The Lost Ones (36 page)

“That all of ’em?” Lillie asked.

“I hope.”

And then they both heard the shot.

THE ONE THEY CALLED TONY
tied Donnie to his own kitchen chair and started beating the ever-living shit out of him. It wasn’t fair to say it was all Tony, some of his boys joined in, including Ramón Torres with his injured leg. He was hobbling on that damn thing, strips of bloody bedsheets working as some kind of cheap-ass tourniquet. Guess the bullet had gone straight through. There were a lot of fists and pointed boots coming at Donnie, fast Spanish with a lot of threats that didn’t make a lick of sense. He just tried to take it, laughing at them dumb shits, because he sure as hell wasn’t gonna give them the satisfaction of seeing fear in him before they put a bullet between his eyes. Luz was holding on to his arm, screaming at the men as they worked out their social problems, screaming and crying. Donnie’s eyes about swelling shut as he cracked out a whispered “What did you ever see in this guy? The damn cowboy hat?”

A couple fists knocked his lights out twice. He didn’t mind the pain as much as the coming to with more fists flying. Luz screamed more, running for the door. Donnie wondered what had happened to Javier and Luis, thinking those boys weren’t as stand-up as they promised. He’d even take that kid shooter right about now. Donnie’s head lulled to his chest, looking at the world crazy and cocked and bloody as hell, his trailer more fucked up than he’d ever seen it. Four of them huddling around one another, talking, smoking, worn out from giving the goddamn beating, bless their hearts.

“They want to know where you’ve put the guns,” Luz said, whispering, crying in his ear.

“Don’t you tell ’em.”

“They’ll find them anyway.”

“Give your boys a chance,” Donnie said. “They can get out.”

“Didn’t you hear what they said?” Luz asked. “They want to cut off your head. Leave a message.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Donnie said, spitting blood across his shoulder. “I bet that’s gonna hurt like a bitch.”

LILLIE LED THE THREE DEPUTIES
down on the ridge, all spacing themselves among the trees, looking down into the little gulley, watching the men below walking around with AK-47s, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and laughing. Faraway music from a car stereo lilted through the air. Quinn walked ahead of Boom, Kenny, and Ike McCaslin, telling them to leave their ball caps with the ATVs and unzip the front of their jackets, leaving space for their undershirts to show a bit.

“Why?” Ike asked, not butting up against Quinn but more making talk as they wound through the headstones.

Quinn turned to him, crooking his head to the side, showing what the bill would look like in silhouette. “An open shirt gives another vertical line. From far off, you’ll look like another tree.”

“Kenny’s been thinking like a tree for years,” Ike said.

From back behind him, Quinn heard Kenny give a quiet “Fuck you.”

The headstones lay crooked and lichen-coated, sculptures of wood stumps for loggers and small lambs for children. Lots of names Quinn knew from growing up in the county, the dead, long-gone relatives. He found the footing along the hill to his liking; all the recent rain had made the October leaves as soft and silent as wet cotton. Soon they were headed down the slope to the objective rally point where he’d give Lillie the order to start shooting at the men by the trucks, maybe flush out whoever had fired that pistol. Quinn didn’t like the sound of that single shot and silence.

Boom walked up at his flank, Quinn walking with the Remington pump in hand, pockets loaded down with the extra magazines for the 9mm he wore on his belt.

“Donnie’s dead,” Boom said.

“Sounds like it.”

“This gonna get you in trouble with those Feds?”

“They asked me to let them go,” Quinn said. “I got to respond to shots fired.”

“Part of your job.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“I’d been pissed if Lillie hadn’t called.”

“What were you doing?”

“Wide-ass awake,” Boom said. “That’s the bitch of not drinking yourself to sleep.”

Quinn judged the distance before they’d stop. He radioed Lillie and within seconds heard her call down the ravine with a bullhorn for the men to put down their weapons and put up their hands. The reply came in assault weapons, zipping a continuous stream of bullets up onto the ridge.

Quick, loud, cracking rifle shots responded from the deputies. The men by the trucks ducked for cover and fired up to the ridge with their automatic weapons. Quinn was at a quick run now, Boom, Kenny, and Ike following, ready to sweep in behind the men and take control of the Varners’ land.

