The Innocents (3 page)

Y
ou think he’s come to yet?” Anna Lee asked Quinn. Both of them in his farmhouse kitchen, grilling two venison steaks in peppers and onions in a black skillet. He added a little more salt and pepper, charring them in a stick of fresh butter.

“He was awake when Reggie Caruthers hauled him off,” Quinn said. “He was making all kinds of threats to Lillie, saying that she’d broken his jaw. Calling her a crazy-ass dyke bitch.”

“Did she break it?”

“I sure hope so,” Quinn said.

“You don’t mean that.”

Quinn didn’t answer, turning the steak, checking it with a fork. Still a little too bloody for his taste.

“Something a-matter?”

“Thought you were going to bring Shelby with you?”

“Shelby’s five and easily confused,” she said. “Besides, she’s with Luke this weekend.”

“Does Luke know where you are?”

“We’re separated,” Anna Lee said. “I don’t need to check in with him. We’ve been through all this crap before. Until things are done, I don’t want her thinking that she’s got two daddies.”

“I’m not backing up,” Quinn said. He turned the steaks, getting a nice sear on both, the smell of burning meat, onions, and butter filling his kitchen. He reached for a cold Budweiser and took a sip.

Anna Lee, in cutoff jeans and an
OLE MISS BASEBALL
T-shirt, leaned against the kitchen counter. She’d grown her strawberry blonde hair out long that summer and her skin had a burnished red-brown glow, making the freckles even more pronounced. As she moved and stretched, the gray T-shirt rode up a bit on her flat stomach.

“I know,” she said.

“I know what I want.”

“So do I.”

“But what?”

“Luke knew you were coming back home,” she said. “He was worried you’d want me and Shelby to leave with you.”

“That’s crazy,” Quinn said. “Luke might realize I have two aging parents and a crazy sister to look after. Not to mention a wandering cattle dog.”

“He believes the only reason you came back to Jericho was for me. And, now that you have me, you’ll keep on moving.”

“Do I have you?”

“Slow steps,” she said with a grin. “Isn’t that what we agreed?”

“I don’t like you being with Luke.”

“He’s still my husband.”

“Not for much longer.”

“I have to see him,” she said. “I’ll always have to see him.”

“But you’re with me,” Quinn said. “Right?”

Anna Lee gave a weak-as-hell smile, walking toward him. Quinn took the steaks from the skillet and set them on an old china plate to cool. He reached out and pulled her close, his hand touching the warmth of her low back, and kissed her. She kissed him back, but barely, a stiffness in her lips and back. He told her he loved her and she told him she loved him back.

They ate outside. Anna Lee cut up some heirloom tomatoes for a salad and served them with a couple baked sweet potatoes. Quinn drank his second beer and Anne Lee had a Pepsi, still too much Baptist in her. You can’t commit adultery and drink alcohol at the same damn time.

“My dad wants me to invest in some more land,” Quinn said. “Said I need to be thinking of the future. Planning a family.”

Anna Lee nearly spit out her Pepsi but caught herself and wiped off her chin. “Are you kidding me?” she said. “Jason Colson giving you advice on how to plan ahead. I really don’t think he knows what he’s going to do from day to day. All he does is play old Creedence tapes and work on that piece-of-shit Pontiac.”

“It’s something,” Quinn said. “He’s pretty much just getting to know us.”

“You know what I think of him and his excuses,” she said. “Your momma feels the same way. She doesn’t care a damn bit about how he’s trying to show off his horses to Little Jason. Acting like he’s goddamn Grandfather of the Year.”

“He’s trying,” Quinn said. “And he thinks I need to buy up that logged-out land Johnny Stagg owns.”

“Why?”

“He wants to open up a dude ranch,” Quinn said. “Well, he’s not calling it that. Basically, he wants us to double our cattle and add some horses. He thinks we can dig a big lake and maybe rent out some cabins. He believes folks would pay for lessons or to board their horses.”

“That’s crazy.”

“You know, he was the wrangler on both
Pale Rider
and
Silverado
.”

