Darren told the woman to back up a few feet, and when she spit in the dirt at his feet, he told her he was willing to give her the same treatment black folks got from cops if she thought she was getting the raw end of this citizenship deal. “Though, bit of advice, you may want to get your affairs in order first.”

“You hear that, Sheriff? The nigger just threatened me.”

Quinn turned, his arms still holding Marnie in such a way that she was nearly cuffed by the sheer strength of his will. They both saw Darren at the same time. Like a bull from a pen, Marnie threw off the sheriff and ran through the red dirt to Darren, looking at him with begging eyes. She grabbed his arm, digging her fingers through his shirt, digging through to bone. Darren felt like a stone in mud, hammered in place by her hurt. “Did you find Levi? Did you find my boy?”

Bo scratched his reddish beard and nodded toward Darren. “Why don’t you ask him what he was doing talking to Leroy Page about the boy last night?”

Sheriff Quinn shot Darren a look that cracked what easy camaraderie there’d been between them yesterday. Quinn was furious. “You talked to Page?”

“Wanted to be clear he knew what he saw Friday night.”

Marnie looked from Darren to the sheriff. “Mr. Page? He saw Levi? Does he know where my son is?”

From the back of the cruiser, Gil hollered through the glass, loud enough that his breath fogged the back window, “I never laid a hand on that boy.”

Marnie screamed back, “You whipped him just two weeks ago, left welts the size of bloody slugs. He couldn’t hardly sit right for days.”

“Shut the fuck up, Marnie!”

“Fuck you, Gil.”

“It’s Page,” Gil said, nearly obscured by the fog of his breath in the back of the cruiser. “Can’t y’all see that? The old man had it in for Levi since he tried to burn the church, red hot over the fact that he tagged up the old man’s house.”

“Ask the Ranger here if he’s protecting one of his own,” the bearded man said while his wife, girlfriend, whoever, kept filming the scene with her phone. Darren edged away from the two of them, from the cracked camera’s lens, aware of the potential hazards that being filmed carried for him as a Ranger who’d only recently gotten his badge returned. He turned his back to the cell phone camera and asked Quinn, “You arresting him on the kid?”