Chapter 5: Seven in the Morning

Lyle Kenyon stood in the deputy's headlights and smiled at me.

"That note is secured against the Gentry deed," he said. "Not the shares. The land."

I had refused him on the hood of his truck an hour ago.

Now he was telling me the paper I refused to sign was never the thing that mattered.

A truck came up the pasture road behind the deputy's.

Wayne's truck.

It stopped and he got out and stood at the edge of the light. He didn't say a word. He looked at Lyle, then at me, then at the deputy.

Lyle saw him come in and his smile got wider.

The deputy folded the work order into his jacket pocket.

"This paper's evidence now," he said. "Nobody handles it but me."

Lyle laughed.

"A forged work order is a county matter," he said. "A note is a bank matter. I know which one keeps a man awake."

Dessa had been standing by the dam frame with her arms crossed.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a folded paper and walked it to me.

She put it in my hand.

It was the feed store's own copy of the note. The store's stamp sat in the corner. The buyer's line read: Lyle Kenyon.

He had bought the debt himself.

"Dessa," Lyle said.

His voice was quiet and it was the first time all night I had heard him say her name.

"You've said enough for one night," he said.

Dessa flinched. She looked at the ground.

The deputy turned to me.

"Ma'am, the work order's evidence and I'll take it in," he said. "But the note is a civil matter. I can't touch it."

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