The Redeemers (12 page)

“What’s that?”

“Getting to that new normal,” Boom said. “Ain’t nothing going to jump back to what you want. You take what you given. That’s what Caddy facing. She kept on moving after the storm, kept busy as hell, so busy it would have killed some folks. She raised money, handed out food and clothes to the folks in Tibbehah, and she was fine until things slowed down. When things got slow, she had to look at her situation. And there she was, missing something, like I missed my goddamn right arm.”

“Dixon.”

“Yes, sir,” Boom said. “You know she was right about him. He took that bullet. He didn’t have to go, be there when you gone to go to get Caddy and Jason. That son of a bitch stepped up, owned up to what needed to be done for your sister. She probably loved him even more for that.”

“I shouldn’t have let him go,” Quinn said. “And I never even found out who shot him. That’s the least I could have done for her. I think it was the not knowing what happened, who pulled the trigger, that’s been pulling at her. I just never knew.”

“But we all know who called it.”

Quinn nodded, studying the end of the cigar, glowing red-hot. He ashed the tip, the electronic music playing soft down the street. Lights winking on and off. He could see the shapes and movements of family behind the curtains of the dining room, moving in and out. He waited for the sound of plates crashing, and maybe some yelling, but there was nothing, Jean probably still saying her piece, maybe reading that letter that Jason had written his mother earlier that day. Quinn had read it and the whole thing had ripped him up. He never wanted to read something like that ever again. How in the hell could his sister refuse to get better, why would someone want to stay in the swamp, not crawl out, not improve, not keep moving on. Caddy had been wounded bad time and again. She just never got the chance to heal without something breaking her apart soon after.

“I hate to see this truck go,” Boom said, patting the hood as if it were a horse. “Lots of hours, lots of work.”

“Rusty will get some good use out of it.”

“I don’t know,” Boom said. “I don’t think he wants it. Maybe you can make an offer to the supervisors. You can buy it from the county.”

“Maybe.”

“Take it to wherever you’re going.”

“Who said I’m going anywhere?”

“You ain’t sitting around Tibbehah with your thumb jacked up your ass,” Boom said. “And you ain’t no farmer.”

“I’m looking into some things.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Got to make a living.”

“Me, too,” Boom said. “I appreciate all you done to get me working again. I wish we could have done the same for Caddy. You can tell she feels like it’s all over. The River. Whatever life she had planned with Dixon. She loves Jason, I know that. But she’s all cracked-up, man.”

The front door opened and Jean Colson stepped outside. She waved Quinn forward. She was crying hard. But she was smiling.

Quinn looked to Boom. And Boom nodded back.

Caddy had agreed to get help.

•   •   •

L
illie Virgil helped clean up after the intervention with Caddy. Miss Jean was still in the living room with Caddy, Quinn, and Diane Tull, a family friend who’d taken over Caddy’s role at The River. Jason Colson, the old one, had been there, too, but didn’t say much. He only said he loved Caddy, as if that was all he’d been permitted. None of the family was doing much good until Miss Jean unfolded that letter little Jason had written in purple ink, only having to get two or three sentences into the thing, about how he missed his happy momma and was sad when she was gone, when Caddy started to cry. Caddy had broken down completely, Lillie knowing it was the place where someone like Caddy needed to be. To look at herself right in the goddamn mirror, nod, and admit she was truly and absolutely fucked-up and needed a hand.

She could go to Tupelo tomorrow. Quinn would take her.

“Who’s on duty tonight?” Anna Lee Stevens asked, both of them working elbow to elbow in the kitchen, Lillie rinsing the shit off the plates and Anna Lee loading the dishwasher.

“Kenny,” Lillie said. “Ike McCaslin. I’m headed back on in an hour. I got to check on Rose. Babysitter is watching her and Jason.”

“I better be getting on, too,” Anna Lee said. “My mom has been over at the house for three hours now.”

“Where’s Luke?” Lillie asked, but damn well knowing the answer. Playing dumb was sometimes the best way to find the truth.

Anna Lee opened her mouth and took a deep breath, holding a flowered plate in hand, and then closed it. “Working,” she said.

Lillie nodded and then scraped off some more of the food they had put out, no one really touching the food, not feeling like it was some kind of party, except for Quinn and Caddy’s Uncle Van. Life was a goddamn party for Uncle Van. First thing he did was walk over to the dining room table and make a big turkey sandwich with cheese on a little dinner roll. He looked stoned as hell, being the kind of individual who had a hard time facing the world with a clear head.