“Have you actually seen his name in the credits?” Anna Lee said, finally getting down to slicing into the steak. Bloody and nearly raw, just as she liked it. “I mean, to make sure?”

“I have.”

“Be careful, Quinn Colson,” she said. “I just don’t want that man to go and break everyone’s heart again.”

“Aren’t I always?”

•   •   •

W
hy do you keep those animals around?” Mingo asked.

The boy stood with Fannie Hathcock in the parking lot of the Rebel, watching the Born Losers race each other up and down the strip between the truck stop and the Golden Cherry Motel, where they sometimes lived. The Golden Cherry was a classic old fifties hotel, with a twenty-unit brick building surrounding a swimming pool. The green-and-bright-red neon sign flashed
WELCOME
to all the weary travelers coming off Highway 45.

“I don’t know,” Fannie said. “Maybe because they have character.”

“They scare the crap out of me,” he said. “I don’t like them in the bar.”

Mingo was a good kid. Dark, handsome, and smart as a whip. Fannie had brought him along down at the place on Choctaw land when he
was thirteen. He was in his early twenties now, skinny, with long black hair and a handsome native face. More than anything, Mingo was loyal. In this business, Fannie appreciated that above all else.

“The Born Losers,” Fannie said, watching them gather by the motel pool. One of them stripped off his nasty leathers and jumped on in, to a bunch of hoots. “We do for them and they do for us.”

“Don’t like them,” Mingo said. “Don’t trust them. I don’t get it, Miss Fannie.”

She and Mingo were taking a smoke break after hanging some new light fixtures in Vienna’s. The noontime sun was harsh and the late summer was hot as hell, heat waving up off the asphalt. Across the road, the Losers were gunning their bikes and playing loud music, the doors of the units they rented wide-open. They were dirty, stinky, and mean, but they were the key to making Highway 45, from the Gulf Coast to Memphis, really work. Without them, the Mexicans would think they were weak.

“We get a lot of good stuff running through the Rebel,” Fannie said, spewing smoke from the side of her mouth. “I do a little window-shopping and sometimes they get that stuff for me.”

“That chop shop in Olive Branch?” Mingo said. “With that old trucker who busts up what you send him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t like him, either,” Mingo said. “He’s a damn crook.”

“We all are, baby,” Fannie said. “Me, the Born Losers, that old redneck in Olive Branch. We all do for each other.”

“But a motorcycle gang?” Mingo said. “Couldn’t you get someone else to do their part?”

“Crooks work in wild and mysterious ways,” Fannie said. “Nobody wants to testify that those boys hijacked your truck.”

“Guess not,” Mingo said, strands of black hair flying in front of his flat face. “But they’re really messing up the motel. Two of the doors are broken. All the TVs are gone. If I were you, I’d burn the sheets when they take off for Biloxi.”

“Good idea,” Fannie said, tossing the nub of her brown cigarillo to the ground. “Will you see to that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about TVs,” Fannie said. “Those boys just liberated a whole truck from Best Buy. You got a laptop?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Need another?”

Mingo smiled, his dark Indian hair nearly blue in the hot August light. He’d been full of so much potential down at the Rez. He’d been living with a crackhead sister and her mean-ass boyfriend when Fannie took him. When they came for Mingo or some money, Fannie handed over enough cash to get them high for the rest of the month.

“They piss in the pool.”

“I know.”

“Dirty bastards.”

“But they’re our dirty bastards,” Fannie said. “We just can’t let them ever forget who’s boss.”

•   •   •

B
ack when Milly Jones was a cheerleader, she’d been a Big Fucking Deal, all eyes on her as the girls would toss her high in the air, twirling and spinning, being blinded by the stadium lights and bright green of the field. The lightest on the team, a damn two-time state champion, who’d learned how quick your life could turn to shit. Not a year out of school, working two goddamn jobs, the Dollar Store in Jericho and
the Build-A-Bear Workshop in Tupelo, and now thinking about scrounging for dollar bills at a titty club.

