The Broken Places (38 page)

She thought of The River and the old barn and the people rushing to save it.

“Why’d you have to burn the barn?”

“Make Jamey think on things.”

“He doesn’t have your money,” she said. “Johnny Stagg has your money.”

“Stagg said Jamey was a liar and that he’d never even known about that car.”

“Christ Almighty. It takes a true genius to take Johnny Stagg at his word.”

“I ain’t gonna kill you,” Esau said.

“I know.”

“I just had to take y’all to make him think on things, get some money. If I don’t have money, they’ll throw me back in Parchman. And this time, I ain’t ever getting out. They got this one son of a bitch who busted out ten years ago, wound up in Indiana hunting deer and shit. He hadn’t left lockdown since he come back.”

“And with you killing three men, two of them lawmen,” Caddy said, leaving it hanging right there in the air. Jason turned to her, snuggling tighter. Despite everything that was going on, the boy had nearly fallen asleep once they rode around in the truck awhile. She had not yelled or screamed. She’d remained calm and definite, Jason sure that Uncle Quinn would be coming for them soon.

She’d even pointed to all the pretty flowers and trees and cows. Jason loved cattle. But before he fell asleep, he’d made a point that Uncle Quinn had cattle and a cattle prod, although he just called it a shocker.

“I can’t promise you about Jamey,” Esau said. “As much as it pains me.”

“Why does it pain you?”

“He saved me for a bit,” Esau said. “We had this one old guard named Horace, who was working on killing me. Man was a sadist, licking his lips as he’d break me, working me without no water in the summer. Gave him some kind of pleasure that I didn’t have heat stroke although my skin would fry up like bacon in the sunshine. This was before all them reforms and the new wardens and superintendents they got now. ACLU sued the whole prison system. You read about that?”

Caddy shook her head.

“Jamey and I met at the infirmary,” Esau said, staring over the steering wheel of the parked truck. Rusted Quonset huts and World War Two-era airplane hangars clustered near the ridgeline of woods. The morning light was gray and misty, the old tarmac running for hundreds and hundreds of yards reminding Caddy of when she used to come out here to raise hell with Quinn and Boom.

Esau was talking more. Caddy wasn’t listening.

“Got me medical care and food, my arm treated, had me reassigned to the canteen,” Esau said. “You know what that means?”

“You work at the canteen?”

“That’s the best job a prisoner can get,” he said. “Food, Coca-Cola, movies to rent. And then we started working at the Spiritual Life Center. I was a deacon, although really just a trusty. I had value and purpose. You know what it meant to have them things?”

Caddy swallowed. She held Jason tighter. The sun was rising full up from the east, burning off the mist in the tree line.

“I woulda done anything for that man,” Esau said. “Why’d he have to go and fuck me in the ass?”

•   •   •

Quinn met Lillie
at the Dixie gas station where she’d parked her Jeep Cherokee by the fallen metal sign. A crew worked to secure the gas lines from the damaged pumps, Lillie seeming unconcerned as she spoke to the crew, calling in to dispatch from a handheld as she approached the driver’s side of Quinn’s truck. She leaned into the open window and spotted Dixon. “This the shit sandwich?” she asked.

“Part of it.”

“What’s the rest?”

Quinn told her.

“And so we’re off the books?”

“Yep.”

Dixon was smart enough to stay quiet, knowing he couldn’t talk Quinn out of driving right into the meeting spot at that broke-ass airfield in the north county. “We could call in SWAT or use all the law enforcement we got on patrols right now,” she said. “I imagine the Marshals are pretty intent on turning the lights off for this son of a bitch.”

“I’d rather not have too many boots on the ground.”

“Esau didn’t want anyone but me,” Dixon said.

Quinn shot Dixon a look to ensure he shut his mouth until he was finished speaking with Lillie.

“Do I need to explain?”

“That’s an insult even in the asking,” Lillie said, leaning back out of the window. She was chewing gum and back in her sheriff’s office uniform, dark green with no hat, her brown, curly hair knotted in a ponytail and her Glock on her hip. “I ride with you?”

Quinn nodded.