“This was good,” Anna Lee said. “I’m proud of her.”

“What else could she do?”

“Leave,” Anna Lee said. “Not face the truth. She’s done that before.”

Lillie nodded, finding it a little hard to wash dishes with a gun on her hip, the Glock knocking into the sink when she turned to hand a glass over to Anna Lee.

“I don’t know how this sounds,” Anna Lee said, “but Caddy has always seemed to be playing a part. The way she was in high school. You knew her better than I did. But you know what she was like. The things she did to shock people. She got off on that.”

“It was an act,” Lillie said. “If she can outshock someone, act like she doesn’t give a shit, then you can’t hurt her. That’s why she did what she did with boys. The reason she went up to Memphis and did the things she did there. She had to prove to everyone in this town how tough she was. But she’s softhearted. I don’t think she was acting these last couple years; who she became, who she was trying to be.”

“You don’t think all the religion, the good doing and all that, was all because of Jamey Dixon?”

Lillie rinsed a final plate. She heard Boom say something and heard laughter that she took to be a good sign, a family resolved to what they had and moving on. She shook her head. “I think that’s the real Caddy,” Lillie said. “Dixon was the one who found her.”

“The murderer?”

“I don’t know what he was,” Lillie said. “I just know what he did for my friend.”

Anna Lee didn’t talk for a while, finishing up with the dishes while Lillie wiped the counters clean. Lillie watched her as she pulled her phone from her purse, texting someone, and then turning back to ask if she could do anything else.

“No,” Lillie said. “It’s fine.”

“I didn’t mean to talk bad about Caddy,” Anna Lee said, standing there as perfect as she’d always been. Strawberry blonde, small-bodied, in a black sweater and jeans. Lillie bet her goddamn red purse cost five hundred dollars. She and Lillie had always wanted different things in life.

“I know.”

“I just want her to know herself,” Anna Lee said. “Her addiction is hurting everyone and she needs to admit it.”

“Is that a fact?”

Anna Lee pulled that red bag over her shoulder and pulled her bangs from her eyes, staring at Lillie as if she was bringing Lillie into focus. “Excuse me?”

“I just think honesty is a fine thing,” Lillie said. “I think it’s good to be truthful with kids. I think it’s also good to be truthful with your friends.”

“Of course.”

Lillie wiped her hands on a paper towel and tossed it in the garbage. “How about I walk out with you?”

Anna Lee said her good-byes, hugging Caddy tight. Caddy, wearing sweatpants and an oversized sweatshirt, said, “God bless you.”

Lillie put a hand over her mouth, waiting for Anna Lee to move toward the door, Lillie not bothering to put a coat on over her heavy uniform top. Most of the folks who’d been there had left, leaving spaces in between Anna Lee’s little Honda and Lillie’s official Jeep Cherokee. Lillie walked with her to the car, stopping on the Colsons’ lawn, the entire house lit up bright and shining by old-fashioned multicolored lights over the dormers and squared around the windows.

“Don’t hurt him.”

“What?”

“Quinn,” Lillie said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t know—” Anna Lee started but then realizing that she better stop. “Well, I guess. I guess you can think whatever you want.”

Lillie crossed her arms over her chest, over the silver star, and looked Anna Lee right in the eye. “You better be honest about your plans,” she said. “You want to fuck him, fine. But you leave him like you did before and I’ll come for you.”

“What?”

“I will whip your bony ass, Anna Lee Amsden,” Lillie said. “I don’t know what keeps on drawing y’all together. But he’s too goddamn good for you.”

•   •   •

M
ickey Walls pulled into the gravel lot beside Calvary Methodist Church and killed the engine of his red Hummer. His headlights shone across the old graveyard, spreading out under a half-dozen old trees. Most of the headstones were from a hundred years ago, skinny pieces of rock jutting out of the ground, crooked and broken. Some of the stones had worn down to shards of what they’d once been, sun-bleached roses on the graves, a few little Confederate and American flags on sticks for the veterans. The cemetery was old, but people were still being buried there.

He sat there about ten minutes until a single headlight shone down the road and then turned into the little white church. The light went out, the door slammed, and Kyle Hazlewood was looking at Mickey from the other side of the passenger window. He knocked twice and Mickey reached over to let him on inside. “God damn, it’s cold,” Kyle said. “Why’d you want me to come way the hell out here?”

