by Ace Atkins
“He said me and Lillie got nothing to worry about.”
“You believe that?”
“Hell no,” Quinn said, standing. “But, c’mon, let’s eat. I hear the meat loaf tastes like shit.”
• • •
When Diane Tull got home at midnight, his bright green Plymouth Road Runner was parked out front, him waiting on her and wanting to talk again. She’d told him to please call first, that he couldn’t just come on over when he was lonely or bored and wanted to break out the Jim Beam and cigarettes and discuss his troubles. She told him last time she wasn’t goddamn Oprah Winfrey or Dr. Phil, she was just a working woman trying to have a little fun in the middle years and that bringing up the past wasn’t part of the grand plan. But there he was again, slumped behind the wheel, probably drunk but trying to hide it with the breath mints and chewing gum, trying to walk straight, be focused, and have them talk about Lori. Again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, starting off the conversation like that. Who does that? I’m sorry. Really?
“I’m not in the mood, Hank,” she said. “Can we let it alone for the night?”
“I started on it again,” he said. “My daughter came to me in a dream.”
“She did to me, too,” Diane said. “For a long time. But I finally got brave enough to ask her to leave. And you know what? She did. Lori hasn’t come back since.”
“May I come in?”
“It’s late,” she said. “I got work in the morning.”
“You sure are all dolled up.”
“I sang tonight,” she said. “At the Southern Star. I told you about it last week. You said you might come and listen. I was looking for you. Might’ve been able to talk there.”
“I’m real sorry,” he said. “I’ve been a mess. I bet you sure were something. I saw you and that preacher sing last year, that one who had that church in a barn and got himself shot?”
“Jamey Dixon.”
“Yeah, Dixon,” Stillwell said. “Y’all sounded pitch-perfect on those old hymns.”
Diane leaned into the doorway of her 1920s bungalow, complete with rose trellis and porch swing, and just looked at him. He had a haphazard way of dressing, new blue jeans, an old Marshall Tucker Band tee, and a mackinaw coat that stunk of cigarettes. He had longish red hair and a red beard, both showing some gray. “Come on in,” she said. “Jesus Christ.”
“I just wanted to see how things went,” he said. “With the sheriff. Did he know about what happened? He had to have known about it. Had to bother him, thinking this was all left unsettled in the county.”
“It happened three years before he was even born, Mr. Stillwell,” she said. “Sit down in the kitchen and I’ll get you something to drink. You hungry?”
“Water is fine.”
“Sit down,” she said. “I’ll get you a Coors.”
“OK.” Stillwell licked his lips. “Appreciate it.”
He took a seat at the small kitchen table, slumped at the shoulders, hands laced before him. A hanging silver lamp in the center of the room shining over him. She opened up the refrigerator and grabbed a couple bottles, popped the tops, and placed one in front of him.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” he said, seeming embarrassed to take a drink. “You can ask me whatever you want. Me and you, we’re almost family.”
“We’re not family,” she said. “We just have a pretty ugly connection. That’s worse than being kin.”
“That we do.”
“Why do you keep coming to me?” she said. “Why bring all this up inside me? You do realize I left this shithole town for twenty years because I was tired of heading to the store for bread and milk and getting eyes of fucking pity. You know how many times people started laying hands on me in the damn cereal aisle, wanting to pray, when all I wanted was a goddamn box of Frosted Flakes?”
Stillwell licked his lips more and then drank a few swallows of the Coors. “I don’t rightly know,” he said. “I think it had something to do with the storm.”
“The storm?” she said. “How’s that?”
He coughed and gave a loose, weak smile. She drank some beer while she waited for him to think on things, mull over what he wanted to say. A beer always helped her come down from the high of singing, this group of them getting it right, finding a nice feel for some Haggard, that old bottle letting everyone down, feeling no pain at closing time. And finishing things off, closing out the last set with a bluegrass version of “Mama Tried.” She and J.T. harmonizing on the chorus, J.T. setting down his bass for a mandolin, making each note sound like the turning of pins in a kid’s music box.
