The Ranger (23 page)

“Do you have a lick of sense?”

They sat down in that small, silent room with no windows, just a narrow door. It smelled like burnt coffee and sugar. Someone had left a Bible and a Danielle Steel novel on the table, and Lena thumbed through both of them, searching for a name for the baby, thinking maybe the books had been there for a reason. Her whole life felt like it was coming together.

“How about Raphaella?” she asked.

“A what?”

“For her name?”

“That doesn’t sound like a Christian name,” Charley said.

“Says here that it’s a name of Mediterranean aristocracy.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Or we could call her Ruth. That’s right here in the Bible.”

He opened the snack cakes and pulled out one for himself and pushed the package toward her, biting off half and chewing while he rocked the little baby, touching her little nose with the edge of his finger.

“I want to take you down to Florida with me.”

“You got money?”

“I will have money,” he said, dropping his head into his hand. “Reason I treated you like that was to push you away. I know you could do better.”

“We’re already in this thing.”

“I got money coming,” he said. “Can you hold tight for a couple days?”

“I don’t have no money,” she said. “I don’t have no insurance. I get one more day here.”

“You stay with me.”

“Back at Gowrie’s?”

“I got my own trailer,” he said. “I can’t leave without my money. Then we go to Florida. I already got it all planned out in my mind.”

“What’s in Florida?”

Charley Booth smiled, sticking the rest of the snack cake in his mouth and chewing in deep thought. “I’ve always wanted to open up an ice-cream stand.”

Lillie drove Quinn out
to the old McKibben place, a thousand-acre parcel that had been the envy of everyone in the county. Original hardwoods and big thick pine trees, three creeks that had sprung off the Big Black River and ran through the land adjoining a National Forest. The McKibbens had kept it in their family since after the Civil War, the southern edge of the property the site of a cemetery where hundreds of soldiers who had died after coming to the hospital in Jericho were buried. Quinn had hunted the land many times with Judge Blanton and his uncle, even his father on occasion. An invitation out to the land was an entry into the old times of deer camps and the wild woods where Mississippi ran thick with panthers and black bears. Before Quinn had shipped out, he’d walked the northern edge of the property and found an arrowhead, maybe a thousand years old, and had carried it with him as a good-luck talisman from one warrior to another.

The old creek bed where he’d found it was strong and slow, moving over the pebbled bottom in a place that remained cool even in the hottest month, deep patches of moss on rocks.

And now he and Lillie stood maybe a half mile from that place, and it seemed as if Quinn had entered a moonscape. Most of the thousand acres had been cleared down to the earth, gravel roads had been laid down and foundations poured for the Tibbehah Miracle that had never arrived. Johnny Stagg’s dream of a sprawling development to bring industry and commerce to backwoods Mississippi. All through the open gashes in the earth were scorched burn piles, logs as big as trucks that had refused to burn, charred and left to rot.

“They stopped work about this time last year,” Lillie said, the cold wind whipping her hair into her mouth. “Stagg keeps on saying this is going to happen, but no one has heard of one company coming here.”

“Now he’s hooked in with some bad folks in Memphis.”

“How bad?”

“I followed Gowrie’s daddy up to Memphis last night to a strip club. He was making some kind of deal.”

“Maybe Gowrie’s daddy just likes to check out naked girls.”

“And gets invited into a back room with a fat satchel?”

“Was it that obvious?”

“I don’t think Daddy Gowrie can spell subtle,” Quinn said.

“Did I mention Stagg’s personal preacher, Brother Davis, was with Daddy Gowrie?”

The wind shot like a bullet across the cleared land and stung his ears and face. Quinn placed his hands into his pockets and turned all around him, a stranger in a place that had once been so damn familiar.

“We had a run-in with Gowrie and his daddy back in April,” Lillie said. “Gowrie’d beaten a man at the Southern Star pretty bad. He bit a damn plug out of the man’s throat. He claimed self-defense.”

“Why didn’t my uncle run him out?”

“We’re not the DEA, Quinn,” she said. “Your uncle wanted us to do the best we could. But he was hoping to get some state people in here soon. He knew what was going on and knew Gowrie ran most of the labs.”

