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that every tax he ups is another dollar out’a the economy! Best way ta fix the economy is lower taxes which’ll create more jobs and more jobs means more surplus revenue!”

“Boover, I happen ta like President Obama”—Malone pronounced “Obama” as Obe- bamma. “So’s just quit’cher yammerin’ and give me some chew.”

“Buy your own fuckin’ chew, Chief!”

Malone stared in shock.

“Or better yet, get Obama ta buy it fer ya ’cos he’s been a fuckin’ millionaire for years! He made four million durin’ his last year in the Senate. How’s a junior senator make four million when his fuckin’ salary ain’t even two hundred grand? I ain’t got the money to give you free chew!” Boover stared Malone down, blinked, then exploded laughter. “Shit, Chief! Cain’t ya take a joke!” and then he passed his superior his six- fuckin’-dollar bag of Red Man.

“You got a odd sense’a humor,” Malone replied, then thumb-packed a quarter of the bag’s contents into his cheek. Immediately thereafter, the radio squawked in his cruiser. “Get that will ya?” the chief mumbled.

Boover stalked to the cruiser, but at the same moment, local resident and disputatious pain-in-the-ass Mitzy Crooker hustled by with her yapping dachshund on a leash. “Dood Malone!” she called out and actually shook her fist. “It’s us tax-payers payin’ fer yer damned chew!”

Go soak yer head, ya old fuck, Malone thought but pretended not to hear her. He spat a plume of chew-juice just as Boover addressed him. “Shit, Chief. That was the station. Dang if you ain’t got two deliveries waitin’ on ya.”

Malone’s eyes lit up. “Was one from—”

“Some place called B&T Digital in Tennessee.”

Yeah! “Was the other one from—”

“The Pulaski Animal Shelter. You got a brand-new puppy waitin’ for ya,” Boover said.

(III)

A slight detour took Helton and his kin back toward their neck of the woods. The open back roads were indeed a gratifying sight. Helton didn’t like the unnatural look of Pulaski, or any other city for that matter, but then he shuddered at a dread thought: I’se wonder what NEW YORK City’s like?

He pushed the contemplation away, then looked aside and saw that they were passing a tract of land owned by good ole Nuce Wynchel. In fact, Helton spotted Nuce and his boy Tube out yonder diggin’ post holes for the fence he’d been wanting to put up. Helton waved, then Nuce and Tube waved back.

But it was the next tract of land that was Helton’s goal, and in a few minutes he was parking the bunglesome black truck in the middle of Fuchson’s pasture. “Here we is, boys. Micky-Mack, bring the girl,” and then the youngster dragged the barely-conscious Kasha out. The sun shined, the cool breeze blew, and Micky-Mack and Dumar rubbed their crotches with vigor. In close proximity were several cows chewing their cud. The animals couldn’t have been more disinterested in the presence of the truck or these ungainly people.

“Dang purdy body on the bitch, that’s fer shore,” Dumar said. “And I’se just love them nips stickin’ out.”

“Want me git the hole-saw, Unc? Huh? Huh?” Micky-Mack urged in anticipatory glee, but that glee was not long-lived when—

SMACK!

—Helton’s big open hand landed hard across the youngster’s face. He fell down, dangerously close to a sizable deposit of cow manure. “Gawd DANG, Unc! That plumb hurt worst’n the rest! What you do that fer?”

“To unclog yer fuckin’ ears, boy ’cos ya obviously ain’t been listenin’ to a word I been sayin’.” He wagged a finger back and forth. “Ya don’t throw a header on a gal just ’cos she bad-mouthed ya. That’s the kind’a thing Caudill used ta do.”

“Yeah, Micky-Mack,” Dumar joined in. “Like Paw been sayin’, headers is only done to revenge a horrible, horrible crime.”

“Right. So’s we ain’t havin’ a header, we ain’t killin’ her, and we ain’t even fuckin’ her,” Helton issued. “That’d make us lower down than her. You understand?”

Micky-Mack got up, rubbing his face. “Yeah, I reckon I do….”

“Now whine’choo boys wake our li’l friend Kasha here up?”

The situation’s tenor changed quickly as penises were extracted from flies and dual streams of backwoods urine began to crisscross over the girl’s face. When she started to rouse, her mouth opened in objection but, lo, was expeditiously filled with pee. Aghast and shiny-faced, she leaned up on her hands, coughing, and once her head had been drenched, the seemingly endless streams lowered with pinpoint precision to drench her tight Vladimir Putin t- shirt. The wet fabric sucked up against the ample orbs and elucidated every detail of her areolae and papillae. This was a wet t-shirt contest redneck style.

“My God!” she hacked. “You-you-you evil hillbillies!”

Helton’s bushy brow rose. “There ya go with yer down-talkin’ again. Hon, a good rule’a thumb is don’t talk down ta folks who ain’t talked down to you first.”

“You going to kill me, I know it!” her accent wailed.

“We ain’t gonna kill ya, and we ain’t even gonna fuck ya. Ya’d deserve a fuckin’, a’course, but, see, we’se savin’ up our peckersnot fer somethin’ far more important than you.”

Drenched, she looked incredulous at him.

“But we will be teachin’ ya a lesson, ’cos you got a right foul mouth?on ya.”

“I-I-I…I’m sorry!”

“Too late fer that,” Helton assured her. “Apollergees is one thing, but they ain’t worth shit if they ain’t from the heart,” and then Helton’s big hand landed on top of her head. She squealed when he grabbed a handful of wet hair and lifted her to her feet.

Dumar looked aggravated. “Shit, Paw. I’se understand that we cain’t fuck her on account the punishment gotta fit the crime, but—holy sheeeeeeee-IT!—cain’t we’se at least see her nekit?”

Eyes fixed on the breasts beneath the wet t-shirt, Helton gave the query some consideration. “Don’t see no harm in that,” he said. Then, to the girl, “All right, missy. Get them clothes off.”

Dripping, Kasha could only look back at him.

At the same time, Dumar passed his father a rather large revolver—in specificity, a British-made and century-old Webley .455 whose uniqueness existed in the fact that it was a rare automatic revolver. The antique weapon had once belonged to a lowdown, wife-beating local creeker, Archerd Conner, who’d died wretched in the early ‘90s. Conner’s son, Tritt Conner, whose nickname was “Balls,” had then properly inherited the weapon but he’d died a while back amid some controversy in the woods near a closed hospice for priests with terminal illnesses. Dumar had lucked upon the relic for chump-change at a Crick City pawn shop.

But be all that as it may, Helton took the impressive gun and pointed it right at the girl. “Get ’em right off.”

Wobbly-kneed, and sobbing, Kasha took off her clothes.

The three men’s jaws dropped.

“Holy FUCK,” Micky-Mack said.

“That is some body, ain’t it?” Dumar posed.

Helton remained essentially speechless.

The nude woman gleamed in the sun; the previous urinary void left her hair hanging like oiled strings and the dark pubic tuft a nest of glistening jewels. Wet skin radiated keen as a flash of sunlight on a lake. Just then she