“I lost everything in that storm,” he said. “I knew then there might be no more time to make sense of it. I got to make sense of it before I’m gone. You remember how we used to always light candles for Lori every year on the Fourth. And then people just stopped showing up.”
He looked down at the table, took a breath, and he started to cry. After a while, he wiped his eyes and his face and drank some more beer.
“Hell,” he said. “You don’t have to do nothin’, Diane. I guess I just feel it’s time to shine a light on this.”
“Why me?”
“’Cause you were the one who was there,” he said. “But I ain’t telling you to do nothing. Maybe I just wanted some company. Or maybe I just wanted folks to remember her.”
Diane reached up to the edge of her hair, feeling for that long streak of gray in all that black. She played with the end and glanced down at the gray, thinking maybe this would be the week to finally start dyeing it, making it all even. She tipped the Coors bottle at Stillwell and said, “I’ve never forgotten.”
“I think about the last time I seen her,” he said. “She came to me to borrow ten dollars at the body shop and I wouldn’t give it to her. I’d got all over her about the way she’d been dressing. Embarrassed her. You believe that? She’d gotten all made-up for the carnival with a lot of lipstick and stuff on her eyes and such. You know what I did? I told her to go wash that shit off her face, said that she looked like a streetwalker. How you think that sounds from her daddy? No wonder she didn’t call me when y’all needed a ride. When I had to go see her body with Sheriff Beckett, it was raining and all that goddamn paint was washing off her, making her look something foolish. Why did I talk like that? Like I was some kind of goddamn preacher. What kind of right did I have to be such a goddamn asshole? I deserve every bit of what’s come to me.”
Diane had heard this story perhaps a thousand times, the father playing it over and over again in his mind, trying to figure a way he might have found a new outcome. Sometime later, he became such a crazy-ass drunk that he’d been kicked out of the Born Losers Motorcycle Club as a liability. That fact would become Hank Stillwell’s epitaph, Too Fucked-up to Ride with a bunch of hellraisers. The man still sporting the skull-and-crossbones tattoos on his nothing biceps and sagging skin. Pig Pen written in jagged ink.
“God damn, it keeps on hurting, Diane,” Stillwell said, finishing the beer. “You think that’ll ever stop?”
“No, sir,” she said. “Not till you quit loving your daughter.”
She stood and walked with him to the door and watched as he made his way down her stone path and back to a vintage Plymouth with shiny chrome wheels. He had to crank the car three times, but once it started it growled like a big cat before he rode away.
Diane took a deep breath. Tomorrow she’d lay it all out. Even if it didn’t make her feel better, maybe it would keep both Stillwell and Caddy Colson off her ass.
The bugs had started to gather on her front porch. She clicked off the night-light and went on to bed.
Jason’s younger brother Van had warned him: “Don’t go and fuck with Big Doug and all his bullshit. I don’t care how long y’all been friends. Something done broke in his head in Vietnam.”
“We’re just going to go drink some beer,” Jason said. “What can be wrong with that?”
“You know who he rides with?” Van said. “You know about him and the Born Losers? They seen you jump the other day and wanted you to come out to the clubhouse. It ain’t no beer joint, it’s their private club where they shoot drugs, shoot guns, and raise hell. Do what you want, but I wouldn’t go out to Choctaw Lake for nothing.”
“Appreciate the advice, Van,” Jason said, sliding into his leather jacket and snatching up the keys to his Harley. This was the Fat Boy, not the trick bike he’d used at the show. The landing had been a little off and, damn, if he hadn’t bent the frame. He’d get her straightened out and smooth out the gas tank where it got all nicked to hell when he laid her down. He hadn’t wanted to ditch the bike, but he came off the ramp hot as hell and headed right into the cop cars that had been parked in the end zone.
He rode out along Dogtown Road on a fine early-summer night, feeling the warm wind, smelling that honeysuckle and damp earth, and being glad he was back down South for a while. The Fat Boy was baby blue, with a hand-tooled leather seat made by the same man who’d made saddles for Elvis. It was comfortable to be on the bike, comfortable to be back home among friends. The evening light was faded, a purple light shining off the green hills headed out to the lake, nothing but winding ribbon and yellow lines.