“Now?” Boom asked, Ike at his side. Kenny huffing up behind them, stifling a cough in his jacket.

Quinn held up his hand. He shook his head.

He watched the men taking the fire from the ridge. He waited until the sound broke slow and ragged, some spacing out their shots, some changing out ammo. He ran hard and fast to the rally point where they’d regroup before heading toward the trucks. But at the edge of the clearing, standing on a path to the gun range, Quinn spotted two big men. He slowed and stopped, the men not hearing him, and walked forward with the shotgun jacked full of deer slugs.

46

THE BIG MEN HELD UP THEIR HANDS AND DROPPED TO THEIR KNEES, A
damn teenage kid walking from the shadows, sweaty palms up, yelling in English in a thick Mexican accent for Quinn not to shoot. Quinn shifted the Remington pump to the men and the boy, Boom and Kenny kicking the men to the ground, searching them for weapons. The boy pleaded with Quinn, as shots echoed through the ravine, telling him he was not a part of this, he was a friend to the owner of the gun range. Up behind the men, an 18-wheeler sat parked with its lights off and the back trailer doors wide open.

“Who’s with you?” Quinn asked.

“Two men inside the truck,” the boy said. “I don’t know their names.”

“You know Donnie Varner?”

The boy shook his head, not hearing him with all the shooting going on. During a lull, Quinn asked again.

The boy motioned up to the Airstream on the hill, Christmas lights strung from a ragged canopy to four-by-fours poking out of the ground. Quinn told Kenny and Boom to zip-cuff the men and the boy while he moved toward the big open doors of the 18-wheeler, shining a Maglite held next to the barrel of the shotgun into the open mouth, seeing two Anglo men turn, both sweating, dirty, and out of breath, slowly looking to Quinn like their asses had just been busted. “God damn,” Tiny said. “You made me shit my drawers, Colson.”

“Y’all get the hell out of there,” Quinn said. “Who’s got Donnie?”

“Them crazy-ass Mexes,” Shane said. “Shit, Quinn. Donnie said for us to go on in case this mess got started. You mind?”

“Who are these two men? That boy?”

“They work for Donnie’s girlfriend,” Shane said. “They’re just good folks.”

“I bet.”

Shane dropped his head and walked out with Tiny’s big ass, jumping to the ground first and then helping Tiny out. Both of them had big pistols on their waists, and Quinn took the weapons, stepping back and making his way back to the clearing. He heard the shooting every thirty seconds or so, volleying back and forth from inside the ravine.

“You stand with us, and the judge might make things easier on y’all,” Quinn said.

“For what?” Tiny asked, trying his best to look confused.

“Tiny, outwitting a man has never been your strong suit.”

The gunshots through the ravine went from the quick hard shots of the deer rifles to the rat-ta-tatting of assault rifles. Quinn moved around the wide berm of dirt littered with clay pigeons, beer cans, and tattered pieces of paper targets. The assault rifles flickered hot and orange in the night, the outline of the shooters standing behind their trucks clear and clean in the moonlight.

“You got ammo for those M4s?” Quinn asked Tiny.

Tiny shook his head.

“Well, that’s no help,” Quinn said.

He handed the pistols back to Tiny and said, “Your mother taught me in kindergarten. You shoot me in the back, Tiny, and she sure is going to be disappointed in you.”

ONLY TONY THE TIGER AND RAMÓN
were left with Donnie and Luz. Tony walked around with the AK dropped in his left hand while Ramón found a spot on the couch to change out his bandage and scream a little bit, face turning white, eyes rolling upward some. Luz held a wet towel to Donnie’s face, crying, gripping his hand and saying everything was gonna be just fine. It reminded Donnie a bit of his mother as she was dying, telling him stories about tap dancing in heaven and ice-cream socials up in the clouds.

“How you like Tibbehah so far, Tony?” Donnie said.

Tony turned to him and pointed the gun at them. He was really an ugly son of a bitch, in his forties, with sandpaper skin and fat jowls, looking for all the world like damn Wayne Newton playing Roy Rogers.

Ramón kicked his foot up and down, yelling some more, biting down on torn strips of sheets, saying some kind of crazy-ass prayer.

“I think God’s taken you off the short list,” Donnie said, feeling Luz squeeze his fingers, closing her eyes tight, waiting for that final shot. A damn war cracking and popping all down the range, sounding tinny and compact in the old Airstream.

