The Forsaken

by Ace Atkins

  “Hell-fucking-yes.”

  Behind him stood his old Harley 1200 Super Glide, painted an electric black with an evil jester’s face on the tank. The saddle shone and the chrome gleamed in the early-morning light. Chains walked to it, touched the handlebars for the first time in twenty years, and started to weep. A big man with lots of ink on his face and across his throat approached Chains and offered his hand. He wouldn’t see Big Doug here. Big Doug had died in ’99 from lung cancer.

  Chains threw his leg over the bike, rested his foot on the kick-starter, and fired up the engine. All the Born Loser boys yelled. Up high on the second-floor balcony, Debbie waved. She was crying, too. She said this was it, she couldn’t see him again.

  She’d gotten married to a good man who she said ran the meat section at a Kroger in Southaven.

  The world had changed.

  But Chains hadn’t.

  “Let’s go fuck some shit up and raise some hell,” he said.

  Not one goddamn bit.

  Happy Birthday, America, and all you motherfuckers, too,” Big Doug said, toasting the Born Losers late that night. They’d been outside the clubhouse for most of the day, shooting guns at bottles and cans, smoking weed, and drinking tequila. Jason was so drunk, it was hard to stand, make his way to the jukebox, and find the Flying Burrito Brothers and punch up “At the Dark End of the Street,” one of his favorites. He’d come to the party late, having spent most of the night at the fair, winning Jean an armload of stuffed animals, taking her on swirling neon rides, and driving her home on his bike, a long, intimate kiss before they said good night. She knew Jason was headed back to the clubhouse to see how the boys were doing and she wanted no part of it.

  He was having a pretty good time until Hank Stillwell ran through the haze of dope smoke and started yelling through the music that some crazy nigger had killed his baby. The music stopped and the silence of it all was something. Big Doug had to run up to him, pin Stillwell’s arms against his side, and tell him to slow down. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Stillwell said some black man had forced his Lori and her friend Diane into his car and rode them out to Jericho Road. where he’d done it. “He raped Diane and shot my baby,” he said. “Sweet Jesus! God!”

  Big Doug hadn’t let go of his arms, not pinning him anymore but hugging him tight. “We got you, bud,” he said. “We got you.”

  “She died,” he said. “She died out there in the middle of some field.”

  Chains hadn’t said another word, the whole club getting to their feet, including Jason and the women. Almost everybody was drunk, high, or both.

  Everybody had come down from that tall buzz, knowing that one of their brothers had lost a child. A monster was still out there somewhere, rolling through the hills of Tibhehah County, their home turf, looking for more girls, thinking he could do as he pleased without any retribution.

  “What’d he look like?” Big Doug said.

  “Shit,” Stillwell said, “I don’t know. He’s black. He’s stealing white children. He’s raping and killing. God!”

  Big Doug still held him. Long Tall Sally poured a shot of tequila and brought it to where they stood wrapped together. Stillwell knocked the first one out her hand. But she didn’t flinch, Big Doug telling her to do it again, pour out another, and her setting it in Stillwell’s hand. He took that one, gulped it down, and then another, and Chains had some reds he placed direct in Stillwell’s mouth and within ten minutes he was stoned and glassy-eyed but talking about murder and vengeance and then stories about when Lori was born in Tupelo and how proud he’d been. “God,” he said. “She came to see me today. She asked me for money and I turned her away. I told her she was dressed like a whore.”

  Jason had heard it. He could not look the man in the eye. Someone had found Stillwell a chair as he kept talking. LeDoux marched out of the room, most of the gang following him, to the line of motorcycles. He was giving orders now, telling the boys they were going to ride down into Sugar Ditch and not leave until the blacks gave up their man. “Or we’ll burn down every last shack.”

  Stillwell was alone with Sally. She kneeled and cried with him.

  “I tried to talk to Diane Tull’s father,” he said. “I told him we needed to find this man who did this. But his wife wouldn’t let him go. Some people ain’t got no nuts. That’s why we ride together. A man fucks with one of us and he’s fucked with all of us.”

