Mississippi Noir

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the Bottom

Welcome to Mississippi, where a recent poll shows we have the most corrupt government in the United States. Where we are first in infant mortality, childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, teenage pregnancy, adult obesity, adult diabetes. We also have the highest poverty rate in the country.

And, curiously, the highest concentration of kick-ass writers in the country too.

Okay, maybe that’s not a Gallup poll–certified statistic, but we do have more than our fair share of Pulitzers and even a Nobel. William Faulkner lived and wrote here. Richard Wright is from Mississippi. Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Larry Brown, Ellen Douglas, Shelby Foote, Richard Ford, Ellen Gilchrist, Barry Hannah, Kiese Laymon, Willie Morris, Walker Percy, Kathryn Stockett, Donna Tartt, Jesmyn Ward, Brad Watson, Steve Yarbrough, etc. Also, the Crooked Letter boasts perhaps the heaviest-hitting trio in the crime/thriller biz: Greg Iles, Thomas Harris, and John Grisham. I could go on, and in fact I do, in this very anthology.

Faulkner said that good writing is created by the human heart in conflict with itself. Maybe that’s why so much art comes out of Mississippi—a state in conflict with itself in so many ways. The legacy of slavery has left wounds that are slow to scab over, not even close to healing. The South’s position of loser in the Civil War has left Southerners to brood, as Shelby Foote says. The winner of a conflict goes on. But the loser . . . Finish this quote. We all know it’s healthier to be the mover-oner, the winner, skipping off with a shrug. The state of brooding is a painful one, but it’s one that produces great books.

Maybe when you think of noir, you think of cities shot in grainy black-and-white; alleys and fire escapes and blinking neon signs with a letter or two gone dark. That’s part of it, sure. But noir often reveals a down-on-his/her-luck person going from bad to worse. And where can one find more wonderful worse than here in Mississippi? This isn’t, and hasn’t ever been, a land purely of moonlight and magnolias. Because in that moonlight, under those magnolias, terrible things happen. And in the cities, too, in the Jackson alleys and strip malls, down along the casinos on the coast, in Tupelo, home of Elvis, or the Delta, home of the blues, or along I-55, where there’s a Nissan plant almost a mile long, where trios of crosses dot the highways.

Here are sixteen stories from seasoned noir writers like Ace Atkins and Megan Abbott as well as Mississippi’s new generation of noirists, authors like William Boyle and Michael Kardos. You’ll also find unknown, first-time-published writers like Dominiqua Dickey and Jimmy Cajoleas, who won’t remain unknown for long. I’m thrilled to bring these writers to you. In Alabama, where I grew up, we had a saying: Thank God for Mississippi, otherwise we’d be at the bottom in everything.

Welcome to the bottom.

Have fun.

Tom Franklin

Oxford, Mississippi

May 2016

PART I

Conquest & Revenge

COMBUSTIBLE

by Ace Atkins

Paris

I shouldn’t be doing this, I said.

Hell you shouldn’t, Shelby said. You fucking owe me.

Why?

Don’t you want to meet Lyndsay Redwine?

Since I saw her in a bikini at the city pool.

Then shut the fuck up and drive.

Shelby was fourteen. And she talked like that.

She’d crawled into my tall Chevy Silverado without even asking. Maybe because she liked my truck, riding high on a Rough Country lift kit and new set of 295 Firestones. I gave her rides to school sometimes from the bottom ass of the county down in Paris. People tried to make something of it, which was bullshit.

I was seventeen and a senior. Shelby was a freshman, chubby, and mean as hell.

Wasn’t your momma picking you up? I said.

I don’t care.

This comin’ down on me.

I ain’t goin’ home.

Suit yourself, I said, waiting for the deputy directing traffic to wave me onto 334.

He stared at me through mirrored sunglasses like he knew I was trucking jailbait. But he waved me on as Shelby got some Bubblicious out of her backpack and offered me a piece. She had on faded jeans and a Walmart T-shirt that tugged at her belly, saying, Amazing Grace. How Sweet the Sound.

Well, I’m screwed, I said, driving south, back to Paris. I used the cut-through by the Yellow Leaf Church where my kin were buried.

