Текст книги "The Forsaken"

Автор книги: Ace Atkins

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Stagg swiveled his chair around, looking at Ringold and then back to the Trooper. He could feel himself perspiring up under the red Ole Miss sweater and his face heating up a good bit. He reached into his pant pocket and found the key to his desk, unlocked it, and pulled out two neat stacks of envelopes, all of them postmarked from the Brushy Mountain federal penitentiary in Tennessee. “For twenty years, that son of a bitch has been writing me letters, saying what he planned to do when he came back,” Stagg said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” the Trooper said. “Shit, the parole board would’ve found that pretty damn interesting.”

“Been a good idea if the bullshit he wrote wouldn’t incriminate me, too,” Stagg said. “This man is one of the most cunning, evil, hardheaded sonsabitches I’ve ever met. He’s gonna join up with those shitbirds down on the Coast, they’re gonna put his old weathered ass back on the throne. Then they’re coming straight back for me. He’s going to do it. You know why? Because he goddamn promised he would, gave me his word, and now it’s his time.”

“That man sets foot in this place and we can arrest his ass,” the Trooper said. “You got so many friends in Jackson, Stagg. People who owe you favors are waiting in line. This guy makes any trouble, coming after you, and his ass is in jail or shot dead.”

“Y’all don’t get it,” Stagg said, rubbing his temples, standing up, and spitting the mawed toothpick in the trash can. “He doesn’t want to do me harm. He just wants to get back in the saddle and slide into the world he left.”

“And what’s that?” the Trooper said, grinning. Ringold shuffled a bit on the far wall, those spooky blue eyes blank and almost sleepy, but he heard every goddamn word. His jacket bulging with a Smith & Wesson automatic.

Stagg looked at him, the pulsing dance music in the bar shaking the thick concrete walls. “You’re sitting right in it,” Stagg said. “Chains LeDoux says he’s coming to take over what’s rightfully his.”

Quinn took the highway north headed toward Fate, the fastest way from town up into the hills and his farm, his family, and his cattle dog, Hondo. The setting sun gave all the busted-up trees on the way that in-between red-and-black glow, almost making the destruction pretty. Ophelia and Caddy were still outside, talking on top of a big wooden picnic table, while Jason ran around the bare apple trees with Hondo. Caddy smoked a cigarette but quickly extinguished it as Quinn got out of his truck.

The old farmhouse was a two-story white box with a tin roof and wide porch facing the curve of a gravel drive. The big colored Christmas lights still up from the holidays shined bright and welcoming as Jason and Hondo raced toward him. He picked up Jason, which got harder to do every day as the boy grew, and walked up to where the women sat. Hondo’s tongue lolled from the side of his mouth as Quinn patted his head.

“Trouble,” Quinn said. “Real trouble, with y’all discussing matters.”

“Why’s it men always think women are talking about them?” Caddy said. “You know, there are a lot more interesting subjects.”

“Like what?” Quinn said.

“Embalming,” Ophelia said. “Miranda Lambert’s new album, and maybe taking a trip Saturday to Tupelo. Jason wanted to go see his Great-uncle Van.”

“Embalming?” Quinn said.

“Been a busy week,” Ophelia said. “Should I expect more business tomorrow?”

“Nope,” Quinn said, smiling. “Slow day in the county. Although I saw Darnel Bryant at the gas station and he was looking pretty rough. Not long now.”

Ophelia had brown eyes and brown hair parted down the middle, cut in kind of a stylish shaggy way when not worn up in a bun. When she worked, she didn’t wear makeup, jewelry, or let her hair down. Working with the dead meant hospital scrubs and rubber gloves and masks, and Quinn was always glad to see her out of uniform in blue jeans and lace-up boots, an emerald green V-neck sweater scooped enough to show the gold cross around her neck. She wore her heavy blue coat unbuttoned.

She smiled back at Quinn. Very white straight teeth, nice red lips, and an impressive body under all those winter clothes.

“Grandma’s fixing meat loaf,” Jason said. “You like meat loaf, Uncle Quinn?”

Quinn looked to his sister, and she nodded, shooting him a look. Quinn nodded, too, and told Jason he liked it just fine.

“Momma says it tastes like shit,” Jason said.

Caddy swatted his little leg, lightly but firm. “Where on earth did you learn to talk like that?”

Jason shrugged, unfazed. Quinn kept quiet, knowing exactly where he heard it.

