The Innocents (9 page)

“Damn, you are a straight shooter, aren’t you?”

“Good night, Miss Hathcock,” Lillie said. “Don’t make me come out here again.”

Y
’all close that door and come on in,” Coach Bud Mills said. “
Come on. Come on.
I ain’t gonna bite.”

Ordeen waited for Nito to walk on ahead and then closed The Cage door shut behind them. The Cage was where the coach kept all the football equipment, helmets, shoulder pads, and shit, and the managers did the wash. Coach always had a mess of young boys running around picking up dirty jerseys and pants, turning it around for the next day. The back room always smelled like sweat and piss, funky as hell.

“You boys doing all right?” Coach asked Ordeen.

Ordeen nodded. Coach had a brand-new helmet he was tinkering with, adding on a short face mask and the growling Wildcats sticker on the sides. Tomorrow night’s home jerseys sat in a big pile on a center table, washed and folded and ready for the locker room. Socks, compression
shorts, elbow pads. The Wildcats’ colors of yellow and black, same as Southern Miss.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t you worry about that bond,” Coach said. “That’s on me. We’ll get this crap taken care of. The sheriff is fighting me some. But the DA will drop all that shit. He’s a supporter.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How about you, Nito?” Coach said. “You gonna speak or you just gonna let Ordeen here hold your flaming pile of dog shit?”

“What?” Nito said, snapping his head around.

“I said, I know who owned that peashooter and I know who’s running drugs in this county,” he said. “Since all those arrests, looks like you’ve turned into a real businessman.”

Nito looked at Coach and rubbed his goatee. “Naw, man,” he said. “You ain’t hearing right.”

“I ain’t your man,” Coach said, poking Nito straight and hard in the breastbone with a long finger. “I may not be your coach no more. But you sure as shit call me Coach. You understand, son? You want to get smart and me, you, and Ordeen can talk about fairness and the way the world works. No man needs to be holding on to your fuckup, Nito Reece.”

“Yes, sir,” Nito said, smirking some. “Coach, sir.”

Coach nodded his old grayed head, belly sagging over his tight black shorts. He had on old-school white socks rolled up to his fat knees and a pair of Nikes so out-of-date, they looked older than Ordeen’s momma. He hadn’t shaved that morning and white stubble grew on his saggy cheeks. “OK,” Coach said. “I did for you two knuckleheads. So what are y’all gonna do for me?”

“What you mean?” Ordeen said.

“I already got something for you, Ordeen,” he said. “Don’t you
worry about that. I want you to meet me at six a.m. this Saturday. We’ll have a lot of work to do on the field after the game. I’ll feed you breakfast and lunch. And I’ll want you to do the same for me again in two weeks. And a week after that. You got me?”

“Yes, Coach.”

Nito crossed his arms over his chest, standing sure-footed in wide-legged jeans shorts and a V-neck white Walmart tee. Overhead caged lights glinted off his gold teeth. He was smiling big as shit, waiting for what crazy-ass stuff Coach was going to be asking of him. Nito wouldn’t have any of it. He still blamed the coach for kicking him off the team just for posting some crazy shit up on YouTube. It was just for fun, about smoking a blunt and waving around that pistol. All a big joke.

“Ordeen?” Coach said. “How ’bout you give me a minute with Mr. Nito Reece? Me and him got to have a little heart-to-heart.”

•   •   •

M
illy and Damika hit center stage at Vienna’s to Damika’s anthem, “Bottom of the Map” by Young Jeezy. Damika explaining to Milly that the song was spot-on when you worked that pole down in Jericho, Mississippi. Milly did a handstand and then slid right into bending over, her tight little ass facing three men who’d just walked into the bar. Damika was shaking that rump like nobody’s business, bouncing that big ole black girl booty like Milly could never imagine. Milly had on a Rebel Truck Stop tee, pulled up tight and tied high, with red bikini bottoms, while Damika was buck-ass nekkid. Girl just didn’t care.

It was the first time she noticed the scrolled tattoos on the girl’s rib cage. It looked to be the drawn cartoon heads of two babies.
I’m on fire, kid’s outta control. Competition wants me to stop, drop, and roll.

