Page 98 of Moonshine Lullabies

“I hate this,” Jessie confided in the dark of our bed that night.

“I know, baby,” I told her and I kissed her forehead.

“I don’t believe there is a God,” she said. “Not after all that’s happened with…” She sighed. “In fact, I know there isn’t. If there was, he would have answered my prayer a long time ago to strike that fat fuck down. A heart attack, a huntin’ accident… something.”

Oh, the fuckin’ irony of those words, I thought.

All I could do was hug her, and kiss her forehead, and try as I might to fall asleep. I didn’t until she did. I couldn’t let her lay awake alone.

* * *

“Collier!”

I jolted awake.

“Yeah?” I called out.

“Get dressed brother, let’s roll,” Cy called through the bedroom door.

Jess groaned and pushed off of me.

“Gimme a second,” she moaned. “I’ll make coffee.”

I chuckled as I sat up.

“Fuck that. You sleep, baby. I’ll get my own coffee.”

She sighed and settled back down and I smiled.

I got dressed in the dark, all my brand-new hunting gear already laid out for me. As soon as I was all geared up, I went around to Jess’s side of the bed, smoothed some of her hair back, and kissed her temple.

I met Cypress in the kitchen who was making a pot of coffee.

“Fuck yeah, my dude,” I said and sniffed.

“Put a bowl of oatmeal in your face or somethin’,” he ordered, and I hitched a laugh.

We ate, swilled down coffee strong enough you could stand a spoon up in it, and got out the back door headed for Cy’s truck about an hour or so before first light.

We rode over to his daddy’s house. Renaud and Hamblin’ standin’ in his daddy’s driveway.

“About fuckin’ time y’all got here,” Ham Bone said.

“Can’t shoot nothin’ before first light anyhow,” I said and he had the most annoying fucking laugh.

We all four piled into Renaud’s much more modern truck with its front and back seats after we checked to make sure everybody’s weapons were empty, our huntin’ licenses were on us, and we had everything inside regulations.

Cypress wasn’t kidding. His daddy was a stickler for bein’ on fish & wildlife’s good side.

We drove on out to their preferred huntin’ grounds and got out there just as the sun began to rise.

We traipsed out into the woods, and at a certain point, let Hamblin get ahead of the rest of us.

Renaud gave a hand signal and we all three looked at each other and nodded.

Renaud would be the one to do it. It’d already been decided. He’d made a convincing argument. He was older, it was his daughter, and he’d been the one to invite the predator into her home. If something were to go south, he wanted to be the one to go to prison with the expectation that Cy would take care of his mom and sister with my help.

They were all reasonable points, but damn if we all wanted our pound of flesh and pint of blood for what he done, and for the lastfifteen yearsof fear and heartache that Jess had to endure. For the lifetime sentence of what he’d done hanging over her head.

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