The Ranger - Ace Atkins [17]
He flicked his cigarette into the weeds and called out to the guard to get Charley Booth’s ass out there.
She froze, and he turned back to stare, licking his cracked lips.
Lena ran for the tracks and followed them till she was back in town, broke, busted, and nowhere to go.
“Honey?” Jean Colson said. “I said cream of mushroom. Not chicken noodle.”
Quinn’s mind had drifted as he followed that shopping cart up and down the aisles of the Piggly Wiggly, nodding to what his mother was saying but not hearing half of it.
“Quinn?”
Jean Colson looked at Quinn as if he were still a twelve-year-old boy who’d get a quarter for the bubble-gum machine if he didn’t act up. Caddy’s baby sat up high and attentive in the cart, trying to reach for everything they passed.
“Wasn’t there,” he said.
“Look again.”
“Didn’t you go to the store last night?”
“This for Sunday,” she said. “We got some folks comin’ over after church. People want to see you, honey. There’s going to be a ceremony. You got to feed those people who are coming.”
“I’d rather have catfish.”
“We’ll go to Pap’s before you leave.”
“Who are all these people anyway?”
“Friends.”
“You look. It’s not there.”
She handed over the grocery cart with a huff. Jason held on to a box of animal crackers as Quinn headed down aisle 8, cake mixes and spices and syrups and things. He stopped to pick up some Aunt Jemima pancake mix, his momma never having breakfast food, and was thinking that a pound of good coffee would be nice when he spotted Lillie Virgil striding down the aisle, one hand on her gun, lithe and hard in a tan uniform, until she reached the cart and grabbed hold of it in midroll. She smiled at Jason and called to him, tickling his chin with fingers and talking baby talk, telling him he sure was a handsome boy, before lifting her eyes at Quinn and asking, “You think your momma will let you out tonight?”
“Come again?”
“There’s someone you need to talk to. Says he’ll only talk to you.”
“I can’t right now. Can’t you see I’m grocery shopping? We have people coming over after church and you need some cream of shit to make the casserole.”
“He sure is cute.” She leaned in again, face softening, and said, “I’ll pick you up.”
“What’s this about?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m not hearing a lot of what you’re telling me.”
“Good soldier, believing what you’re told.”
“What time?”
“Give me thirty minutes,” she said. “I got to change out of this uniform.”
Quinn smiled at her. “Don’t get yourself in deep on my account.”
“Who said I’m doing this for you?”
Quinn kept pushing the cart, running his hand over his clipped hair, Jason growing upset because the last animal cracker was gone. He searched down the aisle of flour and spices, the kid now crying like crazy, till he was able to make it three rows over to the cereal aisle.
He found the first box he saw, some kind of sugary -O’s, and opened the box. His nephew was pacified and smiled up at Quinn, a big old thank-you smile, and Quinn leaned into him and grabbed his ear, noticing his father’s eyes for the first time, and the thought startled him.
6
There were three trailers at the bottom of a dead-end road that didn’t even have a number, just another knot in this little enclave called Chance’s Bend, which was mainly white and broke-ass, on the outskirts of a hamlet called Fate. Quinn got out of his truck followed by Lillie, Lillie looking better than he could recall, in a black V—necked sweater with dark jeans and boots, smelling and looking very nice. Quinn had joked with her about her dressing up for him, and the comment didn’t sit too well with her, Lillie trying out the silent treatment, almost embarrassed, for the last ten miles.
She followed behind Quinn as he knocked on the door, seeing a large couch laden with a pillow and sleeping bag through the glass. A toilet