The Lost Ones (10 page)

“Appreciate that,” Donnie said.

“Guns,” Campo said.

“Mr. Stagg said you could help us out some.”

“I don’t want no religious nuts or no Arabs,” Campo said. “Couldn’t live with myself.”

“Just some Mexes who want to shoot up each other.”

“I can live with that,” Campo said. “Long as they don’t fuck up my time-share in Cancún.”

“I think what we got to do—” Stagg said, starting to talk.

“Hold up, preacher,” Campo said. “Let me and this boy talk.”

Stagg sucked down more bourbon, his jaw working on a piece of ice. Donnie studied the cold beer in his hand, wondering just what all that German writing said. He drank down another sip, still wishing it was a Coors, and took a deep breath. “I need U.S. Army Colts,” Donnie said. “M4s. Military-grade. None of that Chinese-made shit, neither.”

“I understand,” Campo said. “We can truck it in? OK, preacher?”

“I ain’t no preacher,” Stagg said. “Get that straight, Mr. Campo.”

“No?” Campo said. “That’s what my boys always call you. They say you’re the spitting image of Pat Robertson, with a little Jerry Lee Lewis thrown in for good measure.”

Campo laughed a lot at that, looking over at Donnie to join in a bit. Donnie couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“I’ll excuse your manners because I can tell you’re intoxicated,” Stagg said.

“I’ve been sleeping down here in mosquitoville for five days now,” Campo said. “My wife has hired two lawyers to keep me away. My oldest son said I was a selfish prick while he’s driving a brand-new Mustang bought with pussy cash. And I have a restraining order on me, and federal agents trying to sweet-talk my bitch of a wife into letting them get a peek into my personal files. So don’t deny me some fun, Johnny T. Stagg.”

Stagg finished the bourbon and put down the glass.

“Truckin’ sounds good to me,” Donnie said. “Do the deal at the Rebel. Money will go through Mr. Stagg. We good?”

He passed over the gun list he’d made with Luz.

Campo blew some smoke out a big fat nose as he read. His big, wide forehead was peppered in sweat from the booze. He wiped it away with a cocktail napkin and walked back over to the bar and refilled his glass. He poured some more into Johnny’s glass, and Johnny looked at the whiskey with some disgust. “Y’all want to have a drink on it?” Campo asked.

Donnie joined them and helped himself to another beer in the refrigerator. He cracked open the top on the side of the counter, drinking off the foam. He stepped a foot in front of Johnny Stagg, feeling his breath on his neck, and raised his bottle. “I say fuck your wife,” Donnie said. “You seem like a hell of a guy, Mr. Campo.”

He looked over at Stagg and winked.

“Maybe ole Johnny can make enough to buy a new suit.”

Donnie and Campo laughed a little bit more. Campo reached around his shoulder and patted his back like a football coach.

Man, it was gonna be a bitch of a ride back to Tibbehah.

QUINN GOT BACK TO THE FARM
at sundown. Hondo was on the front porch but stirred when he heard Quinn’s truck and ran out to greet him, shaking the dust from his coat and offering his head for Quinn to pet. The cattle dog followed him up inside the old house, which was stark, bare, and airless as a church, Quinn leaving the front door open and letting the screen door thwack behind them. He’d spent most of the summer gutting the place and whitewashing the walls and sanding the heart pine floors. By the time he went through all his Uncle Hamp’s junk, there wasn’t much to keep besides a big kitchen table and chairs, a couple iron beds, and an old dresser that had belonged to his great-grandmother. He gave away about everything else or burned it. Now the house seemed empty and hollow but at least clean. Quinn set up an iron bed for himself and a little pillow for Hondo. He’d affixed a metal pipe against the bedroom wall for his pressed blue jeans, work shirts, and such. His cowboy and hunting boots were polished with saddle soap and waiting on the floor below.

He kept most of his guns in a hiding hole he’d bored into the center of the living room floor that he covered with a rug he’d shipped home from Afghanistan. He kept his service revolver on the nightstand after work. A Browning “Sweet 16” rested between a set of deer antlers above the fireplace.

Quinn took off his shirt and tossed it in a laundry bag. Now dressed in an undershirt and jeans, he removed his Sam Brown and cowboy boots and retired to the front porch. He lit up a La Gloria Cubana and brought out a rawhide for Hondo.

