by Ace Atkins
“Nope.”
“Always thought what they said about him were a bunch of dirty lies,” she said. “People can be hateful.”
“You bet.”
“I know you hear things they’re saying about you now, too.”
“I do.”
“And that’s some dirty, shitty lies.”
Quinn didn’t say a word.
“People said things about me after all this, too,” Diane said. “People said me and Lori picked up that man at the carnival and had sex with him. Some people even thought I may have shot Lori myself ’cause I was jealous or didn’t want her telling what we’d done.”
“People have small and idle minds.”
“And you can’t even do your job without people making comments.”
“Of course, bullshit does go with an elected position.”
“And this,” Diane said. “All this I’m about to show you is just for you to know. Your sister wanted us to talk, maybe stoke a cold case and get some kind of air cleared about what happened. Is there still an old report?”
“There is.”
“And you’ve read it?”
“I have.”
A hand-painted sign out on the country road read Dirt For Sale. Quinn followed the rolling ribbon of cracked blacktop, the morning coming up bright and hard in early January. The trailers and small houses, the little farms, and closed gates to hunting lodges passing by. Quinn slowed after a few minutes, Diane telling him to keep driving, it was a ways up, but it was hard to tell anymore since the Fisher house had burned to the ground back in 1992. She pointed a finger a half mile down the road and Quinn slowed and drove off onto the shoulder, the old cedar posts and barbed wire still there, some of the posts replaced with solid metal T-bars. Cattle wandered far in the open pasture, trees dotting the land, cow pies dotting the worn-down grassland.
A tree in the distance caught Quinn’s eyes, skeletal and alone, blackened from fire and spiky-branched. The dead tree resembled a black pitchfork.
Quinn shut off the engine. Diane took in a deep breath. Something about that old tree captivated him, like it was from a half-remembered dream.
“The house was up on that hill?” he said.
She nodded.
“You want to walk up that way?”
She took another long, deep breath. She rubbed her fingers over her eyes. She breathed again. “Oh, hell,” she said. “Come on.”
They got out of the truck, Hondo following. They walked through a cattle gate and then out into the pasture, among the growing weeds, wandering cows, and piles of shit. An old bull sat up on the hill, watching them without menace, just slow and lazy but curious, wide-eyed and snorting a bit. The other cattle grazing and chewing as Quinn walked side by side with Diane until she stopped and said this is where the man had taken them that night, under the full moon and with a pistol on them, telling them they were going up to that old abandoned house and sit a spell.
“‘Sit a spell’?” Quinn asked.
“That’s what he said,” Diane said. “But you could see what he wanted from his eyes and the way he was sweating.”
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said.
“I’d like to say you forget in time,” Diane said. “That some of all this is fuzzy. But that would be a goddamn lie.”
• • •
The city and county leaders decided to hold the announcement at the Jericho Square. It had taken some time to remove all the debris and contractor trucks from the park and get it all looking straight again. The city work crews had strewn white lights in the newly planted trees and across the gazebo that had remained untouched after the storm, as well as the monument to the fallen heroes of the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and the Global War on Terror. The heads of the automotive components company had flown into Memphis and would arrive within the hour. Tibbehah was going to be supplying parts to that new Toyota plant in Blue Springs, one of the country’s biggest. And already Johnny Stagg had spoken to no less than four news crews from Tupelo and Jackson bright and early that morning about what folks were calling the Tibbehah Miracle. Not only did it look like this little backwater county would survive after being hit dead-ass-on by an F4 tornado, but, damn, if it didn’t look like it was going to be stronger and better than ever. A new industrial park, grants to rebuild the old downtown in the historical style of the original, and new road and highway improvements.
“People know it takes a good man to grease those wheels in Jackson,” Ringold said, saying it in that flat, solemn way he spoke. “You’re a hero. Folks say it takes a businessman like Mr. Stagg to get things done.”
