“She’s been seeing some black boy from down in the Ditch,” Pratt said, swallowing but feeling a little confidence coming back into him. Stagg and his boy asking him questions and letting him talk. “A real thug. Her momma wasn’t happy about the situation. I offered to send that girl to a Bible school for girls up in Missouri. Maybe that’s what did it. Hell, I don’t know.”

“Things like that happen,” Stagg said, taking the ElDo up to sixty, curving onto the big concrete bridge, over the swirling brown river of the Big Black. “Hormones. All that rap music and hippity hoppity dancing. I can see how it might confuse a young woman.”

“Whoever did it cut her up into pieces and tossed her into a trash barrel,” Pratt said. “When I first heard about it, I fell down on my knees. I got so sick to my stomach, I couldn’t even feel my legs.”

“That’s true grief,” Stagg said. “Sure can come on like a son of a bitch. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Sure am sorry to hear about it. Thoughts and prayers, Chester Pratt.”

They drove for a while, maybe two or three minutes, but it felt like damn near half an hour, before anyone said a word. The music switched over from Brenda Lee and now was on an old Perry Como song about going round and round. Pratt felt like he was spinning himself, looping up and around Tibbehah County with Johnny Stagg and his gun monkey in the back of the ElDo ready to blow his goddamn head off. He felt like he might get sick again, knowing something real bad was coming somewhere around the bend.

“Oh, hell,” Pratt said, rubbing his hand on his right knee. “Why don’t y’all just go ahead and get it over with?”

Stagg chuckled. “Get what over with?”

“Whatever y’all got planned for me,” Pratt said. “I haven’t slept or ate for three days. I feel like I’ve been drinking Drano and my nerves is jangled like a live wire. I can’t sit here and make small talk while we low ride and listen to fucking Perry Como.”

“Planned?” Stagg said. “Ain’t no plan, Mr. Pratt. I’m your goddamn fairy godfather coming to you live and in person. I was thinking that you might be needing a good buddy right now. Someone to confide in and maybe ask for a little friendship and help.”

“With what?”

“Oh, come on now, Chester,” Stagg said. “You really want me to believe that horseshit about that Byrd girl getting jungle fever and cutting up her own momma? From what I heard, you was into that woman for far more than you’re into me.”