Are all those things true about Colson’s dad?” Rusty Wise asked.
“What things?” Lillie said.
“About how he used to be real famous,” Rusty said. “That he was the go-to stuntman for action pictures back in the seventies and eighties. Did he really jump a rocket car over a river in that movie with Burt Reynolds and Jan-Michael Vincent?”
“Hooper.”
“Yeah, Hooper,” Rusty said. “Was that really him?”
“They didn’t actually jump that car,” Lillie said. “It was special effects with a miniature. You can see it’s fake if you slow down the movie frame by frame. He’s a lot better in this trucker movie called White Line Fever. That man wasn’t scared of nothing. Listen, it’s good to see you this morning, Rusty. But can I help you with something?”
Rusty Wise sat on the old flowered couch that had belonged to her dead mother, like every other stick of furniture she owned, and sipped on some coffee from a flowered cup. While they talked, Lillie’s three-year-old daughter Rose played with her new Doc McStuffins, the doll attending to the medical care of a couple stuffed animals and one toy monster truck. The little girl wore pajamas, and Lillie wore sweatpants and a navy Ole Miss T-shirt. She hadn’t expected Rusty that morning, but there he was, bright and early, knocking on her front door and wanting to talk. She hoped this wasn’t the way he operated.
“I just wanted to connect before tomorrow,” he said. “Make sure you were all set.”
“Of course.”
“Well.” Rusty, a little butterball of a man with fiery red hair, took a sip of coffee and paused. He was already wearing a TIBBEHAH COUNTY SHERIFF golf shirt and had a gun on his hip. “I guess I just had heard a few things from the grapevine about you maybe moving on from the sheriff’s office. Something about a job up in Memphis?”
“People sure do love to run their mouths.”
“Is it true?”
Rusty smiled as he held the small flowered cup with both hands as if warming himself. Rose fixed a wobbling wheel on the monster truck and pushed it alongside the two stuffed animals. Another satisfied patient for Doc McStuffins. The child had been born in Mexico to unknown parents and had come to Lillie two years ago after a bust of some local shitbirds trying to sell kids on the Internet. Lillie had dark thoughts about those people and tried to not to think on it too long. But she did pray every night that someday they’d be caught and tried for their actions.
“Maybe,” Lillie said. “Better schools. More opportunity.”
“I can’t fault you for that,” Rusty said. “I didn’t come over here to put some pressure on you, trying to make you stay. I just wanted to let you know that you’d be a big help if you’d just commit to seeing through the year.”
“Can’t do that, Rusty,” Lillie said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever leave Jericho. But I committed to Quinn to stay on as long as he was around. Now that’s over and I’m trying to examine some things. I hadn’t been back here too long when my mother died. I’m still living in her house surrounded by her things. I haven’t even had time to clean out all the closets.”
“I understand,” Rusty said. “But I’m offering the same kind of deal you had with Quinn. I got no issue at all with the way you live your life. That’s a personal matter.”
“Come again?” Lillie said, lifting Rose off the floor and rolling the truck down the hallway so she would chase after it. Lillie wanted the child out of earshot in case she had to unload some profanity on Rusty Wise. She knew it was coming sooner or later. Rose carried the doll by its loose arm while she moved down the hallway. Lillie turned up the volume on the television, playing the morning show out of Tupelo.
“I just don’t want you thinking I’m one of those people who have problems with it,” Rusty said, laughing. “That’s your own deal as long as you don’t go marching in parades, waving flags, or something.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Rusty gave a little snort. “Oh come on, now. I’m no Bible-beater. I’m just looking for the right folks to do the job. You’re the best one around here.”
Lillie shook her head, looking Rusty right in the eye. She smiled and laughed a little, wrapping her arms over her chest. “Are you saying you don’t mind if I’m a Methodist?” she said. “Because it might really cause some trouble in the sheriff’s office if someone saw me drinking cold beer on Sunday. I also believe women can be in positions of power. Is that OK by you?”
“Fine by me,” Rusty said, dumb smile on his face, cheeks glowing as red as embers. He swallowed, trying to look relaxed but not doing a good job at it. “I didn’t mean anything. I was just coming over to say that it was all right. Whatever you do. I mean, on your own private time. Long as it isn’t something that’s all out in the public eye, I don’t see where they’d be any problems. You obviously didn’t have any issues with the adoption board. Everything worked out good for little Rose. Didn’t it?”
Lillie stood up and reached down to tighten the string in the waistband of her sweatpants. She pushed up the T-shirt sleeves on each arm and walked toward Rusty. He slurped his coffee while she took a wide stance and asked, “You done with that coffee?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good,” Lillie said. “Because I got shit to do.”