Milly shimmied up close to the pole and jumped up as high as she
could go, grabbing hold and then flipping her heels up over her head and clamping tight with her legs, letting her hands and arms go and slowly twirling down to earth. A couple bucks flew up onstage. A fat man in overalls and a trucker’s hat whistled and hooted. She jumped up again, grabbed the pole tight with only one hand this time, and twirled and twirled, feeling the greased metal beneath her fingers. And something she hadn’t felt in a long time: her own damn strength. She could spin herself around and around, holding right with that one arm. She inverted herself, locking on with both hands, kicking her legs out to the side and looking up, spotting Fannie on the catwalk staring down as she worked, the music pumping from the speakers, the other truckers coming up to the island and showering that lit stage with money.

Milly moved a bit, stroked the pole up and down, and collected the money. When the new song hit, she shimmied all the way up, scissoring her legs straight out, inverting, and then grabbing hold with the crook of her legs, sprawling her chest and arms out, stretched all the hell out, staring up at the bright lights of the club. Power and strength never felt so good.

When the song was over, she got down to her knees for all the loose cash and tried sharing it with Damika. Damika took a handful but told her that the cash belonged to her. “I ain’t never seen no white girl spin like that.”

“I knew I could do this,” she said. “It’s just gymnastics. The pole just running sideways. I really like it.”

“Don’t get fucked-up when you do it,” Damika said. “You spin too much and you puke on the customers. That way, ain’t no one gets paid.”

After five, Vienna’s really filled up. A crew of frat boys had come over from Ole Miss in a busted-ass church van and some cowboys from Kosciusko had gathered at the old bar. The cowboys from Kosciusko
wore work boots and Carhartt pants caked with mud. But they carried big fat pockets full of money and knew how to tip. One of them, back in the Champagne Room, whispered to Milly that they’d just dropped off fifty head of cattle at the meat processing plant in Tupelo. The man was drunk and wanted to know if anyone ever told her she looked just like Britney Spears’s little sister, Jamie Lynn?

“I used to get that,” she said.

Not two hours into her shift and she’d pulled in nearly a thousand dollars. Milly Jones had never seen that much money in her life, keeping wads of it in her two garters and the rest in the little pink purse. For the second time that night, she flattened out about two hundred dollars on the old bar, the bartender bringing her bottled water, while she caught her breath. When she got called back to the stage, she looked up high on the catwalk and saw Miss Fannie staring down and watching.

The song kicked on and she got back to work. If she got a little more, maybe she could get gone for good.

•   •   •

S
he’s gone,” Wash Jones said. “Left here two nights ago and ain’t seen her since.”

“Did y’all have a falling-out?” Lillie asked.

“Of a sort.”

“You mind if I ask you to expand upon that, Mr. Jones?”

“Well,” Wash said. “That’s a bit of a personal nature. I don’t think we need to get into all that mess.”

“You’re the one who called me and wanted to meet because you were so worried about your daughter,” Lillie said. “You told dispatch that you were concerned some physical harm might come to her soon if she can’t be found.”

“Oh, well,” Wash said. “Damn.”

Lillie stood outside the ranch house in Blackjack, where Wash had waited in pajama pants and no shirt next to his brand-new blue Chevy Silverado. He knew she was coming and hadn’t seen fit to put on proper clothes. His belly was so big, he looked like he might explode any minute. Man couldn’t put on pants but wore a .44 Magnum belt around his waist.

“I think she done lost her mind,” Wash said.

“Come again?”

“Milly,” he said. “She’s on the drugs. I seen pills in her things. And she’s been dancing at the Booby Trap, showing off her cooch, spinning on that pole.”

“OK,” Lillie said. “But do you think she’s missing?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I sure do. Hell, I can’t find her.”

“And you think it’s because she’s been living a risky lifestyle?”

“Damn straight,” he said. “Just last year, she started dating a black boy. I guess it’s true what they say.”

“What’s that.”

“Well,” he said. “You know. About dating them blacks and not wanting to go back.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Lillie said, even though she did. She just took a moment to look at the fat man in the pajama bottoms scratching his nuts in the gravel driveway. Worried, but not that worried. Wash Jones just seemed pissed-off and wanting to make some trouble. Lillie followed along, took some notes. She’d write up a report later. Maybe send out a patrol to Vienna’s.

“Why do you think your daughter is missing?” Lillie said.

“Listen, Miss Virgil,” Wash Jones said. “I knew Sheriff Beckett real good. I got a lot of years draining the shit tanks of our so-called
respectable citizens. I think I’m afforded some goddamn respect when my wild hare daughter done took off.”

