by Ace Atkins
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“Don’t y’all dare use my damn name,” Curtis Creekmore said. “I don’t want to be listed as no CI, neither. I don’t want you even thinking about putting my ass on the stand because I swear to Holy Christ I will deny every damn word I’m about to tell you. What we talk about in Coffeeville damn well stays in Coffeeville. Just between me, y’all, and these here chain saws. We got a deal or not?”
Quinn looked to Lillie and she shrugged. “I guess so,” she said.
“What the hell you mean you guess so, woman? You said y’all would leave my ass in peace and let me tend to my damn business if I sent you in the right direction about Wes Taggart. And I promise you one goddang thing, what happened to Wes was a long time coming. That motherfucker has been wiping his ass all over north Mississippi since him and J. B. Hood took over at Sutpen’s. If I live to be a million years old, I’ll never understand what made Mr. White take a chance on those shit-for-brains. I figured on things going much worse than they did. Them Fed boys shut down their shop, but Buster White is still eating that prime rib and shrimp dinner down on the Gulf Coast, sunbathing with half-nekkid women and hanging out with superstars like Donny and fucking Marie. So what the hell does that tell you?”
“Donny and Marie?” Lillie said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“What did Wes tell you, Sheriff?” Creekmore said. “I know that boy couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He’d do anything to save his own ass.”
“Ironic,” Lillie said. “Ain’t it?”
Creekmore stared at Lillie, reaching for another cigarette from a pack on the workbench. He set fire to the American Spirit with a Zippo adorned with the Playboy bunny head. The air filled with more smoke as Creekmore snapped shut the lighter. “White used to be an honest crook,” he said. “He didn’t give a damn about nothin’ but making money. Long as you shared your business with him, everything was cool. Long as you didn’t cross him, everything was cool. Me and him used to be friends. I made him a lot of money and he cut me in on a lot of action. But since I got back from Parchman, the man ain’t the same no more. He’s not thinking about business. Gulfport and Biloxi ain’t enough for his fat ass. He’s looking to run the whole damn state.”
“He pretty much does,” Quinn said.
“As a crook,” Creekmore said. “Now he wants everything. I used to go down to his casino and get treated better than fucking Sammy Hagar. That man rolled out the red carpet for me. I got a suite, a big ole mess of chips, and vouchers for their seafood buffet. But last time I seen him, he didn’t have no time for Curt Creekmore. No sir. He was too busy entertaining some big ole swinging dicks from Jackson. Men who wore navy blue sport coats and fancy-ass ties and looked down on a fella like me like I was someone to put another coat of wax on the Hummer. White done expanded his vision. That’s why Wes got kilt. He knew where a lot of money was going.”
Quinn knew where he was headed but needed Creekmore to say it. Creekmore ashed his cigarette into a metal bucket filled with sand. He looked up at Quinn and nodded. “What all do you know about this ole boy Vardaman? The one who’s gonna make the state of Mississippi great again. Turning back the clock to the good ole days of plantations and dark folks working the field.”
“Plenty,” Quinn said.
“I don’t think no one saw that come-from-behind victory back there in the primary,” Creekmore said. “Running this state ain’t about nothing but money. And that was a war chest the fancy Jackson folks were never gonna open for a redneck like Jimmy Vardaman. Buster White wined and dined and got their rocks off with top Southern cooze. But no one could right things for Vardaman. That boy is stone-cold crazy and them folks all know it. All this nonsense with the fucking Watchmen Society. Only Buster White would bankroll a son of a bitch like that. The old guard in Jackson never wanted crazy come to town. You never know when crazy’ll turn on you. But Buster was just licking his chops to take a dump in the governor’s mansion and ole Wes Taggart was his go-between.”
“You know who did it?” Lillie asked. “Who were those boys?”
Creekmore held up his hand in the smoke and shook his head. “Oh, hell. I said too damn much.”
“Actually,” Lillie said. “You haven’t said enough. It’s not too late to drive you up to the Memphis drunk tank. I think they’d just love that long silky hair. They’d turn you into a regular Billy Ray Cyrus, working on your achy breaky ass.”
