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180 Sunshine held his gaze on D.Wayne,and D.Wayne wavered.Thunder clapped as Sunshine rose up to a height above us—D. Wayne on his butt, me on my knees, Lee sitting on one edge of the dirty mattress, Jewel on the other. He was judging us, bringing down vengeance or damnation. All we could do was distract him from time to time. “You shoulda thought of that when you took that money and bought that truck, you stupid little shit. Why didn’t you think? Why don’t you ever think? You ain’t gonna make it in prison.You won’t last a day. And when the niggers or Mexicans kill you, that’s gonna kill Momma. You stupid little shit.” “But I ain’t done it,” Jewel said. “We have evidence,”Lee said.“We can help him prove that he didn’t do it.” “Think, Sunshine,” I yelled. “Think.” “Yeah, think, you stupid fuck,” D. Wayne echoed me. I flung out my right arm to hit him in the chest with my cast. “You fuckers,”Sunshine bellowed,and the thunder provided harmony. The pelting rain on the tin roof made the background music. Maybe in his confusion and anger,Sunshine had created the storm.“You think that the sheriff of this county and his stooge, that limp dick, motherfucking, piece-of-shit deputy dog Hurtis Lomax is gonna let Jewel beat this charge? That bastard harassed my stepdaddy and momma right out of this county.Then when my momma deserted my sister to come back and take up with my daddy, he harassed my daddy out. He testified against me in a whole bunch of my trials.And now he wants me and Jewel both. You fuckers. You fuckers. You don’t know shit.” He started growling, maybe talking in tongues, but surely no human tongues. Maybe only he knew the meaning of the guttural, agonized sounds coming out of his chest and belly. Maybe he didn’t know what they meant. Maybe they were just sounds, not words, a human imitation of the thunder. “I know lawyers,” I said. “I can hire lawyers,” Lee said. “You think you got it bad in cracker county. Try being a nigger in cracker county,” D. Wayne said. D. Wayne got Sunshine’s attention. He stopped his dialog with the swamp gods in his head and crouched to get eye to eye with D. Wayne. “I don’t want to go back to prison and learn to hate niggers all over 181 again,” he growled at D. Wayne. “But I will. I can. I want to ask you a question, nigger.” I could smell the sickening, overripe sweetness of his sweat. “Come with your question, you cracker ass,” D. Wayne said. “You think that little meth head over there can survive any of your friends in the prison house?” “That little wimpy fucker, hell no,” D. Wayne said. Sunshine hung his head.“Just like I said.”He stood.“Lady, you scoot over just a little.” “What, what, no,” Lee said but scooted away from Jewel. I jumped up, “Don’t do anything without thinking,” I said. The gun went off.Jewel’s head turned into a spray of blood and lumps of brain and skull. A lot of that mess stained the wall behind him and sprayed across the side of Lee’s face. She screamed. Sunshine whirled around, caught me with an elbow, and sent me down to the ground. He crouched and looked eye to eye at D. Wayne. “I guess I don’t hate you yet, nigger,” Sunshine said and pushed the shotgun with both hands into D. Wayne’s face. Before I could raise up, before D. Wayne could grab the gun, Sunshine was out the door of the room, then out the door of the cabin. I chased him out into the rain. I watched as he hit the woods. Where we had hacked and clawed and burrowed through it. Sunshine melded into it, became a part of the rain, the undergrowth, the mud, and the pines. I yelled after him, “You idiot. You destroyed the case. You destroyed yourself. You fucking idiot.” But rain drowned me out. I ran back into the cabin and saw D. Wayne over Lee, patting her head.“Look at all the blood, honey. Are you hurt?”Part of the blood was his, running down from the cut on the bridge of his nose. “It’s Jewel’s...

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