The Revelators Page 5

  “Señor Hector is a good man,” Ana Gabriel said. “My mother trusted him.”

  “See?” Jason said, squeezing her fingers. “Everything will be OK. You’ll be safe here. I promise. Momma always has enough for everyone.”

  Jason could barely remember a time before The River. There were patches of his memory, living with Grandma Jean and brief moments of his mother Caddy looking worn and ragged, smelling smoky, coming to see him. She’d bring him toys and gifts from Memphis, sometimes Krispy Kreme donuts and little wooden trains, and promise she’d come for him soon. Everything would be fine. There was always talk about them having a real home somewhere away from Jericho. When he was young, his mother made good on the promise, finding that little house near the town square, cutting her hair short and meeting a kind man named Jamey Dixon. She and Dixon had started all this. Then Jamey Dixon died and that little house got torn to shreds by the tornado. Everything Jason owned was lost, his mother disappeared before returning to him and The River, not doing much else but helping folks since then, stocking food at the pantry and used clothes in the old barn, bringing together visiting preachers, musicians, and volunteers to keep the place alive. Jason always had a fear that if his mother stopped moving, she would die. The thought often woke him up at night.

  “Your mother will be OK,” Jason said. “I promise.”

  Ana Gabriel didn’t speak, pulling her hand away and tucking it into her lap. Her school backpack propped beside the hay bales where they sat. Jason watched her cry, hating to see it, wrapping his arm across her back. Ana Gabriel rested her head on his shoulder and he could smell the sweet shampoo and sunshine in her hair. They’d been here in the barn on his birthday over the summer. She’d been one of a handful of special friends he wanted with him. There was a cake and Ana Gabriel’s momma brought a piñata. Mr. Boom had played some old-school music from the big speakers in his new yellow truck. Later, Jason had wandered off with Ana Gabriel into the barn church. She’d kissed him on the mouth right under the altar. Jason knew it was the greatest day of all his twelve years.

  Jason and Ana Gabriel sat there for a long time in silence until he heard some vehicles pull up outside. Jason turned to the open door of the barn to see two men crawl out of a truck. They wore stiff tan uniforms and mirrored sunglasses. Jason stood up, squinting into the harsh morning light. None of the men speaking or smiling, just staring down at him.

  “Habla inglés, kid?”

  “Damn straight.” Jason gritted his teeth.

  “And what’s your name?” the man said.

  “My name is Jason Colson, mister. My uncle is the county sheriff and his uncle before him. This is my momma Caddy’s place. Yeah, I speak English.”

  The man smiled and shook his head. He had big jug ears and wore the silver star of the sheriff like his Uncle Quinn. “That’s good,” the man said. “How about you run and go find your momma. We got some business to talk to her about this hotel she’s been running for all these illegals.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Besides the corny and outright shitty commercials Zeke Coldfield made for Zeke’s Value City, what really made the store famous was the history museum in back. Donnie had to pass through the glass cases and barrister bookshelves full of bayonets, swords, bullets, and belt buckles on the way back to the office. Dozens and dozens of Civil War–era rifles hung on the wall and in the hands of mannequins in gray uniforms wearing kepi caps. A large sign proclaimed the Battle of Jericho the last stand of a great and noble fight. Donnie bit into a Little Debbie snack cake and stared down into a long glass case like you’d find in an old drugstore. Only instead of shampoo, cheap wallets, and pills, Mr. Zeke had arranged a tattered battle flag along with cannonballs and buttons stamped CSA.

  “Hits you right in the gut, don’t it?” Mr. Zeke said, the old man nearly scaring the shit out of him. A man who looks like the fucking Cryptkeeper should know better than to skulk around in the dark.

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “My daddy started this museum out of nothing but his own personal collection,” he said. “He dug most of it out of the hills as a boy. Back then, you didn’t have to go that deep into the soil to see the scars and the blood that spilled that day. Lord Almighty. Just thinking about it. I mean the sacrifice.”

  The old man was crying, or at least he was shaking. No tears fell or anything, probably because ole Mr. Coldfield had to have been dried up for years.

