by Ace Atkins
“I don’t care what they think,” Quinn said. “But I do like to know how they might vote.”
“Something happen?”
He told her about being at Mr. Jim’s barbershop and Jay Bartlett being such a horse’s ass.
“Jay Bartlett is a horse’s ass,” Lillie said. “A sorry little prick. He hadn’t said two words to me in the last five years. He’s been listening to rumors about me, too. He thinks that maybe I’m helping spread immorality and liberal ideas throughout Tibbehah County.”
“Isn’t that how you get your kicks?” Quinn said.
“Wouldn’t you love to know,” Lillie said. She placed her big combat boots on the edge of the desk and leaned back a bit. She had on her slick green sheriff’s office jacket, hair in a ponytail and threaded through a ball cap with the insignia of Tibbehah County on it. “Now,” she said, letting the front legs down on the chair and shifting her eyes down her stack of papers, “what’s wrong with what you got?”
“I got nothing,” Quinn said.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning there is the incident report with an interview with Diane Tull and a half-dozen people who saw them at the carnival that night,” he said. “There were a couple half-assed and illiterate reports to follow about talking to people who lived out on Jericho Road near the old Fisher property and heard shots but didn’t see a goddamn thing.”
“Right.”
“And an autopsy report.”
“And what else?”
“Nothing.”
“No follow-up reports, nothing filed with the state, no interview with local informants? You know your uncle always had a set of CIs on the payroll?”
“OK,” Quinn said. “So it was half-assed and poorly done. Nobody ever said this sheriff’s department was progressive. My uncle once tried to keep law and order. But he never thought of himself as an investigator.”
“Stuff was taken out,” she said. “That’s not all that happened. Even if it was half-assed, there’d be twice as much here, just as routine.”
Lillie took off her cap and placed it on the table, got up, and set her SO coat on the rack. She sat back down with Quinn and ate another few fries, thinking on things, and then took his last bite of cheeseburger. She thought some more as she ate. “Funny thing is how little people have talked about all this. What exactly did Diane Tull tell you?”
“Pretty much what she told my uncle in 1977.”
“And nothing more?”
“What else could she say?” Quinn said. “How about you spell it out to me, Lillie Virgil?”
“OK, Sheriff.” Lillie nodded, mind made up, and walked over to a long row of dented and scratched file cabinets. Using a key from her pocket, she opened one in the center, two drawers down, and pulled out an old manila folder, shut and bound with an old piece of string. “Call me when you get done reading this.”
She slid the file far across the table to Quinn and he immediately wiped his hands on a napkin and opened it up. Stapled reports, autopsy files, several black-and-white photos that brought to mind many images of the hills of Afghanistan and burned-out homes in Iraq. He could recall the horrid smell of charred bodies. “Jesus.”
“You bet,” Lillie said. “They found this goddamn crispy critter on Jericho Road about three days after Diane Tull was raped and Lori Stillwell was murdered. You think nobody in this office thought about a connection?”
“Who is it?”
“A man,” Lillie said. “A black man. That’s about all anyone knows about him. You can read about all there is in the report, but it looks like Sheriff Beckett didn’t so much as lift the phone to find out who he was, why he was here, or what happened to him. Seems like your uncle pretty much knew this all was a done deal.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Like I said, call me when you’re done,” Lillie said. “I think it’s about time you had a come-to-Jesus with Diane Tull and find out exactly why she’s getting this thing opened far and wide. And if someone tells me this is about God’s will, I’ll punch ’em in the mouth. God may be strange and mysterious, but this didn’t come out of nowhere.”
• • •
Stagg met Craig Houston out on his two-thousand-acre spread out in the county, a good portion of Tibbehah that he’d controlled for decades, including what used to be a World War II airfield and some old hangars and barracks. Before and since the storm, Stagg had his crew out paving back over the tarmac, propping up those old Quonset huts and adding a few more, building up some cinder-block bunkers and then laying out miles and miles of chain-link fencing to keep the nosy out of his business. Stagg had told everyone he was working on his own hunt lodge, the airfield just part of his land, bringing in drinking buddies from Memphis and Jackson. “You like it?” Johnny Stagg said.
“All this shit yours?” asked Houston. “The fucking land? This whole damn compound?”
Stagg grinned and nodded. He stood against his maroon Cadillac, chewing on a toothpick, taking in the possibilities of his own little valley. A cold wind whisking down through the valley and across their faces.
“God damn, man. You ain’t no joke. From here, we do what the fuck we want.”
You didn’t have to tell Houston much about how it would all work, the smart kid in the bright blue satin warm-up stood next to his bright white Escalade just smiling. He talked about their partnership, now a friendship, and how an airfield would get those Burrito Eaters off his back. Those Burrito Eaters now calling the shots from below the border in a town some had never even visited.
“Don’t need no trucks coming in from Texas,” Houston said. “Don’t need no shit from New Orleans. We call it. Deal direct.”
“And you can make it happen?” Stagg said. “You lived with those people down there for how long? Learned their practices and their ways?”
