The Lost Ones Page 7

  “Come out to my church Sunday and I’ll get you fed,” Boom said.

  “Or you could come to my mom’s house and get some, too. Without the three-hour service.”

  “White churches got an eye on the clock the whole time,” Boom said. “Your mom can cook, though.”

  “How about tonight?”

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Boom shook his head. “Where you taking me now?”

  “Got a proposition for you.”

  “I ain’t into that kinda shit, Quinn.”

  “Business proposition.”

  “OK.”

  They cut up off Highway 9 through more acres of cotton in the little bit of flat land that there was in Tibbehah County and up over the Black River bridge, afternoon light gold and thick on the sandbars and dying leaves. The sluggish water moved under extended limbs of fat oaks and on past a rusting collection of junked cars piled ten high in Mr. Hill’s pull-a-part junkyard. Quinn drove a mile or so east past the VFW Hall and turned south into some land that the county still owned. A sign reading county barn, with arrows hand-painted on scrap wood, showed the way a good half mile down a twisting dirt path. The truck bucked up and down off the potholes, Quinn straddling over a dead raccoon surrounded by vultures. The carrion eaters kicked up onto a cedar tree until they passed.

  “You ain’t takin’ me to no goddamn intervention,” Boom said, “are you? Bring my family out and my preacher and my tenth-grade teacher cryin’ and all that. I like to get fucked up. OK? I ain’t no crackhead. Me and you just got a little lit last week, you don’t see me callin’ up Miss Jean and your uncles to come out and lay hands on you and all that mess.”

  Quinn didn’t answer him, just slowed on the dirt path and turned up toward a big sheet-metal barn with two old gas pumps out front. A school bus with flat tires and three old sheriff’s cruisers up on blocks sat in a weedy parking lot. A light fall wind brushed over the tops of the weeds, the whole space still and quiet. Someone had built a fire pit in front of the school bus, the ground littered with liquor bottles and cigarette butts.

  “How much you payin’ to clean this shit up?” Boom said.

  “I’ll get some folks to help,” Quinn said. “But I need someone to run this place.”

  “Run what? This place is fucked up.”

  “Used to be the maintenance shed for all the county vehicles,” Quinn said. “I’m going to the Board of Supervisors next week to get them to open it back up. We’d save a ton of money buying our own fuel and servicing our own vehicles. I got three years of receipts to prove it.”

  “What’s this got to do with me?”

  Quinn kept walking into the open bay door of the old barn. Inside, the barn was deep-shadowed and colder. The wind kicked up the grit and dirt at the mouth’s edge, and you had to adjust your eyes to see in the deep corners. Chains hung from engine hoists, and large old metal barrels stood filled to the rim with filthy oil. Over an old workbench, someone had left a Playboy calendar from 1987, and the pages fluttered over sun-faded images of naked women. Boom walked to the bench and picked up a few tools with his good hand.

  “Need me a mechanic.”

  Boom laughed.

  “I’m serious,” Quinn said. “I met a guy at Camp Phoenix who had a prosthetic hand with fitted spaces for ratchets and screwdrivers. He said once he got used to it, he could work the same as before. You know, the VA has to pay for that.”

  “I don’t want no goddamn Edward Scissorhands. This won’t work.”

  “So you just want to keep pissin’ away your Guard check on shit whiskey and busting heads at the juke?”

  “Maybe I like bustin’ heads.”

  “What’s that pay?”

  “Jack shit.”

  “You want to keep bullshittin’ or do you want to get to work?”

  “I don’t need no fucking charity.”

  “Ain’t charity, Boom,” Quinn said. “It’s good ole-fashioned cronyism.”

  Boom nodded. He picked up a wrench in his good hand. The wind jangled the loose chains hanging from the ceiling. The oil stains splattered on the concrete floor were thick with fine gray dirt and leaves. Boom stayed in thought, standing there, chains turning.

  “You scared it just might work out?” Quinn said.

  Boom stayed silent for a moment, and then said, “Your truck does need work. You shoulda kept that Dodge Big Ram Stagg tried to give you.”

  “I keep hearin’ that,” Quinn said. “Can you do anything with that old Ford?”

