. It makes me feel like some kind of whore.”

  “Indian Rocks is nothing but sunshine and margaritas.”

  “Forever?”

  “Ain’t no other way.”

  Quinn parked his truck at the east side of the Big Black River next to Lillie’s Cherokee and walked out to the middle of the rusted bridge. He stood right beside Lillie, who was wearing a green canvas coat and rubber boots pulled up to the knees of her jeans. Quinn watched what she watched, the big muddy churn of the river, the sandbars hidden from view, sticks and big broken limbs twirling and being carried on south. The rain was a good steady pour now. Quinn now in his poncho and sheriff’s ball cap, light traffic rolling over the old bridge.

  “How high’s the water, Momma?” Quinn said.

  “Five feet high and risin’,” Lillie said.

  They leaned over the rail. Lillie had yet to meet his eye.

  “Looks lots deeper than that.”

  “If it doesn’t stop raining,” Lillie said, “half the county is gonna wash away.”

  “Sugar Ditch always floods,” Quinn said. “How close?”

  “Another day of rain and we’ll have to evacuate.”

  Quinn studied the strong pull of the river, the water the color of coffee and cream, rolling and tumbling under them. He used to fish the river a lot from the very same spot. He and Boom and sometimes Caddy. There used to be a bait store down the road, but that had burned down long ago. There was a dress shop there now.

  “I met up with the Marshals,” Quinn said.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Not well,” Quinn said. “They tell me that these guys Davis and Magee were good friends with Jamey Dixon at Parchman.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yep.”

  Under the brim of her ball cap, Lillie raised her eyebrows. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go get the son of a bitch.”

  “Hold up,” he said. “They don’t believe he was part of the armored car deal. They think that came before, and now they’ve reached out to him for help. He got them both on special detail at Parchman, helping out on some of his services. The Marshals said they were all good buddies.”

  “Half the county is about to wash away while we deal with this shitbag reunion. We better go and find Caddy.”

  Quinn nodded. “Marshals said they’ll call us if they find them. They were firm that they may, or may not, need some help.”

  “They will,” Lillie said. “Always do.”

  “What do you have in the trunk of your Cherokee?”

  “Bolt-action Remington M24.”

  “Nice to have a good sniper with us.”

  “You don’t have snipers in law enforcement, Sergeant,” Lillie said. “I’ve been over this. We conduct surgical shooting. In our world, snipers are the bad guys.”

  “OK,” Quinn said. “I’ll let those men know we have somebody good at surgery.”

  Lillie nodded. They watched the river for a while, Lillie saying she’d go ahead down south to check on the situation in Sugar Ditch. The Ditch being an all-black community where traditionally calling on the law or help from Jericho had been a joke. The whole place looked strung together from clapboard and tin, like something out of a WPA photograph, not well into the twenty-first century.

  “You think Caddy will tip off Dixon?” Lillie said.

  “Probably.”

  “But you’re going to reach out anyway.”

  Quinn nodded. They walked back together on the narrow walkway on the bridge to the sloping muddy banks where they’d parked. “Be sure and keep that Remington handy,” he said. “And your cell phone on.”

  Lillie nodded.

  “Never met a woman who loved guns so much,” Quinn said.

  “I don’t love them,” Lillie said. “Men like guns. I like to shoot and prove myself. I’d rather not turn that on someone.”

  “You know, if I explain to Caddy the situation, she’ll dig in,�
� Quinn said. “I’d just as soon get her away from Dixon for a couple days without her knowing why.”

  “Ordinarily I’d say that’s a horseshit plan,” Lillie said.

  “But with Caddy?”

  Lillie slowly nodded, unlocking her Jeep doors. “Right about perfect.”

  • • •

  Caddy drove. Jamey had left his truck at the Pig.

  “I won’t sugarcoat it,” Jamey said. “I used to be an absolute piece of shit. I don’t think I’ve ever lied about that to you. Have I?”

  Caddy shook her head. She knocked the windshield wipers on high.

  “I drank whiskey like water and tried every drug ever invented,” Jamey said. “I was completely absent in my own life. I had nothing to hold me. What do they say, a natural man? Like an ape or another animal? I had no center. No existence. If I hadn’t gone to prison, I’d be dead or on the street.”