“Is that what they’re saying?” Stagg said, grinning. He popped a piece of peppermint candy in his mouth and chewed hard. “The gratitude does keep me going.”
“Are you going to speak?”
“No, sir,” Stagg said.
“Senator Vardaman?”
“It’s more his kind of show,” Stagg said. “I just handle the introductions around here. I’m what you call a facilitator.”
“You’re also the man who pledged a half-million dollars to rebuild Jericho before any of this happened,” Ringold said. “If I were you, I’d at least say a few words and take a fucking bow.”
“People know what I done,” Stagg said. “That’s enough.”
“Tupelo paper this morning called it an overall story of redemption,” Ringold said. “They referred to you as the former owner of a roadside strip club turned entrepreneur.”
“Is that a fact?” Stagg said. “‘Former’? Bless their hearts.”
The chamber of commerce president, Wade Mize, waddled on over with five folks who looked to be dressed for Sunday service. He wore a blue suit and bright gold tie, fat jowls recently shaved and smelling of cologne. He introduced a minister from Southaven, a couple businessmen from Memphis, and a couple women from Oxford who were looking to start a restaurant and maybe a boutique. Stagg grinned and shook their hands, smiling to all their praise, especially when the minister told him that most often miracles sprout from unlikely places. Stagg winked at the man and continued walking with Ringold. “Uh-huh,” Stagg said.
“Mize sure seemed happy to see you.”
“Funny, the people who call me Mr. Stagg these days,” Stagg said. “Wade Mize’s mother is a stone-cold crazy woman who’s made it her personal mission to drive me from this town. I could take all the newspaper columns she’s written about the old Rebel being a den of iniquity and we could wallpaper the whole truck stop. And you know what? I hadn’t heard a damn peep from her after the storm. She still won’t speak to me, but at least she shut her dry old mouth.”
Stagg and Ringold walked on up to the gazebo where Stagg would stand behind Vardaman and the boys from the automotive company. There’d be talk about the opening of the production line and a grant to finally complete the industrial park right off Highway 45 that would bring jobs, money, and growth to northeast Mississippi. People had flyers and big blown-up pictures of the architectural drawings and such.
There would be a short prayer for the nine dead souls and a bell rung from the Baptist church at noon. After, the way Stagg understood things, they’d all go on over to city hall for a plate lunch of barbecue and catfish catered by Pap’s.
Stagg looked out on the town square, taking a lot of pride in how much had been done in such a short amount of time. The broken shit had been hauled away and already a new row of four storefronts was being built. Stagg had offered the owners of the old stores a solid price for the destroyed property, telling them the recovery might take years—if at all. And now he already had agreements from a bank from Tupelo, a steak restaurant, and a combo coffee shop and tanning parlor.
“You think a dozen girls is enough?” Ringold asked. “For tonight?”
“Depends on the girls.”
“Best we got.”
“Make sure you got a couple real young ones,” Stagg said. “That’s been requested direct by one of the guests. Young, black, and happy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Gonna be a hell of a party out at the ole hunt lodge tonight,” Stagg said. “You better believe it. Those sonsabitches couldn’t wait to get back to ole Jericho.”
Stagg started to step down from the gazebo, walk across the park, and say hello to the meat manager of the Piggly Wiggly when he heard a guttural growl that nearly made him swallow the rest of his candy. He stopped cold on the steps and held up a hand for Ringold to do the same. “You hear that? You fucking hear that?”
He looked into the distance to see a half-dozen motorcycles with big engines and big pipes rip and vibrate the town square. The men had broad backs and leather vests worn over denim jackets. They had long hair and beards and looked as if they’d just stepped off horses from another century.
Stagg wandered out on the walkway, trying to get a glimpse of the pack rounding the Square, see if he recognized any of the bastards who’d come to town to make a stand and go ahead and squat and shit on his big day.
“Mr. Stagg?” Ringold said. “You OK?”
• • •
“Y’all didn’t make it to the house?” Quinn said.
