Shane sits in the back, ensconced in a cocoon of kiddie toys. Chris isn’t an only child. He’s got two little brothers and one little sister, all under nine years old. Atlanta’s not sure if both of his parents are really his or if there’s a remarriage thing going on. Figures it’s not worth it to ask.

She’s up front. The shotgun in her lap. The barrel cracked in half, just waiting for a shell—and she has many of them rattling around the pocket of her camo pants.

Chris stares warily at it. “That thing’s not gonna shoot me, is it?”

“It’s not magic,” she says. “Doesn’t have a mind of its own, relax.”

John Elvis Baumgartner lives even farther out than she does. Up Mill Road, past the “clean Amish.” Left on Wagon Hollow, past the so-called dirty Amish. (Around here folks say that some Amish are lower-class than their peers, for reasons she doesn’t quite get. Atlanta thinks it smacks of prejudice, but she has to admit that the dirty Amish do live on properties that look rotten and run-down: old barns, uncut lawns, ratty dogs wandering about.) Eventually they turn up the winding Indian Run Road, past the Blissful Acres Trailer Park, whose acres are blissful only in the heads of the drug addicts and meth cookers who frequent the place.

All the way at the end of the road sits the farm where John Elvis lives. Right at the base of Grainger Hill. The poor, podunk side. Like Guy says: Gallows for the rich. Grainger for the poor. Maker’s Bell sitting smack in the middle.

They park on Indian Run Road, off to the side. The farmstead sits down a long, straight driveway, not all that different from Atlanta’s own house. The barn is brown, not red, and has a roof that looks as if it might come tumbling down at any moment. The house is a smaller affair: water-stained buttercream siding, a sea-foam-green wraparound porch whose paint can be seen peeling even from here. The fields around are not fallow: they’re freshly tilled for planting, in contrast to the rest of the property, which looks dried-up and forgotten. Someone else probably rents the fields from the Baumgartner family.

A dog lies chained to a tractor tire out front. A fat, scabby Labrador. He snoozes.

They hear music, though it’s a bit of a stretch to call it that. It’s a clamor of guitars, a speed pulse of bass drum and inconsistent cymbal-smashing. Some kind of thrash metal.

“We go up the side,” she says, pointing along an irrigation gully. “You sure you’re coming?”

“I so wanna see their faces,” Chris says. His face is an eager, angry mask.