  “I don’t care,” Caddy said, turning off Main Street and heading down Cotton Road, down toward the farm co-op. The wipers on fill tilt.

  “You know the Bundrens still believe you killed Adelaide? They’ve gone insane with it and want everyone to know you should be rotting in hell.”

  “You blame them?”

  “Guess not.”

  “Neither do I. Adelaide was with me during the worst of it,” Jamey said. “We were together in high school and out of high school. I worked at the ammunition factory, boxing. She worked when she could with her family. But she hated it. She didn’t like the funeral business. She wasn’t like her sister, who saw death as a natural act. I think it messed with her head, growing up with those dead bodies.”

  “I don’t care what they think.”

  Caddy cut up on Highway 9W as if they were headed to Uncle Hamp’s farm, still having a hard time thinking of it as Quinn’s place. The rain was coming down so hard now that she could barely see, running down to thirty and catching the light coming up from the Dixie Gas Station.

  “I know you don’t care,” Jamey said. “I appreciate that. But I got to tell you something, Caddy. I swear to God I don’t know what happened. There are whole pockets of time that go like that. At Parchman, I had plenty of time to go inward and think of things and try to make some sense of it all. But all that happened with Adelaide just kind of runs together. We fed each other, made each other sick. We did what felt good to us at the moment, but those things were all just a sickness. Just sex and getting high. I’m real sorry. I thought you wanted to hear.”

  “I knew Adelaide,” Caddy said. “She was a true mess.”

  “I guess we were in love,” Jamey said. “But it was the kind of love that didn’t fill you up. It was the kind of love that drove you running and screaming nekkid with your hair on fire. You know?”

  “I’ve had that.”

  “That’s not love.”

  “You were going to tell me about Johnny Stagg,” Caddy said. They were now passing Mr. Varner’s store and then down past the gun range that Mr. Varner’s son had used to run guns last year. Quinn nearly got himself killed down that road.

  “Mr. Stagg and I worked out a deal,” Jamey said.

  “When?”

  “I wrote him letters at Parchman,” Jamey said. “This was when I was taking correspondence classes with the seminary in New Orleans. I knew I was ready to get out. And I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen. So I just decided to reach out to Mr. Stagg.”

  “You really call him Mr. Stagg?”

  “What do you call him?”

  “A rotten piece of shit.”

  “Mr. Stagg done me a solid,” Jamey said. “He came to see me at Parchman with this sheriff’s deputy. Hell, I can’t remember his name.”

  “Leonard,” Caddy said. “He’s the police chief now.”

  “Yep,” Jamey said. “Leonard. After I wrote him, he came out to Parchman to see me, and we talked about working out a deal. I told him where to find the money those two convicts stole.”

  Caddy nodded. The rain was coming down so damn hard that it shook the car, pounding the roof and hood. She slowed down to twenty, coming up close to Quinn’s farm, but then taking a U-turn at the three-way and heading back down south to Jericho. She wasn’t sure whether to talk to Quinn or not. And this goddamn day had started out so perfect.

  “I need a cigarette,” Caddy said. “I need a fucking cigarette.”

  “’Cause I worked with Stagg?”

  “’Cause I don’t know who the fuck you are.”

  “What would you do?” Jamey said. “I done my time for something I didn’t do.”

  “You said you didn’t know whether you did it or not. That doesn’t make you an innocent man.”

  “I’m not that man,” Jamey said. “I don’t deny my life was worthless. But I got out for a reason. There is a purpose to my life. God would not have opened the doors had there not been something for me to do.”

  “God?” Caddy said. “God? Or Johnny Stagg. Sounds to me like you sold out your buddies in exchange for your freedom.”

  “OK.”

  “You sold out your friends?”

  “I have purpose.”

  Caddy was crying and used the back of her hand to clear her eyes. They were back in Jericho, rounding the Square and that half-boarded-up, half-wonderful, half-awful town that she could never escape. Every day, round and round, over and over, there was the fucking Square.

  “Johnny Stagg?” she said. “He bought your freedom.”

