Page 140 of Wild Sanctuary

Stan has come down off the porch, though Marcus remains behind, hat in his hands. The man who broke down in the kitchen is gone. Out here, he’s just a coward letting his nephew do his dirty work.

Stan’s boots have crossed half the yard already, unhurried, the gun still loose in his right hand.

I slide down the bench seat until my shoulder is against the driver’s door and my right hand is on the keys dangling from the ignition.

My left hand finds the gear lever on the column.

The F-250 is a three-on-the-tree, the same arrangement Wyatt’s old truck had. First gear is up and to the left. Reverse is up and to the right. I learned to drive on a transmission shaped like this one, in the same yard on a dead August afternoon, Wyatt’s hand over mine on the shift.

Through the windshield, Stan stops about fifteen feet away from Dave.

I can’t hear what Dave says to him, the cab seals it off, but I see Dave’s jaw move, and Stan’s head cock to the side as though he’s just heard something he wasn’t expecting.

The gun in Stan’s hand doesn’t come up.

Not yet.

I roll the driver’s side window down half an inch, even when I know I shouldn’t. The sound carries both ways, but I need to know whether Dave is reaching him.

Dave’s voice comes through in fragments, low and steady, and I catch “your mama,” “Fourth of July,” “pony,” “rain barrel,” and “laughed until she cried.”

Whatever Dave is doing, Stan is listening, and he answers him, low and fragmented. I catch “can’t” and “too late.”

“It’s not, son. Let me help—” Dave pleads.

“Don’t.” Stan’s face is screwed up, the emotions he lacked when he arrived in the kitchen not even ten minutes ago taking over.

Dave takes one tentative step forward.

“I knew your daddy, Stanley.”

Dave’s voice cuts clear across the yard for the first time, carrying more solidly than the angle he tried first.

“I knew the man he was ’fore the drink. And I’m tellin’ you, son, he would not want this for you.”

Stan’s gun hand has started to tremble.

I have sat across from enough people deciding whether to tell the truth to know what it looks like when someone is about to cross a line.

His shoulders drop ever so slightly, and the set of his jawline softens. And for one heart-stopping moment, I think Dave is getting through to him.

But then from the porch, Marcus’s voice carries firmly across the yard.

“Stanley.”

Just the name.

He doesn’t shout, and there’s no anger in his tone. It’s like a schoolteacher’s voice, reminding a child of where his focus is supposed to be.

“Just this one more, son. Then we’re square.”

And just like that, Stan’s back stiffens like he’s been whipped. His gun hand stops trembling, he raises it upward, and I don’t even think before I turn the key, the engine catching first try.

Alma told me debts like his don’t end, but Stan doesn’t know that. His face says he’s sorry— but right now, he’s not as sorry as he is desperate.

I shove the column into first and the engine roars under my hands. Stan’s head snaps toward the sound, and the gun that was aimed at Dave a heartbeat ago swings around to me right as I drop the clutch.

The F-250 leaps out of the barn, tires biting dirt the second they clear the concrete, and I’m out in the yard before I’ve finished deciding to do it.