Ramón kicked and screamed again, pleading for Mother Mary and Jesus, and, damn, if Tony didn’t open up that AK and finish the job that Luz had started. Ramón Torres dropped hard and fast, lights out, sliding down on the couch.

“Déjale vivir y voy en paz.”

Tony agreed with what Luz said and reached for that long black hair and yanked her off her feet, away from Donnie and toward the door. Donnie yelled at Tony’s back as he found his feet and rammed the chair against the wall, breaking free of the rope. The thin Airstream door hung wide open, battering off the wall of that ole tin can. He looked down to Ramón Torres, dead and bloody, and felt sorry for him for a good two seconds before finding a .45 in his jacket pocket. Donnie ran to the mouth of the door, seeing Tony dragging Luz behind him, his neck thick and hairy under that cowboy hat.

Donnie’s shaking hand lifted that .45 as they moved down the hill, spitting blood to the ground and squeezing the trigger.

QUINN GAVE THE RADIO SIGNAL
for Lillie to change the field of fire, the shots coming on stronger now but Quinn knowing they’d swung north, clearing the southern land between the berm, an outbuilding, and those boys hiding behind their luxury trucks. Quinn moved up and over the berm, the men following him across twenty yards to a metal shed, not even catching their breath before they all spread out side by side and headed right for those trucks, opening up fast and hard. Quinn squeezed off slug after slug at the center of shadows, falling
one
,
two
,
three
. Shots came from his side, zipping from the muzzles of the rifles, sparks of firelight, more cracking shots off the hills. Man after man falling, time stopping, heart racing, mind heading back to a rocky crag of some outer edge of hell in Kandahar, a plan to drag back a couple dead pilots before the sandpeople torched their bodies and carried off plane parts and weapons to use against Joes trying to rebuild a nation that wasn’t worth two shits in the first place.

In the periphery, Tiny jogged forward, yelling a war cry, two pistols in his hands, before being cut down to his knees. The shots now popping from a couple rifles. Two shadowed people, darting between bullet-riddled trucks, Quinn getting within
thirty
,
twenty
,
fifteen
meters. The shotgun was spent and empty of all twelve rounds, and he tossed it to the ground, pulling the Beretta, finding the lick of fire from the rifles and quieting both.

Two
,
three
more cracks from up on the hills, and then that strange silence that follows battle. Boom and Kenny ran ahead, Kenny finding some kind of need to shoot a couple more times, probably from nerves. Ike McCaslin walked slower, falling in step with Quinn and asking, “You got any of them cigars left? They shore smelled good.”

DONNIE MISSED TONY THE TIGER
three times before shooting the ugly bastard three times in the back, Luz falling from the man’s grip and tumbling down the hill. The guns went silent. A short pop-pop-pop, and damn nothing but cold Mississippi wind. His eyes were good and fucked up, and he knew he’d cracked at least two ribs, but Donnie made his way down to Luz, the girl trying to find her feet in the mud, a solid shiner below the left eye, black hair fallen wild from the ponytail and covering her face and busted lip.

She’d never looked prettier than when she brushed past Donnie, lit up good from the Christmas lights, and walked up to Tony’s worthless body. She kicked him good and proper in the face, taking that flat-crowned cowboy hat from the ground and twirling it on her finger, a souvenir.

Luz tripped down the hill, hat in hand, and met Donnie down on the footpath to the gun range. She wiped the mess of his face and said, “Can you still drive?”

LILLIE AND HER THREE DEPUTIES
emerged from the skinny pines and thick oaks at the base of the ravine. Quinn had hit the headlights on a couple trucks, lighting up the seven fallen bodies, one draped through the open window of a truck.

Two enemy men were alive. Kenny called dispatch.

Tiny was dead, lying facedown in a mud hole with his big flannel shirt riding up, showing off his wide, naked white skin and the spot where the bullet went clean through. His camo baseball hat floating in the dark water.

“Where are we, again?” Boom asked.

“You want to check on Donnie?” Quinn asked.

“Nope.”

Lillie moved up to them, rifle in hand, confident, and lifted her eyes up to the trailer on the hill lit up in all those multicolored lights, a setting from a country music video but silent and still. “Nice trailer,” she said.