  “Would you like a snack cake?” Donnie asked. “Looks like y’all had some Cocoa Cremes, Nutty Buddies, and Swiss Rolls. Those Swiss Rolls are something else. My daddy used to send ’em to me in Texas with the latest Playboy when he could. Couldn’t have made it through without those nekkid women and snack cakes.”

  Mr. Zeke dried his face of the nonexistent tears and stepped out of the shadow and into the light of the display cases. “That’s one of the things my friends wanted to know,” he said. “Have you been rehabilitated?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Donnie said, having the conversation down pat since he’d come home. “Me and Jesus are thick as thieves.”

  Mr. Zeke didn’t laugh. He nodded, mouth hanging open slightly. His blue suit draped off his bony ass like a scarecrow at Halloween. He accepted a Nutty Buddy and hobbled toward his office, the door open, with light shining from it. The old man slid down into a thick, highbacked leather chair and placed his skeletal hands across his desk. “I guess what I need to understand is just why in God’s green earth you would want to sell weapons to a crew of dirty Mexicans?”

  Donnie wanted to say Because they offered a lot of money. Instead he said, “Oh, sir. I didn’t know who the buyer was. I was just trying to unload a few rifles. I was deceived in thinking they were for some hardworking Americans restricted by all them federal gun laws. You know I ran a range and gun shop when I got out of the service? Like I told my lawyer, what those Feds did to me was pure and simple entrapment. They had this redheaded woman with a body like a brick shithouse running that operation. Tatas like a couple of German turrets. She was obsessed with getting my ass in jail. Me. A hardworking American. Just because I was in the gun business.”

  “It’s our God-given right,” Mr. Zeke said.

  “Damn straight.”

  “You know there some folks in California who’d like to take all our guns, melt them all down into a hot soup and build statues of flowers and fairies,” Zeke said. “Makes the bile rise up in the back of my throat.”

  “Well, sir, I can promise you that once I’m back in business, I’ll only sell weapons to upstanding white Americans.”

  Zeke grinned at that, hands not moving from the top of his desk. His eyes shifted just off Donnie’s shoulder to three men who’d entered the room, all of them dressed like they’d just finished a Secret Squirrel mission in Trashcanistan. Military-style clothes, black ball caps with sunglasses resting on the brims, and knives and guns on their belts.

  “Gentlemen,” Zeke said, making great effort to stand. “This is Mr. Varner. His daddy is one of the finest men in this county, a Marine sniper with more than thirty confirmed kills. Donnie here served in the Guard over in—where was it, again?”

  “Oh, just a few pleasure trips over to Afghanistan.”

  “Not the way I heard it,” Zeke said. “Man doesn’t get a Purple Heart that way.”

  Telling the men he’d gotten his ass blown up while touring around a bazaar looking for some primo hash wasn’t what they wanted to hear. He just looked at the three men, leveled his eyes, and nodded. Donnie Varner. Warrior. Patriot. Hero. Jailbird.

  The trio stood like this: an older white man with a goatee, mustache, and one eye; a skinny middle-aged dude with a long ginger beard; and a strange little fat man with small pig eyes. All of them wearing tactical pants and black T-shirts adorned with some kind of gold watch symbol. Donnie found it odd that the older guy with the goatee wore both an eye
patch and a pair of gold glasses at the same time. But Donnie figured it would be hard to find eyeglasses with only one lens.

  “Heard you got some weapons we need to see,” One Eye said.

  “Working on it,” Donnie said. “Just trying to put my toe in the north Mississippi market. I’d like to know my demand before I start trucking in my supply.”

  The one-eyed man looked over to old man Coldfield. Coldfield reached down for his cup of coffee and Nutty Buddy, slick and brown as a cat turd, and bit into the end. He nodded back to ole One-Eyed Willie.

  The man grinned, showing more spaces than teeth, stroking his white chin. “We aren’t looking for no chickenshit deals,” he said. “We heard you deal in the big time.”

  “I can definitely get my hands on whatever y’all need,” Donnie said. “My resources are far and wide.”

  “We need a hell of a lot.”