  “Nope. But I know where you can get a better one cheap. F-250. Put on a roll bar and a winch. Paint it myself. How’s Army green sound?”

  Quinn walked up to his friend and offered his left hand.

  Boom took it.

  12

  JOHNNY STAGG DROVE NORTH TO OXFORD SATURDAY AFTERNOON AND then west into the Delta, not talking much, only playing his easy-listening music, humming along to Pat Boone and Don Ho, as they crossed into the flat land of the Delta to a hunt club where they’d meet his people. Stagg never said names, not that Donnie had asked. He just talked about these people with a lot of respect and admiration. Stagg was like that, thinking that men who were whoremongers, gun dealers, and drug pushers could be admirable because it brought them nice clothes and big houses and hunt clubs in the Delta. Stagg didn’t have a conscience, believing a man’s wallet is all that separated him from others. A preacher might disagree, Stagg said, but in the end, money is what gets respect.

  “What’s in this for you, Johnny?” Donnie asked.

  “All I want is a finder’s fee,” Stagg said. “How’s forty percent sound?”

  “Twenty sounds better.”

  “Let’s say thirty, ’cause if not, it’s just chickenshit and not worth the time.”

  “Thirty,” Donnie said. “But Johnny, just give me your word that you won’t cornhole me. You do, and I swear I’ll come for you in the middle of the night.”

  Stagg smiled and kept on steering his big Cadillac as if he was steering a ship, cutting north on Highway 316 through Jonestown. The ragged old place looked like something out of a western movie except it was all black; the whole town made of clapboard and brick, broken windows, and ragged trailers. Rangy old black men in dirty T-shirts wandered out onto the stoop of a pool hall as they passed, holding cues and cheap whiskey bottles, eyeing Johnny Stagg’s El Dorado sailing through to Highway 61. Don Ho sang “My Little Grass Shack,” Johnny reaching down every few moments to grab a plastic cup full of ice and bourbon. His brand-new car reeked of cigarettes and cheap perfume.

  “This land looks like somethin’ outta the Old Testament,” Stagg said, more to himself than anyone.

  Cotton fields stretched in endless acres on each side of the highway. The sun was half gone over the river, coloring the billboards sending them on to the casinos on Tunica where big rewards take big risks. Fat women and old blacks held big checks and grinned stupidly.

  Stagg went up off the highway on Dog Bog Road like they were headed up toward the Mississippi River and Friars Point but slowed when they hit a big stretch of fenced land. He turned at an open cattle gate, driving maybe a mile up through the property, through acres flooded for duck hunting and a big forest perfect for getting all likkered up and shooting some deer and turkey.

  “Don’t get smart,” Stagg said.

  “Why start now? Got me this far, hadn’t it?”

  “Answer the man’s questions,” Stagg said. “But don’t put on no show. He just wants to make sure you ain’t a Fed. They’ll probably pat you down and ask you about your service. I think it’s the service part that spooks ’em. You gettin’ one check from Uncle Sam already.”

  “Maybe I need to ask them some questions, too,” Donnie said. “I ain’t handin’ over a hunnard thousand dollars in good faith. Unless you’re gonna tell me we’re meeting Jesus Christ himself.”

  Stagg ignored him, slamming the car door and slipping into a pressed suit
coat he’d kept on a wire hanger. He popped a piece of Juicy Fruit in his mouth and ran a pocket comb through that dyed black hair. They walked together, strolling down the pebble footpath to the biggest log cabin Donnie had ever seen, with thick stone chimneys and a shiny green metal roof. Smoke pouring from one of the chimneys smelled pleasantly of red oak.

  “Let me talk,” Scagg said.

  “What if they ask me the damn questions?”

  “You can answer,” Stagg said. “But do it with respect.”

  Stagg knocked on the front door, and when nobody came to it, he opened her up anyway and stepped into a wide flagstone hall decorated with all kinds of dead animals who’d never set foot in the Delta. There was a zebra and a yak, a polar bear, and even a goddamn elephant. The thick planked walls looked to Donnie like the inside of a barn, with everything set up in the wide open. There was a kitchen, and a space in the back with a pool table and a bar and a couple leather couches facing a flat-screen television turned to some kind of nature show with crazy-ass people in cages poking sticks at sharks.

