The Redeemers (3 page)

“My freezer’s full, Mr. Stagg,” Wise said. “I shoot one and it’s yours.”

“Appreciate that.”

“Ain’t nothing like deer meat,” Wise said. “I got a man who mixes in some pork fat and it makes some good sausage. Not to mention the backstrap. Better than any filet you’d get up in Memphis.”

“You don’t say.”

“My boy got his first kill on Thanksgiving Day,” Wise said. “Wadn’t much. Just some little spike. My boy told me later he thought it was a doe. But when he smeared that blood across his face, he sure was proud. I don’t think he’s stopped grinning.”

“How’s your daddy doing?”

“He’s good,” Wise said. “Appreciate you asking. He’s going back into insurance while I make the transition. He knew I was never cut out for it. Being a lawman was in my blood. I thought about being a cop every day since I left my job.”

“You’ll make a fine sheriff.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stagg.”

Stagg didn’t bring much that morning: a sack of biscuits from his truck stop, a thermos of black coffee, Ringold’s gun, and a legal-sized manila envelope bulging thick and tight.

The men didn’t talk for a long while. And when they spoke, they talked in whispers. After about thirty minutes, Stagg did what he came to do, tossing the bulging envelope down on the slats of the stand’s floors.

“What’s that?” Wise said, rubbing his gun with an oil rag.

“Something you musta dropped out on the trail.”

Wise leaned over, gun in lap, and grabbed the envelope. He opened the top and glanced inside. He looked back at Stagg. His dumb, grinning face grew real serious. “I didn’t drop this.”

“Christmas is expensive,” Stagg said. “And you having kids and all. I bet there’ll be some Visa bills come the first.”

Wise closed the top of the envelope and resealed it. Stagg leaned back into the seat, seeing just the thinnest line of dawn cross over the tops of the greens. He smiled, already thinking on getting on back to the Rebel Truck Stop, making some calls up to Memphis. Things that needed to be done now that the jungle up there was good and shook-up.

Stagg’s head snapped back when he heard the thick envelope land back on the slatted floor in front of him.

“Appreciate that, Mr. Stagg,” Wise—fucking Rusty Wise—said. “But that ain’t my style. This ain’t like when my granddaddy was Supervisor. I was to run this whole deal straight and true. I made a promise to my wife when we were up in Gatlinburg a few weeks back. I told her I’d be the same man I’d been selling insurance. I don’t need nothing to sweeten the pot.”

“That ain’t sweetening the pot, Rusty,” Stagg said. “Just a little welcome gift.”

“Like when you tried to give that big Dodge diesel to Quinn Colson?”

“Quinn didn’t know how to show us any respect,” Stagg said. “He was an outsider. Just as dumb as his stuntman daddy.”

“I appreciate Quinn,” Wise said. “I appreciate what he’s done to help this county. I didn’t run against him for any other reason than I think I can do a better job. I think I’m a better administrator than Colson. This town will never be the same after that F5 rocked our world. People died. Everything got its guts ripped out. But you and I know things can never go back to the old days. We got money coming in. People aren’t staying in Jericho because they got nowhere else to go anymore.”

“Pick up that money.”

Wise shook his head, Stagg remembering when the boy had gotten some kind of award as a Little League pitcher and came up to the Rebel for an ice cream celebration. Hell, that seemed like Monday of last week. “This is from me to you,” Stagg said. “This ain’t from the taxpayers. This is to make things easier coming in from a nice-paying job. I just want me and you to be friends.”

Wise studied Stagg’s face and he nodded slowly but didn’t pick up the money. Something caught his eye and he reached for the rifle in his lap. He picked it up and brought it to his shoulder, training his eye on an eight-point buck prissy-walking in the frost on those greens. The buck was thick and big, but the antlers didn’t seem to fit his size. Stagg didn’t see much worth in that one, hearing the hooves make prints on the thick greens, a bright yellow morning pouring across a little twisty creek and some rolling hills and on into the darkness of the forest.

Stagg needed to take a piss. But now he had Wise all ready to shoot. Stagg kept his rifle in his lap as he saw two more deer appear, two fattened does following this fella out from the darkness. The buck stood tall and alert while the does started to graze. Wise had his rifle set right on that old boy. Stagg took a deep breath, waiting for that shot. Wise closed one eye, everything cold and still, even a swallow seemed to echo in the little wooden room.

