The Shameless

by Ace Atkins

  “What happened to those folks in Jackson?” Boom said. “I thought they were going to pay for the construction.”

  “That was the idea,” Caddy said. “Bentley said they should have everything in order by Christmas. But you know that’s a long stretch of time. We can’t let folks go hungry just because I moved on this too quick.”

  “I’ll be back on the road in a few weeks,” Boom said. “I get these damn pins taken out of my leg and I should be good to go. Lots of outfits up in Memphis who’ll hire me.”

  “Don’t move too fast,” Caddy said, leaning back on her arms, hands flat on the bed. “Take care of you.”

  “Been taking care of myself too damn much,” Boom said. “I go from sitting at my house to getting a ride over to rehab three times a week. I ain’t gonna lie to you. Ain’t nothing for me to do but sit around and watch television and drink. Drank me a whole damn bottle of Jack Daniel’s last night. Only thing that kills those damn snakes in my head.”

  Caddy nodded, both of them sharing the ugly addiction, although Caddy hadn’t a drink or pill in more than three years. She’d come down hard when Jamey Dixon got killed, acting like she was tough and doubling down here at The River, until one night she found herself rolling up in the backwoods for a few pills, a little weed, one little hit from a pint of Aristocrat vodka to keep those demons in check. The next thing she knew, she’d left Jason and Tibbehah County and was back somewhere in Memphis, Quinn kicking in the door to an apartment with an ax handle in his hand and taking her home.

  “The kids’ league banned me for the rest of the season.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to apologize to Jason,” Boom said. “He don’t need that bullshit in his world.”

  “Not necessary,” Caddy said, patting Boom’s huge thigh. “That boy’s seen ten times worse from me or his grandmother at Thanksgiving. One year she got so damn loaded she performed the ‘American Trilogy’ on top of the kitchen table.”

  Boom grinned, shook his head, feeling the rough edges of his beard. “Everything’s gonna be better when I get a truck back, jamming those gears and hitting the highway. Get the hell out of my little shack. Damn, Caddy. I think I’m losing my mind.”

  Caddy wanted to tell him about riding up to Memphis with Tashi Coleman, riding past those shitty little motels and pool halls, spending some time back in the belly of the beast, Dixie Belles, to find out where they could track down Ansley Cuthbert. She didn’t think much of it that night, while she was doing it, watching the whole thing like it was a movie playing back in her head. But since then, it had brought her full awake at three in the morning, gasping for breath, sweating, turning on the nightlight to make sure she was safe in bed, heading into Jason’s room to pat the covers, make sure her son was still with her. No. Boom didn’t need to know all that. He had too much of a burden on him now, a damn good man who’d lost his way and his purpose. Something in sad supply in Tibbehah.

  “You think I should tell Bentley the truth?” Caddy said. “That we’re flat-ass broke?”

  “What harm could it do?” Boom said, cutting his handsome dark eyes at Caddy. “That boy’s crazy about you. Ain’t nothing gonna change that fact.”

  “You know, I believe there is a reason for all this,” Caddy said. “My relapse? What happened to me, it was for a reason. I got weak again, I didn’t value what I’d been given. God showed me what it was like to lose it all, again. And because of that, I’m twice as strong as I used to be. I needed Jamey Dixon at first, and when he was gone, I was left with me and didn’t think I was enough. Now, this is all me.”

  “That ain’t a reason not to ask for help.”

  “One thing I’ve learned running this ministry is everyone hates to beg,” Caddy said. “I’ve prayed and prayed on it. Something will happen. And something good will happen for you.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Sometimes Fannie liked Vienna’s best right before the front doors opened for the long night. There was a quiet kind of pregame excitement to the place, dimming the lights, switching on the neon and flashing lights, all the liquor bottles filled and in order. The easy chairs in the VIP room had been rubbed down with Armor All, carpets vacuumed, and the wooden floors swept. Sometimes she played a little music to get the girls in the right mood, some of them in back suiting up for the night, others already ready for their shift, slumped in chairs around the stages, taking selfies to draw in their best customers or playing Candy Crush on their iPhones. Tonight, she just couldn’t help herself as she poured herself a third cocktail, Debby Boone singing “You Light Up My Life,” one of Ray’s favorites, feeling a little raw and emotional, more on edge since that walking dildo Skinner paid her a visit.

