The Ranger - Ace Atkins [57]
“I got my shit back in Eupora,” Shackelford said.
“Anything that can’t be replaced?”
Shackelford shook his head.
“I’d get out of town for a few weeks.”
“You planning on a shit storm?”
Quinn didn’t answer, handing him four hundred dollars, and only asked if he had a place to go.
“I got an Army buddy in Atlanta,” Shackelford said. “I guess he wouldn’t mind seein’ my pretty face.”
Quinn nodded. Shackelford absently shuffled the money in his hand and then tucked it into his T-shirt pocket under his leather jacket.
“You gonna kill Gowrie?”
“I appreciate the help,” Quinn said. “You’re stand-up.”
Shackelford looked at him and nodded, offering his hand. Quinn reached out and shook the man’s hand, skinny and feeling almost hollow.
“Hell, I didn’t do nothin’.”
“Gowrie forced you out and you came back anyway. I’d call that stand-up.”
Shackelford waited a beat, breathing, and then nodded before he opened the door and headed on into the bus station.
Quinn stayed a moment after the door slammed shut, smelling the diesel fumes of the Greyhounds, and watched Shackelford disappear before he headed back south.
Quinnʹs cell rang about halfway back to Jericho. It was Anna Lee.
“You asleep?”
“I’m headed back from Memphis.”
“Quinn, did you give some girl Luke’s number?”
“She was pregnant and needed a doctor.”
“That girl called us at supper, and Luke drove off to find her. He hasn’t answered his phone in nine hours.”
“Sounds like the girl’s in labor.”
“He’s not at the hospital.”
“Call Wesley.”
“I called him,” she said. “He wasn’t worried.”
“I’m sure Luke’s fine.”
“He went out to that compound up in the hills.”
“You want me to call Wesley for you?”
“Why in the hell would you put Luke in with those people?”
“I’m sorry, I thought Luke was a doctor.”
“Those people out there. Holy Christ. Why’d you set him up like that?”
Gowrie left after the screaming got too bad, after her water broke on the steps with Ditto and ran through her panties and down her legs and she was left in that dirty little room with four women stoned out of their minds. Not a one of them had five years on Lena, and they kept on telling her everything was going to be all right. The hell it was. She kept on punching that number on the cell phone, the one she’d been given at the truck stop, feeling like this was the only way the goddamn pain would stop. But the girls tried to soothe her, bringing her some pills, which she spit on the floor, and a hit of whiskey, which she did drink. Just about twilight is when time kind of stopped, and she threw that phone to the floor and began to walk the creaky floor of that trailer, women on each side of her, telling her to be cool. Be cool? She walked and couldn’t breathe, those damn girls not giving her the space. She held on to her big belly and thought of Jody. Jody Charley Booth, and what he’d done by planting his seed in her, after lying on his back and looking up at the stars and telling her how good it felt when he didn’t have to wear one of them things. And she’d asked if he’d finished within her, and he swore on his momma’s life that he hadn’t. And she believed him.
Not ’cause she trusted him, but ’cause it was what she wanted to believe, and if Charley Booth was going to be beholden to her and they’d live together, and he’d go out and make sure they was taken care of, she’d never, ever, have to step foot in Alabama again.
“You want some more whiskey?”
“Hell no, I don’t want no whiskey.”
She doubled over, the pain something fierce, her busting apart at the seams, muscles and organs coming undone, that baby on the move and wantin’ out of there. And as she got on all fours on the bed, a woman bringing a cool cloth for her neck, she had the scariest thought of all. What if she was too small? What if the baby couldn’t get out? She’d hide it. She’d hide it. ’Cause she saw, in her mind, Gowrie walkin’ in and splitting her in two with a hunting knife and having no more worries about it than gutting a fish. She’d be a fish to Gowrie. And that