The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  “You sure talk straight for a woman.”

  “A woman should talk around the point?”

  “I sure loved your momma.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “And I like to believe in the good side of people, Lil,” he said. “It’s served me well in the last twenty years. People in this county look out for one another. Maybe a time when you might need to reach out to me for a favor.”

  “The gun was loaded,” Lillie said. “He never told my deputy until he took it off him.”

  “Weren’t you young once?” Mills said. “Running wild and free. Making boneheaded mistakes?”

  “Maybe,” Lillie said. “But I was too damn busy shooting in tournaments to be fooling around with stolen guns.”

  “He didn’t know it was stolen,” Mills said. “And you just might think about how people still love that boy around here. We wouldn’t have ever made the play-offs without him. I’d think on those things, Lillie.”

  “Because of the election.”

  “Because of the election, and because of the way people might view a woman running for office,” he said. “Has there ever been a woman sheriff in Mississippi?”

  “Mississippi is a state that needs a lot of firsts, Coach.”

  Coach Bud Mills stood, stretched, and tossed his Styrofoam cup loaded with brown spit in her trash. “Well,” he said. “Can’t blame me for trying to do some good around this town.”

  • • •

  How long?” Caddy Colson said.

  “Six weeks,” Quinn said. “Maybe eight. Depends on the next job. How many trainers they need.”

  “You like being a contractor?”

  “I’m not a contractor,” Quinn said. “I work for the U.S. government and NATO. It’s an organization put together by General Petraeus. Men come to train and return as part of the Afghan local police. Officially, they don’t have arrest powers. But they protect small villages where we’re pulling out and the national police can’t reach. We teach ’em how to shoot, look for IEDs, that kind of thing.”

  Quinn stood out in a barren field with his sister, after spending the last two hours running his uncle’s old International Harvester tractor over the dead corn stalks and a big patch where there’d been rows of tomatoes that had burned up in the heat. Caddy had cut her hair boy-short again, bright blonde, almost the color of straw. She had on a Merle Haggard T-shirt saying MAMA TRIED, blue jean shorts, and muddy work boots. The MAMA TRIED would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been so damn true.

  “You feel like you’re doing some good?”

  “Contrary to some folks who never left Mississippi, all Muslims aren’t terrorists,” Quinn said. “We help locals look out for their own. There are so many different dialects over there that some Afghanis can’t even talk to each other.”

  “Kind of like sending someone down to Tibbehah from New York.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Shit, I can’t understand some of the people in my own backyard,” she said. “It ain’t the Mexicans. It’s folks who’ve been here their whole life who have English as a second language.”

  Quinn smiled.

  “Thanks for tilling up the garden,” she said. “Time to plant the fall greens. What do you think? Turnips or collards?”

  “I say live on the edge and plant both.”

  Caddy handed him a bottle of water and a clean towel to wipe his face. He pulled off his ball cap, plain green with an American flag patch, and wiped his wet brow. Since he’d been gone, Caddy had a new wooden barn built where the old one had burned. She’d added a smaller metal building out back to collect secondhand clothes and supplies and frozen and fresh food for the needy. The River—church and community outreach—started a few years back by a former convict-turned-preacher named Jamey Dixon. Caddy had run the show ever since he’d been killed, except for last year’s trip to rehab.

  “Does it ever get you that you have to go to the other side of the planet to help people out?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We need roads, food, medical aid right here,” Caddy said.

  “I tried.”

  “And it bit you in the ass.”

  “People over there are more grateful,” Quinn said. “Their word means everything.”

  “I thought that was true of a Southern man.”

  “When he’s not speaking out of the side of his mouth.”

  Caddy laughed and Quinn hopped back on the tractor, circling the garden and riding up to the trailer hooked up to his Army-green F-250. The truck still bore the mark of the sheriff’s star where he’d peeled off the decal with a straight razor. It was a big truck, jacked up tall, with KC lights, and heavy winch under the grille. His buddy Boom nicknamed it the Big Green Machine.