The back field had been turned over, waiting for the spring, lying dormant until after Good Friday and planting time. Jean and Caddy both had a pretty ambitious list for the farm this year. Lots of corn, tomatoes, peppers, and peas. They already had cattle, but his mother wondered if they might get a milk cow, too. Quinn wanted to know who was going to milk it every morning when his mother moved back to town once her house repairs were done.

“Who was at the Star?” Ophelia asked.

Quinn shook his head. “Boom,” he said. “Ran into Diane Tull.”

Caddy looked up, Jason crawling up into her lap, watching Hondo chase after a brave squirrel who’d come down from a pecan tree. “When can I shoot?” Jason said. “I could shoot that squirrel. Pow. I could knock him outta that tree.”

“You ever heard Diane sing?” Ophelia said, wrapping her arms around her body. It was a warm night for January, but it was still January. Quinn sat down next to her and put an arm around her. “She’s got a gift.”

The trees were leafless and skeletal, skies turning a reddish copper with long wisps of clouds. “Yep,” Quinn said. “There’s something about her that reminds me a bit of June Carter Cash.”

“Most people say Jessi Colter,” Caddy said, piping up, pulling a cigarette out of the pack and giving Quinn a Don’t you dare lecture me, you cigar-smoking bastard stare.

“Just because you smoke Cubans doesn’t make ’em any less dangerous.”

“Dominicans,” Quinn said. “Cubans are illegal.”

Jason waved away the smoke with his little hand and jumped off the picnic bench, pointing up into the tree. “There’s two of ’em. Look, Uncle Quinn. Pow. Pow. Pow. I can get both.”

“And Boom?” Ophelia asked. “He’s doing OK?”

“Hadn’t drank in a long while,” Quinn said. “Says he’s fine with that.”

“I couldn’t get by without him at The River,” Caddy said. “He comes by every day after work. Helps out on Saturday and after church, too.”

“You do the true Lord’s work.” Ophelia plucked the cigarette from Caddy’s hand and took a puff. “Y’all feed the poor and the sick and give people a place to stay when they have nowhere to go. You don’t need to be a man or go to Bible school for that.”

She handed Caddy back her cigarette.

Little Jason now talked about hunting deer and wild turkey and maybe he could buy that bowie knife at the Farm & Ranch. “Like the one in the book you read,” Jason said. “About the king and that knife in the rock?”

Jean stepped out onto the porch and called them to supper. Quinn caught just a glimpse of his mother in the fading light, blue jeans and an old gray sweatshirt. Dressing up was a rare thing for her, only church, weddings, and funerals. His father had been gone nearly twenty years, and despite some men coming and leaving, she preferred to keep to herself. She was a tallish redhead, a little heavier, a few more wrinkles in her face over the years, but men still turned and looked at Jean Colson. She yelled again and stepped back inside.

Jason didn’t seem excited about supper but walked on ahead with Caddy, Hondo trying to scoot into the kitchen door but someone pushing him back. Hondo, a coat of gray and black patches, ran up to Quinn and nuzzled his leg, flashing the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.

“Hondo’s been banished from supper,” Quinn said. “Jason was feeding him under the table.”

“You always let him clean your plates.”

“Yeah, but Jason was giving him too much,” Quinn said. “That dog is getting fat.”

Ophelia rubbed Hondo’s ears and told Quinn not to talk that way. Quinn didn’t say anything, just leaned in and kissed her hard on that tight red mouth. Glad to be alone with her again.

“How’d the meeting with Mr. Stevens go?” she asked.

“He said me and Lillie got nothing to worry about.”

“You believe that?”

“Hell no,” Quinn said, standing. “But, c’mon, let’s eat. I hear the meat loaf tastes like shit.”

•   •   •

When Diane Tull got home at midnight, his bright green Plymouth Road Runner was parked out front, him waiting on her and wanting to talk again. She’d told him to please call first, that he couldn’t just come on over when he was lonely or bored and wanted to break out the Jim Beam and cigarettes and discuss his troubles. She told him last time she wasn’t goddamn Oprah Winfrey or Dr. Phil, she was just a working woman trying to have a little fun in the middle years and that bringing up the past wasn’t part of the grand plan. But there he was again, slumped behind the wheel, probably drunk but trying to hide it with the breath mints and chewing gum, trying to walk straight, be focused, and have them talk about Lori. Again.

“I’m sorry,” he said, starting off the conversation like that. Who does that? I’m sorry. Really?

“I’m not in the mood, Hank,” she said. “Can we let it alone for the night?”

“I started on it again,” he said. “My daughter came to me in a dream.”

