The Ranger - Ace Atkins [108]
She’d missed that pig-faced boy.
She got a break thirty minutes later, her clothes smelling of hickory wood, and hands dry and cracked from washing dishes. The storm had moved on, and she found him sitting on the hood of a brand-new Dodge truck beaded with rain and wearing a pair of rattlesnake boots and holding a black cowboy hat in his hand. She’d never figured Ditto for the cowboy type, but it was an image. The pig-faced boy came to impress her, and he kissed her on the cheek, his own cheek flushing a bright red.
“I got money,” he said. “I took a job up in Memphis.”
She nodded.
“You weren’t easy to find.”
“I didn’t know you were looking.”
“I wasn’t sure who was looking for me.”
“You didn’t do nothin’.”
“I’m not innocent, neither,” Ditto said, fingering the brim of the cowboy hat in his hand. “How’s Joy?”
“Good,” she said, squinting into the sunlight behind his back. “Why’d you come here, Ditto?”
He slid off the hood of the truck and took her hand. “I’d like to look out for y’all. Come on with me?”
The air was choked with all that hickory smoke, burning off hazy and slow in the golden light. The green hills rose and broke with wet green trees and grasses growing knee-high. Eighteen-wheelers zoomed past them, scattering the smoke and peaceful views.
She smiled at the boy. “I appreciate what you did.”
He nodded. “But you won’t come?”
“How’d you get all that money?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” he said. “But some ole buddies of mine sure have set me up.”
She touched his face and kissed his thin lips. The boy had poured nearly a quart of aftershave over himself. “What happened to Gowrie?”
“Parchman Farm.”
“He get the chair?”
“He killed a lawman,” Ditto said. “’Spec so.”
The boy looked sad and clumsy, fumbling in the pocket of a new snap-button shirt for some cigarettes and lighting them with shaking fingers. But he smiled anyway, trying to look loose and cool on the hood of that brand-new Dodge.
“You won’t come?” he asked.
Lena shook her head. She smiled at him.
“I was glad to know you.”
“You ever hear what happened to that soldier that got Gowrie?” Ditto asked. “I wanted to apologize for thieving his ole truck and stealing them guns.”
“He get ’em back?” she asked.
“Don’t know.”
“That old Ford wasn’t worth much.”
Ditto finished the cigarette and stomped it out in the gravel, walking around the side of the new Dodge and pulling out a big pink gorilla. The ape was so large it was bulky to carry, at nearly half the boy’s size. “You are still calling her Joy?” he asked, shielding his eyes from the sun coming out behind the clouds.
“I sure am,” Lena said, checking her watch, scooting off the truck. “I got to go. I’ll let her know you brung this.”
For all Quinn’s complaints about becoming a Ranger instructor, riding the damn desk was a hundred times worse. As a platoon sergeant, there were always forms and paperwork and details to keep track of. But sitting in front of a computer all day, working on other folks’ shit, was a little slice of hell. He’d crack his office window at Benning with a brick and could smell the Chattahoochee River from where he sat, wanting so much to get on his boots and hike far into the Cole Range till he dropped from exhaustion. But he still walked with a limp, and the doctors there in Columbus said he might always keep it.
The sling was off, and he was able to head to the range and shoot. He taught weapons classes to the kids coming in, and they’d ask him about that limp, hearing that Quinn had been at Haditha and made several trips into Afghanistan.
He