The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “I really don’t give a good goddamn, Wash Jones,” she said. “But let’s look to your daughter. I’ll find her, I’ll let you know.”

  “She’s a good girl,” he said. “Or she was. Until she became a whore.”

  Lillie stared at the shirtless fat man, too damn lazy to change out of pajamas at one in the afternoon. She shook her head over the shame of it.

  “She ain’t even eighteen,” he said. “Wild as a March hare.”

  “Nice.”

  “Sex,” he said. “She’s popping pills and laying with all kind of men.”

  “You think she’s working out back of the Rebel?”

  “She’s got a little white Kia,” he said.

  “OK.”

  “She left two nights back,” he said. “She ain’t got no money. She told me to go and fuck myself and then destroyed some of my personal property. Things she ain’t got no business messing with.”

  “What were they?”

  “Me and her got into it,” he said. “You hear me? We done got into it because of her shaking those titties.”

  “At Vienna’s.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What used to be the Booby Trap.”

  “OK,” he said. “Yeah. All right then. Girl don’t got no sense.”

  “Come again?”

  “I said, girl got no sense,” Wash said. “Shit. She’s gonna go and get herself kilt. Why don’t you just go do your gosh-dang job and bring her ass back home.”

  “Hard to imagine why she ever left,” Lillie said.

  • • •

  What’d Coach want?” Ordeen said.

  “Oh, man,” Nito said. “Just talking shit. You know, ‘Yes, sir / No, sir’ shit. Wants me to do something for him.”

  Ordeen and Nito were back in the electric-blue Nova, circling the Jericho town Square, waving to a couple cute girls in halter tops sitting under an old oak tree, gunning the motor at a couple city boys who needed to show respect. Nito circled three times and then hit Main Street north, heading on back to ole Blackjack.

  “What’s he want you to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Nito said. “Just some dumb shit. He’s been getting some trouble from some folks. He thinks I might be able to straighten it out. He knew all about what we been up to around Tibbehah. He also said he doesn’t want me hanging with you. Ain’t that something?”

  “What’d you tell Coach?”

  “I told Coach that’s your decision, not mine,” Nito said. “I told him I’d help him with his troubles, for not fucking me on that gun charge. He was about to call up the law and make sure they knew that pistol was mine. He said he’d make sure he got you a lawyer and pinned all that on my ass.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know that,” Nito said. “But ole Coach thinks you still his boy. He think he blow that whistle and you come running like a dog. Trained, obedient, come to him with you tongue hanging out. Ready to lick that ass.”

  “Fuck you, man,” Ordeen said.

  “Ha, ha,” Nito said. “Damn. Maybe I come out on Saturday and watch you lay down them white lines. I’ll sit up in the stands and cheer you on. I’ll be smoking a blunt and eating a big-ass Super Sonic and some tots. Crack open some Aristocrat vodka and pour it into cherry limeade.”

  “Coach Mills is all right,” Ordeen said. “Don’t make no trouble. You make trouble for him and he can’t help me. He done a lot for kids who don’t have nobody. Including your sorry ass.”

  “Sorry, man,” Nito said, punching the gas on the old blue Nova, crooked back highway flying by as they left city limits. “You right. Coach is a damn winner.” He fired up the rest of a blunt and let down the window. Nothing but warm breezes and the last of summer days, an endless white line of road.

  “We cool?” Ordeen said.

  “We cool.”

  • • •

  Milly sat in the toilet stall and counted out the final tips from a half-dozen lap dances. She had close to sixteen hundred, give or take a few bucks. Damn. This would do it. Fill up the Kia, get far from this town, and get a clean start. She’d leave everything she had with the police—the old phone, those notes—and let them figure it all out. She couldn’t live like this, with no one wanting to listen and no one wanting to help. Out of respect for Brandon, she’d try one more time.

  “Whew,” Milly said, packing the money tight as hell into the purse. She left out a hundred to make sure it looked like she was giving her tip-out. Most in small bills. If it pissed anyone off, what the hell were they gonna do? She was done with this fucking town.

