“Hell, if I know. I was just thinking they wouldn’t never know it if we took a share.”

“Why didn’t you take some when you first found the cash?”

“I did. Took a couple hundred bucks to make sure it would spend. Went to the store, and the girl used one of them markers to make sure it was real. When she didn’t say nothing, I brought you here for us to get as much as we could.”

“That didn’t work out too good, did it, little brother?”

“Sure as hell didn’t. How you think we can get outta here?”

That was something I needed to think about. It wasn’t that there were a lot of options to consider. Most of them ended with us getting shot, and I liked my body not having no bullet holes in it. What little time there was for me to think was ticking away fast. Andy would get back with her Deddy any time now. That told me what we needed to do, but Marshall wasn’t going to like it no more than I did.

“What?” Marshall asked.

“You ain’t gone like this one bit.”

“Can’t know if you don’t tell me.”

“I think we should go with the flow.”

“You’re right. I don’t like it.”

“Well hell, Marshall, you’re the one that asked. If you got any better suggestions, let’s hear ’em.”

Marshall took a deep breath like his brain needed the extra oxygen for thinking and started to answer, but Harper Lewellen interrupted him. “All right, boys, I’m opening this here door, and if y’all do anything stupid, I’m sending you both right to Hell, understand me?”

5.

Harper Lewellen stood at the lip of the hole wearing his house slippers, a wrinkled pair of sweatpants, but no shirt. The man looked like an aging mastiff with slack jowls and a triple-layer chin. All the muscles he’d built were getting worn out and replaced with flab. His eyes were still crusty with sleep and his hair a mess. Andy was fully clothed now but looked good as ever. She moved away from the side of her Deddy. They both aimed shotguns at us.

“Mack Dooley,” Harp said my name like he’d bitten into a persimmon and made a face to go along with it, “you remember what I said I’d do if I ever saw your face again?”

“Yessir, sure do,” I looked around the barrel that Harper aimed in my face and up into his crusty eyes, “and I was just thinking at least these’re better circumstances to have to shoot me under.”

Andy blushed, and Harp snorted. Marshall muttered something which got Harp’s attention, and he said, “What’d you say, boy?”

Marshall said, “I was trying to tell my brother to keep his goddamn mouth shut before we end up having to pick buckshot from each other’s asses.”

If Harper thought of shooting me first, his mind changed by the time Marshall figured it was best to zip his lips. The shotgun swung in my brother’s direction, and the sleepy look turned to a thunder cloud. He spoke with a bone-white grip on his gun, “You better listen to me right now, boy, we don’t take the Lord’s name in vain in this house, and if I hear you use it like that one more time I’ll blow your head right off your shoulders. Hear me?”