The place sits high up over the Elk River in a section of the town called the Hills. Briar lives there now with Roof and Lynyrd and the two young daughters from his third marriage, to Brooke, a former flight attendant who some in town whisper had been an escort when Briar first met her.
On this particular afternoon, Brooke and the girls are visiting Brooke’s mother in Atlanta, and Briar and his sons are in Briar’s upstairs den along with Klay Monroe, one of the few friends Roof and Lynyrd had ever made at Cross Rivers High.
Klay is currently working as one of Briar’s most reliable drug dealers, his specialty being in the booming growth areas of OxyContin and fentanyl.
“You do much reading, Klay?” Briar has just asked.
Briar’s voice, as always, is surprisingly soft for a man his size. But then he rarely sees the need to raise it. He’s always felt that men who do make a habit of raising their voices to make a point, or as a way of trying to intimidate other people, are just compensating for something. Maybe trying to sound tough instead of actually being tough.
Briar Crockett’s actions, as violent as they so often are, have always spoken far louder than his words.
“Are you talking about book reading, sir?”
Klay is skinny with a lot of red hair and a lot of freckles to go with it, and so fidgety that he never appears to be quite still. But he’s been a solid earner for the Crocketts ever since high school, despite not being, as Briar has pointed out to his sons more than once, the sharpest blade in the razor.
“I’ve never been much of one for books,” he says. He shifts in his chair and giggles. “Was kind of a problem when I was still in school, as you might imagine.”
He looks over at the Crockett brothers, who give him no reaction.
“Always thought that was one of the reasons that Roof and Lynyrd and me got on as well as we did.”
“Fortunately for you, though,” Briar says, “you exhibited, and at a young age, the same sort of skill set my boys have.”
“Yes, sir!” Klay says.
“But unlike you, son,” Briar continues, almost like a teacher continuing a lesson, “I myselfaman avid reader. I’m especially interested, as someone who sees himself as the CEO of a large and profitable company, in other great businessmen. One such was a man named Thomas Watson. Are you familiar with that name?”
Klay Monroe shifts again in his chair, runs a hand through his redhair. “Wasn’t he some kind of famous golfer? I think I used to hear my daddy, who liked golf himself, speak of him before he took off on us.”
Briar smiles and briefly closes his eyes before opening them back up and focusing them once again on Klay Monroe.
“No,” Briar says patiently. “I’m referring to ThomasJ.Watson, who grew IBM into a global power, long before those Apples and Microsofts came along. A giant, that man was, and an authentic American genius. Anyway, he once said that the power of trust is that it’s very difficult to build but very easy to destroy.”
He smiles again.
“Does that make sense to you, Klay?”
If anything, Briar Crockett’s voice has somehow become even softer, so soft that Klay leans forward to hear him better, from the other side of a desk so large it sometimes gives the impression that this big old house was built around it.
“Sounds right to me, sir,” Klay says. He clears his throat. “Yes, sir, it surely does.”
“Do you know why I asked you to stop by today?” Briar asks him now.
“Can I be honest?” Klay asks.
“Always the best policy.”
“I was hopeful that you wanted to tell me in person what a good job I’ve been doing for you,” Klay says. “Sales being up the way they are, month to month and so forth.”
Briar gets out of his chair and makes his way around the desk and sits on the edge of it in front of Klay.
“No, son,” he says. “That’s not the reason you’re here. You’re here because I wanted to tell you—in person—that I no longer trust you. That the profits to which you just now referred would be even bigger, month to month, if you weren’t skimming me the way you are. Which is another way of me talking about you stealing from me and stealing from my family.”
Klay Monroe is suddenly quite still in his chair, as if frozen in place.
“No, sir!”
He’s the one raising his voice now.
