The Innocents (6 page)

“What?”

“This is the last time, Milly,” he said. “It’s for your own good.”

“Wash,” Charlotte said.

“You shut the hell up,” he said. “Ain’t your daughter out there shaking her titties for a couple bucks. I never thought I’d ever live to see such a thing.”

“You won’t do nothing about it like you didn’t do nothing about Brandon.”

“Shut your mouth.”

“You didn’t do nothing to help him.”

“That’s a lie.”

“You only cared what folks thought of you.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

“Don’t you worry,” Milly said. “I’m gone. I’d sure rather be a whore than a fucking coward.”

On the way out, she found his goddamn stash under his bed—Ziploc baggies full of pills and weed—and stuffed them into her pockets. She didn’t get a half mile before she tossed the pills out on the roadside but kept the weed for
herself.

Q
uinn didn’t get back to the farm until late, after drinking a few beers with Lillie and Boom at the Southern Star and catching up on the local gossip and bullshit. As he hit the farmhouse, he spotted the colored Christmas lights glowing from his dad’s trailer and heard music and talking as he walked through the back fields. He moved past his dead cornfields and down a well-worn path to find his dad and a young man he’d never seen before drinking clear liquid from Mason jars.

“This is Bentley,” Jason Colson said. “His daddy and I go way back.”

Quinn shook the young guy’s hand. He had a limp, soft handshake and careless hair. He told Quinn it was a real honor to meet him and appreciated all he’d done for the country. The kid looked to be drunk on Colson moonshine.

Quinn nodded but didn’t sit down.

“I taught this boy to ride at the spread in Pocahontas,” Jason said.
“Bentley knows horses. We’ve been talking about the family plans we have here for the ranch. I told him it didn’t seem like much now, but after some backhoe work, this place could really be something.”

“It’s something now.”

“I know, I know,” Jason said. “But you know what I mean. Say, you want a little nip?”

Quinn shook his head. “Getting late,” he said. “Just wanted to say hello and good night.”

“C’mon, son,” Jason said. “One drink isn’t gonna kill you. I was just telling Bentley here about how many Dodge Chargers were ripped up on the
Dukes
. Damn, I wish I could’ve saved just one of those cars. I’d be rich, wouldn’t need any help on this deal. I heard John Schneider had gotten into refurbishing. I think he sells them for nearly a hundred grand each.”

“You better finish that ’78 Firebird first,” Quinn said.

“You bet,” Jason said. “Yeah, we did most of the work at the back lot in Burbank. They shot the first five or six episodes in Georgia, but that was before I came along. The producer was impressed I came from the South but didn’t believe me when I told him I’d run shine myself. He thought I was pulling his leg. Quinn’s grandfather made some of the finest stuff in north Mississippi. Damn, we gave the local sheriff hell.”

“Who later became my uncle.”

“Damn,” Bentley said, taking another pull. “Whew. This is some good shit.”

“So what do you, Bentley?” Quinn said.

“Sales,” Bentley said. “I was coming up this way and my daddy told me to stop by. I hadn’t seen Mr. Colson in a long while. We just been catching up and talking a little business.”

Jason winked at Bentley and Bentley closed his big mouth, filling it
with some more warm moonshine. Jason motioned Quinn to an empty metal chair that had been on the porch at the farmhouse the last time he’d seen it. Jason passed him the shine and Quinn smelled it before handing it back. He preferred a good aged bourbon.

“You were the sheriff here?” Bentley said.

“For a bit.”

“You ever have to deal with that Hathcock woman who bought the Rebel Truck Stop?”

“After my time,” Quinn said. “I’ve been gone most of this year. She came into the picture after Johnny Stagg went to jail.”

Bentley shook his head. “Sounds like Mr. Stagg was taking the fall for some other folks,” he said. “You can’t trust half of what you see in the media.”

“He was convicted in a federal court,” Quinn said. “He was a crook who’d grown sloppy in his company. Trust me. He was long overdue.”

Bentley nodded, looking like he didn’t believe a word of it. “I just heard some bad things about that Hathcock woman,” he said.

“Like what?” Quinn said, finding the rest of the Cuban in his T-shirt pocket and snapping open his Zippo. The cigar cracked and burned back to life. Quinn readjusted in the seat and crossed his legs.

“Like she’s running whores at the truck stop and at that old motel across the street.”

Quinn gave a hard look to his father and then settled his gaze on Bentley. Quinn let some smoke out of the side of his mouth, nodding. “And how’s that different from Johnny Stagg, kid?”

