“I’m not embarrassed of you,” Caddy said, tossing another bag of cow shit toward Bentley, this time seeing the seam of the bag split open and spill on Bentley’s nice shoes. He hadn’t dressed for work, although over the last few weeks he’d been a big help at The River, sorting clothes, picking okra, and doing some basic repairs on the shacks. He was doing everything he could to show he wasn’t just some spoiled little shit from Jackson who grew up in a house with a stable bigger than an airplane hangar.

“Then why won’t you be seen with me?”

“I don’t like folks knowing my business,” Caddy said, wiping her brow with her forearm, her boots caked in mud, sweating in a tank top and cutoff jeans. “And we don’t really have a lot of culinary options here besides Mexican, Chinese, catfish, and barbecue.”

“What’s wrong with barbecue?” Bentley tossed the hair out of his eyes, an Ole Miss frat boy move Caddy usually would’ve hated. The bag of cow shit he carried made it OK.

“Barbecue here is OK,” Caddy said. “But it doesn’t get much better than Memphis. How’d you like those Cornish hens we had last time?”

“At the Cozy Corner?” Bentley said. “It was pretty awesome. And the taco place over in Germantown. The one with that old guy who yelled at me for ordering cheese dip.”

Caddy smiled, kicking the final bag off the tailgate and hopping down in the dirt of a barn that doubled as a church on Sundays. Everything at The River was about getting back to the basics of religion. No big-screen TVs. No light shows. No gossip or grandstanding. The church was founded by her love Jamey Dixon with the prime purpose of serving the Lord and the common man. It didn’t matter if you were an immigrant who didn’t speak English or a woman who’d made money selling her body. This place was about acceptance, love, and finding a purpose. The River had saved her life. And now it had expanded, with a big new building funded with money from Bentley’s family foundation.

“There’s this event in Jackson,” Bentley said.

“Stop you right there, kid,” Caddy said, walking up on Bentley, running a hand over her close-cropped towhead and smiling. “I don’t do fund-raisers, mixers, glad-handing, or cocktail events.”

“You should make this one,” he said. “Don’t you want to grow this place? These are the very people who contributed to the food pantry here.”