“Four years,” Houston said. “They call my black ass Speedy Gonzales. Understand honor, respect, and that you shoot a motherfucker who don’t. Shit, I didn’t graduate fifth grade and now speak Spanish without no accent. Don’t believe me? How ’bout we go down to the Mex place in Jericho and listen to me talk some shit beyond the chimichangas.”
“Good,” Stagg said. “Good.”
“Who else knows about what you got?”
Stagg shook his head. The bright January wind was a damn knife cutting through that valley, rows and rows of old oaks and second-growth pines, and across the tarmac to where he stood with the black kingpin of Memphis. They both had come by themselves, Stagg leaving Ringold back at the Rebel and Houston leaving his people down in Olive Branch, where he ran things from the back of an all-you-can-eat soul food joint and Chinese buffet.
“When we start?” Houston asked.
“No sense in waiting,” Stagg said. “You say the word, Mr. Houston.”
“They ain’t gonna like this,” Houston said. “There’s a lot of business gonna just be left hanging out there. Ain’t like canceling your subscription to fucking Playboy. People gonna want answers. And if they get them, they gonna come for me and for you, Mr. Stagg.”
“Let ’em come,” Stagg said. “Like I said, those cartel folks been down here before. They know Tibbehah County ain’t open to free trade.”
“You ain’t like the other Dixie Mafia folks I knew.”
“There ain’t no Dixie Mafia, son,” Stagg said.
“But you part of that crew?” Houston said. “All those motherfuckers from around Corinth and down in Biloxi. That’s your world.”
“Dixie Mafia is something the damn Feds made up to cornhole us,” Stagg said. “All those men I used to know, most of ’em dead or in prison, didn’t do business unless we wanted. We don’t have no blood oaths and hierarchy and all that Hollywood shit.”
“But the old crooks?” Houston said. “They wouldn’t been caught dead with no black kid from Orange Mound. You know that
?”
“The South ain’t the same,” Stagg said. “Get that shit straight. I ain’t never thought I’d have to worry about crazy-ass Mexicans coming up from Guadalajara with a chain saw, wanting to tell me how to run my business in Tibbehah.”
“They killed eight of my people last year,” Houston said. “One of ’em was my half brother.”
Stagg nodded.
“Don’t need ’em,” Houston said. “Once you cut off the money, they gone.”
“You bet,” Stagg said, swiveling the toothpick in his mouth. “People come before me never saw a challenge coming. You got to think about the future every day of your goddamn life in this business, son. If you don’t, you gonna wake up with a gun in your mouth or a cock up your ass.”
“Damn, old man,” Houston said. “That’s hard shit.”
“The plain ole gospel truth.”
Houston walked across the weeds to the end of the airstrip, the concrete poured as smooth and straight as a griddle. He looked to the rolling Mississippi hills that protected each side of them, the open doors to the empty buildings, and the red wind sock, blowing straight and hard, at the other end of the runway. The morning sun was bright and wide across the valley.
Houston offered Stagg his hand.
• • •
“We need to talk,” Diane Tull said.
“OK,” Caddy said.
“Not here,” Diane said. “In private.”
Diane had found Caddy Colson unloading canned goods and fresh vegetables from the back of her old blue Ford pickup. She was stocking the storerooms in a barn that doubled as a church, a place called The River, which served the poor and downtrodden of Greater Jericho and Tibbehah County. Caddy was being helped by Boom Kimbrough, a hell of a strong man even with one arm. He hoisted big boxes and unwieldy gallons of milk up in his one massive arm and supported it all with a prosthetic hook.
Caddy looked to Boom, Boom pretending he hadn’t heard any of the conversation, but he walked away with a flat of canned baked beans. “Come on,” Caddy said. “We can go on inside the sanctuary. All right?”
Diane nodded and followed through the big open barn doors, still strange as hell to her to call an old livestock barn, painted red with a sloping metal roof, a church. The outreach and ministry of the late Jamey Dixon. Diane knew how much Caddy had loved Dixon, worshipped and believed in him, and believed that her turnaround as a human being came through meeting him and forging her belief in a Christ who forgave prostitutes and tax collectors. And who was Diane to judge, Caddy did certainly seem like a changed person.
She was fresh-scrubbed in Levi’s and shit-kicker boots, a long sweatshirt on under a blue barn coat, her boy-short hair ruffling in the wind as she walked Diane into the barn and closed the large doors behind them. The January wind whipped up good around them and whistled through the cracks of the church. Long homemade pews stretched out in three directions from a stage and pulpit, bales of hay and galvanized troughs making the point of no one getting over the humbleness of his surroundings.
“How far can I trust your brother?” Diane said.
“Depends on what it is.”
“I’ve started up something again, Caddy,” Diane said. “I wish to God I’d never done it. I want Quinn to just stop, leave it alone.”
“Quinn’s never been much good at leaving things alone.”
“But if I ask him or you ask him, he’ll do it,” Diane said, “right? There’s no need to open things up if the survivors want it closed. That should mean something to him.”
“You want to sit down?”
“Not really.”
“You look a nervous mess, Diane,” Caddy said. “Sit.”