The clubhouse had once been an old fishing cabin, a cobbled-together collection of boards and rusted tin. Outside, fifteen, twenty Harleys parked at all angles in the dirt, all of them custom, with tall ape hand bars, and sissy bars on the backseats for the women who rode with them. When Jason killed the engine he could hear an old Janis Joplin song blaring from inside the shack. A man with red hair and beard, wearing leather pants but no shirt, eyed Jason as he walked past. The man was turning over steaks on an open grill and smoking a cigarette. The man looked to Jason, cigarette hanging from his mouth, and said, “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Jason-Fucking-Colson.”
The dude stopped, held up the end of a long fork to Jason’s chest, and said, “You the dude who jumped the bike over all them Pintos?”
“Yep.”
“I saw that,” the man said. “That was some crazy shit. A bit wobbly on that landing, but some crazy shit, brother.
“My name’s Stillwell, but they call me Pig Pen.” He removed the fork from Jason’s chest and offered him a big pat on the back, his hands filthy with grease. “Big Doug is inside with his old lady. Go on in, there’s cold beer in some trash buckets, help yourself. Damn.”
The windows had been busted out a long time ago and covered in plastic sheeting that bucked up and rippled in the wind off Choctaw Lake. There was a doorway but no door, and once Jason got inside it took some adjusting to get used to the darkness. The walls were decorated in those velvety glow posters of women with big tits, panthers, and Hendrix and Zeppelin. There were some black lights spaced around the room, keeping everything in a soft purple light. as men in leather vests and women in tight T-shirts stared up at him, everyone getting real quiet, just like folks in old John Wayne movies, and all he could hear was Janis daring a man to take another piece of her heart.
Someone messed with the music, turning down what he saw was an old jukebox on a dirty concrete floor, and Jason looked at the group, man-to-man, and over at the women, with long stringy hair down to their butts. He nodded and walked toward the beer, the reason he’d come to the party, since it was harder to find a cold beer in Jericho than a decent job.
And there was Big Doug, arms outstretched, big hairy belly exposed through a wide-open leather vest. He had long black hair and a long black beard and looked like he should be riding the high seas with men with wooden legs and eye patches. He walked over to Jason, wrapped him in a bear hug, and lifted him off the ground. Big Doug got the name honest: he was six foot six and about three hundred pounds. A woman, wearing a headband over her long blond hair parted in the middle, walked over and gave Jason a cold can of Coors.
“I knew you’d come,” Big Doug said. “That pussy brother of yours try and scare you?”
“Which one?”
“Van,” Big Doug said. “I tried to talk to him at the Dixie gas station a few days ago and he about pissed down his leg.”
“Were you alone?” Jason said, grinning.
“Just out for a ride.”
“All of you?”
“Yep,” Doug said. “We ride with the club. We live with the club. It’s a brotherhood. Hey, listen, I want you to meet my woman, Sally. We call her Long Tall Sally because . . . you know.”
“She’s built for speed?”
“Hell yeah,” Big Doug said. “Man, you hadn’t changed a bit. You look the same as when we graduated. You said you’d get out and, damn, if you didn’t do it. Working with Burt Reynolds. Holy shit. You’re an A-list L.A. motherfucker now.”
Jason nodded, drank some beer. The jukebox went silent and he heard that click and whir of a new song coming on. Wicked Wilson Pickett. “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” Somebody’s idea of a joke.
Since leaving the set of the last picture, Jason had let his hair grow out some, getting long for him, down over his ears and covering his forehead and eyebrows. He’d even grown a beard, feeling like a wild man and all natural, until being around this bunch made him feel like a clean-cut square. Some pussy businessman from Atlanta.
“How long you here for?” Sally asked. She had roving eyes and wore a man’s tank top hiked up high over her belly. From the looks of her belly, she drank as much beer as Big Doug.
