by Ace Atkins
Boom suggested they start off at Club Disco 9000, a place where Boom used to hang out before he quit drinking. One night, he’d beaten the hell out of four men—after the loss of his arm—because of a slight to his honor.
“Don’t have much reason to come here anymore,” Boom said.
Quinn pulled his truck into the gravel lot by the old cinder-block juke house. It was Wednesday night and there were six or seven cars and trucks parked outside. The music was loud, but since the place was set way back from any houses or trailers, no one ever complained. Most of the time the music came from a jukebox, but on weekends there’d be a band who’d play blues or Chitlin’ Circuit soul.
“They still pissed at you busting the place up?”
“I made good on it,” Boom said. “I paid off what I broke.”
As soon as they entered, the owner and chief bartender, an old black man named Spam, looked straight at Boom and then to Quinn and just started shaking his head. He leaned against the bar as they took a seat, Spam just taking his own sweet time walking down the bar, towel over his shoulder, before saying, “Please don’t start some shit tonight. I can’t take it.”
“I paid you for that table,” Boom said.
“What about the chairs?”
“Money should’ve covered the chairs, too,” Boom said.
“Hmm,” Spam said. “Thought part of our deal was that you didn’t come down here no more. People afraid when they see you, Boom. They don’t know if you’re gonna hug ’em or kick the shit out of ’em.”
“That was a while back,” Boom said. “This ain’t about that.”
“What’s this about?”
“Sheriff got some questions for you,” Boom said. “Appreciate if you help him out.”
Spam looked to Quinn and raised his eyebrows. “You fucking with me, man? You bring Boom Kimbrough down here to give me that gotdamn fist bump and tell me you’re cool. I know the damn sheriff. And you ain’t exactly the Good Housekeeping Seal, Boom. Got damn.”
“How long you been living in Tibbehah?” Quinn asked.
“Since I popped out of my momma,” Spam said. “I left for Memphis. I came back. Man, you know.”
“Were you here in 1977?” Quinn asked.
“What the fuck you saying I did?”
“Man’s not saying you did shit,” Boom said. “Calm the hell down, Spam. Just listen. He needs some help.”
“Mmm,” Spam said.
“You remember a man drove a black Olds,” Quinn said. “Probably new. Had shiny wheels and black leather inside.”
“You got to be shitting me.”
“Fella was a black man but had some kind of scarring on his face,” Quinn said. “Like he’d been burned.”
“Like Boom?”
“Yeah,” Quinn said, “like Boom. Only Boom hadn’t been born yet.”
Spam shook his head, both palms flat on the bar. The jukebox playing a song with a woman singing “You Got to Lick It to Stick It.” Some of the folks in the bar laughing at the refrain, drinking some big quart Budweiser with a side of illegal moonshine that Spam made special. A few of them would glance over at Boom and then away, Quinn used to the stares about his buddy’s arm but also knowing these people were probably scared of the old Boom, the one who first came out of Guard damaged and beaten and into just tearing shit up.
“Man, Sheriff,” Spam said, “I don’t know. You talk to Dupuy?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Y’all ain’t friends?” Spam asked.
“I don’t think much of how he treats folks around here,” Quinn said.
“Before him, it was his daddy, and before his daddy was a white man named Bertrand Sinclair. And he was the worst of them all, ’cause he didn’t just give folks a shitty place to live. He made them work for it, pay for it, and end up dying for it.”
Boom looked up from the bar. A man walked past Boom and offered his hand. Boom offered his left and the man wandered off.
“I got it,” Spam said. “Fucked-up face. Cool car. Hadn’t been around these parts for almost forty years. Ain’t nothing to it.”
“Can you ask around for me, Spam?” Quinn said. “I’d consider it a favor.”
“Sure, man,” Spam said, offering his hand. “I’m just fucking with you. You’re all right, Sheriff Colson. You ain’t your uncle. Nobody can say that the law don’t care about the Ditch.”
Quinn looked at the man and shook his hand. “I do need to ask you something else about that time.”