The team tossed up the new flyer that Friday night, a little girl named Tiffany, building a damn human pyramid, and Milly grinned down from the bleachers and clapped and cheered louder than anyone. She was happy for them. Really, she was happy as hell. The band from Lafayette County blared out “Party in the U.S.A.” and for exactly three seconds she forgot that she wasn’t a part of this anymore. It was a hot August night and the grass was green and cool. The lights, the players, the students and families all packed in tight. Everything so familiar.

“I hadn’t heard from you in two weeks,” Nikki said.

“I told you what I’m doing.”

“Oh,” Nikki said. “That big secret thing.”

“You remember that writer I told you about?” Milly asked. “The one that writes romance novels, but about Christians. So they talk about the Bible and Jesus more than just doing it?”

“Sure.”

“Well, she’s signing books over in Tupelo tomorrow,” Milly said. “If she can’t help me tell my story, ain’t no one can.”

“Can your car make it over to Tupelo?”

“I’ll see that it does.”

“So you’ll tell her, but you won’t tell me,” Nikki said. “Son of a bitch. I’ve known you most of my life, Milly. And I’ve never known you to act stranger.”

It was true Milly had known Nikki since second grade, best friends since they were in eighth grade and went on that mission trip to Belize. In between smoking dope and fooling around with the pastor’s son and his best friend, they’d both finally realized the world looked a hell of a lot brighter away from Tibbehah County. And they’d never be like their
mommas, not knowing which way to cross the road. Nikki reached down and held her six-month-old son, Jon-Jon, tighter in her lap.

“I don’t want you hurt,” Milly said. “This thing—this secret—will turn Jericho inside out.”

“Shit,” Nikki said. “I don’t think there’s a lot that would shock this place.”

Milly looked down at the field, the sidelines crowded with players and coaches. Everyone waiting for the coin toss in the center of the field, seeing which way things would go. A hot wind blew in from the west, smelling of burning leaves and fresh-cut grass. The summer was about over.

“This will.”

“What is it?”

“Damn you,” Milly said. “Don’t you listen?”

“Oh, come the fuck on,” Nikki said.

“It’s not my secret,” Milly said. “It’s about Brandon.”

And that stopped Nikki cold from opening up her mouth. Ever since Milly’s brother had blown his goddamn head off while supposedly cleaning his .308 in the woods, there hadn’t been a lot of interest in discussion. For a long while, people would walk the other way when they’d see her. What the hell do you say to the girl who had a defect for a brother? Killing yourself is a cold, hard sin to these Baptists.

“Can you at least tell me where you’re living now since your momma tossed you out?”

“Momma didn’t toss me out,” Milly said. “I left because I was tired of all her shit. All she does is watch
The View
and sell her essential oils to her dumb friends. I moved in with Daddy.”

“I thought you hated your daddy.”

“When I was dating Joshua, me and Daddy butted heads,” Milly
said. “He couldn’t wrap his thick redneck head around the fact that his little blonde angel was going with a black boy. You know what he called him?”

“I do.”

“But now that me and Joshua aren’t together no more, he’s not so damn pissed-off,” she said. “He takes out his shit on his new girlfriend.”

“Did you tell him what you’re doing?” Nikki said. “This top secret writing project, filling up those little journals with your book.”

“It’s not my story.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “Not until things come together.”

“And you blow the fucking roof off Jericho, Mississippi?”

“That’s right.”

“Why do you need this woman to help you?”

“This isn’t the kind of thing to whisper,” Milly said. “This is something that’s gotta be told right. She’ll know what to do. She knows people. How to tell the story in the right way. I mean, do you start at the end or go back before it all happened?”

“He was cleaning his gun,” Nikki said. “Right? That part is true.”

“We all tell ourselves lies,” Milly said, reaching down and touching little Jon-Jon’s face. “It’s what gets us through the
night.”

T
here were times when Lillie Virgil wasn’t so sure she wanted to be sheriff. She’d spent Saturday morning hosing down the cell where D. J. Norwood had pissed himself, that turd not flushing quickly enough through the justice system and out of her jail. After, she hadn’t even had a chance to return a few calls and grab some breakfast when the local high school coach wanted to have a sit-down. Last night, Reggie Caruthers pulled over one of his former players hotboxing around the Square with a baggie full of pills, enough weed to choke Matthew McConaughey, and a loaded pistol on the dashboard.