They found a center pew, four spaces back from the stage, Diane wondering if indeed she did look like shit since she hadn’t looked in a mirror since getting to work that morning. She hadn’t dressed up or down and thought she was handling her conversation with Hank Stillwell pretty damn good, considering what he’d said. She now knew his obsession wasn’t just about Lori but about himself and about things haunting him as a man. Diane wanted out.
“What happened?”
Diane told her about meeting with Quinn and driving out to Jericho Road, riding out to a spot that she hadn’t visited in years, not ever wanting to see the place since coming up on it made her feel like she was coming up out of her skin. But she said she swallowed the fear, wanted to face things again, not let what happened control her and maybe put those events off her conscience and into the hands of the new sheriff, since the old one never seemed to listen.
“And what did he say?”
“He said he’d heard the stories and knew what happened to us,” Diane said. “But he needed to look at the old reports and talk to some people. I don’t want him talking to anybody. He starts talking to people and then things are going to come back on me. People are going to start to talk and point fingers, and, Caddy, I’m too old for that. This was too long ago. I can’t have that happen. And I can’t have anything else happen, either. People might get hurt.”
Caddy sat cool in the pew next to Diane, shit-kicker boot crossed at the knee, leaning up against the pew ahead, resting her chin on her forearm. A big cross made out of cedar logs hung from the rafters, swinging lightly in the breeze that cut in from outside.
“Don’t worry about Quinn,” Caddy said. “He takes care of himself and doesn’t scare easy. You’re the one sweating and it’s not even forty degrees outside.”
“This shit is making me think on things I hadn’t worried about for a long time,” Diane said. “Things happened, some of it I recall, but other things feel like part of a dream. Things I heard whispered by my parents and some of the old people, who’d drop little comments on me, giving me a wink like I knew what they are talking about.”
There was a pleasantness to the old barn, the rough-hewn slats of wood, the still-present smell of feed and hay, even as support beams budded with speakers and the stage had been outfitted for a country gospel band. White Christmas lights wrapped most of the rafters and support beams, and there was a stillness about the place, even though people were hammering and talking outside. Lots of people, working to keep the ministry going.
“You don’t have to talk to me,” Caddy said. “But you need to let this all out to two men.”
“Jesus Christ and Quinn Colson?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Caddy said. “Both can help you.”
“I might need the one carries a gun on his hip.”
“Tell Quinn,” Caddy said. “It doesn’t matter who out there wants you to keep things quiet. If it’s still important, still going on, he needs to know. He’ll look out for you. We’ll all look out for you. You’ve been a part of us since the beginning.”
Caddy reached out and squeezed Diane’s hand. Diane hadn’t noticed she was crying until she felt the wetness on her cheeks. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and snuffled a short laugh. “Something better not happen to me or you’ll have to rework Sunday’s service.”
“I got you down for ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and ‘There Will Be Peace in the Valley,’” Caddy said. “Momma is thrilled. Two of Elvis’s favorites. To Jean, something’s not really holy unless Elvis sung it.”
“I’ll do my best,” Diane said.
Caddy gripped Diane’s hand more and squeezed tighter. She looked her right in the eye and smiled, so much strength and confidence that reminded Diane of Jamey Dixon, him being the one who’d first brought Diane to The River and got her to sing onstage, said she had a gift and he needed her to be a part of the rebirth of this county.
“He sure loved you, Caddy,” Diane said, regretting saying it before the words were even out of her mouth. Caddy withdrew her hand, stood abruptly but kept the smile going, and told her again to speak to Quinn.
“And after that?”
“Lay it all do
wn for Jesus, sister,” Caddy said.
You take me to the nicest places, Quinn,” Ophelia Bundren said, looking cute and warm in a snug blue V-neck sweater dress and gray tights. “Are you trying to spoil me?”
“Blue plate special is chicken spaghetti and two sides,” Quinn said. “Depends on what you want for the sides.”
“To be honest, it’s just nice being away from work,” she said. “We had two funerals this morning and another one on Saturday. All of them people I know. All of them old. Do you know how hard it is to make old people look good when they die?”
“I imagine it’s tough to make any dead person look good,” Quinn said.
“You’d be surprised,” Ophelia said. “Some people look better in the box than on the street.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Take Miss Nelson, for instance,” Ophelia said. “In life, she wore that crazy red wig and enough paint on her face for a circus clown. I chose a different wig and toned down her cheeks and eyes. Gave her a softer look. Her husband whispered to me after the service it was the best she’d looked since her wedding day.”
“You are an artist, Miss Bundren.”
“I’d like to think so,” she said. “I just have a different canvas than most.”
“You want the special?” Quinn said, looking up at the waitress, an older frizz-haired woman named Mary. Quinn was pretty sure Mary had been at the Fillin’ Station diner since the day they opened. She’d been bringing food to Quinn since he was in a high chair.
Ophelia sighed and put down the menu that hadn’t changed much, either, over the years. “Only live once,” she said.
Quinn showed two fingers to the waitress and Mary walked off to the kitchen, Quinn and Ophelia framed in the front plate-glass window of what had been a Texaco service station. The owner had even found a couple of those glass-topped pumps from the thirties to place under the portico and hang some old-time gas signs in and around the restaurant. The room smelled like grease and cigarettes.
