Free Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich

be, and do what I tell you to do. If that doesn’t work for you, then the deal is off.”
    “Roger that, boss. I get it.”
    “Do you? Are you sure? Because if you don’t, I’ll find someone else that does, and you—you they find with your hands tied, your arms broken, floating ass-up in the river. Are we clear on this?”
    “Crystal.”
    “Good.”
    Holly slapped the phone closed and hammered back the bourbon. What was it the sheriff had said earlier about finding good help?
    “The pickin’s are slim.”
    Indeed.
    Two calls down and a good buzz. He contemplated calling Clare back but decided against it. He tossed the phone back on the table and picked up his wallet. Behind the two neatly creased twenties and Uncle Sam’s credit cardwas a small photograph of a brown-haired woman barely into her twenties, sitting in the grass with a small boy—a toddler. Holly held the picture, careful of the worn edges, and laid it where the Bible had been. There wasn’t a day that went by that Holly didn’t take a minute to stare at the woman and the boy in that photograph.
    The woman who wasn’t Clare.

CHAPTER
7
    C OOPER B URROUGHS
    1950
    1.
    “Tie those last few off and load them on the truck.” Cooper wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Take a few minutes if you need to, but I ain’t looking to be out here all day.”Cutting and baling marijuana could be exhausting work and the process took up most of the sticky, humid summer months, but Cooper knew he paid well, and his men knew they weren’t going to do anything the man himself wouldn’t do. Still, the heat of a Georgia summer could wilt a man’s back and cook his brains. Delray and Ernest had been humping it since sunup and it looked like they hadn’t made a dentin the day’s workload.
    “Damn, Cooper, we ain’t never gonna get all this done. It’s hot as the devil’s balls out here, and I done sweat out every bit of water in me. We could use a break.”
    “The only thing you’re sweating out is last night’s liquor, Delray. So that makes your problem your own. If you’re still looking to get paid, then you need to get the rest of those buds baled and packedbefore I lose it to the sun.”
    “I don’t mind working, Coop, but goddamn, man, take it easy.”
    Cooper dropped the tightly cinched bundle of tacky green plants to the ground and wiped his brow again. “How much money did you make last year taking it easy?”
    “Last year I was running the stills over on the southern side.”
    “I didn’t ask what you did, Delray. I asked how much you made.”
    “I reckon you and Rye always done me pretty good.”
    Cooper pulled a thin stem of cannabis out of the bunch at his feet and popped it in his mouth. The casual mention of his dead brother didn’t go unnoticed. He shook it off. “Well, I reckon you made about half all year of what I paid you the last three months.”
    Delray shifted his lips over to one side of his face as he thought on that.
    “Well, don’t go trying to do the math,” Cooper said. “I don’t want your brain fryin’ any more than it has to before we get this truck loaded. Just get yourself some water and stop all your bitchin’ before I get a couple of womenfolk out here to show you up.” Cooper looked up toward the truck and called for his son. “Gareth?”
    Cooper’s boy looked down from where he was positioned in the truckbed, straightening the bales as they were tossed in. “Yes, Deddy?”
    “Get up there to the main house and bring these sissies a pitcher of tea. Plenty of ice.”
    “Yessir.” Gareth hopped off the truck and made his way into the house.
    Delray pulled down tight on the twine in his hands. Ernest tied it off, picked up the bale, and tossed it toward Cooper a little harder than he should have.Cooper caught it and slung it into the bed of the truck. “If you got something to say, Ernest, spit it out.”
    It looked like Ernest had a lot to say but wouldn’t get a chance to right then. He squinted