“What the hell’re you doing, Coy?”

“Thinking.”

“‘Bout what? You need to get ready.”

If I asked Marshall what I wanted to ask him, the chances of him lying to me were better than average, but I asked him anyway. “Did you tell Brystal about the money?”

“Goddamn, Coy, do you think I’m that damn dumb?”

“You been hiding from me that you been talking to her, Marshall.”

“Only ’cause I knew you’d act like this right here.” Marshall pointed his finger at me. “But that don’t mean I’m fixing to go and talk about the money. Deddy taught me all the same lessons he taught you.”

Marshall was referring to our Deddy’s number one rule about living a life of crime, don’t talk to nobody about the things you do because you don’t never know who you can trust. I wanted to ask Marshall how it worked out for Deddy since he’d got locked up in Sweetwater State Penitentiary ever since we were little. All the good it would’ve done is piss him off because Marshall got sensitive where our Deddy is concerned.

Instead, I asked, “You even know who all’s coming out tonight?”

“You wanna know if Charlene’s gone be there?”

“Maybe,” I said. “It’ll put me in a better mood if she is.”

2.

Charlene wasn’t with Brystal and her friends. Her ex-boyfriend got back from a long haul, and she went to hear Blackberry Smoke with him in Athens. That left me sitting at the bar by myself while Marshall danced with Brystal—and her friends watched me drink. It wasn’t that I didn’t think any of them girls were pretty, but I got my heart set on having a dance with Charlene, and I let my blues anchor me to a barstool.

Marshall couldn’t have cared less about my downheartedness. He’d come out for a good time and wasn’t nobody stopping him. Hell, if anybody asked him to, Marshall wouldn’t have been able to point me out at the bar. He’d hugged up with Brystal real tight, his hands shoved down her back pockets, and she giggled at whatever he said and kissed him on the cheek.

One of the girls who met us here decided I’d sulked long enough, left her barstool, and came over to sit next to me. I couldn’t remember her name, but I’d been checking her out all night. She wore cowboy boots and cutoff shorts and had the kind of thighs that could squeeze the life from a man.

She sat close to me at the bar and got my attention by bumping her hip into mine. I quit peeling the label from my beer bottle, glanced over at her, and she smiled at me the way a bobcat does when it’s gnawing on the bones of a bunny.

“You just gonna sit here and pout all night, sweetness?” She asked.

I guess she couldn’t remember my name either. “I ain’t pouting.”

“Yeah, you are, sweetie. You’ve been sitting there nursing that beer, hoping it’ll ruin your brother’s good time. Don’t know whether you can tell or not, but he ain’t paying you no attention.”