  Milly opened the stall door and walked back to her locker. The old white stripper and Damika were changing into their street clothes. They looked at each other and then over at Milly. But neither of them opened their mouths. Both of them staring like they knew what Milly was about to do.

  “You did real good,” Damika said. “Damn, you shoulda seen that girl work that pole. Girl’s got talent.”

  “I saw it,” the woman said. “Where’d you learn all that? You said you’d never danced before.”

  “Gymnastics,” Milly said. “I did some cheerleading in high school.”

  “No shit,” Damika said, popping some chewing gum. “Huh.”

  “Well, good night.”

  “Girl?” the white woman said.

  Milly turned at the changing room door and looked back.

  “Don’t you forget to tip out,” the old stripper said, eyeing her.

  Milly nodded, clutching that little pink purse even tighter than ever, and headed through the big barn of a building and to the front door and that last light outside. As she passed the main stage and the long old-fashioned bar, she looked up to see the glowing orange tip of Miss Fannie’s little cigar in a big cloud of smoke.

  It burned bright and then went dark. Milly rushed outside.

  • • •

  Did you see that?” Fannie said, arms resting on the high railing.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mingo said. He had his slick black hair in a ponytail, doing the whole Geronimo thing.

  “One of ’em starts this shit and it never ends.”

  “You want me to get Lyle?”

  “You know where he is?” Fannie said.

  “Sleeping it off at the Golden Cherry,” Mingo said. “I saw him fixing that old Shovelhead this morning.”

  “Follow that little bitch and see what she’s driving,” Fannie said. “Then go get Lyle and a couple boys to track her down and bring me my goddamn money back. Did you see all that shit she was doing on the pole?”

  “That little girl got some talent.”

  “Too bad this is her last damn night,” Fannie said. “Go on and bring her ass back here.”

  11

  Good night for a football game,” Lillie said. “Want some popcorn?”

  Quinn took a handful as he sat right next to Lillie. Lillie would stand up every so often and greet someone in the stands. She’d gained a much easier way with people since he’d been gone, knowing she’d have to lose a little roughness if she wanted to stay sheriff. A few people wanted to shake Quinn’s hands, while others looked away. Those had been the ones who’d voted him out of office, believing all the lies being spread by Johnny T. Stagg.

  “You remember Wash Jones?” Lillie said.

  “Sure,” Quinn said. “He used to be the right-hand man of Brother Davis, emptying septic tanks, before Davis got hung on the cross by our old friend Gowrie.”

  “You know, he about killed his first wife,” Lillie said. “I believe Hamp made some adjustments to the original reports.”

  “Sounds like something he’d do,” Quinn said. “Since Brother Davis was in tight with Stagg.”

  “While you were gone and I’d just com
e back from Memphis, we caught Wash cooking a little meth,” Lillie said. “Wasn’t much. But he should’ve gone to jail.”

  “And, instead, my uncle made some adjustments.”

  Lillie nodded. “Yep.”

  The marching band took the field for the National Anthem. Quinn and Lillie stood up together, both placing a ball cap over the heart. After the final off-note of the kid playing trumpet, the crowd cheered, the band left the field, and the boys gathered around Coach Mills for the final pep talk.

  “What exactly is ole Bud Mills saying?”

  “‘Remember your assignments,’” Quinn said. “‘Take it to them hard and fast.’ ‘Everything full-speed.’ ‘No half-assed.’ All that kind of stuff.”

  “Same as with you and Boom.”

  “Football hasn’t changed,” Quinn said. “Or Coach Mills.”

  “I never liked him,” Lillie said, offering the popcorn bag to Quinn. “He hates women.”

  “C’mon, Lil,” Quinn said. “The man’s been married forty years.”

  “Probably hates her, too,” Lillie said. “Jesus Christ, would you please look behind you? Son of a bitch. I do think Kenny would fuck up his own funeral.”