“She did to me, too,” Diane said. “For a long time. But I finally got brave enough to ask her to leave. And you know what? She did. Lori hasn’t come back since.”

“May I come in?”

“It’s late,” she said. “I got work in the morning.”

“You sure are all dolled up.”

“I sang tonight,” she said. “At the Southern Star. I told you about it last week. You said you might come and listen. I was looking for you. Might’ve been able to talk there.”

“I’m real sorry,” he said. “I’ve been a mess. I bet you sure were something. I saw you and that preacher sing last year, that one who had that church in a barn and got himself shot?”

“Jamey Dixon.”

“Yeah, Dixon,” Stillwell said. “Y’all sounded pitch-perfect on those old hymns.”

Diane leaned into the doorway of her 1920s bungalow, complete with rose trellis and porch swing, and just looked at him. He had a haphazard way of dressing, new blue jeans, an old Marshall Tucker Band tee, and a mackinaw coat that stunk of cigarettes. He had longish red hair and a red beard, both showing some gray. “Come on in,” she said. “Jesus Christ.”

“I just wanted to see how things went,” he said. “With the sheriff. Did he know about what happened? He had to have known about it. Had to bother him, thinking this was all left unsettled in the county.”

“It happened three years before he was even born, Mr. Stillwell,” she said. “Sit down in the kitchen and I’ll get you something to drink. You hungry?”

“Water is fine.”

“Sit down,” she said. “I’ll get you a Coors.”

“OK.” Stillwell licked his lips. “Appreciate it.”

He took a seat at the small kitchen table, slumped at the shoulders, hands laced before him. A hanging silver lamp in the center of the room shining over him. She opened up the refrigerator and grabbed a couple bottles, popped the tops, and placed one in front of him.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he said, seeming embarrassed to take a drink. “You can ask me whatever you want. Me and you, we’re almost family.”

“We’re not family,” she said. “We just have a pretty ugly connection. That’s worse than being kin.”

“That we do.”

“Why do you keep coming to me?” she said. “Why bring all this up inside me? You do realize I left this shithole town for twenty years because I was tired of heading to the store for bread and milk and getting eyes of fucking pity. You know how many times people started laying hands on me in the damn cereal aisle, wanting to pray, when all I wanted was a goddamn box of Frosted Flakes?”

Stillwell licked his lips more and then drank a few swallows of the Coors. “I don’t rightly know,” he said. “I think it had something to do with the storm.”

“The storm?” she said. “How’s that?”

He coughed and gave a loose, weak smile. She drank some beer while she waited for him to think on things, mull over what he wanted to say. A beer always helped her come down from the high of singing, this group of them getting it right, finding a nice feel for some Haggard, that old bottle letting everyone down, feeling no pain at closing time. And finishing things off, closing out the last set with a bluegrass version of “Mama Tried.” She and J.T. harmonizing on the chorus, J.T. setting down his bass for a mandolin, making each note sound like the turning of pins in a kid’s music box.

“I lost everything in that storm,” he said. “I knew then there might be no more time to make sense of it. I got to make sense of it before I’m gone. You remember how we used to always light candles for Lori every year on the Fourth. And then people just stopped showing up.”

He looked down at the table, took a breath, and he started to cry. After a while, he wiped his eyes and his face and drank some more beer.

“Hell,” he said. “You don’t have to do nothin’, Diane. I guess I just feel it’s time to shine a light on this.”

“Why me?”

“’Cause you were the one who was there,” he said. “But I ain’t telling you to do nothing. Maybe I just wanted some company. Or maybe I just wanted folks to remember her.”

Diane reached up to the edge of her hair, feeling for that long streak of gray in all that black. She played with the end and glanced down at the gray, thinking maybe this would be the week to finally start dyeing it, making it all even. She tipped the Coors bottle at Stillwell and said, “I’ve never forgotten.”

“I think about the last time I seen her,” he said. “She came to me to borrow ten dollars at the body shop and I wouldn’t give it to her. I’d got all over her about the way she’d been dressing. Embarrassed her. You believe that? She’d gotten all made-up for the carnival with a lot of lipstick and stuff on her eyes and such. You know what I did? I told her to go wash that shit off her face, said that she looked like a streetwalker. How you think that sounds from her daddy? No wonder she didn’t call me when y’all needed a ride. When I had to go see her body with Sheriff Beckett, it was raining and all that goddamn paint was washing off her, making her look something foolish. Why did I talk like that? Like I was some kind of goddamn preacher. What kind of right did I have to be such a goddamn asshole? I deserve every bit of what’s come to me.”