“Let me get my rifle, Sheriff,” Lillie said. “Just reset the scope.”

“I’m sorry,” Esau said.

“You said that already,” said Caddy, tired of the bullshit, hoping he’d pass out soon. Jason stirred in her lap, asking why they’d parked there. She told him they were waiting on an airplane.

“That’s right,” Esau said. “How do you think I’m getting out?”

“How’s it supposed to land?” she asked. “Last plane to land here was the
Memphis Belle
.”

“Mr. Stagg said he had a private plane that could land anywhere,” Esau said, one good eye hooded and nearly closed like the mangled one. “Dixon better show.”

“And what does Stagg get for his good deed?”

Esau snorted, smiled a bit. He settled into the driver’s seat, watching the length of the broken landing field, weeds and small trees poking out of the cracks. Caddy knew the convict had definitely switched over to another wavelength if he believed he was ever gonna fly out of here.

“Where’s the plane, Momma?”

“It’s coming,” Esau said.

“Just watch the sky, baby,” she said, and turned back to Esau. “What did you tell Stagg you’d do?”

Esau put his sunglasses back on and folded his arms across his chest, gun resting butt-up obscenely between his legs. If he would just nod off, Caddy would grab it in a second and plug that son of a bitch. She did not want her child here. Jamey did not want him here. And God sure didn’t want this. She would use what was given to her and take action. Caddy pointed to the gray sky and rising sun. “You hear it, baby? You see that plane?”

“Nope,” Jason said, pointing. “But I see those men coming out of the woods.”

Two men dressed in hunting camo and ball caps walked out from the trees close to the old Quonset huts. They both had a serious gait about them like they had already shot down a prize buck and just had to drag it back to camp. The man on the right looked vaguely familiar until he got close, and then Caddy was sure it was Leonard, the fat-ass police chief. The other was just as fat and no-necked, with eyes like BBs.

“You knew they were here,” Caddy said, shaking her head. “That’s why you haven’t lifted your gun off your pecker.”

“Hell,” Esau said. “You think I trust Dixon to do what I say? Stagg’s got three more of them boys in the woods.”

•   •   •

“Please don’t do this,”
Jamey said, begging Quinn. “Just let me be the one walking in. I got money. I got as much as the bank would let me. Twenty thousand dollars. Esau isn’t gonna turn that down. Not now. Not after all that happened.”

Quinn stayed quiet as he turned right off County Road 337 and down a rutted dirt road past an old settler’s cabin, wisteria growing wild and making all the trees purple, early light cutting across the rough-hewn timbers cut a century and a half ago.

“Pretty,” Lillie said.

“Oldest place in the county.”

“What about that cabin in Dogtown, near the place that sells worms and crickets?”

“Nope,” he said. “This one here is before the war. One of the only places they didn’t burn.”

Quinn drove a mile down the road and came to a cattle guard with a lot of notices about how trespassing would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He swung open the gate, got back into the cab of his F-250, and headed on down another long rutted road; this road was so rutted and busted that Lillie had to grip onto Quinn’s headrest until the road smoothed out into a big clearing of trees with a ridge running up to the north and east. He stopped the truck, got out, and helped Lillie from the backseat with her sniper rifle. She disappeared into the trees and thick, old-growth woods, tall as a cathedral, some of the last uncleared land he could recall.

Quinn drove on toward the big open fields where the Air Force had built a test range back in the forties. There were still some signs of the old hangars where he and Boom used to blow shit up and smoke dope before Quinn got tired of acting that way. The broken path opened up at the edge of the dirt road and became broken squares of concrete. A brown GMC truck waited for them in the center, not shit around them but the half-bowl of the valley and a hard wind sweeping through after the storm.

Quinn let down his window. “We get out of the truck at the same time,” he said. “But I do the talking.”

“Do I bring the money?”

“Yes.”

“What was that you handed Lillie?”

“A flash-bang.”

“What’s that for?”

“To split Esau’s mind.”

“Let me walk alone.”

“Nope.”

“He can be reasoned with,” Jamey said. “He’s a good man in his heart. He feels used and betrayed, and I understand why.”

