by Ace Atkins
“Dirt bikes,” Quinn said. “I used to always have Hondas out at my uncle’s place. We built a little dirt track just for jumping and messing around. It’s been a while.”
“Highway riding is something special,” Stillwell said. “When I had the money and a good bike, I could clean my head out. If I hadn’t had a bike when Lori was killed, I think they’d better gone ahead and took me to Whitfield and tied on the straitjacket. I just rode and rode. Seems like all I did for nearly ten years is stay on that bike.”
“And you rode a lot when Lori was alive?” Lillie asked.
Stillwell fingered at his nose, straightened himself against the back of the recliner. He looked to Quinn and Lillie and said, “Don’t think it’s a secret who I rode with back then.”
“Born Losers,” Quinn said.
“Among others,” Stillwell said. “Joined up with them when I got back from ’Nam.”
“Army?”
“101st Airborne, 506th Regiment.”
“When?”
“In the shit of it,” Stillwell said. “’Sixty-nine through ’73. Hamburger Hill. Yes, sir. I was there.”
Quinn had a cousin who had died in the same battle back in ’69, serving in the 101st but with another regiment. He recalled his great-uncle and great-aunt, sad old farmers who lived not two miles from his farm who had always seemed to be in perpetual mourning until they died fifteen years ago, two months apart.
“You think we’ll ever know?” Stillwell said. “Your uncle said I needed to make peace that some things just don’t have answers.”
“Diane Tull says a lynch mob killed the wrong man,” Lillie said.
“Yeah,” Stillwell said, hands a bit shaky on the arms of the recliner. “I know about all that.”
“You agree?” Lillie asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Because of Diane?” Quinn said. “Because of her seeing the man who did this a few weeks later?”
“No, sir,” Stillwell said, licking his lips and rubbing his face, eyes void and hovering on a spot between where Quinn and Lillie sat. He was still holding the old gold picture frame tight. “No. I know they had the wrong man from when they set out that night from the clubhouse. They were going to get someone no matter what. I tried to stop it. But it wasn’t going to happen. I can make sense of soldiers holding a hill, but this was just blood for blood.”
There were a few more pictures on the wall and an old black-and-white of a young man with a crew cut on a motorcycle. A young woman sat behind him, arms wrapped around his waist. The boy, Hank Stillwell, wore aviators and had a cigarette plucked in his mouth.
“What about the man who attacked your daughter?” Lillie said. “After all these years, has anyone told you anything?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “My firm belief is that the boy wasn’t from here. He was a hunter, a goddamn animal, coming through looking for young girls. He did what he aimed to do and took off down the road. I believe I have asked every man, woman, and child alive at that time if they ever saw a twisted son of a bitch who had a face like that. I still ask.”
Lillie nodded.
“So who was the man who was lynched?” Quinn said.
“Never knew his name,” Stillwell said. “Nobody did. He was sick in the head, lived up in the hills. Some said he was a vet, like me. Don’t know. Nobody talked much about it later. It was your uncle who set us straight after all this. He knew what we did and told us never to speak about it ever again. He said we’d have to make right with God what we done. He said no court of law could make sense of the savagery. He said that, ‘savagery.’ Your uncle was a hard man. He didn’t want no part of this posse.”
“How was it done?”
“I rode off when they caught him,” Stillwell said. “I guess that makes me a coward. I said my piece, but no one was listening. It was Chains LeDoux told me to ride off if I didn’t have the nuts for it. You know who he was?”
Quinn nodded. “I heard some.”
Lillie stood up and looked into the back of the property, to the woods and rows and rows of young pine trees. Quinn turned to see where she was staring and saw two figures walking at the edge of the woods, a glint of light off some field glasses, and then they disappeared.
“You have a lot of hunters around here?” Quinn asked, still watching the woods.
“Some,” Stillwell said. “Why?”
“That your property behind you?”
“I got fifteen acres of them pines.”
“You may have some poachers,” Lillie said. “We’ll check it out but you may want to call Wildlife and Game.”
Quinn was still seated and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “So you didn’t see it?”
“I saw them catch the man, take him away.”
“Are any of the old riders still around?”
Hank Stillwell bowed his head and closed his eyes, nodding over and over to himself. “You are aware that Chains LeDoux goes free from federal charges in a few weeks?”
“Yes, sir,” Quinn said. “I just heard the news from Johnny Stagg.”
“I ain’t forgot,” Stillwell said. “I got a lot of guilt and shit. Someone like Chains doesn’t have the right to be out and among living, breathing humans. If he comes back to Jericho . . .”
“Bad news?” Lillie said.
“Real bad,” Stillwell said.
Quinn stood. The old man remained in the recliner, where he probably spent most of his days and nights. Quinn scanned the woods again but didn’t see anyone roaming the edges. Lillie had already walked to the door, fingering at her handheld radio, calling for Kenny to sweep the roads around the Yellow Leaf church for some poachers out and about.
“‘Poachers’?” Stillwell said.
“Who else?” Quinn said.
“It’s Chains’s people,” the old man said, unchanged and not moving from the chair. A quiet heat poured into the room, smelling of sweet red oak. “Y’all realize they’re back?”
