The Lost Ones (37 page)

“I’ll call on Luther,” Quinn said.

“Maybe he’s still alive,” Lillie said.

“I should have pressed him.”

“Donnie sought out these folks,” Lillie said. “He brought them here.”

“He didn’t bring Ramón Torres,” Quinn said, moving up toward the hill, light silver and bright and strong. Moonlight shed across the hill and soft rolling mounds of man-made berms, sloping, giving space and height along the length of the gun range. Quinn reached into his pocket for a fresh cigar, listening to the strange sounds of the pumping accordion music coming from one of the shot-up cars.

“Can you do me a favor?” Lillie asked.

“Turn off the music?”

“I sure would love to be with you when those ATF folks find out what happened,” Lillie said. “You know the word ‘conniption’?”

Quinn fired up the cigar, sorry for what happened to Tiny. He’d known Tiny since they’d played Little League football together, but somehow couldn’t recall Tiny’s real name. Even as a kid, he’d always been looking for trouble, the bar fighter, the sore loser at pool, working as a landscaper, a roofer, a fella who’d never be worth more than a sidekick to Donnie Varner.

“Feel like home, Quinn Colson?” Lillie asked.

“Ain’t we all gonna live forever?”

“Come on,” Lillie said, nodding her head up the hill to Donnie’s Airstream. “Both of us will go.”

Sounds in the night become magnified. A snapping branch is a gunshot. Night birds can pierce the darkness. And the sound of a rumbling, grumbling motor of a Peterbilt in a skinny ravine can sound like a crackling, booming summer storm. Quinn saw the headlights, the brightness slicing down that narrow gravel road that Luther Varner had laid twenty years ago, growing closer. Quinn squinted and then ran with Lillie in step back down the hill, watching that length of 18-wheeler roll, big and bold, bumping and running, heading straight for the mess of Mexican trucks. Its headlights crisscrossed over dead bodies and deputies scurrying out of the way, who pulled out their still-warm guns and aimed at the truck, barreling right toward them. The Peterbilt scattered and twisted those big pickups, twirling, dumping one truck on its side, and running for hell and Highway 45, a long tooting whistle of “Fuck you” as it jostled and rolled on out.

Quinn reached out on the radio, calling dispatch to get the highway patrol to stop that truck.

DONNIE GAVE A REBEL YELL
as he rammed through the trucks and cleared the path, that old Dodge van shooting out from the fire road in his rearview as he hit the county road, Donnie turning south and the van turning north. Donnie took a cut up and around Jericho and found a service road out to Highway 45, smiling big as shit when he hit the highway south, wondering for a good long while if he hadn’t pulled the son of a bitch off, planning to meet up with Luz and her boys down in Meridian at the truck stop they’d discussed. He drove from Jericho out of Tibbehah and then into Monroe and Lowndes County, finally seeing those flashing lights in his side mirror, laughing a bit, thinking of making a run for it, maybe hitting a country road and bailing out where there was a good mess of woods, calling Tiny to come pick him up, finding another way down to Mexico. But, damn, if there weren’t more asshole troopers blocking the road up by a filling station, flares in the road, chains with spikes and all that shit, and what is a man to do but tap the brakes, slow a bit into the early light, and find his license and proof of insurance.

He finally stopped a good ten yards short of the roadblock, light coming on a pale purple about six a.m. Donnie was tired and ragged, worn out, hungry and thirsty and flat-ass busted. Donnie rolled down the window to a thick-necked trooper meeting him with a Glock pulled out straight in his hands.

“Was I speeding, Officer? I swear to Christ I was in the flow of traffic.”

“Hands up,” the thick-necked trooper said, opening the door. “Hands up.”

“I get the idea,” Donnie said, hopping down to the asphalt, a couple troopers being first-class assholes and wrestling him to the ground just ’cause they could. They dragged him to his feet and pushed him toward a cruiser, Donnie asking if they would mind if he smoked on the way. The troopers didn’t answer.

“You boys sure love to work out,” Donnie said as they nudged him along. “Y’all do that together?”

47

“YOU’D LET ME KNOW IF I GOT A POSTCARD, OR PHONE CALL OR SOMETHIN’?”
Donnie asked.

“You bet,” Quinn said.

“It’s the law. A prisoner got rights, too.”

“I heard about that, Donnie.”