  “I sure like the sound of that,” Donnie said. “Y’all got some kind of little ole grocery list you can share with me?”

  The men didn’t say anything, One Eye reaching into his pocket and handing over two sheets of ruled notebook paper like Donnie used in high school. Zeke Coldfield mawed up his Nutty Buddy and then licked his cracked old lips as Donnie went through it line by line. When he finished, he gave a low serious whistle.

  “Son, you messin’ with me?” Donnie asked. “Looks like y’all gonna invade some foreign country I never heard of.”

  “Our business ain’t no fucking business of yours,” One Eye said. “You even think about cornholing us and there won’t be no mercy.”

  “Damn, son,” Donnie said. “Let’s hold hands first. There won’t be no cornholing on the first date if I have anything to do with it.”

  “Can you deliver?” Zeke Coldfield said.

  “Yes, sir.” Donnie grinned. “Does the damn pope shit in the woods?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Jason and the other kids headed up onto the porch of The River’s main office behind the barn. His mother was on the steps, speaking down at two men, telling them they had no right to be here unless one of them could produce a warrant. She had her hands on her hips, wearing a man’s undershirt and light Western shirt popping in the wind. Her hair was white blonde and short as a boy’s.

  “This is a friendly visit, Miss Colson,” the main guy said. He had dark brown hair and big jug ears. He stood tall and straight, wearing the tan uniform with a patch on the shoulder that read SHERIFF. “My name’s Brock Tanner.”

  “I know who you are,” she said. “Every child out here is an American citizen. They were born here.”

  “So you say,” Brock Tanner said.

  “I have birth certificates on record in my office,” she said. “Given the upheaval you people created yesterday, I’m working to make sure they are cared for and understand their legal rights. As well as the rights of their parents you people ambushed.”

  Brock grinned a wide, picket-fence smile. He wasn’t a handsome man. He had a long, narrow face and a damn honker of a nose. Every word that came out of his mouth sounded like he was talking to someone not too bright. Jason knew his mother wouldn’t be standing for any of that shit. His momma, Caddy Colson, never suffered a fool in her life. At least that’s what Grandma Jean said.

  “Can I come inside?” Brock said. “You can show me documentation for all these kids. Go and get it over with. We’re trying to make some sense of this for the schools. The superintendent isn’t sure if they should be allowed back.”

  “These kids are going to school,” Caddy said. “If you hadn’t blocked the damn road, we’d be on our way now. In fact, I’d appreciate if y’all headed back the way you came. We’re already late.”

  Brock had his hands on his hips, leaning up onto his toes as he spoke. He craned his neck around as if seeing all the shacks and metal outbuildings for the first time.

  “Quite a place y’all got out here,” Brock said, turning his head to spit. “What are you building down the road? I saw you got the concrete poured and beams already set. Some kind of rec center? That must cost a bundle. Seems like y’all have a lot going on.”

  “We’re late for school,” Caddy said. “Please move your vehicles.”

  A few dozen brown kids wandered on and off the wide porch. Some of them sat on the picnic tables in the shade of the old barn, finishing up sausage biscuits and bowls of cereal that his mother had provided. They had on tattered T-shirts and secondhand pants and sneakers. On a few kids, Jason recognized clothes he’d worn just last year. On the steps, his mom stared down at the men. She didn’t look scared in the least. In fact, she looked tough and pretty in jeans and boots, her old snap-button Western shirt that once belonged to Reverend Dixon.

  “I don’t have to welcome you here,” Caddy said. “And I don’t have to show you a thing. You do have to clear the road and get off my property. If you try and come back, I’ll introduce you to my lawyers, who work for the biggest firm in Memphis.”

  “I’m not trying to make trouble,” he said. “As sheriff of Tibbehah County—”

  “Pretend sheriff,” Caddy said. “My brother Quinn Colson is the damn sheriff. You and Vardaman’s people are just putting on some kind of morality play for the sake of the weak-minded. It won’t last. Y’all are about done. There’s not a single person in this county who believes my brother was a thing but the most honest man to wear that star.”