Quinn nodded, Lillie walking toward the thin metal door and out into the cold. He stood there and looked down at Stillwell, gaunt and graying, shoulder-length hair and beard with still some red in it. He could see the man riding with bikers back in the day.
“When’s the last time y’all went out and patrolled around Choctaw?”
• • •
Diane Tull performed happy hour at the Southern Star twice a week and an acoustic set at The River at the Sunday service. She liked the performances at the Star a bit better, as she could include her whole band and drink Jack Daniel’s on the rocks while she sang. She pulled out a torn piece of notebook paper from her Levi’s jacket and read the set list. A little changeup from last time.
“Kiss an Angel Good Morning”
“I’m the Only Hell My Mama Raised”
“Come Early Morning”
“She Called Me Baby” (Reworking a bit with “He Called Me Baby”)
“Trailer for Rent”
The last song of the first set was the newest. Diane didn’t care much, if anything, for what was coming out of Nashville these days, but she was really digging what the Pistol Annies were recording. She did like a singer from Alabama named Jamey Johnson. And, of course, good old Alan Jackson. But those guys were hardheaded and not part of that Hollywood sound, where producers never heard of pedal steel, Porter Wagoner, or that a good night of heartbreak and drinking was good for the soul. If she had to hear another song about how much a man loved sitting his porch and sipping sweet tea, she swore to Jesus she was going to blast her radio with her 12-gauge. Country music was about a man and a woman, drinking hard, and getting through life. She was sick to death of folks trying to put a glitter ball over Hank’s grave.
“You want another?” the bartender Chip asked.
“I’m good.”
“You look like
you’ve had a hell of a day.”
“Lots on my mind,” Diane said. “Say, go ahead and pop the top on a Coors. I’ll bring it up with me.”
She took the beer and reached down for the handle on her guitar case and walked up to the narrow little stage, where J.T. had leaned an upright bass, not sure why he changed up from the electric. A mandolin lay at his feet to play for certain songs.
Diane pulled the microphone close to the raised stool and positioned a second mic alongside her Martin guitar. Their drummer was a guy from Holly Springs named Wallace who’d played for a lot of big bands in Memphis and New Orleans. He knew all the songs by heart. They’d only gone through the list a few times, with him nailing every bit.
She passed the list around and then shook her head. “How about we do that new one, ‘Hard Edges’? I think I have it down.”
J.T. and Wallace shrugged and she dug into the song, the lyrics reminding her a hell of a lot about Caddy Colson, back when she’d been a woman taking off her clothes so the men didn’t look her in the eye. Some of the late-night conversations with that girl had left Diane cold. She tried to think about Caddy as she sang and how those hard edges hide that tender heart. Diane enjoying the music so much, thinking how the song would sound better with that lap steel to go with J.T.’s mandolin, that she didn’t even mind there were only about seven folks in the bar. She knew from a long time back, you didn’t play for the crowd, you played for yourself.
They went from “Hard Edges” and wove back into the set, getting a few songs down the line into that Don Williams classic, “Come Early Morning,” one of those songs that brought her back to how much joy the radio and old LPs on her grandmomma’s console player used to bring her. J.T. loved it, too, and would work in a harmonica part with the bass. Diane got so into it, she nearly missed the six men in leather and chains walk in the front door of the Star. They wore leather jackets, jeans, and heavy biker boots that thumped on the wooden floor.
Two of them walked up to the bar and the other four took seats close to the stage, kicking back and slumping in their chairs, seeming to already be drunk as hell. They wore beards and tats and motorcycle vests over their jackets. Didn’t take long before they were catcalling and calling out requests. Diane had to politely say, in her quiet country voice, “We appreciate you. But we don’t do requests.”
One of the men hollered out, “So what do you do and when?”
Diane turned to J.T. and J.T. shook his head, leaning in saying for her to forget it and play on. And maybe they had rattled her, god damn them, but she didn’t feel like playing “He Called Me Baby” and asked Wallace and J.T. to head into “Tulsa Time.” And there were more catcalls and beer bottles slamming on tabletops, shots of liquor, in shadows and neon. One of the men had a bald head and crossed eyes, tattoos across his face and down on his chin, and a weird inked circle across his Adam’s apple. He wore a T-shirt without sleeves and kept on staring at her tits as she played, Diane wishing like hell she hadn’t worn the glittered tank top reading Momma Tried and her tight bell-bottoms.
She kept her eyes down on the Martin, playing on through “Tulsa Time,” that long streak of gray hair covering her face and eyes. She finished out the set and then with slow, steady steps walked back to the ladies’ room. She splashed cool water in her face and tried to calm herself.
The door opened. In the mirror, she saw the inked man come up behind her. He slid the dead bolt closed.
“You know who I am?” His voice sounded ragged and guttural like his vocal cords had been cut.
She shook her head and held on to the sink bowl.
“You know our colors?”
She nodded.
“I like your singing,” he said.
He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, his jeans obscenely tight in the crotch, the scent of him something to behold in the tiny space.
“I like your singing,” he said again. “But keep the rest of that old bullshit to yourself.”
