“Goddamn, Marshall, I ain’t jumping on your back.”

“Then bleed, Coy.” Marshall threw his hands in the air and tried to keep his voice low.

Caudell’s boots munched glass. “Y’all get this figured out. We ain’t waiting on y’all forever.”

“Who’s we?” I said, but Caudell climbed into the passenger’s side of the Bronco and slammed the door. I raised my eyebrows at Marshall and threw my hands to the side.

“Let’s get in the truck, and I’ll explain everything to you.”

“Why the hell’re you so anxious to get when there’s a defenseless woman chained up in that basement?”

“Goddamn, Coy, you miss that freezer?”

Marshall ran a hand over his scruff. “That defenseless woman is the reason for this whole shit storm. Don’t you remember her calling the preacher? She can rot in that goddamn basement.”

“Marshall,” I said, but the Bronco’s horn let us know it was time to go.

“C’mon, Coy,” Marshall said, “they’ll leave us if we carry on.”

He turned his back to me, leaned forward for me again, and I hopped on. My brother carried me to the passenger’s side of the truck, and I slid across the backseat behind the driver, and Marshall got in beside me.

Roy Bohannon turned in the driver’s seat and looked at me with one of his country-mile grins. “What you know good, Mack?”

“What the fuck you done got us into, Marshall?”

PART THREE

Mine eyes have seen the glory

Of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage

Where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning

Of His terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

1.

Everybody called Roy Bohannon Peanut. He drove with one arm slung out the driver’s side window and the other propped atop of the steering wheel. As soon as we left the church, he put on a Hank Williams Jr. CD and blasted it through the speakers so loud nobody could talk, and Peanut sang along with Bocephus—sang extra loud with every chorus and glanced in the mirror to see if any of us sang too.

He drove us out to the Bohannon compound where the empire had got run since his great granddeddy was alive. It stood deep out in the woods of Tugalo County, where Albermarle Mountain overshadowed the property, its radio towers a pair of blinking stars. Nobody went out there unless Peanut knew beforehand. Otherwise, people who came out uninvited got fed to Caudell and disappeared in the mountains. When Peanut turned onto the dirt road, he turned the stereo down and pulled over.

He turned and pushed his ball cap back on his head, looked at me and my brother but spoke to me specifically. “Katie’s got y’all a room made up, but y’all’re gone have to share. She wanted y’all’s mama to have a room to herself and not have to worry ’bout being decent ’round y’all. Deddy is living with me now, and he ain’t none too happy ’bout y’all staying here. If he runs his mouth, ignore him.”