“No, sir,” Diane said. Diane and Quinn stood in the pasture a few hundred meters from where the old house had been. “This is where he grabbed Lori and started to mess with her, putting his hands all on her, reaching under her shirt and into her jeans. He kept the gun on me and told me to sit, wait till he was done. I told him we needed to get to the old house, you know, just to keep him moving, trying to figure out a way we could get loose before we got inside.”
Quinn nodded. Hondo broke into a wide circle and started to bark a bit at the cows, getting one big fat heifer to trot forward, the dog nipping at her heels. The dog barked some more and nipped at some other cows. Quinn looked up to the big bull on the hill and then back to Diane. The morning so gray and cold, he could see her breath as she spoke.
That black pitchfork tree loomed in the distance.
“He pushed her down to the ground,” Diane said. “Right here. He told us if we didn’t stop crying, he’d kill us both. He said if I tried to help her, he’d shoot me where I stood. I sat down and waited. He got to one knee, then pressed himself on Lori, and I just blurted out all of a sudden, I’m not even sure I’d said it, but I must have. I told him to come on with me first. I told him I’d let him have me first, not cry about it. I told Lori to go on, leave us alone. He didn’t say anything, but she wouldn’t leave us. She didn’t go ten feet, just standing there with arms across her chest, crying, watching as that son of a bitch ripped off my jeans and underwear with a pocketknife and did what he wanted to me. He smelled like pure garbage, grunting and calling me filthy names the whole time, gun in his right hand until he finished up. Yes, it hurt like hell. I bled down there for weeks.”
“You gave a pretty good description to my uncle,” Quinn said. “You said he had burn marks on his face. A lot of scarring.”
“On the right side,” she said. “And some white scarring across his head where the hair didn’t grow back normal. He wasn’t a big man, but he had a lot of weight and muscle about him. Real compact. I’d never seen him before. When he got going, he spoke in biblical passages about whores and harlots. He told me he hated me.”
Quinn nodded. Hondo looped back to him, tongue lolling, waiting for orders on more roundups.
“When he finished, he buckled up his pants and told me to get my ass up and to stand next to my friend,” Diane said, hands in the pockets of a Sherpa jean coat, gray strand of hair falling across her eyes. “I pulled up my things, which were ripped and trashed, and walked over to Lori, putting my arm around her. I remember doing that much, telling her that as soon as we could we just needed to start running. She nodded, shivering like she was cold, even though it was hot as hell that night. I held her hand as we walked, like when we were kids, and I would look back at the man, him trudging along with a grin on his face till we got near that old tree over there.”
She stood and pointed to the charred relic of what had maybe been a big oak.
“All of a sudden, he told us to run,” she said. “He said run, get gone, he was through with the whores, and we ran to that old house, even though the house might’ve been worse. I always wondered why we didn’t run to the road, away from this place, but the house was shelter and closer and I guess we were thinking he’d leave us and go back to his car.”
“How far did y’all get?”
“From here?”
Quinn nodded. Hondo had wandered over to Diane Tull and moved his head and shoulders up against her leg. She had her right hand draped at her side and was rubbing his ears. She did not seem to be sad or uncomfortable, simply stating a historical fact of that horrific night, laying it all out for the law as she’d promised Caddy Colson. Quinn stood and watched her as she looked across the pasture and thought, her finally saying, “Maybe thirty feet, and then he started shooting. I heard the shot and then Lori slumped and fell and there was blood on me because we were running so close. When I stopped to help her, I felt the tear in my back and the crack of the shot and then two more. He shot me twice in the back and then I fell. The moon was so bright then. I remember that. That bastard getting plenty of light to do his shit.”