  He was slurring a lot.

  Jason looked to Sally. Sally was crying, rubbing Stillwell’s back.

  From the open door of the clubhouse, Jason heard, “Burn the fucking place down. We ain’t coming back until we found this bastard and hung him high.”

  The screams and yells brought a coldness to Jason’s stomach, sobering him up quick. He felt light-headed and weak, watching Stillwell crumple in on himself, nearly off the chair, the tiny circles on his back from Sally.

  Big Doug appeared big and determined in the doorway. He looked right at Jason and lifted his chin. “Come on,” he said. “You’re a part of us now.”

  Nearly a month passed and Johnny Stagg didn’t hear jack shit from Chains LeDoux. He was back in Tibbehah—Oh yes, sir—he’d ride the town square bigger than shit with his gang of thieves, tattooed morons, and rejects. Stagg had heard about their bonfire parties, and a few of his boys had a daily stop at the Booby Trap to watch the girls ride the pole and throw some money down for a pecker pull. But the hell that was to follow, the worry that came over Johnny Stagg all those nights, never came back. Stagg figured maybe that time in Brushy Mountain had been good for the man, maybe Chains didn’t have hate and vengeance on his mind. Maybe the fella just wanted to drink, get laid, if he was still inclined, and ride those scooters all over the South. Johnny thinking on this and then talking a bit to Mr. Ringold about the strangeness of it, this being the end of February, spring weather coming on now, with the windows open to his first office in the Rebel.

  “That’s good,” Ringold said. “The supreme art is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

  “You think that’s what we done?”

  “I think he may have gotten the message from Mr. Houston,” Ringold said. “Burning down their Memphis clubhouse was a bold move.”

  “Wasn’t my idea,” Stagg said. “Still don’t like it.”

  “But it showed they weren’t welcome,” Ringold said. “Them or the Mexicans.”

  “Fucking Mexes,” Stagg said. “We ain’t got no border. Down in El Paso or up in Memphis, those cartels have expanded way out from Texas. Atlanta is overrun with them folks. Don’t know why anyone thought they weren’t coming to Mississippi or Memphis.”

  “But they were already here?”

  “On account of this local boy named Donnie Varner,” Stagg said. “His daddy runs that Quick Mart out in the county. You know him? Ole Donnie tried to double fuck the cartel and the ATF. He’s in federal prison at the moment. Word has it he done it all for some good-looking piece of Mexican tail.”

  “What’s Houston’s story?” Ringold said. “Why won’t he do business with them anymore?”

  “Sonsabitches tried to kill him,” Stagg said. “He was coming out of some disco up on Summer Avenue, drinking champagne and doing what blacks do, and some cartel boys sprayed his Escalade with an AK-47.”

  “That’ll piss you off.”

  “I think we got things worked out just fine now,” Stagg said. “We got LeDoux knowing his place. I got Sheriff Colson knowing which side the bread is buttered on. We get LeDoux back in prison, and that’d be just the damn cherry on things.”

  “How close are we?”

  “’Course you know Colson arrested his own goddamn father,” Stagg said. “He cuffed him, charged him as an accessory in that lynching, and kept him in the county jail for three days before he got kicked loose.”

  “If he didn’t have anythin
g on him,” Ringold said, “why’d he charge him?”

  “I imagine Quinn’s got some problems with his old man,” Stagg said. “I knowed Jason Colson for a long time and real well. He’s a crazy son of a bitch and the biggest cooch hound in north Mississippi. His wife is a fine woman, although she thinks I’m trash come to town, and Colson running out on her was a disgrace.”

  Ringold nodded. He leaned back in his chair so the front legs came off the ground and his back rested against the wall. “Colson is fucked,” he said. “Ain’t nobody in this town except for his momma and family will vote for him. He’s done.”

  “Maybe,” Stagg said. “Honestly, I don’t give a shit. There’s a local boy who’s thinking of tossing his hat into this thing, was in the Guard and had a couple years with Eupora P.D., and he might be a good fit. You can’t trust Colson.”

