by Ace Atkins
It was raining outside, turning the long drive to the main road into a muddy goddamn river. Royce’s dogs kept on scratching at his door to let them in, but he’d be goddamned if he’d let those hounds come in and shake their wet coats all over his sofa and chairs. He walked over to a window covered in Visqueen as the lightning flashed across the sky, power dimming and then coming back on. A thin line of electricity running two miles from the other nearest house. If he lost power, it might take those lazy assholes at the co-op three fucking days to fix it, leaving him to live out on the land like goddamn Jeremiah Johnson. The dogs kept scratching.
Royce reached down and picked up his boot off the ground and tossed it at the door. “Shut the hell up.”
He headed back for his La-Z-Boy, settling in with a jelly jar full of whiskey. All the racket with the storm and the dogs making him lose the last few minutes of Gunsmoke. Still no Miss Kitty, just that white girl and the Indian, the dumb girl now packing up some vittles for him and filling up a canteen full of water. But here comes Chester, riding high and tall on his horse, headed to his fishing hole and coming across the white girl’s farm just as she’s about to play cornhole with the Indian. If he knew Chester, that boy was about to shoot the ole Injun right in the pecker.
Royce tossed back the rest of the whiskey in the jelly jar. Still had some supper left over on the stove from the Quick Stop, a spicy chicken wing and a whole Styrofoam carton of baked beans and turnip greens. He was about to set down with it when Miss Kitty in that white dress filled him with a sharp, crooked pain.
Blam!
Yep, Chester shot that damn Indian, knocking his ass right onto the ground, the white girl springing up and running for him, madder than hell. Chester shocked as could be this white girl knew the boy. He trusted me and you tried to kill him.
How could she blame Chester? He thought the Injun was trying to steal a horse. Now she wanted Chester to save his red ass.
What the fuck was the world coming to? He couldn’t even watch fucking Gunsmoke without being force-fed a goddamn politically correct message. Damn Chester and the Cheyenne now lighting out for the hills before the white girl’s daddy came for this red man’s pecker. Something about Chester keeping a goddamn promise.
I’m a friend, Chester said. A friend. I got to get that bullet out of you.
What a bunch of horseshit. He heard thunder and the howls of the dogs. More scratching at the door, the Visqueen in the windows popping and fluttering with the storm.
As the lightning cracked again, he saw something outside that gave him more of a jolt than seeing Miss Kitty’s ole red-haired crotch waffle.
“Shit,” Royce said, getting to his feet. “Son of a damn bitch. Who’s out there? Is that you, Colson?”
Royce had seen a man. The dogs making a big racket now, howling and barking.
“Who the fuck is out there?”
Royce looked for his gun but couldn’t find it under the mounds of clothes and old magazines, empty bottles and cigarette cartons. His heart fluttered in his old chest like a wind-up toy. Where the hell did he put his goddamn shotgun? What the fuck was going on outside? He found his pay-as-you-go phone over by the nearly empty bottle of booze and dialed in to the sheriff’s office.
“I seen an Indian out there in the rain.”
“Mr. Royce, you been drinking again?”
“I know what I saw, some ole Indian sneaking out my property, probably looking to steal a horse. But he ain’t gonna find no white girl to save his ass. No, ma’am. I ain’t like ole Chester. Ole E. J. Royce shoots to kill if he could find his goddamn weapon.”
“We done told you to quit calling, Mr. Royce,” the smart-mouth black woman said. “Last time you told me the MS-13 gang was selling drugs down at the Gas & Go in Blackjack. Other time, it was some black girl selling cookies for the Girl Scouts.”
“Call the sheriff,” Royce said. “Call the goddamn sheriff and tell him what E. J. Royce done seen.”
* * *
* * *
Quinn and Lillie rolled back into Tibbehah County at 2100, heading straight for the sheriff’s office, when he got the call from Cleotha, hearing a lot of talk about E. J. Royce’s crazy ass. The rain had gotten worse. Quinn slowed his truck, high beams on, as he got off at the first exit, taking the back way into town.