“I didn’t—”
Lillie held up the flat of her right hand in an effort to tell Rusty to shut the hell up. She turned to see Rose, oblivious to the conversation, standing two feet from the television, the weatherman predicting a gorgeous kickoff to the New Year, but with a cold front on the horizon.
As Rusty stood up, shaking his head, saying, “Aw, hell,” she spotted their reflection in an old beveled mirror behind him. Lillie stood there, broad-shouldered and tall, hair in a ponytail and not a speck of makeup on, and the little round man, maybe a head shorter than her, was already wearing his gun, his shirt two sizes too small.
“How about we keep this between you and me?” Rusty said.
Lillie walked ahead of him and held the front door open wide. “Sounds good, Sheriff,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
• • •
Quinn drove Caddy to Tupelo.
They hadn’t spoken for about twenty miles, her head propped against his passenger window, the radio playing “Behind Closed Doors,” Charlie Rich singing the old favorite with a smooth and easy confidence. Quinn had always loved to hear that man sing.
“You should have let me see my son,” Caddy finally said. “That was wrong.”
“It would’ve been wrong for him to see the shape you’re in.”
“You and Momma are just talking shit.”
“Nope,” Quinn said. “You’ll be glad later. He knows you’re well. And safe. That’s all he needs to know right now.”
“Whatever.”
“You were going to pray on it last night,” Quinn said. “Is that all you came up with?”
“Don’t throw Jesus in my face,” she said. “You, of all people.”
“I’m not giving you a lecture,” Quinn said. “How about you do me the same courtesy?”
Caddy snorted and shook her head, bringing her legs up into the big seat and pulling her knees close to her chest. “The thing is, everyone in that room last night has their own problems,” she said. “When’s the last time you’ve seen Momma without a glass of wine in her hand? Or Uncle Van when he wasn’t stoned? We all like things that aren’t good for us.”
“Human nature,” Quinn said. “Difference is, those things aren’t going to kill us. At least not yet. Luke says you should have died.”
“Luke is a tender heart,” Caddy said. “I don’t care what he thinks, and women don’t find that attractive.”
They passed signs for the Brice’s Cross Roads Battlefield, where a thousand-plus Union soldiers had died or were taken prisoner by Nathan Bedford Forrest’s much smaller forces. When Quinn was a kid, he used to imagine being part of the boys who’d stalled the cavalry on that muddy road, making the Yankee infantry double-time it to catch up, bone-tired and on half rations. The graves of the soldiers who died that day were buried out back of the new church, one they had built long after the battle. Now the site was just an acre surrounded by gas stations and fast food and nail salons.
As they passed, Caddy gave a sloppy salute in reference to what Quinn had done as a kid.
“This won’t be long.”
“Someone will bring a guitar,” Caddy said. “Someone always has a guitar at these fucking places.”
“I thought you cared for that stuff,” Quinn said. “The singing, old-time hymns.”
“My brain is fried,” she said. “How can you believe a word that comes out of my mouth?”
Quinn drove on, turning off the main road, following the signs to the clinic where he’d check in Caddy for detox. The radio played Ferlin Husky, “I Wouldn’t Treat a Dog Like You’re Treating Me.”
“Why do you listen to that?” Caddy said. “All that old music. You know, they’ve made music in the last fifty years that might be a little better.”
“Name one.”
“I know why you like that old stuff,” Caddy said. “Because it reminds you of Uncle Hamp’s house and all those old records he kept in wooden crates. You used to put them on when we were kids, the adults sending us back to the junk room to play while they carried on, drinking, talking bad about each other, whispering things about the world that we shouldn’t know.”
Quinn kept on driving, seeing the flat, low brick complex coming into sight down the road. He slowed. Caddy closed her eyes and swallowed. She looked better than she had the other night, but not much. The sores all over her arms and face had scabbed over, making her look as if she’d been in a street fight. She had on old faded jeans and an oversized man’s flannel shirt that Quinn was pretty sure belonged to Jamey Dixon.
He parked the truck and killed the engine, the DJ announcing the next song was Johnny Paycheck singing “Green, Green Grass of Home,” the man saying this was his favorite version of the old standard.
“Momma would fight the man on that,” Caddy said. “Elvis. Elvis. Elvis. No wonder we are all so fucked-up.”
Quinn shut his mouth.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re the good one. Oh, favorite son.”
“Jesus Christ,” Quinn said. “Can I at least carry your bag while you tell me to go to hell?”