  Caddy’s son, Jason, stood up on the truck’s tailgate watching his uncle chain the old tractor to the platform. Now eight, he waited, in a pair of brown overalls, carrying a .22 rifle. He’d been target-practicing with the .22 on some Coca-Cola cans while Quinn worked, waiting for him to trade out the tractor for a johnboat and take him out on Choctaw Lake to hunt for bass and brim.

  “Ready?” Little Jason asked.

  “Gotta head back to the farm first.”

  “Can Hondo come with us?”

  “Yes, sir,” Quinn said. “He’d be disappointed if we didn’t. We also need to stop by Varner’s for some crickets.”

  “Can we cook what we catch?”

  “You bet.”

  “I mean, tonight,” Jason said. “You know, tonight is WWE Raw. John Cena is going back for the belt. You know he lost it to that son of a bitch Seth Rollins?”

  Quinn looked over to his sister. Caddy shrugged and leaned against his truck. She spent most days out here at The River when not working part-time as a receptionist for a dentist in Tupelo. Caddy was sunburned, towheaded, and determined as he’d ever seen her to make her mission work. It had been a long road and some rehab, but his sister was finally back.

  “He’s right,” Caddy said. “That Seth Rollins is a son of a bitch. I’m a Cena fan, too. Although he’s not my all-time favorite.”

  “The Undertaker,” Quinn said. “I remember. You always liked that guy.”

  “You know he’s still wrestling?” Caddy said. “Jason has his action figure. Cena, too. But The Undertaker is taller. And meaner. He’s all-time. Like The Rock.”

  “How about you come fishing with us?” Quinn said.

  “I promised to help Momma shell peas tonight,” Caddy said. “There’s an Elvis Double Feature on TCM. Paradise, Hawaiian Style and Blue Hawaii. She’s cooking a ham with pineapple, making poi. Wanted to know if you want come over.”

  “I’d rather fry up some fish and watch wrestling with Jason, if it’s all the same.”

  “She didn’t mean it.”

  Quinn nodded. He stared at Caddy, smiling, knowing there was more to come.

  “You know how she gets after a few glasses from the wine box,” Caddy said. “I don’t think she gives a damn about you and Anna Lee. She’s just upset about what she heard Daddy is doing out on the farm.”

  Quinn continued to watch. He took a long, deep breath.

  “Dude ranch?”

  “That’s Jason Colson talking,” Quinn said. “Not me.”

  “Can’t blame Momma. It’s her family’s land and it’s the house where she grew up,” Caddy said. “How’d you feel if the man who left you came back to town and wanted to squat on your family memories?”

  Quinn wiped his face and neck again with the towel. An old car wound down the dirt road toward The River and stopped outside the wooden barn used as a church. On Sundays, they’d have guest preachers and local bluegrass music. A hand-painted sign on a piece of charred wood from the old place read LEAVE YOUR PAST AT THE DOOR.

  “What the hell is poi anywa
y?” Quinn said.

  “A taro root cooked and beat to shit,” Caddy said. “Kind of like a tropical mashed potato.”

  The car door opened and a short black woman and two children crawled out. While Caddy waited, the woman fired up a cigarette and leaned against the car. The woman looked tired and beat, worn-out physically and mentally. She reminded him of faces he’d seen in those northern Afghan villages when their world had been turned upside down.

  “You know her?”

  “Never met her, but I know her.” Caddy smiled. “It’s not if you get knocked on your ass. It’s if you get back up.”

  As Quinn and Jason drove off, the tractor on the trailer rocking back and forth, he watched Caddy from his rearview. She wrapped an arm around the woman and led her and the children toward the metal shed for whatever it was they needed.

  5

  I’m taking his ass out for what he done,” Nito said.

  “What he done?” Ordeen said.

  “Man called the cops,” Nito said. “Shit. You know I’m right.”

  “Hell no, I don’t know you right. All I know is, I spent the goddamn night in jail and don’t want to go back.”

  “We gotta get straight on this shit,” Nito said. “Blackjack is our world. We the North Side Boys. We own this place.”

  “’Cause no one else want it,” Ordeen said.

  “Got damn.”

