Bakker knelt and grabbed Garrett’s leg just above where Virgil had him by the foot, and they both pulled. Garrett kicked at them with his other, booted foot, hit Bakker’s forearm, and Bakker fell back, and said, “Goddamn, that hurt.”

Rose, in the doorway, said, “This is better than clowns at the circus.”

Virgil said to Bakker, “Keep him stretched out. I’ll be right back.”

Virgil got up and jogged into the kitchen, where he’d seen an aging gas stove. Sitting on a shelf above the stove was the usual box of wooden kitchen matches. He carried the box back to the bedroom, broke one of the matches in half, said to Bakker, “Hold him tight,” and then jammed the match through the sock between Garrett’s big and second toes.

“What the fuck you doing?” Garrett demanded.

“I stuck a match between two of your toes,” Virgil said. “I figure that when I fire that mother up, you’ll let go of that bed.”

“That’s gonna hurt,” Bakker contributed. “Only got a hotfoot one time, in high school. If I had a choice between getting my nose broken again or a hotfoot, I’d take the nose every time.”

“Hold him tight, here we go,” Virgil said. He scratched a match on the ignition strip on the side of the box and it fired up with a puff of smoke. Virgil blew a little of the smoke under the bed.

“Wait, wait, wait—I’m coming out,” Garrett said. He let go of the bed’s leg, and Virgil and Bakker dragged him out from under the bunk. Then Virgil tossed Garrett his boot.

“I’ll put him in my car,” Bakker said. To Button he said, “I’ll be sending somebody to tow that Camaro. Don’t go putting it on Craigslist.”

Garrett to Button: “Better not fuck with my machine . . .”

—

The group followed behind Bakker and Garrett, who now had his hands cuffed at his back, out to the driveway. Virgil said to Rose, “Your friend’s got swastikas tattooed on her earlobes.”

“Yeah, well, she thought it was the thing to do at the time,” she said. “We were up in the jug at Shakopee, and this chick offered to do it for free . . . I said no. Shirley decided to go with it.”

“Bad life choice.”

“No kiddin’. She went to one of those tattoo doctors to get it erased, but they can’t do it. The doctor suggested she get her lobes cut off. He said trying to laser them would hurt worse than getting her tit caught in a wringer.”

“Ouch. A doctor said that?”

“Yeah. Not that much of a doctor, though. We’re still not sure what he was a doctor of.”

“How come you guys were in Shakopee?”

“We borrowed some cars,” she said.

“A lot of them? They don’t usually send you to Shakopee for car theft.”