  Midnight Man worked slow and silent behind the bar, plugging in fresh kegs in between slicing lemons and oranges for the cocktails. The small bottles of champagne looked pretty as a picture behind the glass door of the refrigerators.

  “The problem with that old liver-spotted son of a bitch is his dick is broken. Probably hasn’t worked for years. Makes him hate anyone who can find pleasure in this shitty little cold planet. He doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, drives around high and mighty in that Ram truck, looking down on people who don’t belong to his particular club of goody-goody assholes, that rotten little smile on his face, acting like he knows something more than the average person. What do you think he sees, Midnight Man, that you and I don’t see?”

  Midnight Man looked up from cutting lemons at the bar, Fannie’s head held in the cradle of her hand. Her steady drink of gin with grenadine and extra cherries before her, cigarillos smoldering in the tray. Debby Boone singing her goddamn heart out.

  “It’s bullshit. True and authentic bullshit, my friend. Do you know what he told me? He said he could offer my people—my fucking people!—something I couldn’t. What the hell does that mean? You were here long before me, barbecuing the whole hog for Johnny Stagg, listening in and knowing every dirty, rotten goddamn deal in north Mississippi. What the fuck could that bastard offer someone like Buster White? You and I both know, the only thing our people care about is money. Money is goddamn everything. Anyone who tries to go and lay some Dr. Phil shit on your ass doesn’t understand their asshole from their elbow. Power? Sex? Where is that shit if you don’t have the money? I learned that a long, long time ago, watching boys leave dollar bills at the edge of the stage, making eyes at me, until they emptied their wallets. You’ll never know the true heart of a man until he shudders in your hand, eyes goddamn crossing, whispering he loves you as he lays down his last hundred bucks for companionship and understanding during an Aerosmith song. You know Aerosmith, right? You know them?”

  Midnight Man shook his head, eyes down on his work, loading the plastic buckets with fruit for the highballs and Old Fashioneds the rich boys like to drink. Those rich boys from Oxford and Starkville coming in with fat wallets and hard-ons that made them walk nearly sideways.

  “Make me another.”

  “You good, Miss Fannie,” Midnight Man said. “It ain’t even four o’clock.”

  “You know what my grandmother used to tell me? The original Vienna who ran that cathouse down in New Orleans? She used to say Man may work from sun to sun, but a whore’s work sure is fun. That woman sure was something. Did you know I didn’t even know she’d been a whore until the second time I’d been busted, my worthless stepfather coming after me with his belt, trying to whip the fear of Jesus into me even though he’s the one who parked the devil there. Son of a bitch. That’s how it is. Isn’t it? Skinner and that rancid bastard were nothing like Ray. Ray had class. A gentleman. God. Where is my drink?”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Fannie,” he said. “Mr. Ray was a nice man.”

  “A drink,” she said. “Now. Extra damn cherries.”

  Fannie reached for the cigarillo and relit the end, watching the smoke curl and float up over the floor. Deb
by Boone now gone silent, the whole floor quiet and dead, worse than a funeral, worse than Ray’s service with that horrid fat wife of his doing the second line around the muffulettas and po’ boys stacked not twenty feet from the casket. What in the fuck was happening?

  “They gonna close us down?” Midnight Man said, his deep, muffled voice somewhere between a whisper and a grunt.

  Fannie didn’t answer, thinking back now on what Ray had taught her. Don’t be emotional about a threat. Be tactical, look at a way to seek out the problem and neuter the son of a bitch. Skinner didn’t get uppity until Vardaman started his run for things, suddenly making Tibbehah County more than Dogpatch, Arkansas. It was some kind of damn poker chip into the governor’s mansion. Skinner had been shining the man’s boots for far too long. But she’d seen the way Vardaman looked at him, as if he was some local yokel joke, until this year.

  What could Skinner deliver that Fannie couldn’t? The only thing Buster White figured Fannie couldn’t do is get rid of Quinn Colson’s ass, sending in the goddamn Hee Haw boys, pickin’ and a-grinnin’, to run roughshod over the county. And see how that damn thing worked out, more bullets and blood flying than a Saturday night in Dodge City.

