If it had been Roof who shot her, that just meant I had one more score to settle with him.
Helene had said that Leamon Ridenour, because of what had happened with Holly, wanted to kill Roof as much as I did.
No, I think.
No, he doesn’t.
Not if EJ’s right and Roof really had been the one to leave my father dead in the middle of the road.
I imagine Roof Crockett standing in front of me and punch harder.
I jab. I cross. I duck and weave and shuffle to the left and right. I throw cross punches from both sides, more from the left because that’s my dominant side now, that’s just reality. I even spend about fifteen minutes doing side kick–punch combos like I’m in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Usually, I can only go at the bag like this for twenty minutes.
I go three times that long this afternoon, seeing the sun begin to set outside the window, but enough of the sun still on my face.
Even near the end, I still need to keep swinging, and kicking, away.
I listen to Daughn Gibson as I finally begin to wind down:
If I lose you,
I might write a song about some rain on the highway…
Rain on the highway, or one more dead body.
I throw one last vicious hook, all the strength I’ve got left behind it, this time trying to knock the bag right off its chain.
ONE HUNDRED THREE
IT’S JUST TAYLOR and me on the porch after dinner, EJ having long since gone up to bed.
Tay has poured whiskeys for both of us. She says, “Helene is more determined than ever to finish what Burt started.”
“More like obsessed,” I say.
I touch my glass with hers and we drink. Now there’s just the quiet creak of both our rocking chairs. It would be such a peaceful scene here, the front yard and the barn and the driveway lit by the moon, Bumper snoring softly between us, if it weren’t for two armed guards less than a hundred yards away.
Helene had suggested that both EJ and Taylor leave town for the time being, but I’d told her that would never happen with either one of them.
“Can’t speak for myself,” Helene had said. “But you’re not losing anybody else.”
She’s extended her order from the night the tattooed man and his crew had attacked me outside the farmhouse, keeping a county police car at the very end of the driveway round the clock.
One of the cops goes with EJ when she heads into town. Onegoes with Taylor when she’s behind the wheel of her school bus. Helene has the same police protection for the Ridenours, Holly being the only witness against Roof and Lynyrd Crockett, for now.
It has gotten chilly out tonight. Taylor gets up and goes inside. When she’s back in her rocking chair, I see she’s wearing one of EJ’s ancient cardigans. Somehow, maybe because she’s Taylor, she has made living here with us seem like the most natural thing in the world.
She takes another sip of whiskey, then puts her head back to stare up into a sky full of stars, and so much of a full moon the night looks more like the dawn.
“I can’t lose you, Silas,” she says finally. “I know I’ve told you that before. But if something ever happened to you… after Burt, and so soon after Burt… I’m not sure my heart could take it.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” I say. “And for the record? We both know that heart of yours could survive a damned nuclear attack.”
“They’ve already come for you twice at your own home,” she says. “There’s no reason they might not do it again if Helene keeps pushing.”
“Well, you know what they say.”