“Hold on,” Spam said, heading down to the other end of the bar and popping the tops of two quart bottles of Bud. He gave the men two jelly jars filled with a shot of shine on the side. Spam didn’t have a business license, alcohol being illegal in Tibbehah County outside the city limits, and he was operating what would be known in the dusty statutes as a beer joint. “OK?”
“A black man was killed that same summer,” Quinn said. “Some men got together and took him out and hung him from a tree on Dogtown Road. Nobody claimed the body, but I was thinking he might have been from the Ditch. Maybe his people too afraid to claim him?”
Spam reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He thumped one free and screwed into his mouth, lighting up with a disposable Bic. “Shit, yeah,” Spam said. “I do know something about that. Everybody remember that day. Jericho went back to being a goddamn sundown town. You know? White folks thought this man had killed that little girl. But that man didn’t do nothing but get in their way.”
“Who was he?” Quinn said.
Boom watched them from his seat beside Quinn. There was laughter and good conversation and a very large woman on the dance floor with a very skinny man. With cold drinks in hand, they looked to be having a pretty good time in the low, soft neon light. A slow soul song came on and they embraced each other, moving smooth and easy. The woman wore the uniform of a maid from the Choctaw casinos.
“Man was crazy,” Spam said. “Just showed up that year with a bag. He stayed with some woman he know and then she kicked him out. He slept out in the woods for a long time. You know, out on the Trace. I don’t think he had a real job, people just called him Echo. Call him Echo ’cause he ended up only repeating you. Not answering you back.”
“Where was he from?”
“Don’t know.”
“Who was the woman?”
“Man,” Spam said, “long time ago. All I remember is when they strung his ass up for those little girls, ain’t nobody could believe it. Hardest part to think about was like you said, the dude who did that to those girls had a car and could talk, to threaten them. Echo didn’t have jack shit. Wouldn’t hurt no one. Just walked the highways with that bag on him, wandering around, looking for some day work.”
“What kind of bag did he carry?”
“Army bag,” Spam said. “Man had been in Vietnam and got out with his brains scrambled. Always carried that bag with him, wearing them Army boots.”
“Man,” Boom said.
Quinn’s cell started to ring and he stepped out into the gravel lot to answer. It was Lillie.
“Well,” she said. “Sonny Stevens does know his shit. Those fuckheads are here now, going through all my shit, my bedroom, my shed, and even into Rose’s room. I don’t like this, Quinn. I don’t like what they’re doing. I don’t like what they’re implying.”
“What do you think they’re looking for?”
“They’re taking all my guns,” she said. “They’re going to try and nail me for Dixon and Esau Davis and make their bullshit stick.”
“Where’s Rose?”
“Right here on the porch,” she said. “I’m waiting for them to be gone.”
“I’m in the Ditch with Boom,” Quinn said. “Hang on. Headed your way.”
The Born Losers called it a church meeting, and although they talked
about not believing in a damn thing, they took the church meeting pretty serious. There was an old card table placed under a swinging light and the core members would sit at that table: Chains as president, Big Doug as sergeant at arms, a skinny dude name Deke was the club treasurer. There was an enforcer named Gangrene who also worked at J.T.’s body shop in town, taking care of most of their bikes. Jason had heard he’d killed a couple men in a brawl outside Little Rock, but he seemed like a decent enough guy. Gangrene had taken the Harley to his shop to straighten out the frame and get the dents out of the gas tank. He was married, had two kids, and owned his own trailer.
Chains knocked on the table with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, it being the gavel, telling everyone who was milling about, playing darts, pinball, and pool, to shut the fuck up and open their ears.
Jason had been playing darts and he stopped. It was midday but dark and hot inside the clubhouse. It was nearly a hundred degrees outside and the fans inside weren’t doing squat.
“I’m sorry to say that scumbag Outlaw didn’t die,” Chains said. “Now they want a truce. We stay out of Tennessee and they stay out of Mississippi. It’s that clear.”