  Fannie took a long pull of her drink, winking at Midnight Man for making it just right. That was it, wasn’t it? Skinner had promised Vardaman something he needed more than anything and couldn’t get himself. Fannie turned around as music started up, a new DJ taking the roost, hitting the first notes of Harry Styles . . . one of her new Latina chicks from Houston warming up on the pole, spinning and spinning, stretching her arms and legs, lifting her eyes to the stage lights, bringing Fannie back to everything she’d been doing for Vardaman and Stagg before that. Girls, girls, girls. That spray-tanned fuckwad couldn’t get enough of ’em. And now some teenage girl’s remains found out in the county, only a few miles from Vardaman’s place, a couple of two-bit Nancy Drews skulking about, asking questions about some shit that went down back in 1997 when the Booby Trap was the flavor of the month and Stagg was the main pimp for all of Vardaman’s people.

  Fannie started to smile, nodding to herself, leaning across the bar and kissing Midnight Man on his sweating bald head. “That’s it,” she said. “That is fucking it. Vardaman is about to shit his damn drawers. What’d you ever hear about his parties out at the Cracker Barrel ranch, back in the day?”

  “When we talking?” Midnight Man asked.

  “Oh, twenty years back,” Fannie said. “What exactly did Johnny Stagg have on the menu?”

  Tashi Coleman

  Thin Air podcast

  Episode 7: MAGGIE

  NARRATOR: Since we arrived in Mississippi, we always knew that Maggie Powers, now Maggie Colson, was the heart of the Brandon Taylor investigation. Once the teenage girlfriend of Brandon, and later the wife of someone we believed to be a possible suspect in his killing. She was key to both the modern world of Tibbehah County and memories of Brandon’s final summer. We made many mistakes during the telling of this story, most notably being led astray by false rumors of her husband’s involvement, but were always grateful for her insight into and memories of Brandon. She knew him over two summers, 1996 and 1997. When they weren’t together, they corresponded. He sent her mix tapes full of Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, and George Strait. They talked about one day running away and getting married. He gave her a silver locket after they were intimate. In the fall of last year, Maggie Colson took us to Choctaw Lake, where they’d spend many long nights together. It was a warm day, the sun gold across the water.

  TASHI: What did you think had happened to him?

  MAGGIE: I guess, at first, I blamed myself. My God, I was only fifteen. He was the only boy I’d been with and then I heard he’d killed himself. I had all kinds of religious guilt at the time. Did I do something wrong? Had we sinned? It was all so confusing. I couldn’t share anything with my mother. My father was a straight-and-narrow Baptist truck driver, he didn’t want to talk about feelings and guilt. I just swallowed it up whole.

  [WALKING ON GRAVEL. BIRD SOUNDS. A WOODPECKER KNOCKING ON A TREE. A BOAT MOTOR FAR OFF ON THE LAKE.]

  TASHI: But you said you never believed it. That you thought there had to be more?

  MAGGIE: We exchanged a lot of letters. I went through them piece by piece, like some kind of jigsaw puzzle. And there was no sadness or guilt. He wrote me only about our future and finally seeing him again that summer. He was excited. We even talked about maybe meeting up during spring break in Gulf Shores.

  TASHI: When did he start to mention the money?

  MAGGIE: That fall. Maybe a month since I’d seen him last. And before we kind of broke up. He said he’d gotten his truck fixed and there wasn’t anything to stop him doing what he wanted to do. He railed a lot against his dad, his dad always wanting Brandon to be like him and do the things he thought were important. The SEC football obsession and gun collection. Brandon said this thing he had going would make him independent. He could live his own life.

  TASHI: Did he ever tell you what that was?

  MAGGIE: Not really. But I had the feeling it wasn’t good. He wrote about it like he’d been stealing something. Or doing something dishonest for the right reasons. I wasn’t worried about it then. But reading back what he said later, I wish I could’ve warned him. There was something dangerous and reckless about the whole thing. I couldn’t get a feel for it other than he’d come into a lot of money. Or at least started to brag about it.

  [MORE CRUNCHING OF GRAVEL. WIND THROUGH TREES. GENTLE ROLLING OF A CREEK RUNNING OVER ROCKS.]