Jason Colson held up a hand and grinned, knowing Quinn wasn’t one to back down over the subject of Stagg. The older man got to his feet and poured out what looked to be the rest of the moonshine from a plastic jug into Bentley’s glass. He talked about how doing business in
Hollywood was a damn cakewalk compared to the folks he had to deal with back in Tibbehah County.

“I heard Hathcock used to be a whore herself,” Bentley said. “Made her money on the flat of her back until gravity took her titties and closed down that cooch.”

“Is that a fact?” Quinn had met a lot of boys like Bentley from Jackson and none of them had been worth a shit, either. Jason Colson just had a true and authentic knack of being drawn to money and influence and didn’t give a good goddamn what kind of company he kept. Quinn figured Hollywood, California, could do that for a man.

“Whether he’s a crook or not, we’re going to have to reach out to Stagg,” Jason said, smoothing his long gray goatee. “We’re going to have to make him an offer on that old property.”

“We have a lot to discuss,” Quinn said to Jason Colson.

“And we need to come up with a couple more investors,” Jason said. “Bentley and his daddy can help with that. And I got some other people in mind.”

“Like I said, we need to talk,” Quinn said.

“We got one hell of a piece of property here,” Jason said, craning his neck around, looking but seeing nothing in the damn dark. “It was even better years ago, before your stupid uncle pieced it off bit by bit.”

“He may have been a crook,” Quinn said, “but Uncle Hamp wasn’t stupid.”

“Man, this shine sure is good, Mr. Colson,” Bentley said, not paying attention or even listening. “You make it yourself?”

“I know this black fella down in Sugar Ditch,” Jason said. “He used to work for my daddy and knows how to work the magic on the still. He has some real sweet stuff he makes for special occasions called
birthday cake shine. I’ll get some for you, if you like. I know your daddy appreciates a good scotch, but he ain’t above his raising.”

“I know he’d like that, Mr. Colson,” Bentley said, getting to his feet and having to hold the rail of the chair for a little balance. “Good to see y’all. I’ll talk to some folks and see what kind of interest we can get down here. Always appreciate the hospitality.”

Bentley nodded at Quinn and Quinn knocked off his cigar ash with the heel of his cowboy boot. His dad took a sip of moonshine and stood to give Bentley a hug and a solid old pat on the back.

After he was gone, Quinn turned to his father.

“You taught that boy to ride?”

“Sure did,” Jason said. “Got real good at it, too.”

Quinn just nodded and walked back to his house, the glowing lights of the front porch welcoming him back.

•   •   •

I
got nowhere to go,” Milly said.

“You got me,” Nikki said. “You can sleep on my couch tonight. I got an entire shithole trailer I rent from my folks. We could be roomies.”

“You’re about busting that trailer, as it is,” Milly said. “You and Jon-Jon don’t need me and my crazy-ass problems busting into that single-wide.”

Nikki nodded and passed the joint back to Milly, who took a long, deep drag and held it. They sat on a big pile of concrete blocks near the Gas & Go dumpsters, the Gas & Go being the only real action in Blackjack. It had closed up an hour earlier, but if you wanted to find friends and meet up, open or closed, this is where you came. On a good night, if you were lucky, the train might rush through town at two a.m.

“Wasn’t that woman any help?” Nikki said. “That author in Tupelo?”

“Hell, no,” Milly said. “I had to pay $29.95 for her book, too. I told her I had a story to tell and she asked me how I wanted my book signed. I wanted to tell her I couldn’t afford a damn book, but it was too late. There was a line behind me as we talked and it was like she wasn’t even listening. Just scribbling in her shitty book. All she wanted to know is if I had made a pact with God about not having sex until I was married. You know, that’s her thing. She writes something called
The Sacred Promise
series and she’s up to a book now called
The Christmas Promise
. Basically, every book is about how a man keeps on trying to get his girlfriend to take off her panties, but she knows how this might really piss off Jesus. She’s gotta decide between Jesus or getting laid. You got to read the whole three hundred pages until they get married and she can get nekkid. That’s what keeps you flipping pages.”

“Damn, Milly,” Nikki said. “I’m real sorry.”

“I spent the whole summer long writing in journals about things that’s happened in my life,” she said. “About my folks getting divorced, Daddy going to jail ’cause of the meth and shit, and what happened with Brandon. There are things that happened around here that people should know. Everybody just smiling and grinning like life is grand. The reason Daddy threw me out of his house is because I called him a coward.”

“I thought he was pissed because you were dancing down at Vienna’s?”

