He climbed into the Air Tractor and started the engine, then turned the plane and taxied into the wind, building speed as fast as he could. When the plane’s wheels left the earth, he felt a wild laugh building in his chest, the same one he’d felt when Alois showed him the Needle Box.

As the plane climbed, Snake banked and flew over the sod field. Three hundred feet below him, the blue ATV was parked beside the big orange tractor. The men by the Kubota looked up, looked down, then looked up again and began pointing and yelling.

“Adios, assholes!” Snake yelled, even as the men drew handguns and began firing at him.

He wished he had a load of herbicide to dump on them as a parting gift. Talk about fucking up somebody’s day . . .

As Snake climbed away from the futile bullets, he felt his burner phone vibrate in his pocket. Taking it out, he yelled, “Toons? That you?”

“This ain’t Toons,” said a woman. “You know who this is?”

Wilma Deen. Wilma and Alois had headed back to Natchez a few hours ago. “I do. What’s going on?”

“I heard some taped testimony from the trial. The dead nurse’s sister testified today. And you should have been there to hear it.”

“What’d she say?”

“Your brother didn’t die from them batteries fallin’ on him. That nigger nurse killed him.”

Snake flew right through a pillar of smoke spewing from one of the chemical plants near Westlake. “Hold up. Cora Revels said that?”

“Not willingly. That Quentin Avery pulled it out of her. But it sounded pretty conclusive. She killed him while he was waiting for treatment back there in Dr. Cage’s office. And Dr. Cage likely covered it up for her. I mean, he had to, didn’t he? He was dickin’ her.”

Snake felt acid flood into his gut. “That nigger murdered Frank?” he said dully, not really believing it. He thought back to the day that pallet load of batteries had tumbled off the forklift and crashed into his brother, crushing bones and opening his chest. And how Sonny and Glenn had rushed him to Tom Cage’s office rather than the hospital, because that was what Frank wanted . . .

“If Tom Cage knew all along that bitch killed Frank . . .”

“What’d you say?” Wilma shouted. “All I can hear is a roaring!”

“I said, Ya’ll get that place we talked about ready! I’ve got my papers and I’m on my way.”

“You mean it?”

“Do what I told you, goddamn it! Out.”