Diane had heard this story perhaps a thousand times, the father playing it over and over again in his mind, trying to figure a way he might have found a new outcome. Sometime later, he became such a crazy-ass drunk that he’d been kicked out of the Born Losers Motorcycle Club as a liability. That fact would become Hank Stillwell’s epitaph, Too Fucked-up to Ride with a bunch of hellraisers. The man still sporting the skull-and-crossbones tattoos on his nothing biceps and sagging skin. Pig Pen written in jagged ink.

“God damn, it keeps on hurting, Diane,” Stillwell said, finishing the beer. “You think that’ll ever stop?”

“No, sir,” she said. “Not till you quit loving your daughter.”

She stood and walked with him to the door and watched as he made his way down her stone path and back to a vintage Plymouth with shiny chrome wheels. He had to crank the car three times, but once it started it growled like a big cat before he rode away.

Diane took a deep breath. Tomorrow she’d lay it all out. Even if it didn’t make her feel better, maybe it would keep both Stillwell and Caddy Colson off her ass.

The bugs had started to gather on her front porch. She clicked off the night-light and went on to bed.

Jason’s younger brother Van had warned him: “Don’t go and fuck with Big Doug and all his bullshit. I don’t care how long y’all been friends. Something done broke in his head in Vietnam.”

“We’re just going to go drink some beer,” Jason said. “What can be wrong with that?”

“You know who he rides with?” Van said. “You know about him and the Born Losers? They seen you jump the other day and wanted you to come out to the clubhouse. It ain’t no beer joint, it’s their private club where they shoot drugs, shoot guns, and raise hell. Do what you want, but I wouldn’t go out to Choctaw Lake for nothing.”

“Appreciate the advice, Van,” Jason said, sliding into his leather jacket and snatching up the keys to his Harley. This was the Fat Boy, not the trick bike he’d used at the show. The landing had been a little off and, damn, if he hadn’t bent the frame. He’d get her straightened out and smooth out the gas tank where it got all nicked to hell when he laid her down. He hadn’t wanted to ditch the bike, but he came off the ramp hot as hell and headed right into the cop cars that had been parked in the end zone.

He rode out along Dogtown Road on a fine early-summer night, feeling the warm wind, smelling that honeysuckle and damp earth, and being glad he was back down South for a while. The Fat Boy was baby blue, with a hand-tooled leather seat made by the same man who’d made saddles for Elvis. It was comfortable to be on the bike, comfortable to be back home among friends. The evening light was faded, a purple light shining off the green hills headed out to the lake, nothing but winding ribbon and yellow lines.

The clubhouse had once been an old fishing cabin, a cobbled-together collection of boards and rusted tin. Outside, fifteen, twenty Harleys parked at all angles in the dirt, all of them custom, with tall ape hand bars, and sissy bars on the backseats for the women who rode with them. When Jason killed the engine he could hear an old Janis Joplin song blaring from inside the shack. A man with red hair and beard, wearing leather pants but no shirt, eyed Jason as he walked past. The man was turning over steaks on an open grill and smoking a cigarette. The man looked to Jason, cigarette hanging from his mouth, and said, “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Jason-Fucking-Colson.”

The dude stopped, held up the end of a long fork to Jason’s chest, and said, “You the dude who jumped the bike over all them Pintos?”

“Yep.”

“I saw that,” the man said. “That was some crazy shit. A bit wobbly on that landing, but some crazy shit, brother.

“My name’s Stillwell, but they call me Pig Pen.” He removed the fork from Jason’s chest and offered him a big pat on the back, his hands filthy with grease. “Big Doug is inside with his old lady. Go on in, there’s cold beer in some trash buckets, help yourself. Damn.”

The windows had been busted out a long time ago and covered in plastic sheeting that bucked up and rippled in the wind off Choctaw Lake. There was a doorway but no door, and once Jason got inside it took some adjusting to get used to the darkness. The walls were decorated in those velvety glow posters of women with big tits, panthers, and Hendrix and Zeppelin. There were some black lights spaced around the room, keeping everything in a soft purple light. as men in leather vests and women in tight T-shirts stared up at him, everyone getting real quiet, just like folks in old John Wayne movies, and all he could hear was Janis daring a man to take another piece of her heart.

Someone messed with the music, turning down what he saw was an old jukebox on a dirty concrete floor, and Jason looked at the group, man-to-man, and over at the women, with long stringy hair down to their butts. He nodded and walked toward the beer, the reason he’d come to the party, since it was harder to find a cold beer in Jericho than a decent job.