Hunter, don’t be such a pussy, she said. You want, just let me out. I’ll walk.

It’s ten miles to Paris.

I don’t care, she said. I don’t care about nothing. I’ve gone way past that road.

She smacked her gum and started texting. I let down my window and drove on. It was late November, already deer season and cold, but it felt good to air out the truck. That ought to do it, she said as she finished the text.

She held out her phone, proud as hell. I glanced down as we hit the stop sign at County Road 418. I FUCKING HATE U.

Yep, I said. That ought to do it. Your momma will love it.

She’s fucked in the head.

Yep.

She didn’t used to be that way. He’s the one who led her into all her fucked-up-ed-ness.

He meaning Randy. Randy being Shelby’s stepfather. ’Course I always liked Randy. Him and my daddy had gone to Lafayette back in the day, and I’d heard that Randy got in a year at Ole Miss before tearing up his knee. He was big and potbellied, always tan and grinning with large white teeth. He built barns from wood he’d milled himself. One time he bought me a Coke at the barbershop.

I ain’t goin’ home, Shelby said.

Then don’t go home.

Let me out up at the cemetery, she said. I don’t give a shit, long as it’s not home.

I dropped her at the old Paris cemetery, crooked and rolling and alone on the hills.

As I drove away, it started to rain. I watched her in my rearview as she sat down near a headstone. She looked worn-ass out.

* * *

WHERE U AT? WORRIED. MOMMA.

Shelby sat on a big slab of marble and texted back. I’M NOT FUCKING COMING HOME. EAT SHIT.

She got up, walked to a cedar tree, and uncovered a rock. Under the rock, and under a couple inches of dirt, she found a half-drunk pint of Aristocrat vodka. Shelby spit out her watermelon gum and took a swig, walking back to the headstone. Probably been better if she’d known any of the dead folks around her. But her people were from Olive Branch, her daddy was buried there, and she wished to hell she could move back.

She drank.

Randy. Fucking A-1 asshole.

Their old house had been colder than shit all week and he wouldn’t get his fat ass up and fix that propane leak. Just crawled under the house and cut off the heat. Said if he hadn’t noticed that fart smell the other morning, his first cigarette could’ve killed them all. Randy said it like he was some kind of fucking hero. Her daddy had been a hero. A hero doesn’t smell farts. A hero gets blown to bits out in the desert.

The phone buzzed in her lap.

I’M CALLING THE LAW.

Shelby downed some more vodka, warming her up in the cold rain and, by God, giving her strength. The ground all bumpy and uneven with skinny old headstones and thick new ones. A few old lambs for kids and tree stumps for the loggers. Must’ve been something to be a logger back in the day. Lots of dead folks here seemed to be real proud of it.

CALL EM, BITCH.

The rain come on hard, splatting off the headstones and dripping off the pine trees surrounding the cemetery. Fuck her. Fuck him. Fuck it all.

She heard a motor and looked up to see Hunter’s dumb ass driving back to where he’d let her out. She tucked the vodka in her pink camo backpack and walked down to where his Chevy idled.

What? she said.

You just gonna sit out here all night in the rain? Hunter said. Jesus.

Maybe.

Get in.

I ain’t goin’ home.

You said that. I’ll take you to my cousin’s. Grab that damn towel. Shit, girl. Don’t get my seats all wet.

She put on a pair of red sunglasses flecked with rain, and climbed in. She felt good and in control. Okay, she said. Your cousin is cool.

* * *

Kids only thought Rebecca was cool ’cause she was eighteen and had her own trailer. But she also had a two-year-old baby, bills, and a tenth-grade education. She’d ditched school about the time she got knocked up. When me, her, and the baby went shopping at the Walmart, folks stared like she was straight trash. Maybe it was all the bracelets she wore and the nose ring. People in Mississippi really got upset by that nose ring.

What the hell, Hunter? she said, walking barefoot from her trailer when she heard my truck. What do you want?

To get out of the rain, I said.

This look like a motel to you?

I shot Rebecca a look. She lit up a cigarette, stared down at Shelby all wet and chubby, and blew out some smoke. Shit, she said. Come on in. Be quiet about it. Braden’s asleep.