“He said what?” Lillie said.
“Royce said he was under attack by Indians.”
“That I’d love to see,” Lillie said. “Maybe if he’s that damn drunk, he’ll tell us the truth about why he’s spreading around all that bullshit about you.”
“I don’t have time for Royce,” Quinn said. “You need to get back to Memphis. And I need to get on back home. I’ll send a deputy out for a welfare check.”
“But Indians,” Lillie said. “He said Indians.”
“What did you expect?” Quinn said. “Royce never heard about Native Americans. I had to dial it down a good bit last time I saw him at the Piggly Wiggly. I’d just as soon not be in that man’s presence. I will never understand how my uncle put up with him.”
“I think he felt sorry for him,” Lillie said. “Hamp could be charitable to a damn fault. How about we roll on that way and see what we can find? I sure wouldn’t mind a few minutes with Royce. I’d love to know who’s aiming to make your family look bad.”
“We know.”
“Skinner, for one,” Lillie said. “I bet he’d throw a fucking parade if you got voted out of office. Between all the trouble you caused for him with the supervisors and you going after Vardaman, that’s plenty of damn motivation. I’ve got to be honest with you, Quinn. I’m surprised as hell they hadn’t come gunning for you a lot sooner.”
Quinn slowed down on the country road, turning on his ticker, slowly stopping in the rain before deciding to take a hard turn north and head on up to Carthage and the wilds of Tibbehah County, where old E. J. Royce lived like he hadn’t moved on to a new century.
“Did you ask him about those remains you found?”
“I didn’t,” Quinn said. “But Dave Cullison went and talked to him. Royce pled ignorance on the matter.”
“He’s good at that,” Lillie said. “What’d you hear back from the state folks?”
“It was a woman’s body,” Quinn said. “Ophelia Bundren thinks the remains had been buried at least twenty years ago.”
“Maybe at the time Brandon Taylor went missing?”
“Maybe,” Quinn said. “Bones were pretty busted up. And we still don’t have a cause of death. Body was buried nearly ten feet deep.”
“With a location passed on by a Brandon Taylor freak who remains unknown to this day,” Lillie said. “You got to wonder why the fuck would all this shit start spilling out right now. Brandon Taylor’s been dead a hell of a long time and his ass ain’t coming back. Who’s making trouble? And why?”
“I didn’t tell you something,” Quinn said, steering around the winding road, headlights still on high, shining up into the tree branches and along the slick pavement. “Maggie and I tried to make contact with whoever was writing those letters.”
“And how the hell did that go?” Lillie asked.
“Nothing came of it,” Quinn said. “I think I spooked whoever wanted to meet with Maggie.”
“When was this?”
“Three weeks back,” Quinn said. “This person asked Maggie to meet them at the Flying J up in Olive Branch and not to tell anyone, especially not me. After we found the woman’s body, we agreed not to keep any more secrets. Nobody knows anything about this wild card.”
“No one showed?”
“Someone showed,” Quinn said. “Some man had a waitress pass along a locker key to Maggie. That’s how we got the old picture and the necklace. I took a look at the truck stop video, processed the evidence for prints, but didn’t get a damn thing. DeSoto County reached out to Memphis TV stations
with the video still, asking for tips.”
“I have to be honest, too,” Lillie said. “I wouldn’t put it past your uncle to have muddied the water around the Taylor case. Hamp was a good man and tried to do the right thing. But Lord knows, he failed plenty of times.”
Quinn turned onto the road to Carthage, passing through the little grouping of a Dollar General, two gas stations, and a metal shed for deer processing. The dash of his truck glowed in the darkness, a slow rain drumming onto the windshield and cab of the truck. The road snaked through fields and forests, coming up into a thicket of pine trees, skinny cottonwoods along a creek bed. The creek was roiling hard in Quinn’s headlights, a muddy slice of water snaking down a rocky drive from up toward Royce’s place.