“He’s just a fine boy who made a mistake,” Coach Bud Mills said, smiling, wanting the woman to know the ways of the world. “He’s a hard worker, tough-minded, and a good Christian. His momma is a pastor out in Blackjack.”

“Besides the weed and pills,” Lillie said, “you do know we got a
loaded Smith & Wesson .357. We traced the gun back to Clarksdale, where it was stolen last year. We also have good reason to believe he’s running with a crew here called the North Side Boys. Heard of them?”

“What’s that, some kind of rap group?”

“It’s a gang,” Lillie said. “They’ve been known to work with some pretty rough folks up in Memphis.”

“It’s hard for my boys,” Mills said. “They come out of high school with everyone patting their back. But when they don’t get recruited or can’t get a scholarship, they’re nothing. They get chewed up and spit out. If Ordeen gets put in the system, he can’t get out. I prayed with him this morning. He’s learned his lesson. Y’all scared the hell out of him. Keep the gun. Let him move on.”

“We intend to keep the gun,” Lillie said. “It’s stolen property.”

“It wasn’t his.”

“Then where’d he get it?”

Mills shook his head. He reached for a Styrofoam cup at the edge of her desk and spit out a little Skoal. He leaned back and folded his arms over his hard, round stomach.

“It’s not easy in that culture,” he said. “You know? Most of them don’t have no good role models, with Daddy knocking up Momma and then shagging ass. Ordeen is different. His momma is a preacher. Good family, knows right from wrong. He’s just restless, is all. Can’t find his way. Can’t find any work . . . Thanks again for that cup of coffee. It’s real early for me.”

“Nice of you to bail him out.”

“Ordeen is special,” Mills said. “If he’d had better grades or could run just a little faster, he’d be up at Ole Miss right now instead of cleaning out toilets at the Rebel Truck Stop.”

“Is that what he’s doing?”

“That was the job I got him,” Mills said. “Before all that business happened to Johnny Stagg.”

Lillie nodded. She never thought of Johnny Stagg as anyone’s victim. Hard to feel bad for a man who’d been sucking off the county’s tit for more than two decades without anyone questioning him.

“All I ask is for you to consider the situation.”

“You want me to drop the charges?”

“Now, Lillie,” Mills said. “How long have you known me? You forget how close I was to your momma. We all miss her. She was the best damn secretary the school ever had. Every Christmas, she baked me a tin of sugar cookies.”

“We all miss her.”

“I know, Lillie,” he said. “How’s that daughter? She’s named Rose, too, isn’t she?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mills spit some more in the cup. He had on a mesh ball cap with the Wildcats logo on it, red coach’s shorts, and a gray T-shirt. Didn’t look like he’d had time to change from the season opener last night. Even if you’d never met Bud Mills in your life, you’d peg him for a coach. Ruddy cheeks, weak chin, and small, clear blue eyes. He was bald on top and graying on the sides. The way she remembered it, her mother always thought he was an asshole.

“Yeah,” Lillie said. “Y’all were friends.”

“I’m so sorry, Lil.”

“It’s been six years.”

“Your momma had a big heart,” Mills said. “Especially when it came to kids from poor homes. She knew some children just weren’t loved. They didn’t serve no purpose in their homes and got treated worse than dogs.”

Mary Alice walked up to her glass door, held up her hand holding a callback slip, and Lillie waved her away. She leaned into the desk that had once been her mentor’s, Hamp Beckett, and then had been her friend Quinn’s for a few years. The top of the desk was battered, still scarred with cigar burns from Quinn. It needed a good resurfacing.

“You keep up with most of your former players?”

“Those who want to.”

“What about Nito Reece?”

“Ole Ranito?” Mills said, laughing. “Hadn’t seen him in a long while.”

“Hard to find Ordeen without Nito nearby,” Lillie said. “When we arrested Ordeen, Nito was in the backseat. It was Ordeen’s car. He had the weapon on him.”

“Nito is another story,” Mills said, grinning. “I’m not coming here and vouching for Nito. I kicked that boy to the curb last season. He embarrassed everyone. Smokin’ dope and putting it out there for the world to see on the Internets.”

