Chapter 6: Memphis

I read it twice.

Kimbrough Holdings was Hal's real estate company.

He'd bought the ground out from under his own brother one week after I walked across a parking lot.

"How much over asking?" Wick said.

The landlord looked at his shoes. "A lot, Wick."

"Okay." Wick folded the letter and put it in his shirt pocket. "Thanks for coming yourself."

The landlord left without coffee.

Wick went behind the counter and picked up the chalk.

I thought he was going to write CLOSED.

He wiped the board clean with his sleeve and wrote, in big square letters:

HER TRIM WON. W.

Then he went out to pull the briskets.

"Wick," I said from the doorway. "What do we do?"

"Same as yesterday." He opened the cook chamber and the smoke rolled out over him. "We cook. Then we go to Memphis."

The Memphis contest was on the bluff over the river, two hundred teams in a city of tents and trailers.

Hutchens and Second Fire got a spot in the middle of the grounds.

Kimbrough Smoke got the spot right next to it.

"That's not an accident," Lorrie said.

Their trailer was gold-lettered and air-conditioned, with a banner the size of a billboard.

Two camera crews. A light on a stand. A generator.

Our side had Mabel, Wick's pickup, a folding table and a pop-up tent Lorrie had bought at a hardware store that morning.

Brice came over at noon on Friday.

He had flowers.

Two dozen yellow roses, the color of the Royal Gold cap.

A cameraman walked backward ahead of him and a boom mic swung over his head.

"Neva," he said softly, so the mic would catch it. "Can we talk?"

I was trimming ribs.

I didn't stop.

"No."

"I just want to say I'm sorry for how it happened. Not that it happened. How."

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