“Damn, Lillie Virgil,” Creekmore said. “Y’all got to do some damn things on your own.”
“The men who came to the jail looked Native American,” Quinn said. “Closest we have to that is the Choctaw Nation. I went down to the Rez and showed their picture around. No one seemed to recognize them.”
“Oh, yeah?” Creekmore sucked on the cigarette, burning it down to a nub. “Maybe I know who those fellas are.”
Quinn shook his head. “You gonna tell us?”
“Nope,” Creekmore said. “I value my life too damn much. And if I were you, I’d keep the fuck away from those boys. If they can break into a goddamn jail to git you, where exactly is a man safe?”
Tashi Coleman
Thin Air podcast
Episode 6: QUINN COLSON
NARRATOR: In one way or another, everything kept on coming back to the sheriff. Both the old one and the new one. Hamp Beckett and his nephew, Quinn Colson. The more time we spent in Tibbehah County, the more we met people who compared the two. Both U.S. Army vets, Beckett served in the Korean War and Colson in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Beckett earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. Colson earned three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star as a U.S. Army Ranger. But Colson didn’t want to talk about that time with our producer, Jessica. We couldn’t tell if it was out of privacy or modesty, but that part of his life was off-limits.
QUINN COLSON: I joined up right out of high school. I thought of it more of a vocation than anything. This was a year or so before 9/11.
JESSICA: I understand you didn’t have much choice in your decision.
QUINN COLSON [LAUGHING]: True. My uncle pretty much gave me an ultimatum. At first, I thought I might play college ball like every other kid in Mississippi. But after my senior year, I was told the Army was my best option. Best thing could’ve happened to me.
JESSICA: How so?
QUINN COLSON: I needed a heavy dose of discipline. The Army gave that to me. And being a Ranger only solidified it.
JESSICA: Did you see much action?
QUINN COLSON: Mmm-hmm.
JESSICA: Could you tell me a little about that? When did you first see fighting?
QUINN COLSON: I’m sorry. But what exactly does that have to do with Brandon Taylor?
NARRATOR: Even though he wouldn’t talk about it, Colson’s Army record was easy to access. Like he said, he joined the Army in 1999. He went through basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, a base he’d return to many times as a member of the elite B Company, Third Battalion, 75th Regiment. We learned a Ranger doesn’t just volunteer once but three times. A Ranger must join the Army, sign up for Airborne School, and then go through the rigorous Ranger Indoctrination Program. That’s where the Ranger motto, Sua Sponte, comes from: Of their own accord. Rangers are known as those in the Army who lead the way, as they often have to clear the most heavily fortified areas in a war zone.
Colson was one of the first into Iraq, securing the Haditha Dam, a highly important target early in the war that the Iraqis threatened to destroy.
QUINN COLSON: Getting the tab was one of the proudest days of my life. They really put you through hell. It’s not just physical. It’s mental, too. We start off at Benning and end up down in the swamps of Florida. If you’re lucky enough to make it to that point, you haven’t slept for days. You do everything you can to keep your mind sharp, focused, on the maneuvers and mission.
JESSICA: Will you tell us about th
e Silver Star?
QUINN COLSON: I was only doing what I was trained to do.
JESSICA: And what’s that?
QUINN COLSON: Neutralize the enemy.
NARRATOR: A newspaper account in the Army Times offered a brief narrative of Sergeant Quinn Colson in Afghanistan in 2006. His company was on a nighttime mission in Nangarhar Province when they came under heavy fire immediately after being inserted by helicopter. Sergeant Colson exposed himself to “rigorous gunfire” as he scaled to the highest elevation to knock out enemy targets. The firefight lasted eight hours, until sunup, and Colson protected the lives of his entire company as he called in air strikes.
JESSICA: How many people have you killed?
QUINN COLSON: Over there or in Mississippi?