  “Come on, man. Sammi’s our friend. He wouldn’t call the cops. He fuck us, he fuck himself. You know how much money he making ’cause of us? We do business and he do business. Why else folks come to Blackjack ’cept to die?”

  Nito Reece sat behind the wheel of a ’72 Chevy Nova, electric blue, with chrome rims and an airbrushed license tag reading HERE KITTY KITTY. Ordeen Davis leaned back in the passenger seat, bare feet up on the dash, with the stereo pumping out Rick Ross. Down on Elvis Presley Boulevard. Got the dogfood, the soft, nigga, and the hard / You can tell them crackers they can go and get the dogs. They passed a big fat blunt between them. Ordeen had rolled it just right.

  “Well, someone knew we had that gun, pills, weed, and shit,” Nito said. “Police got us not ten minutes after leaving the Gas & Go. What the hell’s that about? Come on. Use your fucking head, Ordeen.”

  “You say he snitchin’?”

  “Now you thinking, boy,” Nito said. “Got damn. I think football done scrambled your brains.”

  “OK. OK.”

  “OK?” Nito said. “OK? OK what?”

  They sat parked at a crazy angle about twenty yards from the front of the Gas & Go. Windows all smoked-up, whole body of that Chevy shaking like hell. “We doin’ it?” Ordeen said. “Then let’s do this shit.”

  “Gotta leave the motor running. Don’t want to wake up Little Ray. You seen him in the game last night? Ooh, shit. That boy need his rest. He goin’ D-1.”

  “Boy can hit, but that motherfucker better grow a foot.”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  “Look at your brother,” Ordeen said. “Big ears. Big feet. Small body. Look like a damn gremlin.”

  Ordeen crawled out of the Nova, radio still cranked up high, as Nito followed, cupping his hand to the hot wind to light a cigarette. The fluorescent lights over the pump shone on Nito’s lean body and hard swagger. He had short hair, light gray eyes, and a mouthful of gold teeth. Both of them wore dark jeans, loose at the waist, big ole Chicago White Sox jerseys, and thick gold chains that weren’t real gold. Ordeen wore his hair in long braids with a gray ball cap worn sideways.

  The Gas & Go windows were filled with ads for cold beer, cigarettes, fried chicken, and pizza. When he pushed open the door, a little bell rang and Sammi looked up from the counter, where he’d been messing with his phone. The damn place smelled like old grease and cigarette smoke. “Surprise, motherfucker,” Nito said. “Can’t keep them North Side Boys down.”

  Sammi was a little older than them, his daddy owning the store, and two more over in Pontotoc. He was Iraqi, Pakistani, Muslim, or some shit, but tried like hell to fit in with the niggas in Tibbehah. He’d shaved his black beard in razor-thin strips along his jaw and over his lips. He wore a ball cap just like Ordeen’s and a blue T-shirt about four sizes too big that said GRIT AND GRIND. His black hair was long and curly, shining with some Mideast oils or Jheri Curl.

  Nito walked up to the cash register and leaned his forearms against the counter. Sammi looked back down at the phone, like he was trying to figure out something, and paid them no damn mind.

  “You talkin’ to the cops again,” Nito said. “Ain’t you? Tellin’ them to come on back to Blackjack and take ole Ordeen and Nito’s black asses to jail.”

  Sammi lifted his big brown eyes from the phone and just stared directly at Nito like he was bored as hell. Oh, hell no.

  “You messin’ with us,” Nito said. “You seen us in here with that gun we sportin’. You knew we were rolling last night. Don’t know who else could have done it.”

  “You want something?” Sammi said. “Fried chicken’s old. I’ll give it to you for half price.”

  “Don’t want no old-ass chicken,” Nito said. “I want you to be straight. You call the police and tell her we got a pistol, rolling up into Jericho, smoking a blunt.”

  Sammi put down the phone and shook his head. “You’re crazy, Nito.”

  Ordeen shook his head. He took a deep breath and tried to look away, look at all that damn snack food. He could stand the talk. But, man, he sure hated to see the blood.

  Nito kind of smiled and shook his head, offering his hand to Sammi. Sammi glanced up to Ordeen, who shrugged and reached out to meet Nito’s hand. The hand shot back and bitch-slapped that Middle Eastern boy right across his face. “Don’t you fuck me.”