They sat on the porch for a long time, watching the sun drop over a small orchard of new and old pear and apple trees. The light grew gold and pleasant as it slid across the skeletal frame of a new barn Quinn was building. Hondo made a lot of noise as he chewed.

His mother never understood why he’d kept the old place. Johnny Stagg tried to buy it from him for a more than decent price. But he couldn’t sell a piece of land that had been in his family since 1895, especially to a shitbag like Stagg. Besides, he liked it out here, a good ten miles out of Jericho, and on a good piece of acreage populated with turkey and deer. He expected to have a full freezer by the end of hunting season and had already been able to put up a nice bit of beans, corn, and peppers from his small garden. The idea of home such a strange concept after living life in Conex containers, airplane hangars, and tents for the last decade. One of the first things he’d learned as a Ranger was make the most of your downtime. Quiet your mind and rest. You never know what’s around the corner.

A young doe wandered into his orchard and began to eat some rotten apples that had fallen long ago. He watched with interest as she scoured for the remaining apples, ears pricked for the slightest sound. Bats filled the sky as it turned to night, picking off mosquitoes in the quiet hum of the country. There were frogs chirping in the creek. He’d roll onto duty at four a.m. and would enjoy the last little bit of night left.

Hondo lifted his head from the porch.

Quinn put his hand on him and stood, looking down the long gravel road to the main highway. A red SUV turned onto his road and bumped up his circular drive. Hondo trotted out and barked at his visitor.

Anna Lee stepped out, Hondo sniffing at her hand as she turned up the path to the old white house. Quinn met her at the screen door, letting her onto the porch and inviting her to join him.

He hadn’t seen her since Johnny Stagg’s Good Ole Boy, but the same feeling hit him in the pit of the stomach, something that he wished he could control but couldn’t. It had been that way since they were fifteen, taking it all slow and easy as good buddies till it all became rocky and wild and heated, kid promises made. She said she’d wait till he returned and they could marry, but that didn’t last long. A few years later, she found a better situation when Luke Stevens came back from Tulane. And how could he blame her? He’d only been five years into a war that would take him another five to come home.

“Is this OK?” she asked.

“Just watching the bats.”

“Is that what you do all the way out here?”

“Sometimes,” Quinn said. “I don’t have a TV. A few beers makes things more entertaining.”

“Good to see you the other night.”

“Always good seeing you, Anna Lee.”

He offered to get her some sweet tea or water, but she declined. It was cool on the porch, but she fanned her face with her hand, the trip from the car to the porch a little too much. Hondo stood between them, panting and staring up at Quinn.

Anna Lee rested her tall boots on the ledge. She was fair and blond, with delicate features and a long, elegant neck. Besides the bulge of stomach under her long-sleeved brown dress, you wouldn’t know she was nearly due.

“Haven’t seen much of you since I’ve been back,” Quinn said.

“Haven’t been out much,” she said.

“How much longer?”

“Eight weeks.”

“Luke must be thrilled.”

“He is.”

“Sorry we haven’t talked,” Quinn said. “I guess there wasn’t much to say after you got pregnant.”

“I said all I wanted to say after you got shot,” Anna Lee said. “You figure that wasn’t enough?”

“You didn’t say anything.”

A silence cut between them for a moment, the only sound Hondo’s panting and then the violent scratching of his back leg on his ear. The chain on his neck jingled as he worked. He went back to his bone.

“I put out a steak for supper,” Quinn said. “I can make another.”

“I can’t stay, Quinn,” she said. “How the hell would that look?”

“You came to see me.”

“I came to talk to you about Caddy.”

“I’m done with Caddy.”

“How can you be done with your own sister?”

“After a while, you quit trying.”

“Can you try for Jason?”

Quinn nodded. He watched two young calves playing in the pasture, head-butting each other and tossing their rear ends up in the air. The big cows grazed around them, chewing and eating, the big bull standing on the far hill, looking tired and old. He’d been the bull for as long as Quinn could remember, but his ribs were starting to show, and his eyes had taken on a yellow cast.

“She’s been lying to Jason,” Quinn said. “She’ll promise to come see him and never make it. How’s that look to a kid?”

“She’s back now.”

Quinn didn’t say anything.