  A man was asleep on one of the couches but stirred when they came up on him. He wore khaki pants and a red golf shirt. He’d kicked his tasseled loafers off, and he had old-man half-glasses on a string around his neck. When he saw Johnny, he got to his feet and nodded, pulling out an old-school Zippo and firing one up. He was an average-sized guy, not fat but not in shape either, with small brown eyes and a large forehead from a receding hairline. He was real tan, like rich men always were, and wore a thick gold bracelet on his hairy wrist that jangled in the light when he lit the smoke. Donnie figured he was somewhere in his fifties. His golf shirt said ole miss alumni association, but, damn if he didn’t need to shave his face and neck.

  Stagg shook his hand and smiled and smiled.

  Donnie stepped beside him and said, “You’re Bobby Campo.”

  “This him?”

  Stagg nodded.

  His small eyes roamed all over Donnie’s face.

  “You want a drink?”

  “I’ll take a little toddy,” Stagg said.

  “Cold beer,” Donnie said.

  “I like that suit, Johnny,” Campo said. “You get a deal at the funeral home?”

  “My wife bought this for me last Christmas,” Stagg said. “It’s made in America.”

  “I’m just having a good time, Johnny,” Campo said. “Don’t get your dick in a twist.”

  Stagg swallowed and looked out a large bay window while Campo walked back behind the bar and set a glass of ice and a bottle of Jack on the counter. He cracked open some kind of fancy beer brewed in small batches and handed it to Donnie. Donnie took it and lit a cigarette, figuring if Campo smoked, there wasn’t any harm. He drank some beer and studied all the animals looking down at him with those glass eyes. “You kill all these?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You kill all these animals?”

  “Shit no.”

  “Ain’t this a hunt club?” Donnie asked.

  “It’s a fucking clubhouse,” Campo said. “I shoot some deer and ducks and all that. I bought all that other shit.”

  “That seems kinda fuckin’ stupid,” Donnie said. “That’s like me putting up some all-state trophies in my gun shop that I never won.”

  Campo looked to Stagg. Stagg’s face was coloring a good bit. Donnie smiled as he watched the older man suck down a good half of the bourbon. Campo started to laugh and clasped his hand on Stagg’s shoulder. He laughed until his eyes got a little teary. “If this kid is a federal agent, I’ll cut off my own dick.”

  “Appreciate that,” Donnie said.

  “Guns,” Campo said.

  “Mr. Stagg said you could help us out some.”

  “I don’t want no religious nuts or no Arabs,” Campo said. “Couldn’t live with myself.”

  “Just some Mexes who want to shoot up each other.”

  “I can live with that,” Campo said. “Long as they don’t fuck up my time-share in Cancún.”

  “I think what we got to do—” Stagg said, starting to talk.

  “Hold up, preacher,” Campo said. “Let me and this boy talk.”

  Stagg sucked down more bourbon, his jaw working on a piece of ice. Donnie studied the cold beer in his hand, wondering just what all that German writing said. He drank down another sip, still wishing it was a Coors, and took a deep breath. “I need U.S. Army Colts,” Donnie said. “M4s. Military-grade. None of that Chinese-made shit, neither.”

  “I understand,” Campo said. “We can truck it in? OK, preacher?”

  “I ain’t no preacher,” Stagg said. “Get that straight, Mr. Campo.”

  “No?” Campo said. “That’s what my boys always call you. They say you’re the spitting image of Pat Robertson, with a little Jerry Lee Lewis thrown in for good measure.”

  Campo laughed a lot at that, looking over at Donnie to join in a bit. Donnie couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  “I’ll excuse your manners because I can tell you’re intoxicated,” Stagg said.

  “I’ve been sleeping down here in mosquitoville for five days now,” Campo said. “My wife has hired two lawyers to keep me away. My oldest son said I was a selfish prick while he’s driving a brand-new Mustang bought with pussy cash. And I have a restraining order on me, and federal agents trying to sweet-talk my bitch of a wife into letting them get a peek into my personal files. So don’t deny me some fun, Johnny T. Stagg.”

