Nearly a month passed and Johnny Stagg didn’t hear jack shit from Chains LeDoux. He was back in Tibbehah—Oh yes, sir—he’d ride the town square bigger than shit with his gang of thieves, tattooed morons, and rejects. Stagg had heard about their bonfire parties, and a few of his boys had a daily stop at the Booby Trap to watch the girls ride the pole and throw some money down for a pecker pull. But the hell that was to follow, the worry that came over Johnny Stagg all those nights, never came back. Stagg figured maybe that time in Brushy Mountain had been good for the man, maybe Chains didn’t have hate and vengeance on his mind. Maybe the fella just wanted to drink, get laid, if he was still inclined, and ride those scooters all over the South. Johnny thinking on this and then talking a bit to Mr. Ringold about the strangeness of it, this being the end of February, spring weather coming on now, with the windows open to his first office in the Rebel.

“That’s good,” Ringold said. “The supreme art is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

“You think that’s what we done?”

“I think he may have gotten the message from Mr. Houston,” Ringold said. “Burning down their Memphis clubhouse was a bold move.”

“Wasn’t my idea,” Stagg said. “Still don’t like it.”

“But it showed they weren’t welcome,” Ringold said. “Them or the Mexicans.”

“Fucking Mexes,” Stagg said. “We ain’t got no border. Down in El Paso or up in Memphis, those cartels have expanded way out from Texas. Atlanta is overrun with them folks. Don’t know why anyone thought they weren’t coming to Mississippi or Memphis.”

“But they were already here?”

“On account of this local boy named Donnie Varner,” Stagg said. “His daddy runs that Quick Mart out in the county. You know him? Ole Donnie tried to double fuck the cartel and the ATF. He’s in federal prison at the moment. Word has it he done it all for some good-looking piece of Mexican tail.”

“What’s Houston’s story?” Ringold said. “Why won’t he do business with them anymore?”

“Sonsabitches tried to kill him,” Stagg said. “He was coming out of some disco up on Summer Avenue, drinking champagne and doing what blacks do, and some cartel boys sprayed his Escalade with an AK-47.”

“That’ll piss you off.”

“I think we got things worked out just fine now,” Stagg said. “We got LeDoux knowing his place. I got Sheriff Colson knowing which side the bread is buttered on. We get LeDoux back in prison, and that’d be just the damn cherry on things.”

“How close are we?”

“’Course you know Colson arrested his own goddamn father,” Stagg said. “He cuffed him, charged him as an accessory in that lynching, and kept him in the county jail for three days before he got kicked loose.”

“If he didn’t have anything on him,” Ringold said, “why’d he charge him?”

“I imagine Quinn’s got some problems with his old man,” Stagg said. “I knowed Jason Colson for a long time and real well. He’s a crazy son of a bitch and the biggest cooch hound in north Mississippi. His wife is a fine woman, although she thinks I’m trash come to town, and Colson running out on her was a disgrace.”

Ringold nodded. He leaned back in his chair so the front legs came off the ground and his back rested against the wall. “Colson is fucked,” he said. “Ain’t nobody in this town except for his momma and family will vote for him. He’s done.”

“Maybe,” Stagg said. “Honestly, I don’t give a shit. There’s a local boy who’s thinking of tossing his hat into this thing, was in the Guard and had a couple years with Eupora P.D., and he might be a good fit. You can’t trust Colson.”

Just then Willie James knocked on Stagg’s office door with a shell-shocked face and wide-open mouth. He just kept shaking his head over and over and telling Stagg that he needed to come on with him outside, that there was some trouble that he needed to tend to at that very moment.

Stagg looked to Ringold. Ringold leveled the chair and stood, wearing a Levi’s jacket over his automatic pistol. They followed Willie James through a back hall and the bustling kitchen, floor slick with grease, until they turned outside through a pair of doors and watched as Willie James pointed to the a large rusted dumpster and a couple cooks and waitresses who were looking inside a small sliding door cut in the side.

“What is it?” Stagg said. “Shit. Tell me.”

Willie James seemed unable to speak. He just pointed.

Stagg walked on over to the dumpster, pissed off as hell that he got bothered for every little thing going on at the truck stop. Last week it was a bird that had flown into the convenience store, and two weeks ago he had to drive a girl from the club to the hospital in Jackson ’cause her fake titty exploded.

“What the hell?” Stagg said, peering through the opening, all that rotten chicken and meat loaf and moldy hamburgers making a hell of a stench. He couldn’t see nothing. And then the back of a man emerged, facedown and not moving. Stagg just seeing the shape of him, the old flannel shirt and an arm reaching forward as if the man had tried to crawl himself out of this world of shit. “Well, I’ll be. Willie James? You crawl in there and see who it is.”

“I’d rather not, sir.”

“Get your ass in there,” Stagg shouted. “Use a fucking stick or something, but flip his ass over.”

Willie James was not pleased, as he used the opening as a toehold and then reached up on the edge of the dumpster and crawled on into the mess. One of the cooks, the fella run the pit, gave him a long busted piece of PVC line, and James stepped over that garbage and rotting shit like the man was gonna turn over and say “Boo.”

“God damn it,” Stagg said, “do it.”

“Hold on,” Willie James said. “Shit. Hold on, Mr. Stagg.”

Ringold seemed not interested a bit in what was going on, standing back with a couple waitresses and talking about if it might rain later that day. Here they had a goddamn body in the dumpster and he was worried whether he was going to get wet.

Willie James stuck the PVC line under the chest of the poor son of a bitch and used it as a wedge, losing momentum at first, but then sticking it hard and good and getting the body rolled over in the soft bed of garbage. The stench was something god-awful as the fella turned.

Stagg looked through the sliding door. The damn face of Hank Stillwell stared right at him with wide fish eyes and a mouth so big you could put your fist in it.

“Who is it?” Willie James said. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” Stagg said. “Never saw the son of a bitch in my life. Somebody needs to call the law and get this mess out of here. Son of a bitch . . . Hell . . . God damn.”

Ringold moved over to the opening, peered inside, and then looked to Stagg. As he brushed by Stagg’s shoulder, Ringold said, “Here we go.”

“Yes, sir,” Stagg said. “Would somebody call the fucking law?”

•   •   •

“Momma is back in her own home,” Caddy said. “I guess Jason and I need to be thinking about getting settled, too.”

“I was thinking about moving in with Ophelia,” Quinn said. “You can do as you like.”

“This is your house.”

“This was Uncle Hamp’s home and, before that, it was our mother’s and, before that, our grandparents’, and so on,” Quinn said. “It doesn’t belong to just one of us.”

“Look at you.”

“What?”

“You sure want to shack up with Ophelia Bundren,” Caddy said. “Good for you. You think y’all will get married soon? Have some kids?”

“Caddy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can we just sit here without stirring the shit?” he said.

Caddy laughed, Quinn’s arm around his sister’s shoulder as they swung on the old porch swing and watched the cattle graze out in the pasture. The nights had grown pleasant and the daffodils were big and yellow and in full bloom. Quinn had on a T-shirt and jeans, his boots by the door. Off for the night, Caddy had cooked them all some salmon croquettes, mashed potatoes, and English peas. Quinn drank a cold Coors during and after, enjoying one of the first warm nights they’d had in months, welcoming the end of a long winter.