“All I’m asking,” Lillie said, taking a deep breath and thinking on control, “is why do you think something’s gone wrong? I can’t imagine why a young lady would want to leave the care of such a fine man as yourself.”

“You trying to get smart with me?”

“How about you show me both your hands,” Lillie said. “That’s right. Quit scratching your goddamn nuts and look me in the eye and tell me why you’re worried. Give me something to go on.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I really don’t give a good goddamn, Wash Jones,” she said. “But let’s look to your daughter. I’ll find her, I’ll let you know.”

“She’s a good girl,” he said. “Or she was. Until she became a whore.”

Lillie stared at the shirtless fat man, too damn lazy to change out of pajamas at one in the afternoon. She shook her head over the shame of it.

“She ain’t even eighteen,” he said. “Wild as a March hare.”

“Nice.”

“Sex,” he said. “She’s popping pills and laying with all kind of men.”

“You think she’s working out back of the Rebel?”

“She’s got a little white Kia,” he said.

“OK.”

“She left two nights back,” he said. “She ain’t got no money. She told me to go and fuck myself and then destroyed some of my personal property. Things she ain’t got no business messing with.”

“What were they?”

“Me and her got into it,” he said. “You hear me? We done got into it because of her shaking those titties.”

“At Vienna’s.”

“What’s that?”

“What used to be the Booby Trap.”

“OK,” he said. “Yeah. All right then. Girl don’t got no sense.”

“Come again?”

“I said, girl got no sense,” Wash said. “Shit. She’s gonna go and get herself kilt. Why don’t you just go do your gosh-dang job and bring her ass back home.”

“Hard to imagine why she ever left,” Lillie said.

•   •   •

W
hat’d Coach want?” Ordeen said.

“Oh, man,” Nito said. “Just talking shit. You know, ‘Yes, sir / No, sir’ shit. Wants me to do something for him.”

Ordeen and Nito were back in the electric-blue Nova, circling the Jericho town Square, waving to a couple cute girls in halter tops sitting under an old oak tree, gunning the motor at a couple city boys who needed to show respect. Nito circled three times and then hit Main Street north, heading on back to ole Blackjack.

“What’s he want you to do?”

“I don’t know,” Nito said. “Just some dumb shit. He’s been getting some trouble from some folks. He thinks I might be able to straighten it out. He knew all about what we been up to around Tibbehah. He also said he doesn’t want me hanging with you. Ain’t that something?”

“What’d you tell Coach?”

“I told Coach that’s your decision, not mine,” Nito said. “I told him I’d help him with his troubles, for not fucking me on that gun charge. He was about to call up the law and make sure they knew that pistol
was mine. He said he’d make sure he got you a lawyer and pinned all that on my ass.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know that,” Nito said. “But ole Coach thinks you still his boy. He think he blow that whistle and you come running like a dog. Trained, obedient, come to him with you tongue hanging out. Ready to lick that ass.”

“Fuck you, man,” Ordeen said.

“Ha, ha,” Nito said. “Damn. Maybe I come out on Saturday and watch you lay down them white lines. I’ll sit up in the stands and cheer you on. I’ll be smoking a blunt and eating a big-ass Super Sonic and some tots. Crack open some Aristocrat vodka and pour it into cherry limeade.”

“Coach Mills is all right,” Ordeen said. “Don’t make no trouble. You make trouble for him and he can’t help me. He done a lot for kids who don’t have nobody. Including your sorry ass.”

“Sorry, man,” Nito said, punching the gas on the old blue Nova, crooked back highway flying by as they left city limits. “You right. Coach is a damn winner.” He fired up the rest of a blunt and let down the window. Nothing but warm breezes and the last of summer days, an endless white line of road.

“We cool?” Ordeen said.

“We cool.”

•   •   •

M
illy sat in the toilet stall and counted out the final tips from a half-dozen lap dances. She had close to sixteen hundred, give or take a few bucks. Damn. This would do it. Fill up the Kia, get far from this
town, and get a clean start. She’d leave everything she had with the police—the old phone, those notes—and let them figure it all out. She couldn’t live like this, with no one wanting to listen and no one wanting to help. Out of respect for Brandon, she’d try one more time.

“Whew,” Milly said, packing the money tight as hell into the purse. She left out a hundred to make sure it looked like she was giving her tip-out. Most in small bills. If it pissed anyone off, what the hell were they gonna do? She was done with this fucking town.