“You can’t tell who you’re talking to?”

I couldn’t tell if she got insulted by my question or just fooling with me, and I said, “I’m stuck inside a damn freezer. Nothing don’t sound right.”

“It’s Andrea, Mack. Andrea Lewellen.”

If I could’ve sat up inside the freezer, I would have. “What the hell they got you locked up in this basement for?”

Andrea didn’t answer, and I had to ask her if she was still there. “I’m here,” she said and then got quiet again. The quiet continued for a few minutes, and then she answered me. “They got me down here because of what you and your brother did.”

This time it was my turn to respond in silence. I was trying to think of what reason the preacher could have for locking her in this basement. “What do you mean you’re down here cause of what me and Marshall done? You’re the one who caught us stealing that money and called the preacher on us.”

There was a thump against the freezer. Andy said, “Brother Jessup claimed God spoke to him and revealed to him the whole thing was a setup. Said Deddy came up with the idea to have y’all steal the money and used me calling him to make it look like we tried to stop y’all.”

“What the hell kinda bullshit is that?” I asked. “Y’all didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“We told Brother Jessup. He didn’t wanna hear it. Said the Spirit of Deception was using us to work against God’s plan.”

“Spirit of Deception?”

“That’s the preacher’s way of saying we were lying.”

“Then why the hell don’t he just say that?” I asked, but Andy didn’t answer. She’d gone quiet on me again. I understood why. These were shitty circumstances to have to catch up under, “Where’s your deddy, Andy?”

I thought I heard her cry.

“They killed him, Mack.”

Harper Lewellen didn’t always like me, but he was a good man. There wasn’t nobody in Tugalo County who had a bad word to say about him, especially my Deddy. Harp was there for Deddy whenever Deddy was around, and hearing that old Harp got murdered made me mad enough to shit nails. “What the hell you mean they killed him?”

Andrea couldn’t tell the story for crying, so she took a minute, but her voice was still shaky. “The preacher came to our house a couple of nights after y’all did. Said God spoke to him about us being in on it and that we needed to face judgment. Deddy told him to get off our property, or he was going to get his gun, but the Elis didn’t let that happen. They beat Deddy up so bad his own feet couldn’t carry him, and they dragged him to the truck. They brought us here to the church basement. Brother Jessup said Deddy needed to get baptized, but this wasn’t no baptism you read about in the Bible. He called it the Baptism of Serpents. Said God revealed it to him in a vision. Spoke to him about how Deddy was a deceiver like the serpent was for Eve. Said Deddy needed to get baptized among his own kind and let them decide the fate he should suffer.”