The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  “I didn’t do nothin’,” Nito said. “I was ballin’ the bitch. But, hell. So what? Since when’s that illegal?”

  “Just don’t look good, son.”

  Nito leaned back in his driver’s seat, this car a lot plainer and less flashy than the blue one Coach always saw him drive. This one just a plain old high-polished white with standard wire wheels and bad tires.

  “I just got one of you boys out of trouble and don’t want to see you getting mixed up in this shit,” Coach said. “This ain’t something I can just make disappear like I do for my other boys.”

  “You and Ordeen sure getting tight,” Nito said, grinning with those silly-ass gold teeth, a big gold cross hanging on his neck encrusted with fake diamonds. “You done tole Ordeen that I was some kind of mental defect. Crazy as Kanye.”

  “Boy.” Coach stared at him, tilting his head. “What the fuck you talking about?”

  “Nothin’, man,” Nito said. “Shit.”

  Coach Mills felt a little tic under his eye, trying to keep it all together with all Nito’s too-familiar talk, calling him ‘man,’ back-talking, and not doing what he said to do. Maybe that’s why Nito never made it as a starter. Coach had been trying to get his mind straight all week, keep focused on the task at hand, the damn game this weekend, and not worry about distractions. It was just like Vince Lombardi said: “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” He just wished he could help Nito make the right moves. Coach had been mentoring the boy since he was nine years old.

  “You remember how I took care of you and your momma?” Coach said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You say, ‘Yes, Coach.’”

  “Yes, Coach.”

  “Y’all didn’t have two sticks to rub together,” Coach said. “Who bought you groceries? Got your momma out from working that life down at the Golden Cherry? Got you into that football camp at Ole Miss when you weren’t even ten?”

  “Coach Bud Mills.” Nito lolled his head on the headrest and looked right in his eye. “Jericho’s Citizen of the Fucking Year.”

  Coach snorted, folding his arms over his big belly, ketchup stains from lunch dripped all over the blue golf shirt. “What we discuss between us is personal,” he said. “Remember that. Make jokes, but what we say is between us.”

  Nito grinned. “Just like the old days.”

  “What the hell’s that mean?”

  “Don’t try and play me, Bud,” Nito said. “I’m not that cute little boy no more. I’m a grown-ass man.”

  The cicadas went wild again and Coach felt a coldness spread across his back and up his neck. He knew that feeling, his damn mind messing with him, working on that distraction like it was a piece of meat in his teeth, that fatigue that could make him start making mistakes, keep his mind off the game. The will to win was nothing, it was the will to prep that won the damn game. Distractions. Lazy-ass kids who didn’t have any appreciation or respect. They didn’t know what it’s like to be a man, the pressures and tension that can build up in you like a gosh-dang Hawaiian volcano.

  “You just keep yourself out of trouble, Nito,” Coach said. “Maybe go on up to Memphis for a while. Leave town till everything gets right. I only want the best for you, son.”

  Nito leaned forward, cranking the car, taking a few times before the engine turned over. “Ain’t no making this right, man.”

  “Just take me back to my car,” Coach said. “And don’t you ever ‘Hey, man’ me again. I’m Coach Mills, not some damn black you jive around with down in the Ditch.”

  “Yes, sir, Coach.”

  “Did anybody at all see you with that girl?” Coach said. “’Cause I don’t want to see your black ass end up in jail like Ordeen. Folks would try to make something of it, like they did with that Arab boy.”

  “Naw, man.” Nito reversed the Impala, hit the dirt road, and knocked it into drive, kicking up lots of dust. Shafts of light and darkness scattering across his deep-black face. “Only Milly knew we knock boots. Unless she bragged how good she got it.”

  “Better be damn sure,” Coach said. “Wild talk can kill a man faster than a bullet.”

  • • •

  Did you really have to drag him behind y’all’s bikes?” Fannie said.

  “You said you wanted a show,” Lyle said. “So, what the hell. You got a fucking show.”

