Her baby stirred in her belly. She knew what her answer should be. “Yes. And angry.” She flashed her teeth. “But I’m excited, too. When are you going to give me a gun?”

“When the time comes.”

67

The cluster of farm buildings was set off the road in the corner of a hayfield. When she had walked from the store to milk Bogaloosa’s cows, she had taken the tractor path along the far edge of that field. It seemed like a lifetime ago. It had only been seven months.

She saw a flat spot in the ditch and pulled the truck over without asking. The barn blocked the view from the house, and the ditch put the truck slightly lower than the tops of the winter grasses. Roy looked around approvingly. “You really are a natural, honey.”

He walked up from the ditch and stepped through the waist-high line of bushy weeds along the barbed-wire fence. “You coming?” His voice quiet in the empty night.

“Give me a minute,” she said. “I have to pee.”

“Just remember not to slam your door.” He slung his long legs over the fence and stepped into the grass to give her some privacy.

She dropped to her knees as if squatting, and reached across the driver’s seat to pull the plastic bag of money from Roy’s go-bag. Her hand groped through the clothes and phones and ammunition, feeling for the revolver, but didn’t find it.

“Honey?”

“Hold your horses, mister.” She stood and pretended to adjust the sweatpants, then closed the truck door carefully and tucked the plastic bag under the armpit of her jacket. At the fence, she put one foot on the wire while Roy watched from twenty feet away.

“You want a hand?”

“I can do it.” She turned sideways so he wouldn’t see the money fall under a particularly broad bush, then kicked it farther in as she grabbed the fencepost and hoisted herself over the wire with a grunt. “Everything was a lot easier before you knocked me up.”

They set off together across the meadow. The belly slowed her pace across the uneven ground, but he didn’t pull ahead or try to rush her. The night air was crisp but the wind smelled of wet dirt and the coming of spring.

Roy carried the rifle across his chest. His pistol was holstered on his belt, and his coat pocket swung with the weight of what she assumed was her daddy’s revolver. Helene’s hands were empty, but they wouldn’t be for long, not if this went the way she hoped it would.

Despite the lack of sleep and the long drive and the general exhaustion of her pregnancy, she felt more awake now than she had in a long time. Maybe ever.