Sam Frye didn’t believe half the shit the kid had told him. But Toby, born Tobias Williams sixteen years earlier, was the son of Sam’s best and oldest friend, and when the boy’s father had been eaten up with cancer, Sam promised he’d look out for Toby. “Show him the old ways,” Big Monte had said. The old man meaning take the boy out to the burial mounds, introduce him to the elders who still spoke the language, and maybe teach him some dirty stickball tricks.

But Sam Frye had never been much of a stickball player. And most of the elders he knew had passed on, besides some of the women who sold baskets at the big Choctaw Carnival every year and talked about the days when the Choctaw Nation covered half of the state. The white men arriving with treaties and a little money, forcing most of the tribe west to Oklahoma. A few of the tribe hiding in the woods, staying away from the white man, while their people were forced onto the Trail of Tears, and waiting more than a hundred years before they could claim their land again, put up casinos and water slides and dance for the entertainment of tourists. Frye figured he would do what Big Monte really wanted and teach the boy an honest trade.

“OK, Sam,” Toby said. “Who’s the guy they want dead?”

“Didn’t ask,” Sam Frye said, hitting the windshield wipers. “Don’t know. Like I said. We go and await a phone call.”

“You promised there will be women,” Toby said.

“And there will be.”

“And weed.”

“You don’t need any more weed,” Sam Frye said. “You were baked out of your mind when I picked you up. You need a clear head tonight. This storm will make whatever we have to do even harder. You just follow me. Do as I say and you’ll be fine. I need you to keep your eyes open, keep awake, and keep the car running. That’s it. You can handle it. Right?”

“I have a wedding this weekend,” Toby said. “At the big casino. They want me to play all kinds of old-school music. Back from the eighties when you and Big Monte were young bucks. You and Big Monte like that stuff? N.W.A.? LL Cool J?”

“Naw,” Sam Frye said. “We liked Metallica. Your dad ever play Ride the Lightning or Kill ’Em All for you? That’s music. It was music with brains and substance.”

“That stuff sucks, man,” Toby said. “All the screeching and screaming. No heart and no soul . . . You and Big Monte. Y’all must’ve been something back in the day.”

“Why do you call your father Big Monte?” Sam Frye said. “That shows disrespect.”

“He was mean,” Toby said, running his hand over his razor-short hair. “A drug addict.”