“You want us seen together?”

“Shit, people see us together all the time.”

“Yeah,” Mickey said. “But not the night before. I don’t want folks to think we’re sitting around plotting this thing with Larry Cobb.”

“Then what are we doing?”

“We’re plotting the damn thing,” Mickey said. “Right? Are we still good?”

“I don’t know, man.”

“Shit,” Mickey said. “I damn well knew it. I’ve been trying to call you all damn day and you wouldn’t answer. I knew you were backing out.”

“I ain’t backing out,” Kyle said, rubbing his thin beard, everything about him smelling of cigarette smoke. “Not yet. I just don’t know why it can’t be just you and me. Why you’d go and bring these Alabama boys into the mix?”

“’Cause I need ’em,” Mickey said. “I need one of them anyway. The other is just some kid, kin to the Sparks. He just follows his uncle around and talks about Alabama football. He also drank all my damn beer.”

Kyle didn’t say anything. He had on a pair of brown Carhartt overalls splattered with mud up to his knees. He even had some mud stuck in his goatee that he was picking at while he stared out into the blackness of the graveyard, not saying a damn thing.
Thinking.
Mickey let him think, let him take all the time he needed. ’Cause he sure as hell needed Kyle running the show. If not, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to trust someone like Peewee Sparks.

“Tell me again why you can’t be there,” Kyle said.

“’Cause Larry Cobb is going to point his finger right at me,” Mickey said. “You know that’s true. First thing he’s gonna say when he gets home from Tunica and sees his safe’s been busted is ‘Mickey Walls just fucked me in the ass.’”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “I guess that’s true.”

“You damn well know it’s true.”

“But these other boys,” Kyle said, getting some more mud from his beard, letting down the window and flicking the dirt out onto the gravel, cold air coming on in the cab. “I mean, shit. You know.”

“Yeah.”

“God damn,” Kyle said, “I don’t know them from Adam’s house cat. You want me to work with a fucking Sparks and some kid. I don’t want to get back-shot for a few thousand dollars.”

“Ain’t a few thousand,” Mickey said. “It’s a million.”

“Could be a dang billion, but I can’t spend it when I’m lying facedown in the damn dirt,” Kyle said. “Why don’t we just lay off on this thing for a couple months, go at it again when Larry and Debbi are out of town for a while? Just me and you head on in there and take care of business. That way, we won’t have to work with no fucking criminals.”

“I see what you’re saying,” Mickey said. “But which one of us is going to crack up a five-hundred-pound safe? You got them talents? You see what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “I guess. But who the hell’s this kid? What’s he got to do with anything? That’s just another person in the mix knowing our business.”

“Sparks says the kid is learning to be a safecracker,” Mickey said. “He tails him around to get some on-the-job training. Like some kind of damn apprentice. Don’t worry, the kid won’t screw you. He’s dumber than shit. Thinks Bear Bryant is a bigger deal than Jesus Christ.”

“Hold up,” Kyle said, reaching into his overalls and coming up with a pack of cigarettes, pulling out a cowboy killer and lighting up. “Those motherfuckers are here?”

“Weren’t supposed to be,” Mickey said. “But, yeah. They came on over to my house. They want to ride by Cobb’s house tonight, check things out and lay out some plans. I’d like you to be there, too.”

“Man, I just got off a ten-hour deal down in Ackerman running PVC for a half mile. I don’t have time for that. Not now.”

“Tomorrow,” Mickey said. “It’s got to be tomorrow. The boys are here. Debbi and Larry are gone. I’m out of town.”

“I know,” Kyle said, blowing smoke out into the cold. “You’re gonna be doing tequila shots off Tonya’s big brown titties while I’m jacking around with a couple crooks at midnight. Just don’t seem fair.”

“We split it even.”

“You said that.”

“I’m only paying those boys ten grand.”

“Ten grand total or ten grand apiece?”

“Sparks wants twenty for the whole deal,” Mickey said. “I’m not splitting hairs with him. That’s why you got to be there. I don’t want him counting up that money. He’s got no idea how much is in that safe. He thinks it’s just some payroll or something from the mill. I want you to be there, shoulder to shoulder, when he gets the safe open. You grab everything in that son of a bitch—rings, jewelry, guns. Don’t matter. If you don’t get it all, it’s going to prove the folks who did this knew about the hidey-hole.”