Rebecca tossed Shelby a clean towel as the rain drummed on the trailer. Shelby walked back to the bathroom while Rebecca pressed a hand on the kitchen counter. She was tall and thin and wearing a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut out. A tattoo on her right arm said, BRADEN. She’d gotten it done one night on Beale Street when she decided to quit drinking and smoking weed.

She looked to me and shook her head. Y’all are screwed.

Why?

Johnny Law just called here about five minutes ago, Rebecca said, smoke streaming from the edge of her mouth. Sheriff’s looking for your girlfriend.

* * *

Deputy Ricky Babb spent nearly a half hour with Leanne Dalton while she talked about how her daughter was a stupid, selfish shit and maybe crazy too. She said she wasn’t above committing Shelby, if things come to it. Leanne said her little girl didn’t make no sense most of the time and maybe she belonged in Whitfield. Babb wanted to tell her that if you could take a pill or do an electric shock for being a pain in the ass, he wouldn’t have a damn job.

But Babb just sat there on her tin-roofed porch, nodding along with problems kids got today, and waited to get some religion thrown in there. Just as he thought the woman had shut up, she mentioned a quote from The Purpose Driven Life. God sometimes removes a person from your life for your protection. Don’t run after them.

Babb never thought of God protecting a momma from her own child. But Leanne was pretty sure of it, saying that she didn’t have the money or time to put up with all Shelby’s bullshit and lies.

How’s she lyin’? Babb asked.

’Cause that’s who she is, Leanne said.

Babb sucked on his tooth, listening to the crackle of a radio call. A bunch of cows had broken out of fence on County Road 381. Son of a bitch. Nothing like herding cattle with a busted-ass Crown Vic. Least it wasn’t nighttime. Herding was a bitch at night. What’s that, ma’am?

She accuses my husband of all kinds of things.

What kind of things?

What’s it matter? she said. Shelby’s a liar.

Yes ma’am, Babb said. These kids need to realize the road they’re paving to their future.

Babb thought about all those cows heading down the county road, trying to break for the highway where they’d run out in front of semis and splatter the pavement with meat and blood.

He walked back to his patrol car, which he’d left running, and knocked her into drive.

* * *

What do you think of that man your momma been seein’? Shelby asked. Jimmy or J.J. or whatever the fuck his name is.

Mac.

Yeah, Mac.

I guess I don’t think much of him, I said. He’s not my daddy or nothing. And he knows he’s not my daddy. My daddy lives in Jackson. He’ll always be my daddy.

My daddy is dead, but that doesn’t make it stop being a fact, Shelby said. Half of him is half of me.

I nodded.

Problem with Randy is he acts like he’s charge of me, my momma, and my brother, she said. Only reason he’s living with us is he’s paying the rent.

Yeah?

You bet, Shelby said. Payin’ it to my momma six inches at a time.

Shit, Shelby.

It’s true, she said. I hear him at night. His fat ass riding her like an old bicycle. I thought something was wrong with her one night, and I gone into the bedroom and seen her and him watching a dang porno movie and them doing it like dogs. His old fat, hairy ass on her, nasty breath in her ear. She seemed like she trying to get away. But him locking her down, holding her ass till he finished what he started.

Randy ain’t that bad, I said. They got a picture of him back in the day by the principal’s office. I heard he could bench-press three hundred pounds.

Shelby looked like she was going to throw up. I slowed the truck.

You okay? I asked.

Shit yeah.

You don’t look okay.

Just fucking drive, Hunter.

Doesn’t your momma work? I said, hitting the gas, the dually pipes growling behind us. I mean, she don’t need him.

She was working as a receptionist at an eye clinic for four years, Shelby said. She was real good at fitting glasses.

Where do you want to go?

I don’t care, she said. Somewhere. Anywhere. Put me out. Hell, it’s all the same.

Why are you crying?

I ain’t fuckin’ crying.

* * *

Ma’am, the school resource officer said Shelby Littlejohn rode off with Hunter this afternoon, Deputy Babb said. Have you heard from your son?

No sir, Hunter’s mom said. He do something wrong?