And there was Big Doug, arms outstretched, big hairy belly exposed through a wide-open leather vest. He had long black hair and a long black beard and looked like he should be riding the high seas with men with wooden legs and eye patches. He walked over to Jason, wrapped him in a bear hug, and lifted him off the ground. Big Doug got the name honest: he was six foot six and about three hundred pounds. A woman, wearing a headband over her long blond hair parted in the middle, walked over and gave Jason a cold can of Coors.

“I knew you’d come,” Big Doug said. “That pussy brother of yours try and scare you?”

“Which one?”

“Van,” Big Doug said. “I tried to talk to him at the Dixie gas station a few days ago and he about pissed down his leg.”

“Were you alone?” Jason said, grinning.

“Just out for a ride.”

“All of you?”

“Yep,” Doug said. “We ride with the club. We live with the club. It’s a brotherhood. Hey, listen, I want you to meet my woman, Sally. We call her Long Tall Sally because . . . you know.”

“She’s built for speed?”

“Hell yeah,” Big Doug said. “Man, you hadn’t changed a bit. You look the same as when we graduated. You said you’d get out and, damn, if you didn’t do it. Working with Burt Reynolds. Holy shit. You’re an A-list L.A. motherfucker now.”

Jason nodded, drank some beer. The jukebox went silent and he heard that click and whir of a new song coming on. Wicked Wilson Pickett. “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” Somebody’s idea of a joke.

Since leaving the set of the last picture, Jason had let his hair grow out some, getting long for him, down over his ears and covering his forehead and eyebrows. He’d even grown a beard, feeling like a wild man and all natural, until being around this bunch made him feel like a clean-cut square. Some pussy businessman from Atlanta.

“How long you here for?” Sally asked. She had roving eyes and wore a man’s tank top hiked up high over her belly. From the looks of her belly, she drank as much beer as Big Doug.

“Few weeks,” Jason said. “Want to help my dad get settled after my mom died. Spend some time with Van. And Jerry is driving his rig in from El Paso. Should be here soon.”

“Jason-Goddamn-Colson,” Big Doug said, a little high and a little drunk. “Man, you were never scared of shit. Me and him did FFA together and he was the only one who’d compete with the men at the State Fair. He’d ride goddamn bulls. You remember that? Riding those big-nutted motherfuckers till they sent you flying.”

“Good times.”

“Good times?” Big Doug said. “You are crazy, you son of a bitch.”

Jason finished the beer and Sally wandered off to get him a new one. His eyes had adjusted in the dim room, with the purple light, the haze of dope smoke, and a makeshift bar with a velvet painting of a nude black woman above it. The big glow of the jukebox shone across a group of three men who hadn’t gotten up, still staring at Jason as he stood in the center of the clubhouse.

“Hey, come on,” Big Doug said, just as Sally handed him the Coors. “I want you to meet the man. Come on.”

Jason walked with him over by the jukebox, the music so loud it was hard to hear a word that was being said. A muscular man with no shirt and a lot of tats reclined in a big leather chair. A young girl was in his lap, arm around his neck, holding a cigarette for him and then taking a drag herself. She checked out Jason as Big Doug leaned in and said something in his ear. The man had wild eyes and long greasy black hair and a long beard. There was a lot about the fella that reminded Jason of goddamn Charles Manson.

Jason nodded at him. The scary fella just stared, took another drag, and then looked to Doug, who was grinning big as shit. Doug leaned over to Jason and yelled in his ear. “Meet Chains LeDoux, club president.”

Jason offered his hand. Chains looked at him as if he’d just picked up a turd. Jason looked up over to Big Doug and shrugged. “Doesn’t look like I’m wanted.”

“Don’t worry, he’s always like that,” Big Doug said as they walked away, Chains’s wild eyes never leaving Jason. “He just is skittish of new people. He’s protective of all of us. Doesn’t like change. Always worried someone is going to be a narc.”

“Do I look like a narc?”

Big Doug smiled and patted Jason’s back so hard, Jason lost his wind for a moment. “You sure do, brother,” Big Doug said. “You sure do.”

“Appreciate the beer.”

“You ain’t going yet,” Big Doug said, grabbing his elbow. “We’re just getting started. And you’re invited to ride with us tomorrow. We’re going up to Shiloh, pay tribute to the boys.”

“That gonna be OK with Chains?”

“He’ll learn to love you as much as I do,” Big Doug said. “Just relax, man. Be cool, brother. You’re among friends.”

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