The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  “Nothing’s going to happen to this land,” Quinn said. “And I don’t think I’m having kids anytime soon.”

  “Y’all talking?”

  Quinn didn’t answer.

  “I started late,” Jason said. “Missed out on a lot of things.”

  “You missed out on a lot of things because you lived thousands of miles away.”

  “For a damn good reason.”

  Quinn just nodded, not sure if his dad had seen him or not, the older man intent on getting up the trail with that bad leg, cresting the hill over to the land that he wanted to discuss with Quinn. When the trail ended, so did the trees. And most living things. That rotten son of a bitch Johnny Stagg had strip-cleared one hundred acres of property that had once belonged to Quinn’s uncle. When Uncle Hamp had fallen behind on some gambling debt, Stagg had swooped in, taken over the land, cut down every single tree, and bulldozed what was left. Johnny Stagg was like that. Conservation and the environment were four-letter words to his kind. And the reason every morning was a little brighter now with Stagg in federal prison.

  Jason walked out on the ridge as Quinn lit his cigar. Hondo trotted up behind them, sniffing the smoke on the windless summer morning. His body a patchwork of grays and black. He had one brown eye and one blue.

  “I don’t want it,” Quinn said.

  “Not now,” Jason said. “Not now. But in five years, nature will have taken back over out here. All this scarred-over shit will be gone. Now is when we get the property, double your holdings, and we can make some money. What’s the use of having land if you don’t use it?”

  “To have some personal space?”

  Jason laughed like a man who wasn’t squatting on Quinn’s back half acre in an old broken-down trailer. His only assets seemed to be a collection of belt buckles and saddles given to him by Burt Reynolds and a rusted-out 1978 cherry-red Firebird that Jason claimed had been the star of the film Hooper.

  “This is something for both of us,” Jason said. “We can do this together. You got the land and I know horses. There’s nothing like this anymore. You know how many folks want their kids to learn how to ride? Down there, I thought we’d dig out a pond. It would be the center of all the cabins we’d build.”

  Quinn ashed his cigar and toed the burning end in the dirt.

  “Stagg will sell,” Jason said. “Look how quick he unloaded his damn truck stop and snatch palace.”

  “I know he had some serious pressure on him.” Quinn blew out a long bit of smoke. The cigar was too good to put out and risk getting stale on the porch. It had been a gift from his commander in AFG when he’d gone back to work as a civilian to train the locals.

  “Only one question.”

  Jason looked his son in the eye and smiled big.

  “Just where is all this money coming from?”

  “Don’t worry,” Jason said. “Don’t worry about nothing. Leave all that piddly shit up to me.”

  Quinn shook his head. In the distance, he heard the high whine of a small motor. He turned to see a shirtless man on an ATV cut through Stagg’s property and dip into his woods.

  “Who the hell’s that?”

  2

  Lillie drove for about six miles, deep into the northwest county, almost to the National Forest, until she found Deputy Reggie Caruthers stopped at the fork. She rolled down her window as Reggie walked up, letting her know that Jimmy Deets and a couple more folks with Wildlife & Fisheries were headed their way. Reggie was new, only six weeks with the sheriff’s office, and grinned as he relayed the news. Excitement at last.

  “Anybody seen his ugly ass?” Lillie said.

  “Not yet,” Reggie said. “But he’ll screw up. Norwood’s good at that.”

  “You know him?”

  “Had some trouble with him last week,” Reggie said. “He’s back on the meth. Wanted to know what the world was coming to. Me, a black man, harassing a God-fearing white man.”

  It was hot as it got in Tibbehah County, nearly a hundred, and sticky humid, with the thirteen-year cicadas out in full force, escaped from the ground to copulate and make a ton of racket in the trees. Lillie had to wait until the boiling-up of their chatter died down to speak again.

  “I don’t think Norwood fears anyone,” she said. “Or feels anything.”

  “If we don’t snatch his ass up, he’s going to kill someone. I don’t like the idea of a paranoid meth addict zipping around Tibbehah County with a loaded twelve-gauge.”