  Quinn looked over the edge of the bleachers to see traffic backed up a quarter mile from the grassy area by the stadium used as the parking lot. The bleachers were half-filled, most of Jericho still sitting in traffic.

  “You put Kenny on traffic detail?”

  “It’s Friday night,” Lillie said. “Not a lot of folks volunteering for the job.”

  “Kenny’s a good man,” he said. “But, damn, he does get flustered.”

  “I got Reggie Caruthers working down there, too,” she said. “But he’s new. He’s just following Kenny’s lead. I’m still running two deputies low. I have interviews all next week and I need to fill ’em fast.”

  Quinn followed Lillie down the bleacher steps and back down the ramp to the front gate and the ticket takers. She was saying a few choice words to Kenny over the police radio about him backing up traffic all the way to Memphis. Quinn heard her use the term clusterfuck about four times. He followed her out into the weedy parking lot, where she’d parked her Jeep. The lights bloomed bright in fading August light as the crowd cheered and yelled and clapped at the kickoff.

  “Son of a bitch,” Lillie said. “You know who’s gonna take the blame? Hard to live in a town where you only have one goddamn show. Someone messes up that show and shit will roll right back on me.”

  “Lillie?” Quinn said.

  She looked to him, hand resting on the open door, straining her ear to hear Kenny’s reply on radio about how everyone in the whole gosh-dang world started coming to the game at the same time and something about an accident back on 201.

  “I want to come back.”

  “Come back?”

  “To work,” Quinn said. “I don’t want to leave before the first of the year. I have some personal matters to clear up. Caddy and my dad could use some help getting settled and I need to start looking at some long-term work in Mississippi.”

  Lillie grinned and nodded. “The hours are lousy,” she said. “But the pay’s not worth shit.”

  “Don’t sweet-talk me.”

  “I’d be proud to have you back, Quinn,” Lillie said. “I need help. But as your friend, I don’t want to see you screwing up the rest of your life.”

  “I’d only want some part-time work,” Quinn said. “You can keep the personal advice to yourself.”

  “Don’t let her domesticate you, Quinn,” Lillie said. “A dog ain’t worth a shit once you take its balls.”

  Quinn just shook his head and walked away. He saw his mother up by the ticket takers with Little Jason. The band started to play, more cars and trucks drifting in with Kenny winding his arms like a clock and motioning toward the lot with a light stick. Headlights bumping up and down as they hit the uneven patch of ground.

  “Monday morning,” Lillie said, calling out to his back.

  Over his shoulder, Quinn raised an index finger and pointed forward.

  • • •

  Lyle was tough and loyal, but sure wasn’t much to look at. Fannie wasn’t fond of his smell, either, but with the motel door open, a cigarillo burning in the ashtray, she could endure it. He had on nut-hugging blue jeans and a black leather vest without a shirt. He’d walked in the door carrying a pair of sloppy biker boots, his feet wet from dipping them in the pool. A black beard hung down to mid-chest, held in a tight wad by a bunch of rubber bands.

  “She lives with her daddy and some fat woman up in Blackjack,” Lyle said. “I talked with one of the girls. She’s just a kid. I’d take it easy on her.”

  “It’s not your fucking money, Lyle,” Fannie said. “What if one of the Southern Cross boys rode on over here to the Golden Cherry and swiped all that weed you keep in your saddlebags.”

  “I’d beat the dog shit out of them.”

  Fannie gave a modest shrug, reached for the cigarillo, and took a puff.

  “How much’d she get?”

  “I think she’s cheated me out of a few thousand since she started working here,” Fannie said. “I promise you, that girl knows what she’s done. And sure as hell doesn’t plan on coming back here anytime soon. Or until her money runs out.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to find her ass and bring her to me,” Fannie said. “If she puts up a fight, make it hurt real good.”

  “I don’t like it,” Lyle said. “We don’t beat up little girls. This ain’t part of our deal.”

  “Bullshit,” Fannie said, standing up. “You think I’m keeping you sonsabitches around with free room and board on account of your celebrity endorsement?”

