The Ranger (28 page)

Or that’s what Charley Booth had said over supper.

She dropped the curtain and turned her head.

They was gonna kill him.
Ditto knew it just as soon as he’d heard they were bringing back Keith Shackelford from somewhere over the state line. The dumbass had headed over to see an old girlfriend—that same girlfriend being an ex of Gowrie’s—and it didn’t take a half day to roust him up and drop him in a heap down by Hell Creek. And that’s when the beating started, Ditto trying to disagree with all that, it being contrary to his nature, but his voice was so brittle and young that no one even turned their head when he spoke, just elbowed his ass out of the way as everyone wanted to get a piece of the man who’d fucked up the whole operation.

He figured he could get a gun, maybe fire some shots in the air like they do in old movies, but then he could see them guns turning back on him and him lying down in the same ditch as this unfortunate soul. He kept thinking that maybe they’d take it easier on Shackelford if the boy looked halfway human, but he had a face made of poured rubber and no hair and looked something like a creature that would live down in the center of the earth, coming up at night to catch some air and maybe howl at the moon. A man could beat on someone pretty severe who didn’t seem real.

Ditto ’bout lost his lunch when he heard them bones breaking and caught a splatter of blood in his eye.

“Let’s go.”

Lena let out a cry when she saw Ditto standing over her, his face all flecked with blood and flesh.

“You cain’t stay around here,” he said. “Get the baby and y’all’s things.”

Lena considered Ditto’s upturned nose and pudgy face, thick waist and short legs. But she saw something else in him, a real conviction of what he was saying,
Get on out before Gowrie does the same to you.
And, hell, he didn’t need to say it. Lena had felt it since the first time she’d laid eyes on Gowrie.

“Where will we go?” she asked.

“Somewheres else.”

“He’ll find us.”

“I ain’t as stupid as Keith Shackelford.”

She shook her head and walked the trailer, the thin floor creaking up under her, not having much faith in Ditto but picking up the baby’s things anyway—not much besides what they gave her in a care pack at the hospital and some ragtag used clothes gathered up for them both by Gowrie’s women. She stopped, holding some plastic grocery bags, and just looked at Ditto. “Where are my shoes?”

He got down to his knees and started patting around, reaching up under the blanket and covers, just as the baby started to cry. Lena picked up the little girl, soothing her head, the baby smelling clean and warm and good, while asking her to please be quiet, please be quiet. “Did Gowrie see me?”

Ditto looked confused.

“In the window? I didn’t see nothin’. I swear on it.”

He shook his head.

“Is he dead?”

“He’s in the car. Messed up to shit. Gowrie took things out on him with a whipping chain and a baseball bat. Everyone thinks he’s dead, they were good and drunk when I told them I’d get rid of what they done.”

“You ain’t got no car. We can’t leave. Why did you say that? You gonna get us all killed.”

“Hell yes, I got a car, girl.” He pulled back the towel from the window, revealing the image of the black Camaro surrounded by burning oil drums. Ditto flipped the keys around his fingers. “Figured if he’s gonna be pissed, might as well go all the way.”

“I’m ready.”

“Didn’t figure on you sayin’ good-bye to Charley. He’s with all them down in Daddy’s trailer.”

Lena held the baby against her shoulder, the cries becoming softer, breaking into slow breaths, small whimpers, until they soothed her. Ditto carried the grocery bags in one hand and held Lena’s hand with the other.

He started the car, those dual pipes on that black Camaro purring and throttling. “Ain’t she a wet dream.”

“Don’t forget to put her in gear.”

Holding the baby in the passenger seat, Lena turned to find the mass of Shackelford under a blanket, a bloody hand falling loose against the floor, but she saw him take an easy, soft breath and heard a ragged cough. When he turned to her, uncovering his face from the blanket, Lena nearly shit her drawers. “Where’s that damn Ranger?” he asked in a cracked voice. “Goddamn. Y’all better find his ass.”

29

Gowrie was there the next morning as promised,
meeting Johnny Stagg in the back room of the Rebel Truck Stop with a lazy little smirk, a bad kid done wrong. And Johnny decided not to take him to task, this was going to be a straight business proposition, serving up a solid offer to make sure Gowrie knew it was time to shut down things for a while, roll on out of town, and head back up north to Ohio or Michigan or wherever the boy was raised. But there was blood all over him. Jesus, Johnny didn’t figure on seeing that.