“Appreciate the sermon, preacher,” Quinn said, getting within two hundred meters of Esau’s truck, one-fifty, one hundred, and slowing down.

Esau was out of the vehicle, walking with two men with rifles and marching toward the truck, a .357 outstretched in his right hand. Jamey tensed, pressing back into the seat. Quinn calmly kept driving forward. “He’s gonna shoot you,” Jamey said. “He’s gonna shoot you.”

“I’m not worried about Esau,” Quinn said.

“Who’s with him?” Jamey said.

Quinn slowed and stopped. He knocked his truck into park, opening the door and raising his empty hands. Esau kept moving toward him, Quinn now knowing he’d have to deal with Leonard’s dumb ass and that moron who worked as his assistant chief. He couldn’t recall his name.

Caddy and Jason stayed in the truck. Quinn silently willed Caddy to grab Jason and go to the floorboard until this business was all done. Quinn tried to stare at her, give her a nod, but it was too far, and there was a hard, dull glare across the windshield.

He felt, rather than saw, Jamey walking at his side.

He got within five meters of Esau and his buddies and tossed over two thick, brown Piggly Wiggly grocery bags at his feet. Esau didn’t move, keeping the gun on Quinn, never on Jamey, Quinn’s hands still raised as Esau squatted and looked at the cash.

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

Esau spit.

“I can get more.”

“Ain’t no time.”

Quinn kept a distance from Jamey, who stood to his right, facing the huts. His most immediate threat would come from Leonard and then his fat-ass police officer. Quinn now recalled that his name was Joe Ed Burney. Burney had once been expelled from high school after being caught hiding naked under the football bleachers during cheerleading practice.

“I want you to know, I didn’t lie,” Jamey said. “This money comes from good people trying to help everyone in this county. I don’t have your money, never wanted it. Take this and just go.”

Quinn stood calm and relaxed, hands still in the air, thinking about but not looking toward where Lillie would set up her shot. She’d see it was Leonard and Joe Ed, too, and that wouldn’t stop her getting to work in the least. She’d pick up Esau first, Quinn could draw on Leonard, and then a second shot could take out Joe Ed, who apparently had never been fast with his hands, the reason he’d been caught all those years ago.

Leonard told Quinn to turn around. Leonard walked over to him and patted down his legs and his back, just as Leonard would be inclined to do. “Drive away, Quinn,” Leonard said.

Quinn shook his head.

“You can take your whore sister and the nigger kid,” he said. “But you leave Dixon.”

Quinn didn’t move. He took a breath, feeling the wind on his face, trying again to get to Caddy. He stared at her, and she seemed to get some kind of sense about her, pulling Jason down with her onto the floorboard of the truck. Quinn looked away from the ridgeline and placed a hand on Dixon’s elbow. “Come on.”

The rifles centered on Quinn. Esau squatted on his haunches like a primitive man, thumbing through the money in the Piggly Wiggly bags. He looked up from where he sat and nodded up to Leonard and Joe Ed. “It’s good. It’s good.”

Quinn kept pushing Dixon forward, around the men on the busted tarmac and to the truck with Caddy and Jason. He’d drive that old truck out, get as free and clear of these sons of bitches as possible, and then settle the thing with Leonard and Stagg. A long time coming.

Quinn stared down the bead of Leonard’s rifle and pushed Jamey forward. As they brushed past Joe Ed and Leonard, the fat chief turned red and purple in the face, telling them both, “I swear to God, I’ll shoot both y’all in the fucking back. I swear to you, Quinn. I’ll shoot you down right now.”

“I’ll stay,” Dixon said. “Get ’em out of here.”

“He won’t shoot,” Quinn said. “He’s just a worthless turd. Come on.”

“Get Caddy and Jason and get gone,” Dixon said, and shook loose of Quinn’s hard grip on his elbow. He walked toward Esau, squatting down with the convict on the tarmac, telling him he was sorry how this all happened. He placed his hand on Esau’s, Esau’s shirt blowing up in the wind, his expression confused and pained. “I love you, brother.”