The Forsaken

Qui

“He turned his head from something bad?”

“Diane Tull thinks so,” Qui

“Good Lord.”

“Took him out to Jericho Road where it all happened and hung him from that old oak,” Qui

“So who was the man?”

“Nobody ever knew,” Qui

“Jesus God.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

•   •   •

After supper, Qui

Boom suggested they start off at Club Disco 9000, a place where Boom used to hang out before he quit drinking. One night, he’d beaten the hell out of four men—after the loss of his arm—because of a slight to his honor.

“Don’t have much reason to come here anymore,” Boom said.

Qui

“They still pissed at you busting the place up?”

“I made good on it,” Boom said. “I paid off what I broke.”

As soon as they entered, the owner and chief bartender, an old black man named Spam, looked straight at Boom and then to Qui

“I paid you for that table,” Boom said.

“What about the chairs?”

“Money should’ve covered the chairs, too,” Boom said.

“Hmm,” Spam said. “Thought part of our deal was that you didn’t come down here no more. People afraid when they see you, Boom. They don’t know if you’re go

“That was a while back,” Boom said. “This ain’t about that.”

“What’s this about?”

“Sheriff got some questions for you,” Boom said. “Appreciate if you help him out.”

Spam looked to Qui

“How long you been living in Tibbehah?” Qui

“Since I popped out of my momma,” Spam said. “I left for Memphis. I came back. Man, you know.”

“Were you here in 1977?” Qui

“What the fuck you saying I did?”

“Man’s not saying you did shit,” Boom said. “Calm the hell down, Spam. Just listen. He needs some help.”

“Mmm,” Spam said.

“You remember a man drove a black Olds,” Qui

“You got to be shitting me.”

“Fella was a black man but had some kind of scarring on his face,” Qui

“Like Boom?”

“Yeah,” Qui

Spam shook his head, both palms flat on the bar. The jukebox playing a song with a woman singing “You Got to Lick It to Stick It.” Some of the folks in the bar laughing at the refrain, drinking some big quart Budweiser with a side of illegal moonshine that Spam made special. A few of them would glance over at Boom and then away, Qui

“Man, Sheriff,” Spam said, “I don’t know. You talk to Dupuy?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Y’all ain’t friends?” Spam asked.

“I don’t think much of how he treats folks around here,” Qui

“Before him, it was his daddy, and before his daddy was a white man named Bertrand Sinclair. And he was the worst of them all, ’cause he didn’t just give folks a shitty place to live. He made them work for it, pay for it, and end up dying for it.”

Boom looked up from the bar. A man walked past Boom and offered his hand. Boom offered his left and the man wandered off.

“I got it,” Spam said. “Fucked-up face. Cool car. Hadn’t been around these parts for almost forty years. Ain’t nothing to it.”

“Can you ask around for me, Spam?” Qui

“Sure, man,” Spam said, offering his hand. “I’m just fucking with you. You’re all right, Sheriff Colson. You ain’t your uncle. Nobody can say that the law don’t care about the Ditch.”

Qui

“Hold on,” Spam said, heading down to the other end of the bar and popping the tops of two quart bottles of Bud. He gave the men two jelly jars filled with a shot of shine on the side. Spam didn’t have a business license, alcohol being illegal in Tibbehah County outside the city limits, and he was operating what would be known in the dusty statutes as a beer joint. “OK?”

“A black man was killed that same summer,” Qui

Spam reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He thumped one free and screwed into his mouth, lighting up with a disposable Bic. “Shit, yeah,” Spam said. “I do know something about that. Everybody remember that day. Jericho went back to being a goddamn sundown town. You know? White folks thought this man had killed that little girl. But that man didn’t do nothing but get in their way.”

“Who was he?” Qui

Boom watched them from his seat beside Qui

“Man was crazy,” Spam said. “Just showed up that year with a bag. He stayed with some woman he know and then she kicked him out. He slept out in the woods for a long time. You know, out on the Trace. I don’t think he had a real job, people just called him Echo. Call him Echo ’cause he ended up only repeating you. Not answering you back.”