“And then came that fire.”

“Wesley brought back two graduation photos of Jill Bullard,” Lillie said. “Somebody used that girl all up.”

“She and Caddy were friends.”

“How?”

He told her about Memphis, and they didn’t speak for a long while, Quinn hearing his boots on the turned soil. Some battered earthmovers sat still up by a massive footprint of concrete.

Quinn headed back to the Jeep, Lillie in tow.

“Do you remember that time that you and Wesley threw that keg party out here? You must’ve had two hundred folks.”

“Charged five dollars per head.”

“That was a good party. We had a bonfire, and that old black man played the guitar. Who was he again? That was fun.”

“Till those deputies like you showed up and ruined it.”

“How long did they chase you?”

“A couple hours.”

“But you lost ’em?”

“Didn’t take much.”

“Your uncle knew.”

“Oh, hell yes. He knew it was me. But couldn’t prove shit.”

“Did that bother you?”

“Should it have?”

24

“He’s hunting, Quinn, I don’t know when he’s coming
home,” Anna Lee said, standing on her porch with her arms folded across her chest. Her door was open, and a big-screen television hung on the wall playing Fox News, a woman making inane conversation about several more servicemen killed in Kandahar. The room was furnished with a big brown leather couch and heavy wood furniture and gold lamps. “I’ll have Luke call you when he gets in.”

She tried to close the door. Quinn wedged his boot in the jamb. She wore a thin T-shirt and jeans, no makeup. She smelled of soap and shampoo.

“He say why he dropped charges on those men?”

She shook her head, and looked down at his boot and then up at Quinn. She stared at him for a long time, chewing on her lip. “I don’t know.”

“I’d be a little pissed if someone hammered a gun into my forehead.”

“Wesley said it’s resolved. Okay? Do you mind?”

She pushed at the door.

“Okay. This is where it’s getting a little confusing to me,” Quinn said, pulling his foot back and smiling. “You show up at my uncle’s farm last night, worried out of your mind. You basically beg me to go over to that peckerwood compound, blaming me if anything happened to Luke. Does this picture ring true?”

She held her arms around her waist, thin T-shirt blowing in the cold, her skin looking pale in the fading light. He could hear the buzzer going off on the stove. “I got to go,” she said. “Shit’s burning.”

“You tell Luke that if he’s a stand-up guy, he’ll file those charges. Those shitbags might have killed us all last night.”

“He’ll do what’s best.”

“I bet.”

“Luke is the most stand-up man I’ve ever met,” she said, jaw clenching. “I don’t have time for this. It’s cold and I’m not wearing shoes.”

He touched her shoulder. “Since when does Luke work with Johnny Stagg?”

“You’ve lost your mind.”

“Stagg serves on his board.”

“Stagg serves on the board for the electric company, too. He’s a county supervisor. That’s just what he does. Damn it. Let me go.”

“Stagg just called in a big favor for getting that hospital certificate.”

“You’ll have to talk to Luke about that instead of bullying me.”

“People wonder why I left this place.”

“I sure as hell don’t,” Anna Lee said, slamming the front door.

The glass rattled, and a pine wreath fell to the ground. There was a lot of garland on the porch, strung in with Christmas lights and magnolia leaves, plastic shaped like flowers. Quinn recalled the old Victorian as being a ghost house when he was a kid, a big vacant shell where you’d step up and throw rocks at the window or sneak girls inside to slip a little to drink or smoke dope and make out.

Quinn stepped up to the glass door to knock.

But he dropped his hand, changing his mind.

There was
a small playground across from the Baptist church where Quinn sat with his mother, watching Jason navigate a small fort, a couple slides, and a climbing wall. Up and down, back and forth, jumping and scrambling. Falling and rolling. He always got back up on his feet and cried only once, and only then because one of the swings had been wrapped high above him and he couldn’t reach it. Quinn got to his feet and unraveled it for him, Jason jumping into the seat and holding on to the chains.

“You eat lunch?” his mother asked.

Quinn shook his head.

“We could drop by the Sonic. How about a burger and a milk shake?”

Quinn felt for the cell phone in his pocket, checked the number, and saw it was Anna Lee. He turned off the ringer.