  Just then Willie James knocked on Stagg’s office door with a shell-shocked face and wide-open mouth. He just kept shaking his head over and over and telling Stagg that he needed to come on with him outside, that there was some trouble that he needed to tend to at that very moment.

  Stagg looked to Ringold. Ringold leveled the chair and stood, wearing a Levi’s jacket over his automatic pistol. They followed Willie James through a back hall and the bustling kitchen, floor slick with grease, until they turned outside through a pair of doors and watched as Willie James pointed to the a large rusted dumpster and a couple cooks and waitresses who were looking inside a small sliding door cut in the side.

  “What is it?” Stagg said. “Shit. Tell me.”

  Willie James seemed unable to speak. He just pointed.

  Stagg walked on over to the dumpster, pissed off as hell that he got bothered for every little thing going on at the truck stop. Last week it was a bird that had flown into the convenience store, and two weeks ago he had to drive a girl from the club to the hospital in Jackson ’cause her fake titty exploded.

  “What the hell?” Stagg said, peering through the opening, all that rotten chicken and meat loaf and moldy hamburgers making a hell of a stench. He couldn’t see nothing. And then the back of a man emerged, facedown and not moving. Stagg just seeing the shape of him, the old flannel shirt and an arm reaching forward as if the man had tried to crawl himself out of this world of shit. “Well, I’ll be. Willie James? You crawl in there and see who it is.”

  “I’d rather not, sir.”

  “Get your ass in there,” Stagg shouted. “Use a fucking stick or something, but flip his ass over.”

  Willie James was not pleased, as he used the opening as a toehold and then reached up on the edge of the dumpster and crawled on into the mess. One of the cooks, the fella run the pit, gave him a long busted piece of PVC line, and James stepped over that garbage and rotting shit like the man was gonna turn over and say “Boo.”

  “God damn it,” Stagg said, “do it.”

  “Hold on,” Willie James said. “Shit. Hold on, Mr. Stagg.”

  Ringold seemed not interested a bit in what was going on, standing back with a couple waitresses and talking about if it might rain later that day. Here they had a goddamn body in the dumpster and he was worried whether he was going to get wet.

  Willie James stuck the PVC line under the chest of the poor son of a bitch and used it as a wedge, losing momentum at first, but then sticking it hard and good and getting the body rolled over in the soft bed of garbage. The stench was something god-awful as the fella turned.

  Stagg looked through the sliding door. The damn face of Hank Stillwell stared right at him with wide fish eyes and a mouth so big you could put your fist in it.

  “Who is it?” Willie James said. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Stagg said. “Never saw the son of a bitch in my life. Somebody needs to call the law and get this mess out of here. Son of a bitch . . . Hell . . . God damn.”

  Ringold moved over to the opening, peered inside, and then looked to Stagg. As he brushed by Stagg’s shoulder, Ringold said, “Here we go.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stagg said. “Would somebody call the fucking law?”

  • • •

  “Momma is back in her own home,” Caddy said. “I guess Jason and I need to be thinking about getting settled, too.”

  “I was thinking about moving in with Ophelia,” Quinn said. “You can do as you like.”

  “This is your house.”

  “This was Uncle Hamp’s home and, before that, it was our mother’s and, before that, our grandparents’, and so on,” Quinn said. “It doesn’t belong to just one of us.”

  “Look at you.”

  “What?”

  “You sure want to shack up with Ophelia Bundren,” Caddy said. “Good for you. You think y’all will get married soon? Have some kids?”

  “Caddy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can we just sit here without stirring the shit?” he said.

  Caddy laughed, Quinn’s arm around his sister’s shoulder as they swung on the old porch swing and watched the cattle graze out in the pasture. The nights had grown pleasant and the daffodils were big and yellow and in full bloom. Quinn had on a T-shirt and jeans, his boots by the door. Off for the night, Caddy had cooked them all some salmon croquettes, mashed potatoes, and English peas. Quinn drank a cold Coors during and after, enjoying one of the first warm nights they’d had in months, welcoming the end of a long winter.