“If you feel the need to slap the taste out his mouth, don’t do it,” Lillie said. “Just give me the nod and I’ll do it for you.”
* * *
* * *
Royce found his shotgun and slung open his front door into the rain. Wind chimes made of old coffee cans and spent bullet casings tinkled like bells on his front porch. He’d pulled on a pair of old boots and a stained work shirt that smelled like the inside of a chicken house. Holding the gun, he nearly got knocked off his feet by the dogs, one of them almost his height as she stood on her hind legs and put her paws on his shoulders. Royce shooed them away, clutching the old J. C. Higgins shotgun loaded with buckshot and salt.
“Who the fuck’s out there?” Royce said, yelling into the blackness and rain, stepping out onto the soft ground by his shack. “Better show yourself or you’re gonna be picking rock salt out of your asshole in jail, boy. Come on out.”
He couldn’t see nothing without his glasses, his eyes filling with water. Royce kept the shotgun up in his arms, scanning the cleared land and the edge of the woods. There weren’t many places to hide. Behind his truck, maybe, or beyond to his work shed. As he took one step in front of the other, slow and easy, everything looked fuzzy and distorted like some old black-and-white movie. He got to thinking maybe he didn’t see nothing at all. Maybe that crazy mix of the Fighting Cock and watching that old episode of Gunsmoke had messed up his goddamn mind. His dogs trailed behind him as he passed by the old truck, peeking under the chassis, and then heading out to the shed where he kept his mower and some old tools.
A damn river of mud and shit was eroding his red clay hill, running over his drive and down to the main road. He could feel the wetness soaking into his leather boots as he got to the little tin shed and cut on the lights. The wind whipped the old lamp to and fro, Royce having to squint into the darkness past the heaps of junk he’d collected over the years. Used-up mower blades, empty oil cartons, and busted-up furniture.
He couldn’t see nothing and walked on out of the shed, favoring his left leg, the arthritis kicking up in his right, that leg dragging behind him as he got back to the porch. Royce saw the goddamn door was wide open and those dogs were nowhere to be found, probably already ate up his leftover chicken and greens, maybe getting to some of the homemade jerky old Tom Roberts had given him for Christmas. Fucking dogs. Ain’t got a lick of sense or no goddamn manners.
Royce left the door open and called out for his hounds, hearing some shuffling in the kitchen. He lay the shotgun on the La-Z-Boy and hobbled on back there in the dark, the power having gone out while he had been outside. There was a breaker box above the commode that maybe he could fiddle with, but he knew he was probably shit out of luck. No more dinner. No more Gunsmoke. No more Miss Kitty, with her pretty red hair and high-dollar crotch waffle.
“Git,” Royce said, calling out. “Y’all hear me? Git outta there. Leave my supper alone.”
Then he heard the dogs outside, baying and barking, tracking some kind of animal out into the woods. He stood there in the kitchen, listening, reaching around the table for his supper, when he looked up and saw the shadow of a man before him.
“If you come to rob me, I don’t got shit but the television,” Royce said to the shadow. “And it’s busted most of the time.”
The shadow didn’t talk back, Royce now knowing he had seen the man outside his window.
“You that black-eyed Indian?” Royce said. “The same one who shot up the jail?”
The figure didn’t move or speak. Royce could hear the tapping of water off the man’s jacket, nothing really but a form in front of him.
“Well, goddamn son of a bitch,” Royce said. “Go on and get it over with. I should’ve known I wasn’t never getting no payday. Ole E. J. Royce never gets what’s coming to him.”
The man lifted his hand and Royce could clearly see the gun. The man stepped forward, Royce seeing it was a goddamn Indian but also a fucking kid. Royce smiled, hacking out a laugh, the boy wearing a silly-ass hat like some kind of black man would wear. That boy didn’t look like nothing but a cheap filling station thief.
“Don’t go on and get stupid, boy,” Royce said. “That pistol in your hand ain’t no fucking toy.”