The woman wore a big blue flowered dress that didn’t hide her big blue flowered ass, which was blocking the entire door. She looked down from the mouth of the trailer, soap opera blaring on the television, waiting for him to leave. The rain was in his eyes and soaking his uniform good.

Where does he usually go after school?

He comes home, she said. Except during baseball season. You know he’s starting this year. Third base. I think he’s got a future.

Yes ma’am, Babb said. You think you might try and reach him on his cell phone?

He doesn’t have a cell phone, she said. Kids don’t need phones.

Lots of kids have them.

Good way for them to get in trouble, she said. With all that twittered and selfie stuff. Girls taking pictures in their panties and passing it around. That can just do nothing but make a teenage boy lose his mind.

Does Hunter work?

He sometimes works at the radiator shop over on old 7, she said. But that’s when he’s trying to get some new parts for his truck. You know how much he loves that truck.

Mmmhmm.

Even got a name for it, she said. Calls it the Silver Bullitt. ’Cause of the way it looks like a Coors Light can.

Shelby’s momma is real worried, Babb said, walking back from the steps. The little girl sent some pretty awful words to her momma.

What did she say?

I can’t repeat them.

Do I look like I sing in the choir?

Harsh words, ma’am.

Don’t mix up Hunter in that little girl’s crazy family business, she said. He doesn’t have nothing to do with it. Didn’t I tell you he’s got a future?

Your boy didn’t have permission.

Talk to her mother, then, she said. ’Cause I can’t raise their daughter while trying to raise my own son.

Babb was soaked through and through. The trailer door slammed. He walked back to the patrol car. Been easier working with them cows.

* * *

You ever think about killing someone? Shelby asked.

Hell no, I said. What’s wrong with you?

Shelby’s shoulder pressed against the passenger window of my truck. She was still in her cheap sunglasses, chewing gum, blowing big loud bubbles.

You know, she said, that your life would be better if someone wasn’t on the planet?

You want to kill your momma for being a pain in the ass?

That’s not what I’m saying.

What are you saying then?

I’m just talking, Hunter, she said. Can’t we just talk awhile?

I’m taking you home.

’Cause the law showed up at your mom’s house?

She told them I didn’t have a phone, I said. She lied for me. She lied for you. And Johnny Law interrupted her afternoon television. That’s all she cares to do until I get home for supper. She said the law said I didn’t have permission to give you a ride.

You drove me because I said I’d talk to Lyndsay Redwine.

I got you here, didn’t I? Shit.

Fine, she said. Drop me off then. Right over fuckin’ there.

There? I said. That’s nowhere. That’s just an old couch on the road.

I need to rest.

I’m driving you home.

Shit, she said. I don’t even know where the hell that is.

Shelby grabbed the door handle and acted like she was about jump out. And I figured she was just about crazy enough to do it. I slowed onto the gravel shoulder.

My truck pipes growled as she opened the door wide. I revved the engine. She didn’t move. She just sat there watching the wipers slap the hell out of the rain. She stared straight ahead, thinking on something.

What you got in that toolbox?

Flowers, I said. What do you think?

You got a wrench?

Yeah, I got a wrench.

Give it to me.

I left the motor running, walked out into the rain, and grabbed a wrench from my Husky toolbox. I looked at her hard as I handed it over in case she had it in her mind to go and hit someone with it.

What? she said. Can’t a girl just go and fix her dang house? She blew a huge pink bubble and it exploded like a shot.

I guess.

And Hunter? she said. Pick me up for school tomorrow. Little earlier than usual. I got somethin’ to do.

You want me to get arrested?

Will you do it?

I nodded.

She got out and went over to the wet, ragged sofa as I turned the Chevy around and rolled down my window. Shelby was a trip in her sunglasses, taking a seat on that old sofa in the rain. She acted like she owned all of Paris and that the hamlet was her living room.

You really introduce me to Lyndsay Redwine? I said.

Shelby smiled back and crossed her legs. She had a phone in one hand and a big-ass wrench in the other. Just pick me up, she said. Okay?

* * *

Randy had come in late the night before, racing up from Calhoun County where’d he’d been out with his stupid buddies spotlighting deer. He was red-faced and sweating, wearing an old Carhartt jacket over his T-shirt, when he’d asked Shelby to step outside. He had something he wanted to show her.