“You know, this jail is a real shithole,” Donnie said, touching the bruises turning yellow and blue on his face. “Don’t you think it’s about time to rebuild? Hell, this thing was built back in the fifties.”

“Sixties,” Quinn said. “Nineteen sixty-one. Maybe you can ask your pal, Johnny Stagg, about funding that project.”

“He’s not my pal.”

“Don’t you care how he rolls in shit and comes out smelling like a rose?”

Donnie shrugged.

“Or that he was the one who turned on the Memphis folks,” Quinn said. “You ever met a man named Bobby Campo? Feds just raided two of his strip clubs.”

“You know, jails don’t have metal bars like this anymore,” Donnie said, absently lighting a cigarette, staring up at the ceiling, while Quinn stood above him. “You get locked solid doors and stainless steel commodes. This looks like that jail in
El Dorado
. Maybe I could whistle for Hondo and have him bring me the keys to the lock.”

“He’s too smart to throw in with you.”

“Guess you’re right.”

Quinn waited for Donnie to get up to escort him out into the yard to talk to Luther through the chain link. It was Saturday, visitors’ day, and already the yard was filled with the drunks, drug abusers, and honky-tonk brawlers telling their families they were about to change, that tomorrow was going to be brighter.

“You know what I see in my mind?” Donnie asked, not turning once to Quinn, lying there in a dream state as he had for the last week.

“Love to hear it.”

“I see Luz on a beach somewhere,” he said. “Like in that movie
Shawshank
, and she’d be like that fella that escaped prison. The one working on his boat.”

“Tim Robbins.”

“Yeah, but good-looking. Like, she’s in a bikini, drinking a Corona, feet in the sand, and waiting till I get that postcard and find her. Maybe a Kenny Chesney song playing at some bar made out of driftwood, looking over the ocean.”

“From what you told me, I don’t think she was the bikini type,” Quinn said. “That little town where she was headed, the one up in the mountains, is pretty much dead center of a battle zone between those cartels. It’s an ugly scene, partner.”

“You mind letting me have my dreams?”

“Sure, Donnie.”

“But you’d tell me about a postcard if it came?”

“I’d deliver it in person.”

“Would those Feds tell you if they caught her and the boy?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “I’m not exactly one of their favorite people.”

“Where’d they find that old van of mine?”

“Queen City truck stop outside Meridian.”

“That on Highway 20?”

“Yep.”

“So they were cutting over to 55?”

“Looks like it.”

“And they stole a truck?”

“They did.”

“Where’d y’all find that?”

“New Orleans.”

“And that truck?”

Quinn shifted his weight on his boot heels, watching Donnie stand up, slip into his laceless canvas shoes, walk to the toilet, and toss in the spent cigarette. Donnie scratched his bruised and scratched-up face and waited for Quinn to answer.

“They didn’t find that truck,” Quinn said. “I told you all this already.”

“Yeah,” Donnie said, pushing himself up and getting off the bunk, grinning. “But I love hearing it. I wonder where they crossed the border? Damn if they didn’t pull that shit off.”

“You do realize you’re going to be formally charged in federal court with gunrunning on Wednesday,” Quinn said. “I’ll see if I can’t take you to Oxford for your arraignment.”

“Appreciate that, Quinn,” Donnie said. “But I think I’d rather ride with that redhead who came to talk to me last week. She about set the room on fire. You know if she’s got a boyfriend? Didn’t see a wedding ring.”

Quinn didn’t say anything.

“Hell, do I need to draw you a map?”

“Come on, Donnie,” Quinn said, opening up the jail door. “Luther’s waiting for you. He brought you some biscuits from the Quick Mart.”

“Miss Peaches sure can cook.”

“You mind if I ask you a question?” Quinn said. “Between us?”

“Shoot.”

“How’d you get all those guns out of Afghanistan?” Quinn asked. “Did you hide them in the heavy equipment y’all brought over? Or you catch some customs officer with a goat?”

“Nope,” Donnie said, grinning.

“I’m not working for the Feds.”

“OK,” Donnie said, smiling wide. “We fitted those Conex containers with fake floors, raised ’em up about four inches, enough to fit in whatever we please. Customs folks would clear out the containers, walk around on those floors, and not suspect a thing. A buddy, who will remain nameless, helped me take ’em apart and refit them over in the Shitbox.”

“You’ve got vision, Donnie,” Quinn said. “I’ll give you that.”

