The Broken Places (8 page)

“Mean, mean woman,” Boom said. “Just stay away from redheads and women who pack heat.”

“Solid advice,” Quinn said.

“Just looking out for you, man.”

Quinn smiled. Boom offered his prosthetic hand, and Quinn lightly bumped it with his fist.

•   •   •

Quinn had been home
for an hour, and to get comfortable, he’d removed his Beretta’s leather rig and khaki sheriff’s office shirt. He wore a simple white T-shirt and his jeans, feeling almost weightless and naked, with boots set by the back door, as he fried up some bacon and made some coffee. He stared out the big window over his kitchen sink, watching the cows and many new calves playing in the half-sunlight shooting from the broken slots in the clouds. The window was open, and the air smelled strong and earthy, of tilled soil and cow manure. He never grew tired of the color back in Mississippi. Even in the winter, things were brighter and more vibrant than any inch of Afghanistan. The landscape there was a colorless void of purgatory, where it seemed a sensible day when a man or woman or child would strap on a bomb and decide today was it. Quinn still had a six-inch scar across his forearm where a suicide bomber had shot him square in the chest, the bullet whizzing off his breastplate and into his arm. He’d fought for six hours in that Takhar Province compound before they sealed him back up with needles and staples. After thirteen tours, that became the new normal.

The grease popped and Quinn wiped up some splatterings with a hand towel, forking the bacon from the skillet. He cracked open three eggs and set aside a loaf of Texas bread and some butter. It was after eight now and he was tired. But being on the night shift made early morning his only personal time when he could read and feed the animals, watch the day start up from the long porch of his old farmhouse.

Just as he lifted the eggs from the skillet, he heard the familiar-sounding car drive up into his driveway and shut off the engine. Quinn could almost count the seconds from door slam to front screen door creak and boot thumps down his hallway.

Quinn didn’t even turn as he set the bread in the skillet to brown and felt the familiar arms around his stomach and soft head against his neck. His stereo playing the new CD from Bryan Ledford, country and bluegrass, love, heartache, and revenge. She smelled of fresh powder and a light perfume, her hand pressing down onto his scarred forearm, turning him around and kissing him full hard on the mouth.

Quinn turned off the flame and reached his arms around her waist, hands across her lower back, mouth on hers and then down on her neck and feeling under the light silk of her top, bra strap snapping off, over her smallish breasts and then lifting off her shirt and bra, now with her only in dark blue jeans and dirty cowboy boots. He lifted her up and onto a cabinet as she kissed his face and chest while he pulled off his T-shirt and started working on his belt, barely getting it unbuckled as her legs wrapped around his waist and he carried her through the kitchen and the hallway, the door wide open, the screen door showing deep across the road and into the pasture, sun beating on the hay bales, steam rising in the morning cool. He laid her down roughly on the bed and slipped her from her jeans and boots and pulled out of his, both of them not even fooling with the covers in Quinn’s bedroom. The room was dark, with a thin spindle of daylight cutting through the lace curtains and over the solitary, almost monastic iron bed in the center. The only other furniture was an armoire and an Army footlocker where he kept several of his guns at the end of his bed. She reached out strong and confident below him, gripping the thick iron headboard and holding on as he kissed her harder across her neck and over her body, hating every minute they couldn’t be together, loving her but resenting it all the same. He held her up off the bed as she arched her back and held on, white-knuckled, to the bed as it shook and shuddered with so much intensity that the feet skipped and scraped hard against the wood floor.

When it was over, Quinn moved to the edge of the bed, feet touching the floor. He tried to catch his breath, the sunlight shifting from the floor to across the bed and keeping his face in a half-light. He breathed slow and tried to steady his heart the same way he did when shooting a pistol or rifle, but everything felt uneasy and off-kilter. She was behind him now, her body pressed behind him, chin on his shoulder, her skin moist on his back and breath hot in his ear. The old house was calm and easy except for the country music playing muffled from the kitchen.

“Can you stay for breakfast?” he said. “I cooked it before you came so you couldn’t make an excuse.”

“No,” she said.

“Five minutes won’t matter.”

“No one can see me here.”

Quinn did not turn around, staring into the curtain as it fluttered and settled in the spring wind. “I don’t much care anymore.”

“You don’t have as much to lose.”

“You know what I want to say,” Quinn said.

Her hand reached up over his shoulder, and she put two fingers to his mouth. “Hush.”

“I want to say it.”

“That just makes this all harder,” she said, getting off the bed, the mattress creaking and releasing as she stood small-breasted and wide-hipped, with her strawberry blond hair cut in blunt bangs that shielded her eyes. She laughed as she searched on the floor for her panties and her jeans and walked from the dark room into the kitchen, where she returned clothed and holding her boots. She sat on Quinn’s locker and slid her stocking feet into them and then stood and walked to the half-closed door. “At least this is something,” she said.

“Who’s at your house?”

“My mother.”

“Does she know where you are?”

“Sure,” she said. “Grocery shopping.”

“You do know,” Quinn said, standing and dressing.

“I do,” she said. “But if you ever say it out loud, I swear to Christ that this will all end. I don’t know what this is. But it’s something and works for now.”

Quinn rubbed his temples, listening to the heavy steps of her boots and the door slamming behind her. Anna Lee Amsden was back in his life.