  “Mr. Stagg has a lot of friends down in Jackson.”

  “Johnny Stagg is a cancer on this town and this entire county,” she said. “You made a deal with the devil.”

  “You’re talking to a man who lived in sin and no purpose,” Jamey said. “I have a chance to be in society again and tell people the good news of Christ. You think that’s a lie? You think I’m just a two-bit con man, trying to hustle and get by? Because if that were the case, Caddy, I’d just as soon find another line of work than saving souls.”

  Caddy turned off the Square, back down Cotton Road, and the new stores to Jericho. Hollywood Video and the Dollar Store and Subway. Shit to buy. Shit to live. She reached into her purse and reached for a pack of cigarettes she’d taken from her mother and punched up the lighter on her car.

  “You better be the real deal, Jamey Dixon,” she said. “’Cause if you are lying to me? Lying to everyone? I may be the biggest goddamn fool that ever walked this earth.”

  Jamey placed a hand on Caddy’s knee. She drove east toward Highway 45. The rain kept on pounding the hood of their car as if there would be no end. The windows were fogged, light was dim, tough to see.

  “I love you,” Jamey said.

  “Sure.”

  “I want you to be my wife.”

  Caddy searched the blacktop for that middle white line. She kept on driving. No direction. Nowhere to go.

  “About time you got here,” Jean Colson said.

  “Been a little busy, Mom,” Quinn said.

  “Anything good?”

  Quinn slid in next to Jason in a booth toward the back of the El Dorado. He wrapped his arm around Jason and pulled him close for a hug. “Nope,” Quinn said. “Where’s Caddy?”

  “Running late,” Jean said. “She told us to go ahead and eat. You know we waited on you thirty minutes?”

  The table was littered with a half-empty basket of chips and a couple platters of picked-over Mexican food. Jean already had another damn cigarette out, Quinn hating it when she smoked around Jason. But if he brought up cigarettes, she’d bring up cigars. And when he tried to explain they weren’t as hazardous as bullets, the conversation was already derailed.

  “So, what was going on?” Jean asked.

  He winked at her. “How about we talk about it later.”

  “You have to shoot someone?” Jason said.

  “Nope.”

  “I like it when you shoot those bad guys,” Jason said. “Them bastards.”

  Jean’s face colored a bit and she stubbed out
her cigarette in what was left of her chimichanga. She reached for Jason’s hand and politely excused them as they both walked outside to talk.

  Quinn went ahead and ordered a couple steak tacos and a Coke, wanting that beer that would never be served in Jericho on a Sunday. From where he sat, he could see Jean getting down on one knee, a bit awkward with her added weight, speaking to Jason in those careful, plaintive tones about making the right decisions. As soon as he turned twelve, Quinn would have to give him a talk about how he’d been right. That some bastards really did need shooting down.

  He ate some chips and checked his phone. He’d eat quick and then head back out to find Caddy. Even if she didn’t respond to him, Jean would know where to find her. Quinn stood and hung his damp coat on a hook, setting his ball cap on top.

  When he sat back down, Anna Lee and Luke Stevens walked through the front door and said hello to Javier, who took them to a table not five feet from Quinn. She was holding their daughter, all of them dressed for the First Baptist Church, which was a bit more formal than Calvary Methodist or The River. Quinn stood and spoke to them. Anna Lee met his eye but turned away, Luke gripped his hand and patted him on the back. He told Quinn how good it was to see him and wondered what was new in Tibbehah.

  “You missed a triple homicide this morning,” Quinn said. “Could’ve used you.”

  “Can’t say I miss coroner work,” Luke said, still smiling, hand still on Quinn’s back. “How’s Ophelia working out for y’all?”

  “Just fine,” Quinn said.

  Luke loosened his tie and grinned some more. “Not bad lookin’, either.”

  Anna Lee glanced up from where she’d settled the baby into a high chair, eyes flashing on Quinn’s and then back on Luke’s. Everything kind of paused there for a moment, and Luke’s hand left Quinn’s shoulder and he walked back to his table. He said he hoped he and Quinn might get to do some turkey hunting next weekend.

  “Or we can just sit around and drink some whiskey,” Luke said.