  “Well,” Brock said, a big smile on that long, dopey face. “I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

  “Do as you damn well please, Brock,” Caddy said, heading down the steps and standing right in the man’s face. Brock Tanner standing a good head higher than her but having to jerk his weak chin back to make room. “But clear the road as you do it. I got a school bus to fill.”

  4

  What a fine and glorious morning,” Skinner said, standing over Quinn’s back booth at the Fillin’ Station as if expecting an invitation to sit. “Every day is a blessed day. I even think I smelled rain in the air. Lord knows we could use it. This heat’s burning up half this county.”

  Quinn was alone, Boom just leaving to run over to the Farm & Ranch, and eating the Working Man’s Platter of two eggs, country ham, grits, and two biscuits. About the best thing about getting shot was having to regain all the weight he’d lost. He buttered his second biscuit with a steak knife while looking up at Skinner and wondering what in the hell the old man wanted.

  “You mind if I take a moment of your time?” Skinner said. He removed his pearl-gray LBJ Stetson off his liver-spotted head and took a seat before Quinn could respond. “I don’t think you and I have seen much of each other since the shooting last year. A real tragedy. Horrible thing to get shot in the back like that. And on Halloween, too. Has anyone been able to piece together just who could do that to you?”

  Quinn sliced some country ham and made a sandwich from the biscuit. He took a mouthful and started to chew. He couldn’t think of anyone he’d want to see any less than Skinner. The old man ran the Tibbehah County Board of Supervisors, a crooked bunch, less one honest man, who made their careers out of funneling off state and federal tax dollars. It had been that way for more than a hundred years. They looked at graft as their birthright, a sacred and dutiful part of the good ole boy system.

  “I have to say you’re looking a heck of a lot better than when I ran into you and your sweet wife, Miss Maggie, at the Piggly Wiggly,” he said. “I said to my wonderful Merva Joy, married more than fifty years now, that the sheriff sure didn’t seem like himself. You got a little testy with me there in the frozen food aisle. Saying something about making me eat my ole Stetson.”

  Quinn leveled his eyes at Skinner and swallowed. He reached for a napkin and wiped his mouth. “You gonna tell me what you want, Skinner, or you want me to start guessing?”

  “Now that’s the old sheriff that I know,” Skin
ner said, hee-hawing. “Yes, sir. That’s the Quinn Colson who speaks his mind. We may not have gotten along, but I always knew where I stood with you. Yes, sir. You are one straight shooter.”

  “Well,” Quinn said, picking up a thick ceramic mug and taking a sip of coffee. “Get on with it.” Miss Mary sauntered by and refilled his cup. She left without saying a word to Skinner. Most folks didn’t like Skinner. And those who did called him an acquired taste. Like sardines. Or the music of Jim Nabors.

  “I guess you know what happened out at the plant yesterday,” Skinner said. “I stand with our government and do not support folks slipping across our borders. But I don’t like being run roughshod over without warning. I think even you would have let the supervisors know just what was going on.”

  “Never did,” Quinn said. “Unless I was presenting my budget.”

  Skinner laughed, looking a lot older than he remembered the ancient bastard. His skin looked thin as parchment paper to the point he could see the veins in the man’s temples. His eyes so clear and blue they almost seemed transparent. When he called out to Miss Mary for a cup of decaf, his outstretched hand quivered and shook. Small dots of perspiration had popped out on his forehead.

  “I’m on leave,” Quinn said. “Go talk to the interim sheriff.”

  Skinner widened his eyes and coughed into his shaking fist. He looked up at Quinn, the skin at his throat fluttering like a turkey’s. “I did,” he said. “I tried to speak to him yesterday. And first thing this morning. It seems that old boy thinks he’s big news for little old Tibbehah County on account of him attending Vanderbilt before heading overseas. I even read the man’s book, Honor and Duty. I pegged him for a different kind of individual than the one who’s sitting in your gosh-darn seat.”

  Miss Mary plunked a cup of coffee in front of Skinner and handed him a menu, a slight as the man had been coming here since before Quinn was born. There were rumors Skinner had been part of the original sixteen men who’d packed the back room when the diner closed on Monday night to hold a Klan meeting, although no one had ever offered any real proof.