“Remember me and you in the woods, laughing our damn asses off as he come out his trailer buck-ass nekkid with nothing more than a garden hose between his legs?”

“I can still smell that horsehair and charred meat,” he said. “Burned up his stock to a crisp.”

Dusty turned his head out the window and spit onto the crushed shells of the road. He looked back to Daddy and nodded down to the gear shifter. “Mind if I borrow that there book of matches?”

“Help yourself, son,” Daddy said, passing along the book with the cover reading southern star lounge. jericho, ms.

*   *   *

Nothing was as promised with Chastity Bloodgood. She’d led TJ and John Wesley straight down into the ass crack of Louisiana and onto the narrow sliver of Grand Isle to find a stripped-out house on stilts with no power, no furniture, not a speck of food. They were all freezing inside, sitting around the first meal of the day, a twenty-three-dollar bounty from Jo-Bob’s Gas & Grill from down the road. Two shrimp po’ boys they all shared along with a big Styrofoam clamshell full of dirty rice and three egg rolls with a Cajun dipping sauce. Two Diet Cokes and a Mr. Pibb for John Wesley.

They ate silently in the weak light of their dying cell phones, Chastity getting a short charge on the one she found in Graham’s Land Cruiser while she waited for food at Jo-Bob’s. She pecked away fast and furious, answering fans on the FreeByrd handle and finally speaking, claiming she’d touched base with folks who might help them if the boat to Mexico didn’t pan out.

“Hold up,” TJ said, leaving half an egg roll stuck in the Cajun sauce. “Hold up one goddamn minute. What do you mean if the boat doesn’t pan out?”

“News flash,” she said. “When we drove up, did you see a fucking boat parked at that dock out back? Now, Daddy may have stuck it in dry dock or something for repairs. But just in case he sold it or something, we need a plan. That’s all on me. Nobody else is doing any long-range thinking.”

“There’s nothing here,” TJ said. “Your daddy lost this place just like he lost y’all’s house in Hot Springs. Why can’t you just admit you’re just taking us down goddamn memory lane? There’s nothing here anymore. Nothing for you or me or John Wesley. And your daddy ain’t no different from mine. A man who got big dreams but keeps on getting knocked on his ass. Least my daddy never quit on nothing.”

“You don’t know shit about my family,” Chastity said. “Or my father. He’s the biggest seller of Chevy trucks in all the Ozarks.”

John Wesley looked from girl to girl, his mouth open while he held an unsteady fork of dirty rice.