  “I’m not stirring the shit,” Caddy said, “but I would like to know just a little bit more about our father. What did he look like? What did he say? Is he as crazy as folks say?”

  “I’d back away from this situation like a burning car,” Quinn said. “My dealings with Jason were not pleasant.”

  “You calling him Jason?”

  “I’m not calling him Dad.”

  “He had to have a good reason,” Caddy said. “If he didn’t have a good one, he would have made one up.”

  “He tried,” Quinn said. “None good.”

  “And you charged him with murder.”

  “I charged him as an accessory,” Quinn said. “He wouldn’t talk. He just sat there not answering any questions. He got some shitbird lawyer out of Jackson to bust him loose. But he’s not done with any of this. He has to come back, answer to things. We’re putting together a case on the lynching. Lillie and me.”

  Caddy took in a long breath. Little Jason was inside watching television, a show on PBS about a couple brothers who fight crime against wild animals called Wild Kratts. Jason liked animals and thought of himself as an animal protector and rescuer.

  “I want to talk to him,” Caddy said.

  “No you don’t.”

  “Not your decision,” Caddy said. “Sorry.”

  “That’s like sticking your head in an oven,” Quinn said. “Don’t do that to yourself. Keep away from him. Let me put things together, but don’t offer yourself up. You were young, but you know he doesn’t have feelings. What kind of man walks away from his wife and two kids? Not just walk away but has no contact with us at all? Like we never even happened?”

  “I want to know his reasons.”

  “Who gives a shit?”

  “I give a shit, Quinn,” Caddy said. “I want to know. When I was young, it about turned me inside out.”

  “We had bigger issues.”

  Caddy was silent, not wanting to address that time in the woods, that man following them both, and what had happened in that old and rotten barn. Maybe Jason had loved them once, but he was a man who loved himself so much that he did everything he could to destroy himself. Quinn had come to the realization that the stunts weren’t bravery but cowardice, wanting to break himself into bits so he wouldn’t have to feel a thing. Why should he be admired for that kind of bullshit? He and Caddy would have never gone out into the Big Woods if it wasn’t for him skipping town . . . again.

  “Did he
try to talk to you?” Caddy asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Did he try and explain things?” Caddy said. “With him and Momma? And him not coming back ever?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did it make sense?”

  “He finally quit talking to me,” Quinn said. “Lillie and I tried to break him down, Lillie being really, really good at it. But he just shut up, wouldn’t talk about himself and that gang and the hanging of that fella. Disgraceful. People wonder why Mississippi is the armpit of this country.”

  They rocked some more. A nice warm breeze passed over them, the bright, fun sounds of the television show coming through the open door, Jason giggling inside.

  “This is your house.”

  “You,” Caddy said, “get married. Bring her here. Have a family. Don’t be frozen. Move on. You’re not that type of man. Move on to the next thing, the next story. Grow. Life does not stop.”

  “Preacher?”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “I have no problem with a woman being a preacher,” Quinn said. “Just don’t like to hear it from my sister.”

  Quinn’s cell rang. He looked at it, seeing it was dispatch, picked it up and answered. Mary Alice said there was some kind of trouble out at the Rebel Truck Stop, not sure what was going on, but Lillie was headed that way. “Shit.”

  “What?” Caddy said.

  “Somebody must’ve drove off from the pump without paying,” Quinn said. “And Johnny Stagg got his dick in a twist.”

  “Is he as bad as you think?”

  “Worse.”

  “Stay here,” Caddy said. “Don’t mess up supper. Let Lillie handle things.”

  “It’s my job,” Quinn said. “And I would never make Lillie deal with that son of a bitch alone.”

  “She’s pretty tough,” Caddy said. “Toughest woman I ever met.”

  “I have no doubt,” Quinn said, “that Lillie Virgil could handle this whole county without my help.”