Freezers are a lot like casinos with no clocks or windows—I lost all sense of time. I thought it must be morning when I heard some banging around the basement. I thought the Elis must be coming for me when Andy hollered. It was the first time I heard her voice since the afternoon before. I yelled Andrea’s full name, but she wasn’t paying attention to me. She begged whoever came down to the basement to take her out of here, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

The lock jangled, and the lid slung open.

“Goddamn, Coy,” my brother said.

13.

Marshall pulled me out of the freezer by my arms, and I ran to Andy, but he wouldn’t let me. My jeans got shoved into my hands, but Marshall ushered me to the basement steps, where a big fucker waited for us. Seeing Caudell Clark standing there reminded me of all the bar fights he got into for fun, using mangled bodies to mop up bloodstained floors. He made the Elis look small. It made me nervous as to what my brother had gotten us into.

I stopped to put on my jeans but ignored Marshall when he said to keep moving. He didn’t want to hear what I had to say, but I made him listen. Words grated on my throat when I spoke. It sounded like Beelzebub did the talking for me. “We gotta get Andy outta here.”

“That ain’t happening, Coy,” Marshall said, “now let’s get outta here.”

“Marshall,” I said, “that preacher’s been putting her through all kinds of hell. God knows what he’ll do when he finds y’all took me.”

Caudell answered me this time. He didn’t leave room for argument. He put a catcher’s mitt of a hand on my shoulder, and his Black knuckles looked busted from pounding faces. “The girl ain’t coming. You’re all I was told to come here and get.”

“Told to come here and get me?” I said, then turned to my brother. “What did you do, Marshall?”

Marshall shoved me past Caudell and up the steps. “Bitch at me later, Coy, we need to get the fuck outta here.”

I stumbled up the first few steps and caught my balance on the handrail. “Keep your goddamn hands off me, Marshall. Answer my questions or I ain’t going nowhere.”

Caudell’s voice outweighed my brother’s. “Tell you everything you need to know back at the truck. Now go.”

The basement door got busted into kindling. It made me sick leaving Andy.

We went through the side door of the sanctuary and headed up the aisle between the pews. That oversized wooden cross loomed over us like an omen of doom. The front doors were missing from the hinges, and glass trailed all the way out to the parking lot. I didn’t walk no further. Marshall said, “C’mon, Coy, what the hell!”

“I ain’t got shoes on, Marshall. Want my feet cut all to hell?”

Marshall looked at the ground and turned his back to me, leaned forward a little.