“They could call you back anytime,” she said. “Right?”

He nodded.

“Did you go over this year?”

“Just for a couple weeks.”

“It’s not the time. It’s what y’all were up to.”

“It was boring, just some recon stuff.”

His mother nodded, not believing him, and walked over to the fort, waiting for Jason to navigate the steep edge. Jason found a way out from the bar, teetered around the top, held on to the handrail, and then for some reason—Quinn hoped it was that Jason knew that his grandmother was under him—he just let go with a high-pitched laugh and fell into her arms. She let him go, and he ran over to a metal elephant that had been set on a heavy-duty spring, about breaking it as he rocked back and forth.

“Thursday?”

“They gave me a week,” Quinn said. “That was generous.”

“The U.S. Army can stand to do without you for a week.”

“Just how long has Anna Lee been coming over, helping with Jason and all that?”

“I can get someone else. There’s a little girl at church who’s sweet and pretty reasonable.”

“So you’re full-time now. With Jason.”

“It’s temporary.”

“You sure?”

“Caddy is looking for work in Memphis, staying with a friend, trying to get into a stable situation. She said she’s looking for good schools right now. She’s made a real change, Quinn.”

Quinn took a breath. He folded his hands in his lap, rubbing them together, placing them back into his jacket pockets. “Shit, it’s cold.”

“Does it bother you?” she asked.

“Caddy can do what she likes.”

“I mean, about Anna Lee?”

“I won’t lie,” Quinn said. “Ever since I got back, Anna Lee has acted like I’ve wronged her. I guess we remember events in different ways.”

His mother didn’t say anything.

“And I don’t want to hear a word about how she was trying not to get hurt,” he said. “You know how many boys in my unit get the same shitty letters? All that brokenhearted BS looks like it’s written by the same person. I just wish one girl would own up that she was tired of her boyfriend being away and wanted to screw around.”

“You believe that?”

“Are we gonna go to Sonic or what?”

“We can go to the Sonic.”

“You mind if I ask you something?”

His mother waited.

“All those times Dad left, headed out to wherever he went, did you get mad?”

“He had to make money.”

“Even though he wasn’t always on a job.”

“Quinn, I love you,” she said. “But don’t try and rope me into your dilemma.”

“Can you do me a favor before I leave?” Quinn asked.

“Anything.”

“All right.” Quinn smiled, put his hand on her back. “How’bout we take Jason to say good-bye to his great-uncle.”

Jean Colson just shook her head.

So they stood there,
looking down at the ground. Jason had wandered off one row over to pet a stone bunny that had been placed over a grave. The cemetery was big and flat and treeless, reminding Quinn of something that a farmer would design, not landscaped, only long, even rows of headstones waiting for the final reaping. The stone for his uncle had his name and birth and death, underscoring he was a Christian. Nothing about his military service, or that he’d been sheriff. On the mound of dirt, dead and dying flowers lay in the cold. A big wreath shaped like a gun had been sent by the Mississippi Law Enforcement Association.

“That’s not in good taste,” Quinn said.

“What happened wasn’t for public knowledge.”

“So, you want to say a few words?” Quinn asked.

She shook her head.

“It would mean a lot.”

“I don’t know.”

“Might make you feel better.”

She nodded and closed her eyes. She inhaled for a moment before she began. “Okay . . . You were a good brother when you acted right,” she said. “You could be fair but not always. Some folks might have said you were pigheaded and stupid, and I think that did play a role in this final stupid act you’ve left us with. But who am I to judge? I don’t judge you, Hamp. I’m your sister. I guess you can’t hold a dead man accountable to things that have been said. But he’s here with me and part of this family, and even to this day I want to kick over this headstone for you ever calling that boy a”—she was whispering now—“a damn mistake. Only mistake I know is self-pity.”

His mother kept her mouth open, breathing, like she was about to add a little more, but then she took a step back and simply said, “Amen.”

“Amen,” Quinn said.

The wind across the treeless graves seemed even colder, light fading down even at four p.m., Quinn recalling how damn desolate this county could be during the wintertime and then how green and alive it could be during planting season. He reached for a yellowed rose from the flower gun and set it at the base of the headstone.