NINETEEN

Why do you have to use so much profanity?” Sam Frye asked, driving straight up Highway 45 from the Rez in the dark and the rain. Both hands on the wheel, wipers tick-tocking across the windshield. He had his black hair pulled into a ponytail, his flat black eyes looking up into the rearview mirror to behind them. “Can’t you make your music without all those motherfuckers, bitches, and all that business?”

“’Cause we hard, man,” Toby said. “You want those rhymes to drop on your head like a goddamn atom bomb. Why don’t you like it? Damn, it feels good to be a motherfucking Native. You talkin’ that shit, we the wrong ones to play with. My tribe and your tribe. Your race and mine. Mississippi Choctaw ’bout to take it to the pines.”

“Is that your crew?”

“Nah, man,” Toby said. “It’s Big Savage. He was born in Oklahoma but came back to Mississippi to keep shit real. That’s good stuff, man. Big Savage. His last video got like a half-million views on YouTube. Last time I seen him, he got himself a big ole black-ass Cadillac, spinning rims. Whole inside of that ride shines with electric blue light.”

“That’s what you see for yourself?” Sam Frye said, eyes on the broken yellow line ahead of him in the slanting rain. “Living large with Cadillacs and rolls of cash?”

“You know it,” Toby said. “Shit, man. Beats the fuck out of killing folks for a living. You do this shit long enough and tables gonna turn on your ass. Someone is going to be waiting for us. Like tonight. Rolling the fuck back up in Tibbehah County? You got to be some kind of crazy.”

“Not crazy,” Sam Frye said. “Tonight, I wait in the car and you go inside and take care of business.”

“I don’t like it,” Toby said. “Shit, man. I heard the sheriff here came down to the Rez, flashing a picture of me at the jail around the casino floor. Chief Robbie saw it. He had to warn the whole fucking tribe to shut their damn mouth.”

“I saw the picture,” Sam Frye said. “It looked nothing like you or me. Just a blurry photograph and a sketch of what they thought you looked like. But it was nothing. Don’t worry about Chief Robbie. He knows what we were sent to do. None of our people will sell us out. That business is all over.”

“What’s up with the Chief, man?” Toby said, sinking down in his seat, an Oakland Raiders cap with a flat bill down in his eyes. “Why he have us killing these folks up in the damn boogerwoods? What the hell they done to him? Or the tribe?”

“Why does it matter?” Sam Frye said. “If the Chief wants something done, we are the men he sends. This is his decision. It’s a high honor.”

“And we get paid?”