Wise squeezed the trigger, the shot cracking hard, and that big buck turned and twisted, speeding for hell or high water back over the creek, running broken and scattershot over the greens until he fell, heavy and busted, in a bed of turnip leaves. The does were gone.

Wise set down his gun. He turned to eye Stagg and then looked down at the money.

“This why you came?” Wise said.

“I guess I ain’t a hunting man.”

“But you’ll eat the meat?”

“Sure.”

“Then help me drag this deer back to the Bad Boy Buggy and we can head on to town,” Wise said. “This buck will be my gift to you. Might be a good way of starting off the year.”

Stagg stood up, feeling some stiffness in his knees, and held his rifle in his hand. The rifle feeling strange and foreign to him. He’d much rather be sitting behind his desk and handling his affairs in a closed room. Being out here in nature and the wide-openness of it made him feel strange. His stale, rotten breath came out like a cloud in front of him.

“I do wish you’d reconsider,” Stagg said.

“I know,” Wise said. “But this is how things got to be, sir.”

Stagg followed him down the homemade ladder of the stand, knowing he’d just laid it all on the wrong fella.

•   •   •

S
top the truck,” Caddy screamed from the backseat.

The sun was coming up along Highway 78, over the state line, but not far out of Memphis. Quinn didn’t answer, but Lillie Virgil turned around in the passenger seat and then turned back to Quinn. “You better,” she said. “She looks real sick.”

“Nothing I can do about it.”

“I think she’s gonna fucking puke.”

“Let her puke,” Quinn said. “I’m not stopping until we get back to Jericho.”

“Jesus Christ, Quinn,” Lillie said. “You really want to clean up that mess?”

“She’ll try and run.”

“Hell, no she won’t.”

Caddy started to make retching sounds from the backseat. “God damn it,” Quinn said. A road sign said next exit was in a quarter mile, and Quinn looked up to the rearview mirror and told Caddy to hold on. “There’s a filling station. We can get out and walk. Get you some fresh air. But don’t even think about going anywhere.”

Quinn eased the truck into the exit lane and turned right up into an Exxon station facing the highway. The pumps were empty, but the inside of the convenience store was lit up like a bright box. The truck wasn’t even stopped before Caddy had opened the door and hopped out, running, Quinn thinking for a moment she would try to run away, but then she stopped in some high yellow weeds and bent at the waist.

“I told you,” Lillie said. “That’s not good.”

“No, ma’am.”

“What the fuck is she on?”

“I saw tinfoil and lighters laying around,” he said. “Her fingers are black with soot. Looked like a goddamn opium den in there.”

“You were in there a while. I was headed up to that shithole when I saw you come down those steps, carrying her in your arms.”

“Yep.”

“What happened?”

“A few folks needed an attitude adjustment.”

“No shit,” Lillie said. “There’s blood all over your shirt.”

“It’s not mine,” Quinn said. He reached for the door handle and stepped out into the brightening December morning. The chill cut up and over a hill filled with aluminum cans, fast-food wrappers, and beer bottles. Caddy had puked and now she was trying to quit the heaves. Quinn stepped up and put a hand on his sister’s back.

“Oh my God,” she said, kept saying. “Oh my God. Those boys. You. Oh my God.”

“Everything is OK, Caddy.”

“Are they dead?” she said. “Is everyone dead?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Why?”

“Because they weren’t worth it.”

Caddy straightened up, wiping her eyes with her filthy hand, weak sun in her face. She didn’t look much like the sister he’d known. Her blonde hair had grown out long and stringy and she looked to have lost a good deal of weight. Her face was skeletal and hollow, with black circles under her eyes. There were sores and scabs on her arms, and a few on her neck. It had been a long year and a half, after losing her house in the storm and watching her boyfriend be shot and killed.

“You have blood on you,” she said. “All the blood.”

“It’ll wash out.”

“Are you OK?”

“I’m fine.”

“What was that?” she said. “What were you swinging? What was that?”

“An ole axe handle,” he said. “Just something to get those men’s attention.”

“I didn’t want you up there,” she said. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.
Oh God. Oh God.
I’m a waste. I’m just all the hell used up.”

“Bullshit.”

“I want to be dead,” she said. “I want to be dead. Don’t you fucking understand?”

“And how would that work out for Jason?”