“Just got back from your momma’s,” Anna Lee said. “I watched Jason while your mom shopped. Caddy came in after I fed Jason.”

Quinn nodded. “Twenty-four-hour hero,” he said.

“She unpacked,” Anna Lee said. “I think Caddy’s home for good.”

13

CADDY WAS THE CIGARETTES-AND-COFFEE CADDY THAT QUINN HAD SEEN
a thousand times before. She’d sit in their father’s old recliner and read the Bible or books of inspiration or some Christian romance novel with women and horses on the cover and begin reciting back things she’d read as if they were her own ideas. She was pale and skinny, with dark-rimmed eyes and bad hair. She’d stripped off all the makeup she took to wearing when she was all full of herself and toned down the sexy dress with a pair of jeans and a large T-shirt that hit her at the knees. She lit up and reached for a Diet Coke, finding her place in a book called
The Shack
, a novel Quinn had heard about that told the story of a man who meets up with Jesus in Oregon and talks it out.

When Quinn walked into their mother’s house, she jumped up and hugged him as if they’d last left things in great order. Quinn recalled a shouting match in a Memphis parking lot where he told her to get her shit together. Caddy had been working for dollar bills at a gentlemen’s club by the airport.

“Big brother,” Caddy said, and kissed him on the cheek.

Quinn nodded and hung up his hat by the door. Anna Lee had followed in her car and closed the door behind them. She smiled at Caddy, both of them obviously catching up earlier, and she walked outside to join Jean, who was playing with Jason on a tire swing hanging from an old pecan tree.

“You still got the eyes for Anna Lee, knocked-up and all.”

“She said you wanted to see me.”

“You could’ve come tomorrow.”

She sat back down in Jason Colson’s recliner, the one they should have taken out and burned the day he packed up his shit and moved to California for good. She pulled on her cigarette and grinned at him in a knowing way, as if it were Quinn with the goddamn problems. Not Caddy, who’d moved home because she’d hit rock bottom with nowhere else to go.

“Anna Lee says you’re sticking around awhile,” Quinn said.

“Momma needs help.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And I’d been missing Jason, with work and all,” Caddy said. “It’s ninety miles to Memphis.”

About a hundred and fifty replies popped into Quinn’s mind with that one. But he stayed silent, knowing a man never got himself in trouble by keeping his mouth shut.

“Sheriff Colson.”

“I was sheriff last time you were home, too.”

“Don’t recall much of that trip.”

“No fooling.”

“It’s not the same,” Caddy said. “Not now.”

Quinn nodded and walked back to the kitchen to snatch a beer that his momma kept in the refrigerator just for him. He popped the top on a Budweiser and returned to the TV room, knowing Caddy was a hell of a lot easier to take with a beer in hand.

“You know, you can let your hair grow out,” she said. “You don’t have to go with the high and tight.”

Quinn shrugged and drank the beer. Caddy turned to the sliding glass door and watched Anna Lee and Jean pushing Jason between both of them. Jason laughing and kicking his legs, both women making sure that he didn’t veer off path or go too high. Jason screamed with laughter.

“It’s good to be home.”

“You make it hard on him,” Quinn said. “You just make it that much goddamn harder every time.”

“You won’t spoil this for me,” Caddy said. “You hadn’t walked in the door five minutes.”

“You want to tell me how now is different?” Quinn asked. “Because Momma and I are going to have to clean up the mess when you get gone again. You ever try reading books to a child while he’s crying?”

She nodded. “I’ve been meeting with a counselor,” she said. “Three times a week. He wanted me to come home, address my issues with my family.”

“You blaming us now?”

“We grew up in a shitstorm.”

“I figure you wouldn’t want that for Jason.”

“I don’t want to fight,” Caddy said. “Momma’s picked up dinner, and I thought we could all sit down together. I’m trying, Quinn. I am. I’m clean.”

“How long?”

“Three weeks.”

Quinn nodded. He’d heard it before.

“What happened to the new boyfriend?”

“He’s a piece of shit.”

“I think I told you that,” Quinn said, the words out of his mouth before he could stop them. But Caddy still smiled at him, feeling something in the room that Quinn didn’t. She was looking at all of Jean’s stuff, and the sight of that ugly green couch and slick dining room table that they didn’t use except for Christmas and Thanksgiving and even those old Elvis movie posters brought her some kind of happiness.