The Broken Places (36 page)

Behind the house, the big Genco generator he’d installed before the winter hummed with a quiet efficiency. It was enough to run his freezer and refrigerator, lights in the back of his house, and the pump that worked his well. He and Ophelia made their way up to the front porch, Quinn opening the gate for her. She came up first, stepping on the big metal feed sign he’d set near the door. The creaking metal sound made her jump a little bit as if she’d seen a snake, and she turned in to Quinn. Quinn had been walking forward and caught her as she turned, wrapping an arm around her, smiling and pleased everything was pretty much the way he’d left it.

He turned, Ophelia still in his arms, and whistled and called for Hondo. Only a sharp wind answering back from the wooded acreage.

“He’s OK.”

Quinn nodded.

“What’s that?” she said, pointing to the rusted sign for Purina feeds under their feet.

“Homemade security.”

“You expect many people to sneak up on you?”

“You bet.”

Ophelia shook her head, the porch darkened and silent, unable to see Quinn’s truck over the huge tree lying on its side in the front yard. He turned and pulled his arm away, but Ophelia grabbed him by the wrist and tilted her chin upward and closed her eyes, kissing Quinn hard on the mouth.

She held it a good moment, letting her arms fall but reaching for Quinn’s hand. She held him at length and studied him, biting her lip.

“Hello,” Quinn said.

“Hello,” she said. “God, it’s been a hell of a goddamn day.”

Quinn nodded.

“When I was a kid, I used to come out here with my grandfather and climb trees while my granddad and your uncle would sit on this porch and drink whiskey and smoke cigars.”

“Planning the future of Tibbehah County.”

“They did a pretty shitty job of it,” she said.

Quinn nodded again. He whistled for Hondo, reaching for the keys in his pocket and unlocking the front door, leaving it wide open and airing out as they walked inside. Ophelia held his hand as they made their way through the space.

“Hardly any furniture,” she said. “No pictures.”

Quinn shrugged, looking for signs Hondo had been inside.

“Quinn, I think this is the emptiest house I’ve ever seen.”

•   •   •

“Is that real money
or pledged money?” Jamey said, looking over Caddy’s shoulder in the trailer.

“It’s already into the church’s account.”

“It must be on account of those news people,” Jamey said. “That interview with Tupelo went out on CNN.”

“Well, it’s real.”

“I just took the reporter around The River,” he said, shaking his head. “Showed them the food and water we’d stockpiled and where people could sleep, take a shower, and get a hot meal. I showed them how we were helping people who didn’t have any insurance, talking about how we would help them get resettled. I didn’t ask for any money. I didn’t say anything about us needing money.”

“But we do need money.”

Jamey nodded, scruffy and tired, walking with a bad limp. He had on a Haggard T-shirt and faded jeans with no shoes. “Good Lord.”

“Yep.”

“To say the word makes it not seem as special.”

“A miracle?”

Jason turned from over Caddy’s shoulder. Caddy had thought he was asleep. “What’s a miracle?”

“We’re going to help out a lot of folks,” Caddy said. “It’s going to happen.”

Jamey smiled, but there was hesitation in his face as he stared back at the computer. Caddy couldn’t quite place it, but it seemed as if he was trying to come to some kind of decision on something that didn’t seem to be a question.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, baby.”

“What’s wrong with the money?”

“Nothing.”

“Why won’t you look at me?”

Jamey turned away from the screen and ran a hand over his exhausted and scruffy face. “I guess we all been broke so long that I’d grown comfortable with it. Having money and means makes me nervous, is all.”

“As your commitment to helping people?”

“When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others,”
he said. “I guess I feel like a hypocrite.”

“You didn’t sound a trumpet.”

“Cable TV news is the modern trumpet.”

“Then we just get rid of it fast,” Caddy said. “OK?”

Jamey turned again, face half hidden in shadow, with no smile and a short nod. Caddy walked into the back room and laid Jason onto the bed. His eyes were hooded with sleep, but he asked, “What if it comes back? Where do we go?”