NARRATOR: Since returning to his home in Jericho, Mississippi, in 2010, Colson has killed several people. One firefight between himself and his deputies and a crew of escaped convicts left four people dead—including the chief and assistant chief of the Jericho Police Department. An inquest into the shooting determined Colson and his chief deputy, Lillie Virgil, killed the police officers—not the convicts—but also determined that the police officers tried to kill Colson first. Colson and Virgil were exonerated, but the violent action and whiff of scandal caused him to lose his second election. The man who won, Rusty Wise, was shot and killed while deer hunting just a few weeks after taking office. Sitting in the deer stand with him and also shot in the ambush—Quinn Colson. Despite a gunshot wound, Colson managed to survive a couple of days alone in the woods and kill his armed attackers. It’s significant, because Colson is known around here for once surviving a week lost in the woods when he was just ten years old. News stations from Memphis covered his disappearance, much as they would Brandon Taylor’s just seven years later. The difference is Quinn Colson lived through it. He’s lived through a lot.
We found several other justified shootings with known criminals, drug dealers, and bank robbers—the usual law enforcement stuff. Too many to focus on in this podcast. One was particularly interesting. Colson was involved in a shoot-out earlier this year with a man named Rick Wilcox, a Marine veteran turned interstate bank robber. While trying to rob a local gentleman’s club, Wilcox and his crew killed five bikers paid to protect it. And when Colson arrived on scene, they destroyed his truck with a grenade launcher. Colson and Virgil took Wilcox alive this time. We’d probably tell you about this incident anyway, as it made the national news, but what makes it even more interesting is this: Rick Wilcox had a young son named Brandon, named to honor an old friend of his ex-wife. You know her as Maggie Powers Colson.
So, it’s been less than a decade since Quinn Colson came home from two wars. In that time, his sheriff’s office has racked up an unusually high body count for a county of this size and attracted statewide attention for their arrests. Not everyone sees this as a good thing.
PASTOR TIM TRAYLOR: Are we better off with Quinn Colson as our sheriff? I guess it depends on who you ask. I will say Tibbehah County was a lot more quiet under Sheriff Beckett. Sheriff Beckett was a man who liked to keep the peace. It seems like Sheriff Colson is always on a search and destroy mission. That’s just what I’m hearing. But who am I to say?
NINETEEN
Why do you have to use so much profanity?” Sam Frye asked, driving straight up Highway 45 from the Rez in the dark and the rain. Both hands on the wheel, wipers tick-tocking across the windshield. He had his black hair pulled into a ponytail, his flat black eyes looking up into the rearview mirror to behind them. “Can’t you make your music without all those motherfuckers, bitches, and all that business?”
“’Cause we hard, man,” Toby said. “You want those rhymes to drop on your head like a goddamn atom bomb. Why don’t you like it? Damn, it feels good to be a motherfucking Native. You talkin’ that shit, we the wrong ones to play with. My tribe and your tribe. Your race and mine. Mississippi Choctaw ’bout to take it to the pines.”
“Is that your crew?”
“Nah, man,” Toby said. “It’s Big Savage. He was born in Oklahoma but came back to Mississippi to keep shit real. That’s good stuff, man. Big Savage. His last video got like a half-million views on YouTube. Last time I seen him, he got himself a big ole black-ass Cadillac, spinning rims. Whole inside of that ride shines with electric blue light.”
“That’s what you see for yourself?” Sam Frye said, eyes on the broken yellow line ahead of him in the slanting rain. “Living large with Cadillacs and rolls of cash?”
“You know it,” Toby said. “Shit, man. Beats the fuck out of killing folks for a living. You do this shit long enough and tables gonna turn on your ass. Someone is going to be waiting for us. Like tonight. Rolling the fuck back up in Tibbehah County? You got to be some kind of crazy.”
“Not crazy,” Sam Frye said. “Tonight, I wait in the car and you go inside and take care of business.”
“I don’t like it,” Toby said. “Shit, man. I heard the sheriff here came down to the Rez, flashing a picture of me at the jail around the casino floor. Chief Robbie saw it. He had to warn the whole fucking tribe to shut their damn mouth.”
“I saw the picture,” Sam Frye said. “It looked nothing like you or me. Just a blurry photograph and a sketch of what they thought you looked like. But it was nothing. Don’t worry about Chief Robbie. He knows what we were sent to do. None of our people will sell us out. That business is all over.”