  “I wanted a distraction,” Fannie said. “A little protest of scooters. I guess I can’t complain. It worked for a while. The damn vultures stayed camped out at the Gas & Go for a week and left us alone. But now they know where the girl worked. And some damn idiot at the sheriff’s office told the Commercial Appeal that I was absolutely a person of interest. I can’t get a helluva lot of horny truckers to walk past those live cameras to see some nice young snatch.”

  “What’s the world coming to, Fannie?”

  It was midday, hot as hell outside but cold and dark in Vienna’s. Two girls in bras and panties sat on the stage checking their cell phones. Fannie looked up from behind the bar and snapped her fingers. “Dance,” she said. “Get up there and shake your asses.”

  “Ain’t no one here,” said a white girl with purple hair. She popped her gum.

  “Do I look like I give a shit?” Fannie said, shaking her head. The music from the unseen DJ filling up the big, barnlike room. The girls dropped their phones and started to circle the poles as Fannie leaned forward into the bar and Lyle. “You know what happened to that Muslim boy? Sammi?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Don’t care. I still think he’s guilty as hell. How does it look that Sam the Sham was the last one to see that girl alive? You know, this country is filled with terrorist cells just waiting for the damn Ayatollah-Assahola or whoever to start jabbering on about Allah’s Will. Am I right?”

  “Just how far did you get in school, Lyle?”

  “Fuck you, Fannie,” Lyle said. “How about we just don’t talk about this mess and you pass me a cold beer? I’ve been riding all day and the inside of my mouth tastes like a dirty cat box.”

  Fannie reached into the long cooler and brought out a cold Budweiser, cracking the top and laying it down. Without him even asking, she poured him a shot of Jack on the side. “If I were you, I’d just get on my bike and keep on riding,” she said. “This shit show can’t last forever.”

  “That’s what I should do,” he said. “But how often do I ever do what I should?”

  “They don’t want you anyway,” Fannie said. “That bull dyke sheriff won’t sleep until they get me before a grand jury making me seem like a goddamn Jezebel Lizzie Borden. You know, she wants her entire case to lead back to me. You should’ve seen the way she looked at me when she busted down the door to Vienna’s. The top of her lip was slick with sweat, she was so damn excited, heated up with the idea.”

  “All I know is that I never touched that little girl,” Lyle said. “How about you?”

  Fannie reached for her gold butane lighter and fired up the three burners, turning that cigarillo around in the flame. “Does that really seem like my style?”

  “This coming from a woman who keeps a steel hammer in her purse,” Lyle said. “Christ Almighty.”

  • • •

  Every day Nikki woke up, she prayed that it had all been some kind of rotten dream, some kind of bad liquor or fever from eating the fish tacos at the El Dorado. But, instead, she’d walk the trailer half-asleep, fetching Jon-Jon his bottle and turning on the news to find Milly Jones just about everywhere. There wasn’t an hour went by that some news crew didn’t come knocking on her door, wanting to know the inside story of Milly, their friendship, and who might have set her best friend in the world on fire like that. Nikki would refuse to talk and try and close the door, but, damn, if they didn’t get tricky, push that microphone in her face, realizing they’d been taping her the whole time. They’d say they only wanted to know the real Mill
y, make their viewers understand the tragedy that had taken place in Mississippi. They even had a graphic for it. TRAGEDY IN MISSISSIPPI on Fox News, the morning news blonde downright giddy when a new piece of the puzzle slipped out: Bikers Rally Against Muslim Suspect, Strip Club Owner a Person of Interest, Dead Girl’s Father Speaks. It went on from that, day to day.

  Milly had it right. Run, run, run until your car didn’t have no more gas.