  “Miss Holder said Norwood was convinced a Mexican cartel was after him,” Lillie said. “Said they were going to kill a bunch of folks just as soon as they finished up their chorizo and eggs.”

  “Sure,” Caruthers said. “Can’t shoot no one on an empty stomach.”

  Lillie had known Reggie Caruthers since fifth grade. His mother had been Lillie’s teacher and she used to bring Reggie, then four, to class with her. He was twenty-nine now, but he still seemed like Little Reggie to her, with his dimples and bright smile. When he applied for the job, she had to reconcile that he was now a four-year Army vet and had done two tours in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division. About every other day, she had to stop from calling him Little Reggie and pinching his cheek.

  “You think he’s got a plan?” Reggie asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Just keep on running until he runs out of gas or turns that thing over?”

  “He’ll probably just pass out somewhere,” Lillie said. “Maybe the buzzards will start to circle. We can follow ’em to his bones.”

  “You know his daddy rents some land up in the hills,” Caruthers said. “He’s got a single-wide for a hunt club. Or a drinking club. Black people don’t go up there for a reason. Those hill folks are crazy as hell. They hangin’ out the Stars and Bars just to make sure we know.”

  “Can you show me?”

  Caruthers walked back to his cruiser and returned with a Tibbehah County map. He ran his finger over Highway 9W, running west of where they were now. He kept on moving his finger closer to the Fate community and the Natchez Trace.

  “Shit,” Lillie said. “He’d have to cut right across—”

  Her cell phone rang and she reached into the console for it, recognizing the number. Reggie tilted his head at her and flashed a big smile. “Quinn?” he said.

  “Yep.”

  Caruthers smiled. “Maybe we better change over from a chase to a rescue mission.”

  • • •

  Would’ve been nice of you to stop by the SO and say hey,” Lillie said. “Maybe bring me some trinkets from Kabul. Like a fucking scarf.”

  “I’ve been catching up on my sleep,” Quinn said. His father walking along with him back to the farmhouse. Ole Hondo trotting close by, tongue lolling from his mouth.

  “Sure,” Lillie said. “Yeah, I bet you’ve been catching up on a few things.”

  Quinn ignored her. Lillie never liked Anna Lee or thought much of her unresolved marriage to Luke Stevens. Anna Lee and Quinn not so much living in sin as occasionally delving into it. Lillie knew. His family knew. Hell, everyone knew, including Luke.

  “Listen,” Quinn said.

  “You got some crazy son of a bitch on a four-wheeler raising hell out on your property?”

  “Damn, you’re good, Lil.”

  “It’s D. J. Norwood.”

  “I thought we busted his ass two years ago,” Quinn said. “He sent me a homemade Christmas card from Parchman. Told me he found Christ at Unit 27.”

  “He’s served that time and gone back for more,” Lillie said. “And now he’s back to pick up where he left off.”

  “Remind me.”

  “Being this county’s A-1 fuckup,” Lillie said. “Shoplifting, drug dealing, breaking into houses and trailers when the mood strikes him.”

  “What’d he do?”

 
“Stole that ATV from Ruthie Holder’s shed.”

  “That all?”

  “And a loaded twelve-gauge Browning she won in a raffle at the Baptist church.”

  “Well,” Quinn said, turning back to his house. “Guess we better get ’em back.”

  “How about you just sit this one out until the law arrives?” she said. “He’s got no truck with you. He’s just flying high on eleven different herbs and spices.”

  “Glad to show him some hospitality.”

  “I really wish you’d rethink that plan.”

  “I won’t shoot him,” he said. “I’m too damn tired.”

  “Son of a bitch,” she said. “Quinn, would you fucking listen to me?”

  Quinn turned off the phone, walked down the gulley and up onto the Indian Mound and into his house. He reached for the crossbow he’d hung over the stone hearth as a decoration until deer season. He carried the bow, along with a quiver of arrows, moving outside toward the woods.

  His dad stood outside by his painted horse, named Hooper. Jason held a Winchester lever-action, like John Wayne preferred. “Like some company?”

