The Forsaken

“I don’t really care who this embarrasses,” she said. “Do you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“But you rode with these people?” she said. “This could get you in trouble, too.”

“I’ve been clean now for more than twenty years,” Stillwell said. “I have a good many years of my life that I don’t even recall. After Lori died, I just wanted to make myself numb to the world and with the help of some lucky pills I succeeded.”

“But they’re back?” Diane said, cars and trucks slowly driving past them on the Trace. “Aren’t they? I’ve seen them coming back in town, buying things at the store, heading back out to that clubhouse y’all used to have. Are they the same folks?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Stillwell said. “Some of them. Some are new. Others are dead.”

“And the more this comes out,” Diane said, “the more it shuts them down.”

Stillwell’s face was covered in reddish gray stubble, looking as if it had been a couple days since his last shave and maybe last bath. He wore a red-and-black checked coat, threadbare trousers, and an ancient pair of pointy-toed cowboy boots. “What they did was wrong. That man gets out of prison and he’s going to turn this town inside out. He’s been sitting there up at Brushy Mountain thinking on things, making plans for when he comes back. You and me don’t step up, tell what we know, we’re going to find this county in worse shape than after the storm.”

“One man?” she said. “You really believe he can do all that?”

Stillwell nodded. “He’s got a list of people he wants cleared out and I’m number one on that list.”

“So you’re trying to save your own skin?”

“I’m the dumb son of a bitch who put him in prison,” Stillwell said. “I turned informant on the whole crew and testified in federal court. Chains LeDoux calls me his own personal Judas Iscariot.”

“This isn’t about Lori,” Diane said. “This isn’t about me.”

“It’s all the same, Miss Tull,” he said. “We’re just all caught up in it until we see it all through.”

“I should go.”

Stillwell touched her arm as she passed. He looked into her eyes, shivering as if the coat didn’t offer him any warmth in the setting sun. “Please,” he said. “All I need you to do is tell the sheriff that these people got the wrong man. Tell them that you saw the fella who did this to y’all after that man got hung.”

“I already did, Hank,” she said. “And now I’m done with whatever angle you’re working. Please leave me the hell alone.”

By the time Qui

“Hey there, Caddy,” Qui

“What did you tell him, Qui

“Did he win?” Qui

“Damn you.”

“He’s a kid,” Qui

“I don’t give a crap,” Caddy said. “He’s five. I don’t want him fighting. I don’t want him to respond to those kind of taunts. You don’t think I’ve laid awake at night thinking about what these little rednecks will make of some half-black kid? You think it’s bad now? It’s going to be a hundred times worse in high school. I think about him asking a girl on a date and, no matter if they’re black or white, what they’ll say. It breaks my heart.”

“Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand.”

“Sit down, Caddy,” Qui

“I remember that,” Caddy said, sitting. “I recall everyone talking about it. You broke his nose.”

“Yep,” Qui

“Well, Jason isn’t you,” she said. “And there were two boys doing this to him.”

“He can’t let people talk to him like that,” Qui

“At five?” Caddy said. “Have you gone crazy? I’m not trying to raise a fine young soldier, I’m trying to raise a good boy with a good belief system. If I tried to fight every bastard that had done me wrong, I wouldn’t have time to breathe.”

“Well,” Qui

“Really?”

“Shit, yeah,” Qui

Caddy was on the porch swing, some of the red-hot color gone from her face. She had on a man’s button-down over a George Jones T-shirt. “OK,” she said. “I appreciate you trying. I really do. But I don’t want Jason to be a kindergarten hell-raiser. I want him to make better choices than we did. Smart ones.”

“Isn’t ass-kicking in the Bible?”

“Maybe you forgot to read the second half of that book,” Caddy said, smiling a bit. The old swing kicked up and back slowly on chains from the curved beaded-board ceiling. Qui

“What’s for supper?” Qui

“Mom’s got something going,” she said. “I think she’s frying up some of that deer you just got processed. The cubed steak with some sweet potatoes and green beans.”

It was quiet and still between them in the falling shadows. Qui

“I’m fine,” she said. “Why?”

“You hadn’t stopped working in almost a year.”

“I don’t want to stop,” she said, placing a hand on Qui

“I think that was Jerry Reed.”

They stayed on the porch, front door closed to Jean and Jason. Caddy said Jean had gotten some ice on Jason’s eye, helped tend to his cuts and bruises. The older boys who’d done it were suspended and she said Jason took some kind of comfort in the justice of that. Qui

“How’d everything go with Diane Tull?” Caddy asked. “Every time I start feeling sorry for myself, I think about what that woman has gone through.”

“You’ve been through plenty.”

“But to be raped and shot, lying there and knowing your best friend was dead.”

“Hard stuff,” Qui

“Did Uncle Hamp ever do anything?”

“Nope.”

“Not even questioned someone?”