And the damn Indian shot him. Royce fell back, slamming onto the kitchen table and scattering the baked beans and greens, the pint of Fighting Cock shattering on the floor. Royce held on to his chest, feeling blood and so much pain he couldn’t even mouth the words for mercy. And then the second shot came and it was all over.
* * *
* * *
Quinn stopped at Royce’s old blue mailbox and knocked his truck into four-wheel drive, turning up onto the eroding gravel road and heading toward the old shack on top of the hill. Lillie popped some chewing gum as she watched the truck’s bright lights wash over Royce’s place, saying even dogs deserved better shelter.
“Doesn’t look like he’s here,” Lillie said.
“He’s here,” Quinn said. “There’s his truck.”
Quinn slowed and stopped close to the front door of the shack, a group of a half-dozen Walker hounds coming out to greet them as he got out. Lillie followed, pulling on the hood of a black slicker, the truck’s headlights shining up onto the porch and into the darkness. Quinn reached down for his radio mic and called in the location to Cleotha and hit the light bars to make sure the old man didn’t come out shooting.
Lillie pulled the Sig Sauer off her belt and headed up for the porch.
“I thought you said to take it easy,” Quinn said.
“This is easy,” Lillie said.
Quinn carried the old Winchester lever-action he’d brought with him to the range. He called out to Royce, seeing the shoddy aluminum storm door was wide open, battering against the wall. He called out again. The door kept hammering against the siding.
The dogs started to bark—rapid, high barks—as if they were on the trail of something. Lillie nodded to Quinn and followed the barking around the back of the property. The storm had passed, but thunder rolled in the distance as he walked up onto the porch and into the house. Another dog headed out to greet him, wagging its tail.
Quinn reached for a small flashlight he kept on his belt and shone it around the inside of the shack, the place smelling like a damp ashtray, wet dogs, and kerosene. He aimed the light over an easy chair and old couch, mounds of clothes and trash scattered around the floor. Quinn had been in the shack before and never knew how a human being could live in such filth. As he turned back to a far window, the electricity cut on, the overhead lights brightening the room, the television flashing on as Royce’s satellite worked to regain the signal. Matt Dillon appeared as a drawing that morphed into the man as he reached for his six-shooter and shot toward the screen. The volume turned up high for Royce’s deaf ears, filling the silence. James Arness as Matt Dillon. Dennis Weaver as Chester. Milburn Stone as Doc. And Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty.
He heard a snuffling and rooting around in the kitchen, Quinn seeing the backs of two dogs hunkered over something that had fallen on the floor. There was the smacking, lapping sounds of dogs eating. As he passed by the kitchen table, he saw a man�
�s legs and a pair of muddy boots, the cracked linoleum floor splattered with blood.
Another gunshot cracked. Quinn looked back to the TV but it wasn’t Gunsmoke. Two more quick shots from a handgun.
Quinn ran outside and back around Royce’s house, Lillie standing by a stretch of apple trees, her arms stretched out with the Sig.
“He had a gun,” Lillie said.
Quinn nodded, scanning the woods line, searching for the shooter as he reached for his radio. Rain pelted Quinn’s back as Lillie wandered up close to him.
“Royce is dead,” Quinn said.
“This boy wouldn’t stop,” Lillie said. “When I yelled out to him, he turned and raised his gun. I hit him, Quinn. He couldn’t have gone far.”
Quinn reached down for a hat on the ground, a flat-billed Oakland Raiders baseball cap. “Could it be one of our guys?”
“Looked like a Native kid to me,” Lillie said. “Just like Royce said. I guess even liars tell the truth once in a while.”
“We better get this secured fast,” Quinn said. “Royce’s dogs were already getting to him, making a mess of the crime scene.”
“Dogs,” Lillie said, shaking her head. “They’ll damn near eat anything.”
* * *
* * *
Sam Frye sat in the idling car, looking out into the rain, when he spotted Toby stumbling from the woods. The boy holding his stomach, falling down to his knees. Sam ran out and grabbed the boy, helping him into the backseat, finding an old towel to hold to the gunshot.