“It’s all over, sweet baby,” she said. “Close your eyes.”

•   •   •

Esau Davis mingled with all
the twister survivors and helped himself to a plate of cold fried chicken big enough to reassemble the whole bird, and a big, fat portion of beans and potato salad, and walked back to the truck he stole. He had the radio on and a half bottle of Percocet and a nearly empty bottle of Turkey. He listened to a song by Miranda Lambert and thought of Becky, glad she was out of Mississippi and safe and waiting on him at a motel in Birmingham. She had wanted to double back and come for him when she found out about Bones. Damn if the woman didn’t cry, making up stories about how Bones had been a good man and a handsome man and a friend who had showed nothing but love. Horseshit like that.

Esau upended the Turkey bottle and studied the backside of the old barn Dixon had turned into a church. A barn church made a lot more sense to him than a church in prison. How had he ever bought into Jamey’s lies about redemption and change when the bastard couldn’t even work a miracle on himself? Esau’s face grew red with shame at the memory of Jamey laying his hands on his head and talking about being washed clean with the blood of the Lamb.

He drank some more, took another Percocet, and studied his bad eye in the rearview. He still was looking a hell of a lot like old Quasimodo. But half-drunk, he was looking better and better.

Twice he had spotted Dixon.

Once he had spotted Dixon’s woman and her nigger kid.

He wondered how much of his money Dixon had used for all those piles of clothes and food and portable showers and shitters. He clenched his teeth, the radio playing a song as a tribute to the survivors of that terrible storm that had hit Jericho, Mississippi. Miranda again. “Safe.”

Esau turned off the radio, searched into the old GMC’s glove compartment, and found some cheap gas station sunglasses. He had on a new black silk shirt, embroidered with roses on his shoulder like some Mexican pimp, and jeans so tight that his business looked bold and exposed. That crazy stripper nurse brought him fresh socks and a new pair of boots that creaked and squeaked when he walked. A pack of Marlboro Reds in his breast pocket and a loaded .357 on his hip.

“Fuck, yes.”

He wasn’t leaving this town, torn to shit like him, before getting what he had earned and what he had been promised. The Marshals, the police, and the FBI could fill him with more holes than Bonnie and Clyde, but his ass wasn’t leaving till this got right. But to make that happen, he needed to push Dixon and make him want him to settle up, come to him. But Dixon didn’t seem to give two shits about his own life, letting them turn him into a human piñata, being beaten and humiliated, pissing down his leg, and still keeping the secret of the deal safe with him. Had Mr. Stagg not shown Esau the light and the truth, he’d still be chasing his pecker in circles.

Get the money. Call Stagg. And then get gone.

Just like that.

He called Becky.

“You sound like shit,” she said. “Just come on.”

“You know I’ll go out hard,” he said. “You know I ain’t scared of shit.”

“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I ever heard,” she said. “Run. Save your ass. Let’s go to Florida and eat crab claws and drink margaritas and screw till the sun comes up.”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“Hell I don’t get it,” she said. “You think I enjoyed them guards listening to fucking sounds outside that couple’s house we used? You don’t think they used those security cameras to zoom in on my tits?”

“Why didn’t you tell me Dixon kept some money back? Why? Why, goddamn it?”

“’Cause I didn’t fucking know, Esau.”

“OK.”

“Are we good?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, Esau,” she said. “It’s over, baby. That money’s gone, and if Dixon still got it, he spent it by now. Leave it alone. If it hadn’t been for that tornado, you’d have every U.S. Marshal looking for the tallest tree in Mississippi.”

“But they didn’t,” he said. “Ain’t nobody seeing me, baby. Town is blown apart. It’s just beautiful.”

“Now you’re talking like a crazy man,” she said.

“Hell,” he said. “Now you’re finally listening.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Esau was silent for a while, catching Dixon walking from that old trailer and heading back into the barn. He stared at the trailer where his woman and that kid had holed up. He saw rows and rows of red plastic containers filled with diesel to run those generators and stacks of hay bales by the open door of the barn.

“Esau? Hello? What the fuck?”

