“I mostly use my hands.”

Darren laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes. He’d always been alright with Joel.

“Some of us are eating,” said Paulette.

“Dylan hasn’t texted you, has he?” Joel said.

Darren headed for the refrigerator. “Dylan? Text me?”

“Joel’s afraid the boy’s dead in a pit somewhere,” Paulette said.

Joel’s coffee paused on its way to his lips. “What did you say?”

He caught the way her eyes narrowed, the way she looked away. Paulette delayed her answer with a bite of toast.

The dream. Joel’s gut, that vaunted intuition of his, spoke clear and cold in his ear. Did she have the same dream?

“Ditch,” she said. “Dead in a ditch. And he’s not. What does it matter?”

Joel set his mug in the sink, his fingers going cold. Why was he so afraid this morning?

“I’m going for a run,” he announced.

“You can leave the door unlocked.” Paulette didn’t look up from her phone.

“Love you,” Darren called.

It was cold outside. The trees shushed one another, shook their boughs free of last night’s rain. Joel tapped his Apple Watch. No messages. A cold bead of water fell from the eaves of the porch and shimmied down his neck.

He took off jogging.

Don’t be afraid until you need to be afraid, he told himself (not that it did him much good.) As he rounded the corner of Gillis Street and ran on the road’s shoulder—why did nobody in Texas believe in sidewalks?—Joel realized it wasn’t just his dream that had set him on edge this morning. Joel had been afraid since before bed, since he’d driven around Bentley after the game and tried to assure himself that his brother’s odd behavior last night was normal.

As he ran, Joel couldn’t help but feel watched. He thought of those black eyes—those hungry empty eyes—in the stuffed bison he’d seen on the way into town. The thought made Joel’s stomach twist. Sometimes he didn’t want to know why one memory echoed with another.

Last night, in the rain, Joel had driven past the old storefronts on South Street, past the auto shop with the little Everest of stacked tires in its parking lot, past the dark splotch of the Milam Municipal Park on the west side of town. Such a runty little place, that park—a few trees, a parking circle, an overgrown gully—but they’re never auspicious, are they, the places where your life is detonated?

An undignified site for an undignified arrest. An arrest which, depending on how you measured it, had been either the beginning or the end of Joel’s problems.

It had certainly given the folks at Bentley First Baptist plenty to talk about, back then (though those folks were seldom at a loss for gossip.) Even with its steeple gone from the sky, Joel almost hadn’t believed his mother when she’d told him last night that the church was gone. But, sure enough, he’d found a vacant lot lashed with rain on Hollis Avenue at the exact site where that old pile of red bricks and abrogation had once reigned.