  She’s been so damn struck by the horror of what happened that it took her a week to go through the mess Milly had given her. Most of it didn’t make a damn bit of sense. A lot of her journal pages seemed like something out of a ninety-nine-cent romance novel, names changed to protect the guilty. She’d written the thing like a movie of the week: Young Cheerleader Hits the Skids, Young Brother Takes His Own Life, both growing up in a House Filled with Violence. But what got her was the continual mention of a man Milly just called The Devil. The Devil had entered Brandon’s life. The Devil forced his hand on that twelve-gauge that day, making sure that he left the earth with the shame he felt. But who was The Devil? What had scared Milly so damn much that she wouldn’t tell her best friend? Nikki had tried and tried to get that old phone, the one Milly said was Brandon’s, to work. But if she found out what Milly had known, what the hell would she do with it? Nikki didn’t care to be doused in gasoline and left to walk some lonely old road.

  So day to day, she’d stayed in the dark house with her baby. It was cool out from all that heat. At night, she’d go to the Piggly Wiggly and get some groceries. Sometimes, her momma would stop by, her face showing shame for the filth her daughter was living in, begging her to come on back home and take her sister’s room. She said these trailers weren’t meant for any decent white person to live in. Damn, she was sick of it.

  After she tucked Jon-Jon back in for his nap, she returned to the chair by the television. Wash Jones himself on CNN standing at the foot of the bridge close to where Milly had been set on fire. He wore one of those T-shirts she’d seen around town. A high school picture of Milly with photoshopped angel wings and the dates of her birth and death. “I just want to thank everyone for the kindness and love they shown our family. And I want to thank the sheriff’s office here for all the hard work they’ve done on Milly’s case. But it’s been two weeks now since my daughter got set aflame and I don’t believe we’re any closer to getting justice than the night she died. I beg that if anyone knows anything to please speak out. My daughter can’t rest until we get out the truth.”

  Nikki shut off the television, sitting in silence, the hum of the AC unit buzzing under a cracked window. Everything was so dark. The room a strewn mess of baby clothes and bags from Sonic, open cartons of Chinese from Panda Express. Nikki didn’t know the last time she’d taken a shower, wearing the same cheerleading camp tee from two days before.

  She had to get up.

  She had to do something.

  The slam of a car door startled her. She heard footsteps crunch on the gravel outside, and the loud knocking started her heart racing. The baby started to cry. God damn it. When the hell would these people leave her alone?

  She peered through the blinds into the white-hot light and saw the face of Nito Reece. Nito tilted his head, knocking harder, smiling with his big gold teeth. “What’s up, Nikki girl?” he asked. “You gonna let me in or what?”

  • • •

  You can stay here as long as you like,” Caddy said, letting Sammi into one of the minicabins behind the barn. “There are fresh towels in the bath. You can wash what you like in the machines right next door. We have a breakfast in the barn every morning. Help yourself to what you need in the commissary.”

  “What’s that?” Sammi said.

  “Big metal building where we keep the pantry.”

  The boy looked terrible. One of his eyes had swollen shut, there were bandages over both arms and deep cuts and scrapes across his neck and face. When he spoke, there was a slight wheezing sound from the two broken ribs. Those bastards had really worked him over.

  “This is a church?” Sammi said.

  “Of a kind.”

  “You people aren’t going to try and make me a Christian,” Sammi asked. “Are you? I go to mosque every week in Oxford.”

  “Nope,” Caddy said. “That’s not what we do. We’re not those people.”

  “What people?”

  “People who make judgments,” Caddy said. “The man who founded The River wanted it open to everyone. We had a Buddhist family from Vietnam stay here for the last six months. They arrived Buddhists and they left Buddhists. Although they really did seem to like some of the old-time gospel music. It was a real kick to hear them sing ‘Blessed Assurance’ with those accents.”

  Sammi followed her into the one-room cabin, a small bathroom in the rear. A bed, a dresser, an old school desk, and a bookshelf loaded down with Christian books and paperback novels. She’d also stocked the shelf with books from C. S. Lewis, Thich Nhat Hanh, Zane Grey, and Eudora Welty. Sammi laid a gym bag down and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “I’m not a villain,” he said. “A bad guy.”

  “I know.”