  “We’re bouncers,” Lyle said. “You know? And shit.”

  “And this is the ‘And shit’ part,” Fannie said. “Now, get your fucking boots on and y’all bring me that cheating little bitch.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Tonight.”

  Lyle stood up, grabbed hold of his pecker for a readjustment, and stared at Fannie. A bunch of his boys lounging about, drinking cheap beer and doing cannonballs off the diving board. “Can I ask you something?”

  Fannie just stared at him, seeing all the scars on his face, the ink down his arms and hands, across his neck. Man used his body like a damn Etch A Sketch.

  “What makes you so goddamn mean?” Lyle said, smiling.

  Fannie reached the little round table and smashed out the smoke. “I ain’t your momma, Lyle,” she said. “You remember that and we’ll be just fine.”

  • • •

  Where will you go?” Nikki said. “What will you do?”

  “I’ll call you when I’m safe,” Milly said. “Right now, it’s best you don’t know. Especially since you have Jon-Jon and have to take care of your whole damn family.”

  “Do you have money?”

  Milly nodded just as the Wildcats ran in their first touchdown of the second half, tying things up. The running back was Nito Reece’s little brother, a short and tough little shit who some thought might get a scholarship. The crowd screamed and yelled, hammering their feet on the old aluminum stands, shaking the whole damn thing like they were having an earthquake. A little boy ran in and kicked the extra point and the Tibbehah fans yelled and screamed even more. Up by a point. An old woman behind where Milly and Nikki sat wanted the Wildcats to kill them bastards from Pontotoc. Everyone shook their black-and-yellow pompoms, Milly lifting up an arm to join them, smiling a bit at Nikki.

  “Well, do you?”

  “I got enough,” Milly said.

  “I can give you some,” Nikki said. “I got about sixty dollars saved up for Christmas. I don’t need it until then. It’s no big deal or nothing.”

  “I appreciate that,” Milly said. “I don’t
need money. I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  Milly reached into her purse and handed her over an old beaten cell phone with a cracked screen and a plastic baggie filled with three spiral notebooks. “I want you to keep these for me until I get back,” she said. “Don’t try and mess with the phone. It’s not activated and it needs a charge.”

  “Where’s your phone?”

  “That was Brandon’s phone,” Milly said. “It’s important to me. Just tell me you’ll put it somewhere safe and wait until I get settled somewhere, OK?”

  “What are you worried about?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Come on, Milly,” she said. “What the hell’s going on? Is it something with your daddy? Your daddy isn’t a nice man.”

  “No,” Milly said. “He’s not.”

  “He almost killed you once.”

  “That was my own damn fault,” she said. “But that old man don’t scare me none.”

  Milly sat with Nikki all the way to the fourth quarter. When the clock ran down and the buzzer sounded, she took her friend’s hand and squeezed it. Milly winked at her, said she better be getting on, and joined the crowd snaking their way down to the concession stands. Milly caught a big lump in her throat, knowing she had no damn intention of ever coming back to this place.

  • • •

  Caddy heard the growling motorcycle engines from nearly a mile away. The guttural sound brought her walking from the barn and out into the warm summer night. She’d been playing Charlie Rich’s Greatest Hits on her phone while hosing out the public bathrooms that had become a downright disgrace. She looked a mess, in cutoffs and a man’s white undershirt and tall rubber boots. She had dirt and grease up under her nails and streaked across her arms. She’d spent the whole day trying to get an old push tiller working again, changing the oil and cleaning the carburetor, without luck. Her ancient Ford truck parked outside in the gravel lot.

  She walked to it, seeing a dozen or more headlights jostle up and down on a road that only led to The River.

  She watched the single lights as she reached into her cab and grabbed a bottle of water. She drank the water, still feeling hollowed and dehydrated from the day’s work, as the motorcycles rolled closer. Dumb bastards probably thought The River was some kind of bar, not a church. The sun had set, the sky growing a light purple and blue to the west, the riders coming into focus, dark figures kicking up a trail of dust behind them.