  TASHI: This is the place?

  MAGGIE: It is. This is where we came when we wanted to be alone and not seen. When I first came back, after my grandmother died, I drove out here and stayed for a long time. I put on a Garth Brooks CD and said a little prayer for Brandon. That crazy kid will always be fifteen, lying on his back, looking up at the stars, coming up with the craziest ideas. We were going to get married. Move out to Nashville or L.A., where he could work on his music and photography and maybe be in movies. None of it I believed. I just loved to hear him talk. He always had some kind of thing working.

  TASHI: And that’s what killed him?

  MAGGIE: None of us know what will come from this. I’m not so sure that I believe in a heaven and a hell. But I believe in a right or wrong, that arrogant people can’t just decide who lives or dies, making an example of a kid like Brandon Taylor. I loved him. I really did. What happened in this county ripped my damn heart out of my chest and made me grow up real quick. I don’t like the words revenge or retribution. Everyone gets busted up in the world. That’s just part of the deal. I just want people to know Brandon as he lived and breathed and why he was killed. This whole thing destroyed his family, nearly destroyed me. The truth is all we can hope for. You can’t hide in a pocket of lies like some kind of animal. Karma is real, and I do believe it’ll come back on you like a ton of bricks.

  TASHI: You sound like you believe that there will be some justice?

  MAGGIE: That crazy kid deserves it.

  [SOUNDS OF CRYING. A LONG MOMENT OF SILENCE.]

  TASHI: Are we going to play it?

  MAGGIE: Sure. OK. Damn straight.

  [THE FIRST CHORDS OF GARTH BROOKS’S “SHAMELESS” ACCOMPANY THE SOUNDS OF THE RIPPLING CREEK, SOUNDING TINNY AND SMALL IN THE VAST WOODS DOWN BY THE LAKE.]

  TASHI: Memories?

  MAGGIE: So damn many.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I’m sorry,” Tashi Coleman said. “I shouldn’t have trusted E. J. Royce.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “Why would he make something up like that?” she said. “He was damn specific about the details. You and Brandon Taylor mortal enemies, fighting over land to hunt?”

  Quinn didn’t answer, both of them sitting in his truck outside Hubie Phillips’s hous
e on St. Nick Drive in east Memphis. Mr. Phillips wasn’t home and they’d decided to wait a while to see if he’d show up, Phillips being the one and only connection between Brandon Taylor and Ansley Cuthbert. He and Tashi had spent a good deal of the afternoon trying to track down Ansley without any luck, even using some information Lillie Virgil had provided. The best Quinn could tell, the girl had just skipped town.

  “Betty Jo Mize had a lot of nice things to say about you,” Tashi said, sitting still in the shotgun seat, typing fast on her iPhone while she spoke. “She said Jericho was a ghost town before you came back, eaten up by corruption and greed. I heard a lot about you and that man Johnny Stagg and how everything started to get better a few years ago.”

  “You don’t know me,” Quinn said. “Like you said, you only know what the records say, what I used to do when I was a kid. I guess if I’d been in your position, I might have been inclined to listen. I may have crossed on the Hawkins land once or twice. I really don’t remember.”

  “Caddy and Ansley Cuthbert set us straight,” Tashi said. “We were being used. We’ve been being used in one way or another since before we came to town. I don’t even know what Ansley wants out of this. I mean, does she know what happened to Brandon? And if she does know, why the hell won’t she tell us? I think whoever was working Royce took advantage of us not understanding Southerners, not knowing how the wheels turned beneath all those smiles and the hospitality. You must think we’re pretty dumb.”

  “To quote the late, great Burt Reynolds,” Quinn said. “Exactly how dumb you are largely depends on what part of the country you’re standing in.”

  “So noted,” Tashi said. “Is it really true your father was his stunt double? I heard that from a lot of people, but we haven’t been able to confirm it yet.”

  “My father lied about a lot of things,” he said. “But seldom about his days in Hollywood. It’s true. Give or take a lie or two. I know he worked on Smokey and the Bandit, one and two, and Hooper. He did a lot of stunts with a deaf, half-Cherokee woman named Kitty O’Neil. I always thought I’d meet her one day and maybe get the whole story.”