He unbolted the door and walked from the ladies’ room. Diane had watched the whole thing from the mirror over the sink. She breathed and breathed and then dabbed her face again, tucked her silver hair behind her ear, and marched back out for another drink and to start the second set.
When she walked back into the Star, all the bikers had left. She ordered a shot. Until she felt that warm Jack hit the back of her throat, she’d started to wonder if she’d imagined the whole thing.
But they’d been there. She could still smell them.
Quinn and Lillie drove the back roads around Yellow Leaf nearly an hour before they spotted the tracks. They were fresh, worn hard and distinct in the mud, and obviously made by some kind of cycle, not a car or truck. Quinn got out of his truck, Lillie riding with him now, leaving her Jeep at Stillwell’s place, and they counted three bikes riding along the dirt and into the tree line. They were big wheels, heavy set into the mud, too big and weighty to be dirt bikes.
“You want to see where they go?” Lillie said.
“Why the hell not?” Quinn said.
They followed the tracks only about twenty feet until they saw where the tracks became muddled and had sunk deeper in the mud. The tracks then circled back the way they came and out onto the road. From the turnaround point, they made out distinct boot prints heading into the woods.
“These aren’t hunters,” Lillie said.
“A kind of hunter,” Quinn said. “Trying to spook Stillwell.”
“I don’t think he spooks much,” Lillie said. “He’s too worn-out to study on things like that. He seems like he’s been waiting on them a long time.”
“You heard anything about what he was saying?” Quinn said. “About this gang coming back out to Choctaw Lake?”
“I know that place,” Lillie said. “Some shithole shack off a back road. I used to fish by a little river that ran into the lake there. Best place for crappie. But I hadn’t seen anyone go in that shack for years.”
“When’s the last time you been out there?”
“When’s the last time I’ve been fishing?”
“Come on,” Quinn said. “Let’s check it out.”
It was dark when they turned off Cotton Road and headed down south on past Dogtown. There were wooden posted signs from Wildlife and Game about the seasons for hunting and the need to obtain a license. By the edge of the lake, there was a park, with a playground, a couple piers, and a set of public restrooms. Quinn and Lillie drove through the empty parking lot down by the boat ramp and circled off the landing down an overgrown dirt road that seemed to lead nowhere.
“You sure this is it?”
“Look in your headlights, Ranger,” Lillie said.
In the narrow beam of headlights were many rutted tracks from motorcycles and cars. The lights shone ten feet ahead into absolute darkness, no moon above, and the road had been so untraveled that limbs and tree branches scraped at the doors and hood of the Big Green Machine.
“Boom won’t like this,” Lillie said.
“He does love this truck.”
“He made that truck,” Lillie said. “He got tired of you riding around in that old piece of shit.”
There was light ahead.
Multiple headlights and a bonfire lit up a gathering at the edge of Choctaw Lake. Quinn slowed into the elbow of the narrow dirt road, stopped, and cracked the driver’s window. In the distance, they could hear what sounded like Mexican corridas, Quinn familiar with the sound of the music through a few run-ins with his old pal Donnie Varner.
“A Tex-Mex biker gang?” Lillie said. “OK. This should be interesting.”
“You want to walk it?”
“Hell no,” Lillie said. “Let’s see what these motherfuckers are up to.”
Quinn shrugged. He hit the light bar on top of the F-250 and rode bigger than shit down that gravel road in front of the busted old clubhouse Hank
Stillwell had spoken about. There must have been twenty jacked-up trucks parked all around the shack and maybe thirty motorcycles. Out by the lakeside, several oil barrels billowed flame and smoke up into the dark sky. Men and women were walking around, the Mexican music seeming to come from one of the trucks, tall and high, with the back window painted with the face of the Virgin Mary. Quinn slowed the truck at the edge of the party. Everyone with a cup, bottle, or cigarette in hand. The men and women were Anglo and Mexican. They warmed themselves by the fire, tilting up bottles, and then looked at the flashing blues coming from the truck.
“OK,” Lillie said. “Now what?”
“We wait.”
“Wait for what?” Lillie said. “For them to start shooting?”
“Someone will ask what the fuck we want,” Quinn said. “Someone’s got to be in charge. They’ll want to show us they’re in charge.”
Quinn kept his window down, the air brittle and sharp rushing into the warm car. Quinn reached into the ashtray and relit the rest of the La Gloria Cubana he’d started that morning. He and Lillie sitting there listening to the sad song sung in Spanish with a steady backbeat and high notes of the accordion.
Not a minute later, a large man in a black leather jacket with a denim vest over it ambled on over to Quinn’s truck. He had a shaved head and a lot of ink on his face. At first, Quinn thought he had a small beard, but the closer he got to the truck, Quinn saw it was a Satanic goatee etched permanently onto his chin.
“You dating anyone lately, Lil?” Quinn said.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Here comes Mr. Right.”
The man walked up close to Quinn’s window and then leaned inside the truck, drunk-smiling to Quinn and Lillie and checking out the squawking police radio and the shotgun Quinn had mounted on the back glass.
“Evening, Officer,” the man said.