  • • •

  Just why did Quinn come back?” Reggie Caruthers said, following Lillie down a winding deer trail. “Heard he was gone again for good.”

  “Probably to change his Jockey shorts and get laid.”

  “Long way to come home and get laid.”

  “Quinn’s got special motivation back here,” Lillie said. “It’s what always brings him back. He’s tough. But, in that department, the man can’t help himself. He’s got a woman who’ll destroy him someday.”

  “Anna Lee Stevens?”

  “Yep,” Lillie said. “Can’t anyone have a personal life around here?”

  “Nope,” Reggie said. “Speaking of friends, aren’t you worried Quinn might want to run against you for sheriff?”

  “He got treated pretty bad,” Lillie said. “Some real Will Kane shit. They believed all kinds of lies about both of us and voted that insurance man into office. He was a nice man. But—”

  “That didn’t work out.”

  “No, sir,” Lillie said. “Never saw what hit him.”

  They hadn’t heard the stolen ATV’s motor since setting foot in the woods. The cicadas were louder than ever, buzzing up to a boiling point and then calming down a bit. Lillie rested the rifle against her shoulder as she walked along the worn deer trail, dead leaves and fallen twigs at her feet. It grew cooler as they walked deep into Quinn’s land. Fresh springs bubbled up out of the ground and ran in zigzagging patterns down the hill. Moss grew along fattened oaks and the warm air smelled of cedar trees.

  It was almost pleasant.

  • • •

  D. J. Norwood was naked save for a pair of work boots, wet as a rat, on top of the ATV, rubbing down the twelve-gauge with an old T-shirt. He seemed to have gone swimming in Sarter Creek and then found a patch of bare earth to dry out in the sun. So intent on cleaning the gun and whistling to himself, he didn’t hear Quinn walk up a dozen meters from him. But as Quinn raised the crossbow, Jason called out, wanting to know if Quinn saw anything.

  Norwood was surprisingly fast with the shotgun, up onto his shoulder, teeth chattering and telling Quinn to back the fuck up. His eyes zipped and darted over the rolling land around him.

  “I think jail made you dumber than ever, Norwood.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Norwood said. “I don’t know you.”

  “Quinn Colson,” he said. “You’re trespassing. And polluting my creek.”

  “I can wash my ass where I please. And you ain’t Colson. Colson don’t have no beard.”

  “Damn, you are observant,” Quinn said. “Now, how about you lower that Browning you took off Miss Holder.”

  Quinn’s father stepped up into the clearing, Winchester pointed direct at Norwood’s skinny white body. Norwood’s hair had been shaved as short as the stubble on his face. He had small, mean black eyes and a caved-in, hairless chest. A tattoo of a dream catcher decorated his sternum, providing a perfect target. Below the tattoo was the word PEACE.

  “I didn’t steal nothing from Miss Holder,” he said. “She told me I could borrow this here gun. Shit.”

  “And the four-wheeler, too?”

  “Shoot, yeah,” he said. “She wanted me to kill a turkey for her.”

  “Turkey season’s not until spring,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah,” Jason Colson said, moving up shoulder to shoulder with Quinn. He spit on the ground. “But it looks like shitbird season started today.”

  “Y’all better put down those weapons,” Norwood said. “Hurt me and I’ll hire goddang Morgan & Morgan up in Memphis to sue your ass for every penny you got. Them folks don’t mess around. You hear me?”

  Norwood stood up fast off the ATV in anger, naked, limp, and moving sloppy in boots with loose laces. A leaf had stuck to the side of his head as he walked. Quinn rested his index finger light on the trigger and breathed slow and easy.

  “Boy,” Jason said. “You move again and I’ll shoot that little pecker from here to Hot Coffee.”

  “Why y’all putting a boot on the throat of a white man?” Norwood said. “I didn’t do nothin’. That old woman’s the one who’s gone crazy. She’s can’t remember jack shit. I cut her damn grass. She thinks of me like her own son.”

  “OK,” Quinn said. “Wait till the sheriff gets here and you can explain everything.”

  “Y’all called the sheriff?”

  Quinn just nodded, a close eye on Norwood’s every move.

