The Ranger - Ace Atkins [34]
“With who?”
“Myself.”
Anna Lee cut her brown eyes over at him, her long fingers picking at her chicken, pulling the skin off, taking little bites. Quinn smiled at her and she looked away, another old woman coming over to him, a friend of his dead grandmother, handing him a greeting card she wanted him to open when he returned back home. Quinn wasn’t quite sure where she meant.
He laid his hands on her old hand and thanked her, his eyes lifting up and seeing Lillie Virgil holding Jason upside down and swinging him from side to side like a pendulum. She was dressed up, long black pants, a nice silk top. Quinn noticed Anna Lee watching her and then looking down when she saw Quinn was staring.
“People have seen you around with Lillie,” she said, smiling. “What’s going on there?”
“Nothing.”
“Heard y’all have barely been apart.”
What do you say to that?
Quinn messed around with the last few mouthfuls and put down his fork, looking for some sweet tea to clear his mouth. He took a deep breath, catching Lillie’s eye and smiling. Lillie smiled back.
“She never dresses like that.”
“Stop,” Quinn said.
“What?”
“Needling me.”
“Congratulations,” Anna Lee said. “They sure missed you at church.”
She cleared her plate and was gone. Quinn turned to the right, where Mr. Jim was working on a chicken leg and then wiping his mouth. He looked at Quinn and shrugged.
“What do you make of that?” Quinn said.
“I wouldn’t have kept my barbershop open for forty years if I didn’t know when to shut my mouth.”
“I will never understand her,” he said.
“Hell, men and women, we don’t speak the same language,” he said.
Quinn winked at the old man, gathered his plate and took it back to the kitchen. His mother, never one to have a good time, was already elbow-deep in the sink, suds spilling over the counter onto the floor. Jason was running wild, with Lillie running after him, running right into Quinn and then pushing him back with the flat of her hand.
“Y’all have a nice talk?” she asked.
Quinn reached for the coffeepot and poured a cup.
He rolled up his sleeves and started to help with the dishes, his mother trying to push him away. “Go talk to everyone,” she said. “I can’t be in there.”
“Let me ask you a question,” Quinn said, reaching for a wet plate to dry. “Was Uncle Hamp really friends with Johnny Stagg?”
“I know they did business,” his mother said. “I don’t know if they were friends.”
“Stagg wants our land pretty bad.”
“He won’t get it.”
“You’re goddamn right.”
“Quinn?”
“What?”
“Watch that mouth.”
Quinn reached for a glass and dried it, setting it on the rack, Lillie wrangling Jason long enough to sit him at the little breakfast nook, trying to get him interested in a coloring book. Over his mother’s shoulder, he saw Anna Lee in the foyer throwing a purse over her shoulder and reaching into her coat pocket for her keys. She looked at Quinn and then turned for the door, Quinn knowing the move, knowing she wanted him to follow her outside so they could argue a bit more.
Quinn reached for another dish.
“Judge Blanton is going to keep his eye on things after I’m gone,” Quinn said. “I don’t want that land ever coming to that son of a bitch.”
His mother shook her head.
“Okay?” Quinn said, Lillie lifting her head from the table and looking at him.
His mother nodded.
“Do you now see how he wasn’t in his right mind?” Jean Colson asked. “It would’ve been just his mind-set to sell that property to someone without telling me.”
“He didn’t sell it,” Quinn said, “just signed some stupid agreement on a scrap of paper.”
“I hadn’t spoken to him since last Easter Sunday, and here he comes in maybe three weeks ago, knocking on my door and wanting to know if I could store some of his boxes. This is a man with two barns and three sheds. He had so much junk he needed me to watch his possessions.”
Lillie stood up from the table. She looked to Quinn.
“What did he leave, Mrs. Colson?” Lillie asked, placing her hands in her pockets and standing on the balls of her feet.
His mother had turned his bedroom into a sewing/storage