he’ll come for you?”
She shrugs and takes a seat. “Maybe him. Maybe Bodie.” A sudden realization strikes her: “Aw, damn, and those other Nazi assholes saw me, too. That’s not good, Shane.”
They sit quiet for a while. The afternoon sun sinks, sliding like a plump egg yolk toward the edge of a tilted pan.
The dog leans his head on her knee. She scratches his ear. He whines a happy whine.
“You’re not my dog,” she tells him. “So don’t get used to this.”
He pokes her with his nose. A curious affectation, but whatever.
Soon Shane says: “Those Nazis. They were the same ones who messed with Chris.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think they did it?”
She knows what he means.
And she offers a game nod.
Shane sits up straight. “That means this whole thing with the dogs is starting to meet up with Chris’ murder.”
“Yeah. I guess it is.”
“That’s not good.”
“No. It ain’t.”
Takes a while, but Shane finally asks: “Are you going to make them pay, too? Way you made those guys, Birdie and Bodie, pay?”
She exhales hoping the breath will make this feeling go away but it doesn’t.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m not real good at that part. I mostly just make things worse. I feel like I’m sinking in a bed of lake mud and every time I struggle I sink that much deeper.”
“I think they’ve hurt a lot of people.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.” She narrows her eyes. “Why you think so?”
“I did some research. Newspaper archives and whatever. Local county business? Chris isn’t the only gay kid who killed himself. There’s three more in the area—and one who was beaten to death underneath the watertower just outside Danville.” He pauses. “That one had cigarette burns on him.”
Cigarette burns. Just like Chris had when the Neo-Nazis first attacked him. That attack at the behest of Chris’ own awful father. Shane continues:
“And there’s been a rash of Hispanic kids killed, too. All of them beaten to death.”
“We don’t know that it’s connected.”
He shrugs. “No. But it makes sense.”
It did. It does. The sour milk inside her curdles.
* * *
Eventually Shane goes home. Atlanta heads inside—the dog again trotting after—and eventually she calls Jenny. She tells Jenny only the vaguest of details, explaining that the boys who hurt her dog have been hurt in turn.
“I don’t know how to get you proof of it, though,” Atlanta says.
Jenny breathes loudly into the phone. “I need proof. I gave you a lot of money.”
“Oh. Okay.” She pauses. “I don’t know how to do that, though.”
“What happened to them? You said the one’s hand was… hurt.”
“A dog chewed it up, actually. Yeah.”
“’And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.’” Jenny pauses. “That’s from the Bible. From the Book of Matthew. One of the gospels.”
“I’ve heard it before.”
“This place you went to. It was a… “
“A farm. They had dog fights there.”
“That means they’re going to keep hurting dogs.”
“Well, these two knuckleheads won’t.”
“I can’t…” Here Jenny’s voice breaks down a little. Just a hiccup. A croaky stutter where the voice goes high-pitched like a ricocheting bullet and the threat of tears looms large. “I can’t think of other dogs getting hurt.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Jenny.”
“Fix it.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Shut it down. I’ll pay you the rest of your money and then some.”
“I can’t. I can’t go back there. It’s dangerous.”
“Imagine what it’s like for the dogs.”
Atlanta tries not to yell but she does it anyway: “I saw what it was like for the dogs. Okay? I saw. I saw the fight. I saw the barn where they, they… Vick the dogs. I saw blood and heard dogs in pain and there was this raccoon…” Her voice trails off. Softens again. “I can’t go back. I don’t have good reason to.”
“Then you won’t get the rest of your money.”
Shit. “Fine. It’ll just have to be that way.”
Atlanta hangs up the phone and simmers.
* * *
She paces the house for a while. The dog trotting in her wake. Evening steps in when afternoon fades and at a certain point Atlanta is surprised to discover she wants her mother. Wants to see her, wants to talk to her, wants her to make pancakes because hell if a stack of Mama’s pancakes isn’t the most comforting thing in the world. Like a golden pillow slathered in warm buttery syrup. Atlanta goes to the fridge just to see if they have the fixings for just such a golden pillow. It’s there on the