She knew her damn bitch momma had called him. She’d told him what she’d said.

Why you want to upset her like that? Randy said. Your momma was crying and blubbering so much, I could barely make out her words.

Shelby just stood there in his headlights, arms crossed over her small chest, in their front yard. Randy opened up the tailgate to his truck and dragged out a dead deer.

Sometimes a young girl believes things, imagines things that never been there, he said. "Way it works when you’re a kid. But you spread them things onto your momma, and your momma calls me up, that’s when you need to consider your actions. Brother Davis was sayin’ last Sunday . . .’’ Using his winch, Randy hoisted the doe by the back legs over a tree branch.

Brother Davis is a cross-eyed hypocrite.

You need to think on what you’re sayin’ and doin’, Shelby, Randy replied, shuffling back to his truck and cracking open another Busch from his cooler, Adam’s apple working while he swallowed most of it.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his bloody hand, and set down the beer on the tailgate. His stomach swelled over the top of his pants. The back of his neck was reddish-brown and hadn’t been shaved in a while.

Are we straight?

She was quiet. She just stared back at his big, dumb ass, showing she wasn’t scared of jack shit. She knew and her momma now knew too. Whether her momma believed it or not wasn’t Shelby’s damn problem.

Randy pulled a buck knife from a leather sheath and walked to the doe swinging in the wind. There was lightning far off from their neighbors’ and a cold wind bringing in rain from down on the coast. Headlights shone on the dead animal.

Shelby wanted to say more but only got out, Can I go inside?

Hold up, Randy said. Hold up. Listen. Haven’t I been good to you?

That’s what you call it? she asked, lifting up the sleeve of her T-shirt, fat finger bruises on her arms. Goddamn you, you fat bastard. It ain’t right what you did. I didn’t want it.

Randy froze in the front yard, open-mouthed, doe swinging from the pecan, and slit that deer from anus to throat, the insides of the animal dropping down hard and bloody onto the dead grass.

He studied the entrails that had fallen, picked up a cigarette, closing one eye as if to get better focus, and just nodded at her. We straight?

Shelby ran into the house and slammed the door behind her.

* * *

Shelby’s momma ain’t gonna file charges or nothing, said Johnny Law, a.k.a. Deputy Babb.

We sat in the cruiser together that night as it rained like hell outside us. I didn’t say nothing.

But she and her stepdaddy wanted me to talk to you, Babb said. They wanted you to understand the exact nature of what you done today. That girl is fourteen years old.

Yes sir.

And she’s real impressionable, Babb said. You being a senior with a big, nice truck like that. I ain’t too old that I don’t recall what a young girl would do for an older boy. But your cousin sure as hell understands the consequences of her actions.

This don’t have nothing to do with Rebecca.

You don’t want to be changing diapers while trying to play ball, Babb said. That little girl is messed up in the head. Shelby would do anything for some attention. That’s why I’m talking to you like a man. Let you know all the things that come with spending time with a girl like that.

Shelby’s just my friend, I said. She needed help.

Babb smiled. He had yellow, crooked teeth.

She didn’t want to go home.

How come you went over to your cousin’s trailer?

’Cause we didn’t have nowhere else to go, I said. It was raining.

Y’all were together nearly four hours before she got home.

We were riding around. Shelby likes to take the back roads.

It was the wrong thing to say. Babb just smiled bigger. He put a hand on my shoulder, leaned in, and said, Keep it in your pants, Hunter. Don’t go throwing away your life on a little ol’ fat girl.

I didn’t answer. I just crawled out of the cruiser and walked back to my house and the supper my momma had laid out. Field peas, greens, and hamburger steak that had grown cold.

Momma was back on the couch, laughing at something she’d seen on television.

* * *

The morning was bright and cold when Shelby removed the skirting around the front porch and crawled under the tin-roof house. She was quiet about it. All she needed was Randy to wake up from a twelve-pack coma and start asking a lot of questions.

The house was old and slat-boarded, nothing but dirt and trash up underneath the floors. Running above her was a mess of old copper pipes and new