Caddy liked having a purpose. Most mornings, she would drop Jason at preschool, and, if she didn’t have to go to work, she’d head right for The River, knowing there was plenty of work to be done. Jamey left her in charge of the gardening and the gathering of used clothing. They planned to open a thrift shop in an outbuilding, and the cleaning and organizing took most of her day. But it was spring now, and she had to continue to plant, scatter the compost, and cultivate rows for the small tomato plants she put in the ground last week. If everything worked the way Jamey saw it, they could feed and clothe most of the congregation. And those who joined the church would work and earn, giving their life some purpose, too. Jamey said that was the only way he’d survived the Farm, getting away from lying in his bunk and watching television and getting out in the fields. And from the fields, finding the course work through that seminary in New Orleans. He walked away from prison not only a free man but a full and complete human being and an ordained minister.

She was on her hands and knees that morning, the sun breaking through the clouds, dirt up under her nails, and feeling good spreading the mulch around the little plants. Caddy stood up to wipe the sweat from her face when she saw the silver truck running down the dirt road toward the barn. She’d never seen the truck before, but that wasn’t that peculiar. Jamey invited everyone he met to come out and join them, and even if he got turned down, he’d ask them to think on it and come out and just see what The River was all about. He didn’t care if they became members, only that they witnessed what they were doing. If Jamey and Caddy could serve as examples to those they met, then they had done something.

Two men got out of the truck, one white and one black. The black man was tall and skinny, and the white man had hair the color of copper wire. They were a far bit off, and as she was deciding whether to meet them, she saw Jamey emerge from the barn and walk toward them, suddenly stopping where he stood. They were exchanging words and Jamey was pointing for them to turn around and head back down the road they’d come.

The copper-haired man kept walking, and Jamey threw down the paintbrush in his hand. He was repeatedly shaking his head until the man, looking thick and muscular, got within a foot of Jamey and punched him square in the stomach. Caddy wasn’t even aware she was running until she was ten feet away, tripping and crushing the new plantings and heading from the garden. She ran to Jamey, who was on his knees. The man yelled at Jamey, telling him he was a coward and a piece of shit, and Caddy didn’t know much about the situation but found herself in front of the man with the red hair and beard, spitting right into his face.

“Leave us alone,” Caddy said. “Get the hell out of here.”

Jamey was back on his feet, taking in big gulps of air and pulling her back. He told her to run away, this wasn’t her business.

“Get out of here.”

The black man joined his friend. He looked Caddy up and down like the men used to appraise her in Memphis. And she thought back on the time when she’d work for forty dollars a dance, two for sixty, in a uniform of bra and panties, dancing full of vodka and pills and being numb to the lights and dance music and not being a participant in her own existence. She wanted to spit on him, too, but her mouth was too dry.

“Glad to see you back with women, Dixon,” the black man said. “You come a long way from Louis Scott cornholing you in that tool shed.”

She looked to Jamey, feeling like she wanted to cry but instead setting her jaw. Jamey pushed her behind him and looked right at the man with red hair. “Don’t make me call the police,” he said. “Get gone from here.”

“Is your brain fried?” the red-haired man said. “You got something belongs to me.”

“I got nothing but what I wear.”

“Motherfucker,” the black man said.

“Don’t make me call the police.”

“Call ’em,” the red-haired man said. “But I swear I’ll kill you before they get here. I am not going back before I get what’s mine or before you’re dead.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The man struck Jamey again hard in the mouth, reeling him backward, stumbling on his feet. But he stood his ground, telling the man to leave. “Not here, not in this place.”

“What is this?” the black man said. “Some kind of dope-smokin’ hippie commune? I thought you’d be up to your eyeballs in pussy and Cadillacs about now. Although this one sure is something sweet. I can smell her from here.”

“You nasty piece of shit,” Caddy said. She reached for her cell phone, dialing for 911, and Jamey pulled the phone from her hands.

“Not here,” he said. “We’ll talk. But I don’t have what you want. I need you to understand that. Anything we talked about at the Farm is gone. That’s not my life now.”

“Well,” the red-haired man said. “It’s my life. It’s all I got.”

“We have volunteers coming,” Jamey said. “Where can we meet?”

“You tryin’ to set us up?” the black man said.

Jamey looked to Caddy and then back to the men. “I set you up, and I kind of do the same to myself.”

The men studied Jamey, thinking on what he said. The daylight white and slatted, running for acres and acres through the tilled land and the half-painted barn. Caddy held on to Jamey’s arm, holding him back, holding herself on her feet. Without a word, the men were back in the truck, cranking the engine and turning away in a spray of dirt and gravel.

“OK,” she said, steadying herself. “Just what the hell is going on?”

•   •   •

“Why’d we leave?”
Bones said, driving the Tundra down the long gravel road. “Ain’t no reason to leave.”

“You want to talk to the locals?”

“Hell, naw.”

“Dixon is right,” Esau said. “He fucks us, he fucks himself.”

“That really true what you said about Scott cornholing that motherfucker in the shed?”

“Don’t know,” Esau said. “That’s what I heard. I know they took the hide off his ass before we started looking out for him. Wasn’t for us, Dixon knows he’d be dead.”

“We take care of him,” Bones said. “Protect him. And then he supposed to take care of us. Only when he get out, he can’t even remember our fucking names.”

Esau gritted his teeth, nodding.

“Where do we go?” Bones said, hitting the main county highway and driving north, up toward Jericho and the Town Square. A handmade sign on the side of the road read:
HELL IS REAL. ARE YOU READY?

“Back to the hunt club,” Esau said. “Let’s eat and wait for Dixon to call.”

“What if the man who owns the place shows up?” Bones said.

“Son of a bitch probably owns ten places just like that one,” Esau said. “Rich men don’t value what they got. That’s what makes them have soft bellies and little dicks. Reason their women don’t have respect for them.”

“You give me a bunch of money and I don’t care if I get fat and my pecker shrinks,” Bones said. “How about you?”

“Guess not.”

“So how come Dixon pretending like he don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about?”