“That started it,” she said. “But I don’t think he would’ve followed through if I hadn’t called his ass out. That’s why he couldn’t handle Momma and why he shacked up with Big Charlotte. Charlotte won’t call him on nothing. You should have seen her there tonight, asking him for permission to eat potato chips. I bet he even tells that woman when and where she can take a crap.”

Nikki was wearing yellow silk pj’s with green flowers and plastic flip-flops. Her hair was in a short ponytail and she had on her glasses because it was late and she had already been in bed when Milly called. Milly had brought the weed and they’d smoked it up right there in the space behind the Gas & Go and the path back to Nikki’s house. This had been their meeting spot since they were girls, sneaking out to drink flavored vodka, talk about boys, escape from their parents. Nikki used to escape out back regular when her parents got in fights. Milly recalling hearing the screaming and beating inside the house while Nikki pretended all was right in the world. If you don’t point out the shit, then it doesn’t happen. The Southern way.

“You think I’m doing right?” Milly said.

“What’s that?”

“I want to get things straight before I get the hell out of here,” Milly said. “Today was the most humiliating day of my life. I tried to open up to some crazy woman who thought a woman’s goodies were a lockbox and then I had to give a lap dance to a sixty-year-old trucker from Meridian. He showed me pictures of his grandkids while I grinded in his lap. How fucked-up is that?”

“Pretty fucked-up,” Nikki said, laughing. “Say. Pass that joint back to me. Where will you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you can’t stay here?”

“Why would anyone want to stay here?”

“Roots,” Nikki said. “You don’t want to grow ’em, but, damn, how they spread.”

“You could come with me.”

Nikki tried to let out the smoke cool and easy but started to giggle and it spewed from her nose. “I got a baby, a shit job, and two worthless parents to support,” she said. “Tell me how to get around that?”

Just then, an old car painted a fresh metallic blue rolled up by the gas pumps. The windows were tinted, bass shaking the frame as it sat there, headlights lighting up the space where Milly and Nikki sat smoking the joint. The front license tag read
HERE KITTY KITTY
.

“Nito,” Milly said.

“Yep,” Nikki said. “Come on.”

The passenger door opened and Ordeen Davis got out, smiling and pointing right at the girls. “What y’all doing, out here smoking it up in your nighties?”

•   •   •

I
t was well past one and Vienna’s was closed. Fannie had done the countdown herself and stood tall on the catwalk, house lights on, staring down at the two stages around the golden poles, groupings of easy chairs, and the long wooden bar where two of the Born Losers sat drinking beer. Fannie was dog tired, sipping on a hot cup of coffee and knowing she had plenty more to do until she’d walk across the street and crash at the Golden Cherry.

Mingo walked up the stairs and Fannie kicked a fattened canvas bag toward him. The skinny Indian nodded, hefted the cash under his arm, and walked back down to the main floor. The Born Losers saw it was coming and looked up to the catwalk to give a nod and a thumbs-up to Fannie. They’d ride the cash down to the coast together and be there before dawn.

As she walked back to her office, her phone rang.

“How’d it go?” a man’s voice said.

Fannie read out the totals down to the last nickel.

“Slow.”

“Not the best,” Fannie said. “Not the worst.”

“How were the girls?”

“New girls did fine,” Fannie said, sitting at her desk and grinding the heel of her hand into her eye socket. “Picked up some local talent, too.”

“Had any trouble with the law?” the man said.

“Nope.” Fannie said. “Are you going to call like this every night? Because it doesn’t make the countdown go any faster.”

“It’s what you agreed.”

“Are you going to tell me your name?” Fannie said. “Maybe I can talk a little dirty to you.”

“Would it matter?”

“I guess not.”

“You’re doing fine,” the man said. “We’re happy with the arrangement.”

“I’m so fucking glad,” Fannie said. “But I still want a meet with Mr. White.”

“I don’t know that name.”

“Sure you do,” Fannie said. “He’s your goddamn boss. And he’s who set me up in this shithole of the year. You tell him I need a little face time. He can meet me on tribal land or we can meet down at the coast. Doesn’t matter a good goddamn to me.”

“What’s your trouble?”

“Tell him I just got a visit from the fucking junior Rotary Club of Jackson,” she said. “Someone down there is under the impression that Johnny Stagg still runs the show and I should step right in line.”

“We don’t work with Stagg.”

“No shit.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good,” Fannie said. “Because I got a feeling they won’t be sending a kid to do a man’s work next time. You tell Mr. White that?”