“What’s up with the Chief, man?” Toby said, sinking down in his seat, an Oakland Raiders cap with a flat bill down in his eyes. “Why he have us killing these folks up in the damn boogerwoods? What the hell they done to him? Or the tribe?”
“Why does it matter?” Sam Frye said. “If the Chief wants something done, we are the men he sends. This is his decision. It’s a high honor.”
“And we get paid?”
“We do.”
“Hope this shit don’t take long,” Toby said. “Me and my boys got a party over in Greenville tomorrow night. We sold out this motherfucking club by the railroad station, big-ass old warehouse, moonshine and black women twerking their big asses and all that countrified shit. You’d like it. You should go.”
“No thanks.”
“How ’bout we stop off at the titty bar on the way back?” Toby said. “I know the little girl I tore up last time would be real glad to see me. Wouldn’t mind a little time with her in the champagne room. Let her take my dog out for a little walk.”
“Not tonight,” Sam Frye said. “Tonight, we drive you far out in the country. We will stay to back unpaved roads where there is little light and no one to see us come or go. You will be the one who’ll go into this house and kill the man. Are you ready? Is that something you can do on your own?”
“I’ve done it before,” Toby said.
“Yes,” Sam Frye said. “But he was a man you knew and you wanted him dead. This man is nothing. I don’t even know what he looks like. Or even his name.”
“Then how will you know it’s even him?”
“Because there’s no one else,” Sam Frye said. “He’s an old man. He lives alone.”
“Why send us?”
Sam Frye shrugged, taking the last exit before the Tibbehah County line, trying to stay away from the big truck stop by the strip club a few miles down. He slowed into a small BP gas station, only four pumps and a little cinder-block store offering bait, tackle, and barbecue. Cajun boiled peanuts and ammo. He killed the lights and headed on inside to pay cash to fill up the tank. It was a wet, slick night and he didn’t want to stop again after they’d finished their business. A slick plastic sign popped in the wind reading BUD LIGHT WELCOMES HUNTERS.
When he got back to the car, he saw Toby fingering rounds into a .357 Magnum.
“You found the gun.”
“You told me it was under my seat.”
“Sometimes you look exactly l
ike your father.”
“No thanks,” Toby said. “That’s not why I do this.”
“Not for the tribe?”
“For the goddamn money,” Toby Williams said. “The music I make is to honor the history of the tribe. What we’re doing here is nothing to be proud of, Sam. We’re just taking out the trash for Chief Robbie. Where the fuck is the honor in that?”
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E. J. Royce was drunker than a goddamn skunk.
He’d been watching a Gunsmoke marathon on the Western Channel since the sun went down and the rain rolled in, trying to get a good look at Miss Kitty. There was something about the way the woman wore those fancy ole-timey dresses and those big hats with ostrich feathers that flat out did it for him. Royce had his pants around his knees waiting for his old parts to spring to life, a box of Kleenex and jar of Vaseline handy, the mood usually hitting him when Miss Kitty stepped on or off a stagecoach. Or when she gave one of those coy side eyes to old Matt Dillon. But at the damn moment, he was forced to watch some cock-and-bull story about Chester heading out of Dodge to go fishing and some captured Injun being brought into the general store by the local agent. The agent had a rope tied around the savage, the man being led around like a dog as he was being forced back to the Cheyenne Rez. That dumb-ass daughter of the store owner getting one look at that big-muscled savage and falling for him even though he doesn’t speak a word of English. Royce kept on trying to place the fella playing the Indian agent. Was it Strother Martin?
Damn, where the fuck was Miss Kitty? Hair done up just right, little mole on the side of her mouth. Royce bet she smelled like dusting powder and perfume and would give him a good talking-to. Make him understand manners, a napkin in his lap and how a man should use a knife and fork at the table.
Nothing. Royce hitched up his britches and walked back to the table, where he’d set the rest of the Fighting Cock. He found a quarter bottle and three cigarettes left. He lit up a cigarette and poured a good portion of the whiskey in a jelly jar before fanning out the match. The TV now showing the white girl meeting up with the Indian, who’d shook loose of the agent somehow out back of the barn. The damn Indian couldn’t say jack shit in English but the word help. The white girl told him he needed to go or her daddy was gonna shoot his dick clean off.