  Stagg finished the bourbon and put down the glass.

  “Truckin’ sounds good to me,” Donnie said. “Do the deal at the Rebel. Money will go through Mr. Stagg. We good?”

  He passed over the gun list he’d made with Luz.

  Campo blew some smoke out a big fat nose as he read. His big, wide forehead was peppered in sweat from the booze. He wiped it away with a cocktail napkin and walked back over to the bar and refilled his glass. He poured some more into Johnny’s glass, and Johnny looked at the whiskey with some disgust. “Y’all want to have a drink on it?” Campo asked.

  Donnie joined them and helped himself to another beer in the refrigerator. He cracked open the top on the side of the counter, drinking off the foam. He stepped a foot in front of Johnny Stagg, feeling his breath on his neck, and raised his bottle. “I say fuck your wife,” Donnie said. “You seem like a hell of a guy, Mr. Campo.”

  He looked over at Stagg and winked.

  “Maybe ole Johnny can make enough to buy a new suit.”

  Donnie and Campo laughed a little bit more. Campo reached around his shoulder and patted his back like a football coach.

  Man, it was gonna be a bitch of a ride back to Tibbehah.

  QUINN GOT BACK TO THE FARM at sundown. Hondo was on the front porch but stirred when he heard Quinn’s truck and ran out to greet him, shaking the dust from his coat and offering his head for Quinn to pet. The cattle dog followed him up inside the old house, which was stark, bare, and airless as a church, Quinn leaving the front door open and letting the screen door thwack behind them. He’d spent most of the summer gutting the place and whitewashing the walls and sanding the heart pine floors. By the time he went through all his Uncle Hamp’s junk, there wasn’t much to keep besides a big kitchen table and chairs, a couple iron beds, and an old dresser that had belonged to his great-grandmother. He gave away about everything else or burned it. Now the house seemed empty and hollow but at least clean. Quinn set up an iron bed for himself and a little pillow for Hondo. He’d affixed a metal pipe against the bedroom wall for his pressed blue jeans, work shirts, and such. His cowboy and hunting boots were polished with saddle soap and waiting on the floor below.

  He kept most of his guns in a hiding hole he’d bored into the center of the living room floor that he covered with a rug he’d shipped home from Afghanistan. He kept his service revolver on the nightstand after work. A Browning “Sweet 16” rested between a set of deer antlers above the fireplace.

  Quinn took off his shirt and tossed it in a laundry bag. Now dre
ssed in an undershirt and jeans, he removed his Sam Brown and cowboy boots and retired to the front porch. He lit up a La Gloria Cubana and brought out a rawhide for Hondo.

  They sat on the porch for a long time, watching the sun drop over a small orchard of new and old pear and apple trees. The light grew gold and pleasant as it slid across the skeletal frame of a new barn Quinn was building. Hondo made a lot of noise as he chewed.

  His mother never understood why he’d kept the old place. Johnny Stagg tried to buy it from him for a more than decent price. But he couldn’t sell a piece of land that had been in his family since 1895, especially to a shitbag like Stagg. Besides, he liked it out here, a good ten miles out of Jericho, and on a good piece of acreage populated with turkey and deer. He expected to have a full freezer by the end of hunting season and had already been able to put up a nice bit of beans, corn, and peppers from his small garden. The idea of home such a strange concept after living life in Conex containers, airplane hangars, and tents for the last decade. One of the first things he’d learned as a Ranger was make the most of your downtime. Quiet your mind and rest. You never know what’s around the corner.

  A young doe wandered into his orchard and began to eat some rotten apples that had fallen long ago. He watched with interest as she scoured for the remaining apples, ears pricked for the slightest sound. Bats filled the sky as it turned to night, picking off mosquitoes in the quiet hum of the country. There were frogs chirping in the creek. He’d roll onto duty at four a.m. and would enjoy the last little bit of night left.

  Hondo lifted his head from the porch.

  Quinn put his hand on him and stood, looking down the long gravel road to the main highway. A red SUV turned onto his road and bumped up his circular drive. Hondo trotted out and barked at his visitor.