  “God damn. Son of a bitch.”

  “Get off the four-wheeler, Norwood,” Quinn said. “And put down that shotgun.”

  “Hell with you.”

  Quinn didn’t answer.

  “Either pull that trigger, Robin Hood, or get the fuck outta the way.” Norwood held the shotgun in his right hand and mashed the starter with his left.

  Norwood raced forward on the ATV, kicking up rock and dirt, scooting away with a rebel yell. Naked as hell and firing off the shotgun into the air. Quinn got a quick glimpse of skinny white ass, bucking up and down, and the broad tattoo on the man’s back as he drove off. Hank Williams Junior grinning at him behind enormous mirrored sunglasses, cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “Family tradition,” Jason said.

  “His tats?” Quinn said, lowering the crossbow.

  “No,” Jason said. “His daddy and two uncles were true pieces of shit, too.”

  • • •

  You hear that?” Reggie Caruthers said.

  “Shotgun,” Lillie said.

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t seem worried.”

  “Quinn promised not to shoot.”

  “Y’all have that kind of trust?”

  Lillie didn’t answer as she walked. The woods filled with the high whine of a four-wheeler motor, growing closer as Lillie and Reggie followed the narrow path downhill. Lillie knew the trail, linking up to the dirt road to the south and Quinn’s pond farther up to the west. The path had been smooth and well worn from Hondo, but now also from Jason Colson’s three horses.

  “Norwood’s coming.”

  “How do you know?” Reggie said.

  “’Cause this is the only way out of the woods,” she said. “Quinn must’ve shaken him loose.”

  “Can we shoot him?”

  “I’d rather not,” Lillie said. Walking and searching, trying to find a little cover in the woods, seeing a tangle of wild privet and thinking it was a fine spot. “Too much paperwork. Unless the bastard asks for it.”

  “If it wasn’t Quinn shooting,” Reggie said.

  “You stand by that fallen tree,” Lillie said. “He comes up this path with that shotgun and you do what needs to be done.”

  “Where are yo
u going?”

  “Advanced police tactic,” she said, reaching down and finding a fallen oak limb. She lifted it up, not rotten, with plenty of heft. She knocked the bark off the limb and found a narrow spot to grip.

  “You’re going to knock his ass off that four-wheeler,” Reggie said, “aren’t you?”

  “He’ll cut up this hill and be looking straight at you.”

  Reggie nodded, unlatching his Glock and aiming it toward the buzzing sound. Lillie moved behind the privet with the heavy limb in both hands, chocked up high for good measure. As he hit the tree line from the open pasture, zipping up the hill, Lillie noticed D. J. Norwood was grinning and yelling, the twelve-gauge laying prone across the handlebars.

  “Here we go,” Lillie said.

  Reggie stepped out onto the path and yelled for him to stop. Norwood gave another rebel yell and gunned it as Lillie stepped free and swung hard.

  3

  You think he’s come to yet?” Anna Lee asked Quinn. Both of them in his farmhouse kitchen, grilling two venison steaks in peppers and onions in a black skillet. He added a little more salt and pepper, charring them in a stick of fresh butter.

  “He was awake when Reggie Caruthers hauled him off,” Quinn said. “He was making all kinds of threats to Lillie, saying that she’d broken his jaw. Calling her a crazy-ass dyke bitch.”

  “Did she break it?”

  “I sure hope so,” Quinn said.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  Quinn didn’t answer, turning the steak, checking it with a fork. Still a little too bloody for his taste.

  “Something a-matter?”

  “Thought you were going to bring Shelby with you?”

  “Shelby’s five and easily confused,” she said. “Besides, she’s with Luke this weekend.”

  “Does Luke know where you are?”

  “We’re separated,” Anna Lee said. “I don’t need to check in with him. We’ve been through all this crap before. Until things are done, I don’t want her thinking that she’s got two daddies.”

  “I’m not backing up,” Quinn said. He turned the steaks, getting a nice sear on both, the smell of burning meat, onions, and butter filling his kitchen. He reached for a cold Budweiser and took a sip.