Caddy swallowed and nodded. She slipped on a pair of very large and dark sunglasses. The glasses hid half of her face. Quinn got out of the truck and reached into the back for the bag, reminding him of the little pink suitcase she’d brought with her following her brother into the Big Woods.
“You might want to talk to these people about what happened when we were kids.”
“I don’t know what I need to talk about.”
“It doesn’t matter if things come out,” Quinn said. “You don’t need to protect me for what happened.”
“Did you do what I asked?”
Quinn reached into his jacket and brought out two packs of cigarettes and a new lighter. For the first time in a while, his sister smiled, leaning forward and kissing him on his cheek.
“You do love me,” she said.
“No shit, Caddy,” he said, picking up her two bags and walking toward the front door of the detox center.
• • •
Do we really need to wear masks?” Chase said. “I feel pretty goddamn stupid.”
“You’re going to feel even dumber when the cops get you on a surveillance camera,” his Uncle Peewee said. “Or when some witness picks you out. Would you rather wear a ski mask or something?”
“You got one?”
“Nah,” he said. “Ain’t no skiing in Mississippi. Just this shit Mr. Walls got for us.”
Mr. Walls had told Chase he’d picked up the masks earlier that year at the Dollar Store for a Halloween party that he never went to. Maybe if he’d chosen something else, something scary, it wouldn’t have made him feel so dumb. But the goddamn Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, his Uncle Peewee wearing the Donatello mask. Shit, it was too damn much. He was even wearing the fucking purple bandanna that came with it and flipping around a pair of plastic nunchucks, saying he knew some moves from this guy over in Columbus who’d been a real-life Green Beret.
Walls was gone. Already halfway down to the beach.
Soon it would be dark. And wouldn’t be too long before that Kyle fella would come on over and they’d all pile into his uncle’s van. Peewee had said they could use some walkie-talkies in the truck, but Kyle had said the law might be listening in. So they’d agreed just to use their phones, in case something was going on. Other than that, everyone was supposed to stay quiet until the door opened on that safe.
Peewee had pushed the mask off his face and set it on top of his head. He’d helped himself to a cold Coors and was sitting in Mr. Walls’s easy chair, watching a damn porno movie. Chase had watched some of it, but he wasn’t buying none of it. Just ’cause the girl kept on saying, “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Shit, that didn’t mean a thing. At one point, the girl looked up at the cameraman like she was asking when is this damn donkey gonna quit riding my asshole.
“I want to find me a woman like that,” Peewee said, a little high but not drunk, looking silly as hell with a kid’s mask on his head. “Down at Temptations.”
“Hell, that woman is a fat-ass.”
“How old are you, Chase?”
“Eighteen,” he said.
“You don’t know nothing about real women yet,” he said. “I bet you like all them stickly skinny girls with those big blow-up boobies. Wait till you get older and you’re gonna appreciate some shaking goin’ on.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Mr. Walls got some cereal,” he said. “Eat some of that shit.”
“I don’t want any more fucking Frosted Flakes,” he said. “Give me the keys. I saw a Sonic back in town. I want a cheeseburger. I’ll bring you back one.”
“Think,” Peewee said. “Think on it, son. How many folks you want seeing our getaway vehicle. Good Lord in Heaven. You sure got the brains of your daddy.”
“You never told me you knew my daddy.”
“Me and him run together before he got sent on to Kilby,” Peewee said. “You might think about going on and seeing him sometime.”
“Hell, no.”
“That may be for the best,” Peewee said. “The man has gone and turned queer. Dresses up like a woman and slow-dances with the biggest niggers in the joint.”
Chase opened his mouth. And then he closed it.
“Ha, ha, ha,” Peewee said. “Shit, man. I’m just messing with you. Your daddy ain’t no fucking queer. Not that I know about. He’s just a real asshole.”
“Momma won’t tell me what he did.”
“He busted a man’s head open at some beer joint,” Peewee said. “It was a fair fight, but the fella died.”
Chase nodded, picking up his own mask off the kitchen table, it being Raphael. He slipped the elastic band over the back of his head and slid the mask down over his face, now seeing the world through eyeholes. Uncle Peewee was right. He could see just fine.
He reached around and touched the small of his back, where he kept his new gun. The little .32 felt snug and tight, hanging right there in his waistband and under his drawers. Everyone who’d been telling him no guns tonight—Peewee, Mickey Walls, and that dumb fucking hick Kyle—could all smooch his redneck ass. He wasn’t showing up at this party empty-handed.
He was too damn smart for that.