The men nodded. Somewhere, a “Hell, yeah.”
“They ain’t scared of us,” Chains said. “They’re scared of fucking Johnny Law, who has a hard-on for their skag business and the whores they’re running out of those trucker joints on Lamar and at the airport. They don’t need the pressure and the shit. I say we deal.”
“For now,” Big Doug said.
“Yep,” Chains said. “For now.”
Deke, skinny-faced, with a long, flat nose that looked like a penis, and droopy, sad eyes, nodded. “Money’s tight,” he said. “We got two hundred bucks and some change left. Can’t afford a war.”
“Me and Gangrene making a run down to New Orleans,” Chains said. “We’ll be back in four days. Don’t worry about money.”
“But we’re through with the Outlaws?” Big Doug said. “One of those motherfuckers kicked me in the balls. Hell, they tried to kill Jason.”
“If they’d killed your pal, that ain’t on us,” Chains said. “He’s not riding with our colors. He gets hurt and that’s on you, brother man.”
Big Doug leaned back into the folding chair and folded his big fat arms over his chest. He wore a black Molly Hatchet tee with the sleeves cut off. “Fuck me.”
Jason met eyes with Chains LeDoux, noticing the way the man had just trimmed his black beard, his hair still down past his shoulders. He wore no shirt and skintight jeans with combat boots, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. His eyes, those fucking gray eyes, just lingered on him. “You got a fucking problem, dude?”
Jason held the look, chalked up the pool cue, and said, “No problem.”
A couple fat boys at the bar exchanged a look, the big-titted black woman with the Afro lying prone in the velvet painting looking down at them. A man in the background of the painting peeked out from behind a curtain as the woman beamed in the spotlight.
They all heard the cars at the same time, tires on gravel. One of the boys went for the door and yelled back inside that it was the fuzz.
“God damn, son of a bitch,” Chains said.
Jason leaned over the table and broke apart the balls. Two solids went in. He stepped back and checked out the next shot as the club members walked to the door and filed outside. Jason took another shot, missed, looked up, and saw his partner, redheaded Hank Stillwell—Pig Pen—had left, too.
Jason shrugged and took a sip of beer, leaving the bottle at the edge of the table, and filed on outside.
Two patrol cars with Tibbehah County sheriff’s insignias sat parked at crooked angles outside the clubhouse. A hot, dry wind blew off Choctaw Lake, the lake dry and low as hell, as the sheriff came forward from his vehicle and asked, “Which of you boys they call Chains?”
Chains stepped forward. “I’m Chains.”
Big Doug stepped forward. “I’m Chains.”
And Deke rubbed his long, rubbery nose, stepped forward, and opened his mouth. “I’m fucking Kirk Douglas.”
“Y’all are true comedians,” said Hamp Beckett, who Jason had met on one prior occasion. Beckett, a Korean War vet and the longtime sheriff, had not been impressed with his Hollywood stories.
Beckett looked over Chains and the boys to Jason, hanging by the clubhouse door, and now looked even less impressed. He just shook his head and spit some Skoal out on the ground.
“I seen the pictures, and you seen the pictures, where the lawman comes out to harass the bikers,” Beckett said. “Me and you fellas playing a goddamn game like Wile E. Coyote and that fucking bird. But I don’t care about your long hair or your scooters or whatever y’all do out here on the lake. This is your place, and as long as nobody gets hurt, it’s not my trouble.”
Big Doug took a step back. Little Deke twitched for a moment, turned his head, and then did the same. Chains stood alone, with his tight jeans and combat boots and loose cigarette in his fingers.
“I got a call yesterday from the police chief up in Olive Branch,” Beckett said. “He knows y’all boys got into a rumble with some more scooter lovers up there. He ain’t issuing any warrants because I don’t think his jail is big enough to hold each and every one of you. But he wanted me to deliver a message. Go get your barbecue in Byhalia, stay out of his town. Is that too much to ask?”