Stagg had gotten the key to the hunt lodge from one of Vardaman’s people, the senator providing the space, with Stagg bringing the booze and the women to the party. He employed a sixteen-year-old black kid named Willie James Jones, who carried in the crates of whiskey, while Ringold drove the Rebel Truck Stop van with eight girls from the Booby Trap. Before they’d come out, he made it absolutely clear this was in no way related to their duties, but if they wanted a shitload of tips, they were welcome to come along. Only problem with the offer was turning down a dozen girls. He decided to choose a couple young black girls, a Vietnamese, a Mexican, and four white girls. One of the white girls had the best goddamn tatas he’d seen in his life—natural, too—that she could wrap around a man’s head like a hat.
“Where you want this, sir?” asked Willie James.
“Back bar underneath them ducks,” Stagg said. “You see the ducks?”
Willie James nodded and kept walking through the open lodge over to the big fireplace and long bar. The walls were decorated with all manner of dead animals, stuffed ducks and deer and bobcat, Mississippi creatures. But the senator was also fond of going on over to Africa, and a game preserve in Texas, where he’d killed a rhino, a lion, and some wild animals Stagg couldn’t name. All the animals looked as dumb and glass-eyed as the girls who wandered in with Ringold, mouths hanging open since this was a good bit nicer than any of the trailers they’d been raised in out in Ackerman or Pontotoc.
“Please refrain from drinking unless y’all are asked,” Stagg said. “These are fine men. They don’t care for sloppy women.”
The women nodded, the girl with the big tatas popping purple bubble gum as she listened. The two black girls wore identical pink kimonos, while the rest wore terry cloth robes over their bikinis and lingerie, already dressed for work.
“How about some music?” asked one of the black girls. Her name was Jaquita or Janiqua or some kind of crazy name. “Ain’t a party with no music. Shit . . .”
“Sure,” Stagg said. “As long as it’s either country or western.”
The girls sighed and Stagg walked out of the room back to the big kitchen where Willie James had laid out the cheese-and-sausage trays from Piggly Wiggly with some plates of cold fried chicken brought down special from Gus’s in Memphis. Like always, the men could come into the kitchen, grab a plate of chow, and wander on out to the big room by the big stone fireplace to mingle with the ladies. The ladies were being paid by the hour, but the men knew it was customary to leave a tip, although there was this flunky
from Jackson who gave a girl only two bits after intercourse. Stagg would never forget the low class of that fella or his people.
“Mr. Stagg?”
Stagg turned to see a little white girl, whose name he couldn’t quite recall, come into the kitchen and ask if they might talk. She eyed the buffet of food and licked her lips and Stagg told her it was fine, go ahead and grab something to eat. “There might not be time later,” he said. “While you tend to the business.”
She didn’t hesitate, grabbing an Ole Miss paper plate, and started to gather chicken legs, cheese, and sausage. “I ain’t eaten all day, Mr. Stagg. Thank you.”
Stagg smiled at her and waved a hand over the feast.
She inhaled the food so fast that Stagg worried she might choke, waiting for her to take a breath. “You had something you wanted to ask?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “But I don’t rightly know how to say it.”
Willie James peered up at Stagg from the long counter, where he was slicing up fruits and vegetables with as much skill as any Jap chef he’d seen on television.
“It’s OK,” Stagg said. “You want to whisper it?”
“Well,” said the girl. “Last time, one of those men, a fat man from Tupelo who owns all those car dealerships . . .”
“Yes, ma’am,” Stagg said, knowing his name and knowing the girl did, too. His big, florid face plastered on every billboard from Jericho to Batesville. No Money Down. Bad Credit? No Problem.
“Well,” the girl said. “He had some unusual requests last time. I’d rather not be his date.”
“What kind of things?”
The girl, short and small-boned, with hair like a pixie doll, leaned in and whispered into Stagg’s ear. She was very direct and specific about the acts.
“Good Lord Almighty,” Stagg said. He shook his head. “Man must’ve been raised in a barn.”
“And then he wanted me to finish it with a . . .” the girl said, then whispering some more.
“I get the idea,” Stagg said, feeling his face burn. “Hot damn. Well, all I can say is, keep a wide berth around that fella. I wouldn’t let him near my dog.”