“Huh?”

“I said, do you even know what you’re going to do?”

“Yep.”

“What is it? Jamey is never going to get square with you. Not now, not after all that’s happened in Jericho.”

“No?” Esau said, licking his cracked lips and grinning. “Then maybe I’m gonna smoke his ass out.”

Boom came into the sheriff’s office at first light, dirty as hell, holding a gallon jug of water from his prosthetic hand and wiping his face with a clean towel.

“Woman was trapped in a pile of rubble,” he said. “I don’t know if she was more scared of dying in that mess or seeing my hook reach down for her.”

“What’d she do?” Quinn said.

“Took the hook.”

Hondo rested at the edge of Quinn’s desk, full of water and biscuits after Quinn and Ophelia had found him snoozing in the barn with a couple calves. The dog rode all the way back into town in the truck bed, Quinn dropping Ophelia back at the funeral home while he continued on with search and rescue, patrolling the now-empty streets. “Power?” Boom asked.

“Twenty percent online in the county,” Quinn said. “City may not have power for three weeks.”

“Any more dead folks?”

“Holding at nine,” Quinn said.

“Kenny?”

“With his daddy,” Quinn said. “I told him to get gone. We got most of the streets cleared; crews going to be searching through the mess for a while. He needs to rest, take care of his father.”

“His old man ain’t never been right in the head.”

“Nope,” Quinn said.

“You think it’s possible for Ken Senior to get worse?”

Quinn shook his head. Boom took a swig from the gallon jug and took a heavy seat into the chair across from Quinn. A large topographic map of the county had been spread on the wall, pins and colored threads to track cleared houses, cleared roads, and the path of the tornado. Quinn had a fresh cup of coffee on his desk and a half-eaten sausage biscuit. The other half had gone to Hondo, who rolled over on his back in sleep, back leg twitching in some kind of dog dream.

“I’m going back to the barn,” Boom said. “Two trucks broke down last night. Both of them waiting on me.”

“You tired?” Quinn said.

“Nope,” he said. “You?”

Quinn shook his head. Hondo startled himself awake and got to his feet, shaking his mottled black and gray coat, and trotted over to put his head into Quinn’s lap. Quinn scratched his ears.

“Funny thing about PTSD,” Boom said. “This is the first time my head’s been right in a while.”

“Yeah?”

“Feels like my ass is on high alert for a reason,” Boom said. “Right.”

Quinn nodded. “Feels comfortable, doesn’t it?”

“Broke-down streets, houses all fucked up, and people walking around all bloody and crazy,” Boom said, grinning. “Shit. This is where I live.”

Quinn toasted him with his coffee mug, the sharp gold light coming through the blinds of his office window. Boom grinned and grabbed his jug and turned to the door, Mary Alice meeting him halfway, not pleased about something. “Sheriff?” she said. “I told him you didn’t have time. But he is insisting.”

“Who?”

“Jamey Dixon is at the desk,” she said. “He said it’s an emergency.”

“I heard about that fire at The River,” Quinn said. “They said it’s under control.”

“Dixon says it’s not about the fire.”

Boom raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

“Great,” Quinn said.

“You really want to see that SOB?” Mary Alice said.

“Yep,” Quinn said. “Why the hell not? Tell the preacher to come on in. It’s not like we have other shit to do.”

•   •   •

Esau Davis had crawled out
of his truck two hours earlier and made his way to the back of that big wooden church and started soaking the shit out of the timbers with diesel. Nobody saw him as he worked or as he coolly flicked his cigarette down at where the fuel had puddled in the dirt. The fuel turned to flame, zipping up onto the barn and across the wood to bring on a crisp fire and black smoke. Esau didn’t stick around to watch the show but just kept on walking with fascination toward that broke-ass trailer up on the hill, people now yelling and running for the barn. People calling for water, an extinguisher, telling all those folks inside sleeping and tired to please get the hell out. Y’all had a tornado, now here comes a fire. If Esau could pull off a flood later, he could guarantee he could fuck all them up.