Gowrie noticed him looking. “I was painting.”

“Didn’t expect you before sunrise,” Stagg said.

“I was up.”

“What’s happened?”

“Just some shit. What do you want?”

The room was filled with all kinds of busted-up video games. Johnny made a fortune out of them before kids started hookin’ up to their TVs and carrying games around in their back pockets. Most of them were broken, but sometimes he’d pull out a Ms. Pac-Man or an old shoot-’em-up and let the girls over at the Booby Trap have a go when things got slow. You never saw a competition in your life like a contest between women who were on the skids. He’d seen pretty hair pulled and death threats issued.

“Why don’t you throw all this shit away?” Gowrie asked.

“Campo’s been trying to find you. He thinks you’re duckin’ him and we’ve cut him out.”

Gowrie didn’t say anything, sliding out of his leather jacket real gingerly, favoring a bad shoulder, and slunk down into an old Turbo driving game. He played with the shifter, the screen just as black and dead as you please, and thumped at the wheel.

“You owe him some money.”

“He’ll get his money,” Gowrie said, spinning the wheel to the right and then hard to the left, downshifting and back up. “This thing work?”

“We’re gonna have to shut down for a while,” Stagg said. “And you’re gonna have to pay him what’s owed.”

“That’s what you said,” Gowrie said. “You ever think about my shit?”

Gowrie got up, favoring his left arm, and passed within an inch of Stagg’s nose, looking at him hard, jail dog kind of stuff, and reached for the cord, searching for a place to plug in the game, juice her up. Gowrie’s scent reminded Stagg of a feral animal. “Ah, hell.”

“It ain’t forever.”

“You scared of that little Italian?”

“Do you know what kind of people Bobby Campo works for? They’re blaming me.”

“And how come this shit storm is flying ’round my head?” Gowrie asked, smiling. He found an outlet, plugged her up, and the game started to hum and chatter, loading. “That man wears shoes like you’d buy for a woman. Talks about his momma like she was the Mother Mary herself.”

“I said Campo blames me,” Stagg said. “How come he’s got that idea? He’s thinkin’ I get a cut.”

“You act like we’ve been buds for a while,” Gowrie said, staring straight ahead, watching the colored cars and roads and checkered flag come to life. There was a city way off in the distance, and he watched it as if the whole window was real. He thumped the steering wheel some more, shifted up and down, and mashed the accelerator. “
Let’s go
.
Hell.
Shit, you started this mess, wanting my boys to steal that man’s cattle.”

“Boy, you’re flying a million miles an hour on those eleven herbs and spices.”

“That son of a bitch shot me in the back with an arrow,” Gowrie said. “Missed my heart by an inch. So why don’t you get Campo’s dick out of your mouth before blaming me?”

“That don’t sound Christian,” Stagg said, smiling. “I don’t care for that kind of talk.”

Gowrie grinned back. “Only religion I found gets counted at the church.”

“I’m headed to see Brother Davis right now,” Stagg said. “I wanted to tell you face-to-face.”

“You touch that money stash and I’ll kill your ass.”

“If that money don’t get to where it’s owed, they’re comin’ for me.”

“I’m sick and tired of people using me up,” Gowrie said. “You keep clean, don’t you, Brother Stagg? You don’t have to keep your money in some movie-house church.”

Stagg didn’t say anything.

“Hell no. You got clean money in a regular bank. Ain’t no filth on those pressed good-ole-boy slacks.”

The checkered flag flew, and Gowrie was off, shifting up and down, wrecking the car twice, spinning and getting the hang of it, in and out of all those race cars, moving on fast to that electric city on the horizon. After the third wreck he plugged a cigarette in his cracked lips and popped open a Zippo etched with a skull over a Rebel flag. There was more dried blood on the back of his neck, a dark stain spreading across his shoulder.

“Don’t go near that church,” Stagg said, resting his hand on top of the video booth. “You get gone.”

“Just how you gonna make me do that, Johnny Stagg?”

“You figure that out.”

Gowrie nodded. “What happens to my boys when we break camp? How we supposed to train? How are we supposed to live?”