“Few weeks,” Jason said. “Want to help my dad get settled after my mom died. Spend some time with Van. And Jerry is driving his rig in from El Paso. Should be here soon.”
“Jason-Goddamn-Colson,” Big Doug said, a little high and a little drunk. “Man, you were never scared of shit. Me and him did FFA together and he was the only one who’d compete with the men at the State Fair. He’d ride goddamn bulls. You remember that? Riding those big-nutted motherfuckers till they sent you flying.”
“Good times.”
“Good times?” Big Doug said. “You are crazy, you son of a bitch.”
Jason finished the beer and Sally wandered off to get him a new one. His eyes had adjusted in the dim room, with the purple light, the haze of dope smoke, and a makeshift bar with a velvet painting of a nude black woman above it. The big glow of the jukebox shone across a group of three men who hadn’t gotten up, still staring at Jason as he stood in the center of the clubhouse.
“Hey, come on,” Big Doug said, just as Sally handed him the Coors. “I want you to meet the man. Come on.”
Jason walked with him over by the jukebox, the music so loud it was hard to hear a word that was being said. A muscular man with no shirt and a lot of tats reclined in a big leather chair. A young girl was in his lap, arm around his neck, holding a cigarette for him and then taking a drag herself. She checked out Jason as Big Doug leaned in and said something in his ear. The man had wild eyes and long greasy black hair and a long beard. There was a lot about the fella that reminded Jason of goddamn Charles Manson.
Jason nodded at him. The scary fella just stared, took another drag, and then looked to Doug, who was grinning big as shit. Doug leaned over to Jason and yelled in his ear. “Meet Chains LeDoux, club president.”
Jason offered his hand. Chains looked at him as if he’d just picked up a turd. Jason looked up over to Big Doug and shrugged. “Doesn’t look like I’m wanted.”
“Don’t worry, he’s always like that,” Big Doug said as they walked away, Chains’s wild eyes never leaving Jason. “He just is skittish of new people. He’s protective of all of us. Doesn’t like change. Always worried someone is going to be a narc.”
“Do I look like a narc?”
Big Doug smiled and patted Jason’s back so hard, Jason lost his wind for a moment. “Yo
u sure do, brother,” Big Doug said. “You sure do.”
“Appreciate the beer.”
“You ain’t going yet,” Big Doug said, grabbing his elbow. “We’re just getting started. And you’re invited to ride with us tomorrow. We’re going up to Shiloh, pay tribute to the boys.”
“That gonna be OK with Chains?”
“He’ll learn to love you as much as I do,” Big Doug said. “Just relax, man. Be cool, brother. You’re among friends.”
Let’s get one thing straight right from the start, Sheriff Colson,” Diane Tull said, “if there is any blame that goes to this, go ahead and blame me. I was the one who wanted to walk home. I was the one who froze up when that man stopped us, when Lori and I should have run like hell.”
“The only blame is on the man who did this,” Quinn said. “You were two kids. The man had a gun and had you both trapped. He was a predator out there hunting for something just like y’all. If it hadn’t been you, he would have attacked someone else.”
Diane was quiet, seated in the passenger side of his big green Ford F-250, the heater blowing, hot coffee in the mug holders, driving on out to the road to Jericho where all this had happened thirty-seven years ago. She said she wanted to make a run out to the old Fisher property before the Farm & Ranch opened at nine. Quinn had rolled on duty at 0600, but he had been up since 0430, running the hills up and around his farm and doing a short routine of pull-ups, push-ups, and flutter kicks, before shaving, dressing, and meeting up.
Hondo rode in the backseat of the cab, wanting to come to work today, his head slid up between the two front seats, panting.
“Your uncle sure loved that dog,” Diane said. “He bought top-shelf food and kept a jar of pig ears for him. Always kept him in flea collars and heartworm protection. He was a good man, Sheriff.”
“How about I don’t call you ma’am and you don’t call me sheriff?”
“You don’t like to talk about him,” she said. “Your uncle. Do you?”