  “I’m not fucking you.”

  “I say you called the sheriff. You tell me why.”

  “I didn’t call anyone.”

  “Come on, man,” Nito said. He slapped Sammi again, this time harder, and the crack of it filled the Gas & Go. Ordeen pretended to look at some chips, seeing that the BBQ Lay’s now had half the fat of other chips. He reached for some pork cracklins and walked back to the cooler for a six-pack of Keystone.

  “If you don’t leave, I will call the cops.”

  “Last thing you do.”

  “Hit me again.”

  Nito slapped Sammi again. Ordeen reached for some hot sauce to go with the cracklins. His momma wasn’t cooking tonight, staying at church until late. Either it was them cracklins or a cheeseburger at the Sonic. Tonight he’d be sleeping on the couch, watching that ESPN, trying not to hear what was going on in the back room with his sister and the men she brought home from Club Disco. Sunday she’d be hungover as hell and praising Jesus for four hours. Hell of a thing being kids of a preacher.

  “Come on, man,” Ordeen said. “Man says he didn’t do it. Y’all keep cool. I don’t want no more trouble.”

  Sammi wiped the blood off his lip. His head shook a little bit, black eyes darting around the store, staring out to see if anyone was coming to help. He looked to the glass wall and saw a truck pull up, an old black man, Mr. Bobo, get out, lifting a pint bottle to his mouth and wiping it with the back of his hands. Nito didn’t care one damn bit and pulled that pistol out from his deep jean pocket, pointing it right in Sammi’s face.

  “Do it again, nigga.”

  “I didn’t do nothing,” Sammi said.

  “Shoot you right in the fucking snout.”

  Sammi just stared at him with his big black eyes. Didn’t raise his hands up or nothing. He stayed cool as shit and reached down for a little brown cigar burning in a metal tray and lifted it to his lips. “We done, man?”

  “You call the cops and I tell the cops about all that Chinese shit you selling in the back room,” Nito Reece said. “Don’t you be telling me that it fell off some damn truck.”

&n
bsp; Mr. Bobo saw Nito with Sammi and turned back the way he’d come, headlights clicking on, backing out that old brown truck. Man didn’t get to be that old from being dumb.

  “I thought you were my friend,” Sammi said.

  “Shit,” Nito said, flipping the gun around butt first. “Who the hell tole you that?” As he swung for Sammi, Ordeen turned his head the other way, blood flecking on the hot glass protecting all that chicken and pizza.

  • • •

  They’re real,” said the old stripper. “You can touch them if you want.”

  “That’s OK,” Milly said. She had a book in her lap, The Christmas Promise, with an inscribed note from the author: Dream Big. Share your stories with the world!

  “You can tell real titties from the droop,” the woman said. “All these fake titties flying around this place are easy to spot. No jiggle. Hard as damn bricks. I had mine since I was fifteen. You don’t have to take my advice. But don’t ever get implants. You’ll cut your tips in half. Men like to look at ’em but don’t care for the touch.”

  Milly wished the woman would be quiet. It had already been a long as hell day, trucking up to Tupelo to meet that famous author and then the author not having time to hear her story. All the woman wanted was Milly’s last thirty dollars, her gas money, for a “Christian Romance Just in Time for Christmas!” How could Milly have been so dumb, bringing those little journals, trying to pass along her true stories.

  Milly and the old stripper sat together on a long bench in the locker room at Vienna’s Place. After Milly had signed the paperwork, Miss Fannie showed her to a locker and gave her the combination, saying it was up to her to keep up with her own shit. She said some of these bitches would steal her ass blind. The older woman pulled up a garter high on her leg and snapped it against her thigh.

  “This is my first night,” Milly said.

  “I could tell,” the woman said. “Make sure you take a shot of Jaeger before you hit the stage. Your legs will be shaking like a newborn fawn. But it gets better each time. By the end of the night, you won’t even care if you’re nekkid. It’s a job and that’s your uniform. Hell, you’re young. These boys are going to love you. Men know that new-car smell.”