Chains flicked the cigarette. He nodded with understanding and walked up to Sheriff Beckett, whispering in his ear, patting him on the back, and handing him the last couple hundred dollars in the club fund. The sheriff beamed and laughed, not saying a word, sticking the wad of cash into his uniform trousers and walking back to the patrol car.
“Y’all ride safe,” he said, before backing out and kicking up a billowing cloud of the dry and dusty road.
Quinn and Lillie waited at the DA’s office in Oxford the next morning with Sonny Stevens telling them everything was going to be just fine. “I don’t think they found what they were looking for,” Stevens said. “And now they want to slide something across the table? We’ll listen to their bullshit, thank them for their time, and then walk over to Ajax and have a Bloody Mary. What do you say? Be a shame to waste the trip.”
They sat together in the front conference room of an institutional-looking building off Monroe Avenue that had once been the local health department. The office still smelled like ammonia and old people. The floors were a dingy, worn linoleum under skittering fluorescent lights. Someone had tacked last year’s Ole Miss football schedule on the wall. As always, the scrawled Ls outnumbered the Ws.
“I didn’t care for the way I was treated yesterday,” Lillie said. “Dale Childress and his partner came to my front door, shoving that warrant into my face. They acted like they were raiding a drug dealer’s house, tracking mud on my kitchen floor, waking up Rose. They didn’t have the sense or decency to put anything back.”
“So noted,” Stevens said. “This entire matter has been disruptive as hell to y’all’s lives and that of the sheriff’s office.”
“I don’t think they’re making an offer,” Quinn said. “I think they’re about to show us their cards. Grand jury meets in a week. I don’t like the timing.”
“Don’t get your dick in a twist,” Stevens said, looking sharp today in a navy blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. He straightened his collar and cuffs. “Excuse me, Lillie. Sorry to be so crude. But let’s wait and see. I just don’t care to do all this sitting around. We’ve been in this goddamn place for almost thirty minutes and my ass is starting to hurt.”
Not two seconds later, the door opened and in walked Childress, followed by a fat man in a blue suit with a florid face and enormous gold glasses. The fat man looked as if he’d just jogged twenty miles to make the meeting. He offered a sweaty hand all around: “Trey Wilbanks, Assistant District Attorney.” Trey knocked over a coffee m
ug as he was shaking hands, but it was Quinn’s and empty and only made a minor thud as it fell to the floor.
“I appreciate y’all driving over this morning,” Wilbanks said.
“Didn’t know we had a choice,” Lillie said.
Stevens flicked his eyes at Lillie but quickly returned a calm, pleasant gaze back to the men, hands folded in front of him. Wilbanks flipped through some papers as if trying to recall exactly what this meeting was all about.
Childress hadn’t offered to shake hands. He sat beside the fat ADA and slumped into his seat, not smiling or making eye contact with Quinn. All of Childress’s good ole boy Aw, shucks act from their first meeting was gone.
“Deputy Virgil, do you own a fifty-cal sniper rifle made by the Barrett Firearms Company?” Wilbanks asked.
“No, sir,” she said. “You looking to purchase one?”
Wilbanks wiped his sweating face with a napkin. He smiled and glanced to Childress before continuing, showing no emotion as he spoke. “Seems you had one in your garage under lock and key.”
“That’s a lie,” Lillie said. “I know my guns.”
Wilbanks grinned a bit more, sending a What can I do? look to Sonny Stevens, who had ceased smiling a few seconds before. Stevens’s entire posture changed, listening to the questioning. The old man had his index finger covering his mouth, eyes flicking over the sweating young attorney as if trying to shush himself and not let go a tirade he was holding close.
“Our purpose of this meeting is to give y’all a chance to talk things over and perhaps offer another version of the events that gibes with this new evidence,” Wilbanks said. “We found fifty-cal shells in the hills above that old airstrip in Tibbehah County and bullets in the bodies of the two dead men. The fifty-cal rifle we found at Deputy Virgil’s home is now with a state lab with rush orders to get results. None of us want to make law enforcement look bad.”