“I’ll get you some money.”

“How much? You gonna compensate me for all I’ve lost?”

Stagg told him, and Gowrie crashed the car, rear-ending a tractor trailer and sending them both up into a big plume of smoke and fire. He crawled out of the booth, smoked down the cigarette, and tossed it to the concrete. “Like I said, none of this shit would’ve happened if you hadn’t sent my boys to steal them cows.”

“They were mine.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn,” Gowrie said, yelling and then smiling, breaking into a little laugh. “You kicked up a shit storm, and if you think I’m shagging ass without breaking it all apart, you are crazy as hell. What do you think we all stand for? You were to give us a base camp where we could run maneuvers and train. Now you treatin’ me like I’m some kind of criminal. I’m the only thing you got between you and that crazy soldier.”

“Acting sheriff called the state troopers two hours ago. They’re coming for you.”

Stagg stared at the dried blood across Gowrie’s T-shirt. The blood had hair in it and torn bits of flesh, some of the blood had dried on his hands and up under his fingernails. Gowrie noticed him staring and smirked, and licked his cracked ole lips.

“You mind me asking you a question?” Stagg said.

“Shoot,” Gowrie said.

“Just what do y’all train for?”

Gowrie popped a fresh cigarette in his mouth and reached on top of the video game for his leather jacket. He fired up the Vantage and blew smoke as he spoke. “I don’t mind you asking at all, Mr. Stagg.”

The smoke drifted up into the ceiling, and Gowrie slipped back into the jacket as Stagg took a step back and looked up at the two surveillance cameras over Gowrie’s shoulder. He pulled any shit and he had four boys with guns ready to kick in doors and drop this piece of shit where he stood.

Gowrie watched his eyes and craned his head and looked to each corner, the cameras, and then back at Stagg.

He grinned.

“When you and your family are having bacon and eggs and sitting pretty as you please in that great big old house you got,” Gowrie said, “you might start noticing things on the television. The battle for the Holy Land has begun, and the Beast walks among us. When airplanes begin to disappear and people you known your whole life start to vanish as they stand before you, don’t come down to Hell Creek and be asking me for any help. No, sir.”

“We have a deal?” Stagg asked.

“We’re in a war. Don’t you see it?”

Gowrie grinned a rotten smile and walked away, popping his middle finger over his shoulder as he slammed open the exit door and moved back into the purple night.

Not much past four
in the morning, Quinn and Lillie headed south on Highway 45 about twenty miles into Lowndes County. Some kid had called Quinn’s cell phone, telling him that Keith Shackelford was in trouble, and Quinn was pretty sure it was a trap till Lena came on the line. And even now as they drove into the BP filling station, lit up like a beacon in the middle of acres and acres of dead cotton fields, he chambered a round in his .45, and Lillie stepped out with a shotgun, hanging down cool and loose by her leg. He scanned the parking lot, seeing a clerk counting out cigarettes by the register and a trucker taking in some diesel. Down by the air and water pumps, out back by the Dumpsters, he saw a pudgy kid with freckles and Lena sitting on a curb.

The kid got to his feet, giving Lillie cause to hold the weapon in both hands and turn in a full circle. Quinn walked easy and slow, gun in hand, till he reached the boy and asked him just what in the hell he wanted this early.

“Keith Shackelford called for you.”

“Where is he?”

“Dead.”

“What happened?”

The kid told him. Quinn looked to Lena, seeing she’d been crying. She just sat on her ass in the cold, keeping the baby tight to her chest and inside her coat, her breath fogging up around her.

“You need to get that baby somewhere,” Lillie said. “It’s thirty degrees.”

“We ran out of gas,” the kid said.

“Where were you headed?” Quinn asked.

The kid shrugged.

“Where’s his body?”

“In the shitter.”

“Excuse me?” Quinn asked.

“I tried to get him cleaned up and he died on me in there,” the kid said. “I just propped him up on the commode, didn’t figure on staying till the car died on us. I kept it running so the baby would get some heat.”

“You get that baby inside.”

“That man in there told us we couldn’t hang about. He thought we might steal something while he was watching television. He figured right ’cause we needed some cheese crackers and milk.”

“Get that baby inside,” Quinn said, some force in it. “We’ll get the police down here.”