  “People have been calling me a terrorist my whole life,” Sammi said. “We moved to Mississippi when I was six. But I was born outside Detroit, in Dearborn. I sort of remember what it was like there. Lots of Muslims, families getting together without people looking at us funny. I was happy. Everything seemed a lot brighter up there. More trees. More love. I guess coming down here after nine/eleven wasn’t the best idea. My father had a brother who worked down in Gulfport. He set him up with a few stores, and here I am.”

  “Don’t judge this town on those bikers,” Caddy said. “They’re not even from here.”

  “It’s not the bikers,” Sammi said. “Even before all this, people looked at me funny. They laughed at me in school, calling me Jihad Johnny and all that shit. They once evacuated the high school after I got into a fight with another kid. The kid told the principal I planned to blow up the lunchroom.”

  “What’d your parents say?”

  “You know my father?”

  “I’ve met him,” Caddy said.

  “Well, it’s always the same thing,” Sammi said, trying to push himself off the bed but getting met with some pain. He gritted his teeth. “He always said we were lucky to be here. Anytime there was something bad in Syria on the news, he’d have us watch it. He’d talk about how we lived in a better place and to ignore the bad stuff. He told us to never talk religion or politics with y’all. He said work hard in school, do your best to become a doctor, engineer, or something. But look at me. I barely got a degree. I’ll be selling live bait and Moon Pies until I’m an old man. I guess it’s made me hard. I don’t care how much folks try and hurt me.”

  “I know what you mean,” Caddy said. “This is a place to rest up, heal, get a new life plan. Think of this place like a base camp. You stay here until you’re strong enough to either go back to work or do something new.”

  “My father wants me back at the store today.”

  Caddy nodded. “You just got out of the hospital,” she said. “Give yourself some time.”

  “What if they come back?” Sammi said. “What if those men ride up here on those fucking Harleys and try to start trouble with you?”

  “They’ve been here before,” she said. “And I asked them to leave.”

  Sammi smiled, Caddy seeing he’d busted a couple of teeth. “You asked them?”

  “Nicely,” Caddy said. “And I pointed my uncle’s old twelve-gauge at the ugliest one.”

  “They’re all ugly.”

  “True.”

  “The Quran commands me to stand out firmly for justice,” he said. “Even if that means going against yourself, your parents, or kin.”

  “The Bible likes justice, too,” Caddy said. “How you go about it just depends on what volume you read.�
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  “If those men killed Milly, I want them to die for it,” Sammi said. “I think about her every minute. I could have helped her.”

  “How?” Caddy said. “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”

  • • •

  Tell me exactly what he said,” Quinn said.

  “He asked me if Milly had been talking about him,” Nikki said. “I told him no and he called me a liar.”

  “He threatened you.”

  “Not exactly,” Nikki said. “He went around it. My son had woken up when he drove up. I opened the door and told him I was busy, but when I walked back to the crib, he was right behind me. He kept on telling me babies freaked him out because they were so delicate. Jesus God. My blood just ran cold.”

  “Did Milly talk about Nito?”

  “Only that he was a complete unhinged freak,” Nikki said. “She told me he was always asking her out, saying that since she’d gone black with Joshua, there was no going back. But Nito wasn’t Joshua. Joshua was a good-looking, smart guy. Nito Reece is nasty. He’s a damn drug dealer and a thug.”

  “I can bring him in,” Quinn said. “Talk to him.”

  “Please, please don’t use my name,” Nikki said. “God. I have a baby. Do I look like I have a whole lot of options around here?”

  Quinn stood with the girl in what could only be politely described as a shithole. The baby was back inside with his grandmother, Quinn standing sure-footed in the dirt yard smoking a Drew Estates Maduro he’d started that morning. Nikki sat down on a toppled old refrigerator. A stained mattress lay nearby, along with a bunch of Coke cans tossed around the yard. A hot wind blew through the trees, a dog barking from down the road.

  The dog got the attention of Hondo, who poked his head from the passenger side of Quinn’s truck and sniffed at the air. Quinn wrote his cell on the back of an old business card and handed it to the girl.

  “Nito Reece gets within a mile of you, you call me.”

  “He’s crazy, you know?”