Lillie looked across the desk at old Bud Mills, hero to Tibbehah County, the name on the sign when you hit the county line. Two-time State Champs. He smiled back at her as she stared, reaching for his spit cup again, taking a big breath, waiting to hear the game plan.

“You can talk to the prosecutor, Coach,” Lillie said. “But Ordeen and Nito scare the hell out of me. They got a hell of a bad thing going. And either you’re gonna have to start mailing ’em cheese and crackers to Parchman or visiting them at the cemetery. But they’re long down a fucked-up patch of road.”

“You sure talk straight for a woman.”

“A woman should talk around the point?”

“I sure loved your momma.”

“That’s what you said.”

“And I like to believe in the good side of people, Lil,” he said. “It’s served me well in the last twenty years. People in this county look out for one another. Maybe a time when you might need to reach out to me for a favor.”

“The gun was loaded,” Lillie said. “He never told my deputy until he took it off him.”

“Weren’t you young once?” Mills said. “Running wild and free. Making boneheaded mistakes?”

“Maybe,” Lillie said. “But I was too damn busy shooting in tournaments to be fooling around with stolen guns.”

“He didn’t know it was stolen,” Mills said. “And you just might think about how people still love that boy around here. We wouldn’t have ever made the play-offs without him. I’d think on those things, Lillie.”

“Because of the election.”

“Because of the election, and because of the way people might view a woman running for office,” he said. “Has there ever been a woman sheriff in Mississippi?”

“Mississippi is a state that needs a lot of firsts, Coach.”

Coach Bud Mills stood, stretched, and tossed his Styrofoam cup loaded with brown spit in her trash. “Well,” he said. “Can’t blame me for trying to do some good around this town.”

•   •   •

H
ow long?” Caddy Colson said.

“Six weeks,” Quinn said. “Maybe eight. Depends on the next job. How many trainers they need.”

“You like being a contractor?”

“I’m not a contractor,” Quinn said. “I work for the U.S. government and NATO. It’s an organization put together by General Petraeus. Men come to train and return as part of the Afghan local police. Officially, they don’t have arrest powers. But they protect small villages where we’re pulling out and the national police can’t reach. We teach ’em how to shoot, look for IEDs, that kind of thing.”

Quinn stood out in a barren field with his sister, after spending the last two hours running his uncle’s old International Harvester tractor over the dead corn stalks and a big patch where there’d been rows of tomatoes that had burned up in the heat. Caddy had cut her hair boy-short again, bright blonde, almost the color of straw. She had on a Merle Haggard T-shirt saying
MAMA TRIED
, blue jean shorts, and muddy work boots. The
MAMA TRI
ED
would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been so damn true.

“You feel like you’re doing some good?”

“Contrary to some folks who never left Mississippi, all Muslims aren’t terrorists,” Quinn said. “We help locals look out for their own. There are so many different dialects over there that some Afghanis can’t even talk to each other.”

“Kind of like sending someone down to Tibbehah from New York.”

“Something like that.”

“Shit, I can’t understand some of the people in my own backyard,” she said. “It ain’t the Mexicans. It’s folks who’ve been here their whole life who have English as a second language.”

Quinn smiled.

“Thanks for tilling up the garden,” she said. “Time to plant the fall greens. What do you think? Turnips or collards?”

“I say live on the edge and plant both.”

Caddy handed him a bottle of water and a clean towel to wipe his face. He pulled off his ball cap, plain green with an American flag
patch, and wiped his wet brow. Since he’d been gone, Caddy had a new wooden barn built where the old one had burned. She’d added a smaller metal building out back to collect secondhand clothes and supplies and frozen and fresh food for the needy. The River—church and community outreach—started a few years back by a former convict-turned-preacher named Jamey Dixon. Caddy had run the show ever since he’d been killed, except for last year’s trip to rehab.

“Does it ever get you that you have to go to the other side of the planet to help people out?”

“Maybe.”

“We need roads, food, medical aid right here,” Caddy said.

“I tried.”

“And it bit you in the ass.”