“It’s a gift,” Donnie said, walking ahead out in the long dark hall. “Sometimes I wish I could turn the damn thing off.”

LATER, IN THE SPRING,
the children played outside after the church held Sunday service with doors and widows open, daffodils flowering, grass coming back to life, a soft, warm wind blowing across picnic tables set between the headstones in the nearby cemetery. Quinn stood inside with Caddy, hearing the kids squealing and laughing while they played tag, running wild up and around the graves, too young to know they were stepping on the dead. Caddy wore a new denim dress, face freshly scrubbed, and worked to take the cakes and pies out to the tables. The other church members finishing off their cold fried chicken and potato salad; open jars of homemade pickles and pimento cheese spread out on the table. Somewhere their mother was among them, gabbing, bragging about Jason.

They called days like this Dinner on the Grounds. Old church members and those who’d left Jericho long ago would often return, recall old times about people they’d buried long ago with a smile and a laugh. Since the fall, a soldier had come back home, another small American flag staked by the grave. Another just like him lay nearby, dead since ’05. Quinn knew them both, had grown up with them.

Caddy took the pies outside and returned to fill pitchers of sweet tea. She looked confused as Quinn smiled at her. “What?” she said. “You drinking?”

“It’s good to have you back, Caddy.”

She nodded. “Can you still drive with me to Tupelo on Thursday?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Quinn said, standing alone with his sister. The wind shooting through the open doors smelled of warm sun and budding leaves and flowers.

“I know you hate going, all that talk.”

“Nope,” Quinn said. “No reason we can’t talk about it. We’re not kids. You were right.”

“You mind me writing that down?” Caddy said. “Never heard my brother say that before. You sure you haven’t been drinking? Maybe a little of that strawberry moonshine Boom likes?”

“Nope.”

“I’m good,” Caddy said. “I don’t even know who that person used to be.”

“Day by day, right?”

“It’s over, Quinn. Everything is different.”

Quinn was quiet, just smiled back at Caddy. He wished everything was as simple as she imagined it.

Quinn walked to the open doors and stared down the sloping hill at all the folks sitting at the tables among the headstones. Boom ambled up to the steps with an empty Styrofoam plate in his hand and joined him at the threshold, turning back to see what Quinn was watching. They stood side by side, and Boom nodded his head, seeing it, too. Lillie was showing off the child she’d adopted, the lost girl from the trailer park. Good to her word, she’d named her Rose after her mother, who was buried down that hill. Quinn had never seen Lillie smile so much. Boom wondered aloud if Lillie knew just what the hell she was doing, raising a child by herself, a child she didn’t know a thing about, finding it like a wandering animal on the side of the road.

“You want to question Lillie’s methods?” Quinn said.

“Nope.”

“Lillie will figure it out.”

“Kid’s not right,” Boom said. “Hadn’t walked yet. Baby over a year old. God bless her for trying.”

“Sometimes a hard head is an asset.”

Boom walked back into the church for a second helping of lemon icebox pie or chocolate pie or coconut cake. Quinn drank a little more tea while Jason played war among the headstones with two boys and a tough little girl in a pink dress, time seeming to move in reverse. Quinn’s eyes again falling on Anna Lee with her child, the little girl born in November. She was probably talking to Lillie about long sleepless nights, diapers and baby clothes, as she readjusted the child in her arms, Luke nowhere to be seen, probably sticking with the Episcopalians in town. She turned to Quinn at a distance, like she could feel him staring, and waved. He returned a loose wave back and smiled, Anna Lee still looking eighteen with her blond hair tied back in a black ribbon, long flowered skirt showing under a bright red jacket. A dozen years ago, there had been a summer afternoon on a secret creek, cutoffs and tank top tossed onto the hill, jumping out, wild and free, toward Quinn as he treaded cold water.

“Don’t even think about it,” Lillie said, meeting him on the steps and handing him her adopted daughter. Quinn hoisted the kid into his arms, all big brown eyes and long lashes. The child was attentive and beautiful, but as light as a bird, almost like holding air.

“I’m just watching the kids,” Quinn said. “Making sure Jason doesn’t bust his head on one of those stones.”

“Bullshit,” Lillie said. “You know she still looks at you the same. Same as when we were in high school, and you had her name written in your truck’s back window. She shouldn’t do that. It’ll mess your head up, and I need you whole.”