“Oh God,” she said. “Oh God. Jesus. Jesus. What am I?”

“You’re alive,” he said. “You just got lost. I’m here. I got you. You understand? I got you.”

Quinn kept his hand on Caddy’s back. He turned to look over his shoulder and saw Lillie Virgil, standing tall and confident, outside the truck, with hands in her jacket pockets, ball cap pulled down in her eyes. Quinn reached down and grabbed Caddy’s hand, thinking of leading her through the Big Woods all those years ago, when real evil entered their lives, and kept on following her ever since. His hands were still shaking a little bit. Three men coming at him with some kind of ownership over his sister had brought on a rage he seldom liked to let loose.

“Come on.”

Caddy wouldn’t move. “I don’t want him to see me like this.”

“You don’t have to see Jason until you’re ready,” he said. “We’ll get you all cleaned up.”

“You can’t clean up all this shit. All the shit I’ve done. Don’t you want to know?”

Caddy’s whole body was shaking, and he reached around her shoulders and hugged her in close. Caddy had always been much smaller than Quinn. He kissed the top of her head, smelling the foul scent of body odor and cigarette smoke. The cherry perfume used to cover it all up doing a poor job.

“You’ve been gone almost a month,” he said. “Jason doesn’t give a shit what you look like. He doesn’t care where you’ve been.”

Caddy shook her head, but she let Quinn lead her away from the trash-strewn hill and back to Lillie Virgil and the safety of the Big Green Machine. The eighteen-wheelers blew past on their way to Memphis and down to Mobile. Quinn walked in step with his sister slowly, her whole body quivering under his arm as she started to cry. She’d left everything—her mother and father, her brother, her son, and even an outreach ministry that, for a time, had seemed to have been not only her salvation but salvation for a lot of others after the storm.

“Come on,” Quinn said. “Let’s go home.”

“I don’t know what all happened,” she said. “I don’t remember.”

“Good.”

“I’m sorry, Quinn,” she said. “I fucked up. I fucked up bad. Just leave me here. No one has to know.”

“Nope.”

“You damn bastard,” she said. “Why do you just keep coming back?”

“Our daddy comes back after thirty years and it’s all on me?” Quinn said. “Dealing with him and Jean? To hell with that.”

“I’ll fuck up again,” she said. “It’ll happen again.”

“Maybe.” Quinn wrapped his arm over her shoulder and they started moving toward the big truck. Caddy looked up into his eyes as they walked and gave a blank smile. He held her close and tight. They moved together, Quinn feeling good, until his sister threw up on his cowboy boots. He stepped back as she dry-heaved.

“Jesus,” she said. “Jesus.”

“Slow steps, Caddy,” he said. “Slow steps.”

3.

M
ickey Walls was just about done loading a truck with two thousand square feet of Brazilian cherry flooring when goddamn Debbi Cobb pushed her way through the showroom and back into the warehouse wanting to know just who in the fuck did he think he was. Mickey was smoking Marlboro Reds with his best installer, a fella named Lee Salter, who’d just gotten back from a six-month stretch in Parchman, and wasn’t in any mood to square off with his ex-mother-in-law over one missed alimony check.

“My daughter has too much class to beg you for what’s coming to her,” Debbi said, chomping on some gum.

“Hello, Debbi,” Mickey said. “Sure is good to see you. How about we step into my office?”

“I’d rather stay right here while you go write me a check.”

“Come on,” he said. “I made some coffee. Let’s talk.”

“About all you’re good for,” Debbi said. “Talk.”

But she turned, noticing but not acknowledging Lee’s old weathered ass giving her a good look-over. Mickey knew Debbi liked it. Why else would a woman pushing sixty wear a pair of painted-on black jeans with fancy-ass pockets, a black-and-silver-striped top reading
BEBE
, and silver heels showing off her purple-painted toenails? Her hair was high and puffy, with blonde streaks in all that dyed brown, and she had on a pair of big designer sunglasses that looked like a pair of welding goggles. As she followed him back into the showroom, Lee puckered his lips and narrowed his eyes. Mickey figured that six-month stretch must have been six months too long.

“I thought Lee was in prison,” Debbi said, popping that gum.

“He just got out.”

“And you hired him back?”

“Lee’s the best man I have.”

“Didn’t he expose himself to a checkout girl at the Piggly Wiggly?”

“He was relieving himself in the parking lot.”