“People over there are more grateful,” Quinn said. “Their word means everything.”

“I thought that was true of a Southern man.”

“When he’s not speaking out of the side of his mouth.”

Caddy laughed and Quinn hopped back on the tractor, circling the garden and riding up to the trailer hooked up to his Army-green F-250. The truck still bore the mark of the sheriff’s star where he’d peeled off the decal with a straight razor. It was a big truck, jacked up tall, with KC lights, and heavy winch under the grille. His buddy Boom nicknamed it the Big Green Machine.

Caddy’s son, Jason, stood up on the truck’s tailgate watching his uncle chain the old tractor to the platform. Now eight, he waited, in a pair of brown overalls, carrying a .22 rifle. He’d been target-practicing with the .22 on some Coca-Cola cans while Quinn worked, waiting for him to trade out the tractor for a johnboat and take him out on Choctaw Lake to hunt for bass and brim.

“Ready?” Little Jason asked.

“Gotta head back to the farm first.”

“Can Hondo come with us?”

“Yes, sir,” Quinn said. “He’d be disappointed if we didn’t. We also need to stop by Varner’s for some crickets.”

“Can we cook what we catch?”

“You bet.”

“I mean, tonight,” Jason said. “You know, tonight is
WWE Raw
. John Cena is going back for the belt. You know he lost it to that son of a bitch Seth Rollins?”

Quinn looked over to his sister. Caddy shrugged and leaned against his truck. She spent most days out here at The River when not working part-time as a receptionist for a dentist in Tupelo. Caddy was sunburned, towheaded, and determined as he’d ever seen her to make her mission work. It had been a long road and some rehab, but his sister was finally back.

“He’s right,” Caddy said. “That Seth Rollins is a son of a bitch. I’m a Cena fan, too. Although he’s not my all-time favorite.”

“The Undertaker,” Quinn said. “I remember. You always liked that guy.”

“You know he’s still wrestling?” Caddy said. “Jason has his action figure. Cena, too. But The Undertaker is taller. And meaner. He’s all-time. Like The Rock.”

“How about you come fishing with us?” Quinn said.

“I promised to help Momma shell peas tonight,” Caddy said. “There’s an Elvis Double Feature on TCM.
Paradise, Hawaiian Style
and
Blue Hawaii
. She’s cooking a ham with pineapple, making poi. Wanted to know if you want come over.”

“I’d rather fry up some fish and watch wrestling with Jason, if it’s all the same.”

“She didn’t mean it.”

Quinn nodded. He stared at Caddy, smiling, knowing there was more to come.

“You know how she gets after a few glasses from the wine box,” Caddy said. “I don’t think she gives a damn about you and Anna Lee. She’s just upset about what she heard Daddy is doing out on the farm.”

Quinn continued to watch. He took a long, deep breath.

“Dude ranch?”

“That’s Jason Colson talking,” Quinn said. “Not me.”

“Can’t blame Momma. It’s her family’s land and it’s the house where she grew up,” Caddy said. “How’d you feel if the man who left you came back to town and wanted to squat on your family memories?”

Quinn wiped his face and neck again with the towel. An old car wound down the dirt road toward The River and stopped outside the wooden barn used as a church. On Sundays, they’d have guest preachers and local bluegrass music. A hand-painted sign on a piece of charred wood from the old place read
LEAVE YOUR PAST AT THE DOOR
.

“What the hell is poi anyway?” Quinn said.

“A taro root cooked and beat to shit,” Caddy said. “Kind of like a tropical mashed potato.”

The car door opened and a short black woman and two children crawled out. While Caddy waited, the woman fired up a cigarette and leaned against the car. The woman looked tired and beat, worn-out physically and mentally. She reminded him of faces he’d seen in those northern Afghan villages when their world had been turned upside down.

“You know her?”

“Never met her, but I know her.” Caddy smiled. “It’s not if you get knocked on your ass. It’s if you get back up.”

As Quinn and Jason drove off, the tractor on the trailer rocking back and forth, he watched Caddy from his rearview. She wrapped an arm around the woman and led her and the children toward the metal shed for whatever it was they needed.