Page 22 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin’s Duet (Sins of the South)

“I would do anything to make you happy. You know how much I poured into you, just to see you smile and taken care of. I didn’t do it to buy your love or your body.

I did it because you are the only person in the world I love and trust. But I know I got fucked up ways.

I’m fucked up. ‘Cause as much as I love you, Lorrie, I made a promise to myself long before you and I ever met. I wanted to be in charge of the Harvest. And in the end, I put my ambition before you. But you don’t deserve to come second place for anybody.

Not even for me. I just don’t know where that leaves us ‘cause I still can’t let you go even if– even if maybe I should. ”

Franklin Junior started fussing and Lorrie bounced him up and down until he quieted again. “Either you want me or you don’t,” she said.

“I want you to be my wife,” he said instantly, and with no hesitation.

She exhaled. “I don’t know if I can be your wife.”

Lorrie watched at the set of Absalom’s broad shoulders, seeing the tiny trembling of them fight his self control. But as always, he mastered himself.

“Guess I deserve that,” he said.

“It’s the way your people treat my people I can’t stand,” Lorrie said.

“I’m afraid you won’t try to change it, and if that’s true then we have a problem.

I don’t want you running the show up here and turning a blind eye to what your followers are doing.

I hear the way they talk.” She chewed her lip. “And about your wife …”

“That’s over with. I’ll make it right, Lorrie. I promise.”

I promise. When he said those words, he meant it. Lorrie knew that he always meant it.

BANG! The raccoon finally got the lid of the trash can open.

Absalom said, “I can’t promise I won’t ever hurt you, but I will try my damndest every single moment I breathe to love you and treat you right.”

“We’re better together,” said Lorrie.

“You’re damn right.”

“Dog!” said Franklin Junior, pointing at the raccoon. Absalom laughed, and Lorrie slipped her hand into his.

Lorrie drove a Suzuki that Absalom had picked up for her from Rebel McCall a year ago. The night before, she’d parked it at the Greasy Hog. Somehow the car had now magically found itself near the sleepy holler called Mulberry.

At five o’clock the sun was still high, but the cold front seemed to be deepening. Lorrie looked out curiously at the crooked sign declaring the name of the holler. She’d heard things about the people from Mulberry but couldn’t remember what. Her car seemed undisturbed, anyway.

“First thing I did when I left you last night was have my cousin Shadrac pick it up for you,” Absalom explained. “Nobody would trouble it in this place.”

“Does anybody live here?” Lorrie wondered.

“Not anymore.”

Lorrie rubbed her thumb over the burlap grocery bag Aunt Pearl had handed her before she left.

Inside it was all manner of fruits and vegetables from their garden, plus half of a pecan pie.

She would have to cut up the veggies once she got home.

Put the pie in the freezer. Right now she had no appetite.

Lorrie struggled to keep her mind ahead.

They passed an abandoned house with a garden gone to seed, full of weeds.

But the apple tree out front was budding.

Life went on in spite of everything. Hm.

Her own garden at home could do with some tending.

Those hornworms were wreaking havoc on her tomatoes.

“You alright?” Absalom asked.

“Fine.”

She’d left her aunt and uncle’s house with high hopes, but on the drive out here the suspicion grew that she’d just stepped right back into the old mess she’d been trying to get away from.

She’d fallen for Abi’s silver tongue. Again.

And now she was doing exactly what he wanted– going home, sitting tight, and waiting for him to summon her. Again.

“I need to head back,” Absalom told her as his truck climbed up the last bit of the hill. The road was terrible.

“So that’s it, then,” Lorrie said. “Now you’re leadin’ the Harvest? Now you’re in charge?”

“Something like that.”

“Good for you. Now you have everything you ever wanted.”

He watched her from the tail of his eye. “Not everything,” he said quietly.

Lorrie pursed her lips.

“I had the boys fill up your gas tank.”

“Thanks.”

“You should have no problems heading down to Rowanville. I’ll follow you to the main road to make sure you’re off safe,” he said.

Make sure I don’t turn around and come back, you mean.

“I thought we’d be going up to where you’re staying,” Lorrie said quietly.

Absalom shook his head. “It ain’t safe for you with Hiram and the others millin’ about. I wish—”

Lorrie frowned. “Do you smell that?”

Absalom jammed down the clutch. “Yeah. Shit— could be the radiator.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Climb out and get a stone for me, will ya?”

Lorrie climbed out as Absalom pulled up the E-brake. “The hood’s smoking, Abi.”

“Yeah, I know,” came the terse reply. “Definitely that radiator.”

Lorrie found a big piece of quartz and jammed it under the back wheel. Something under the truckbed caught her attention.

“Abi,” she shouted. “What’s all those wires for?”

He leaned out the window. “What?”

“The wires. Under there.”

Then everything started happening at once.

Absalom leapt out of the vehicle and started shouting at her.

Lorrie didn’t understand. He kept bellowing, BOMB, BOMB, BOMB.

Absalom rarely ever raised his voice and the sound of it had her bolting like a rabbit for the trees, Absalom not far behind.

By a miracle they didn’t twist their ankles among the knobby roots and pitted ground of the forest floor.

They halted yards away, waiting, panting, wide-eyed.

Nothing happened.

“Stay here,” Absalom told her after the most tense two minutes of their lives. Against Lorrie’s protests he walked back to the truck and gingerly peered under the bed. Quickly he straightened up and beat a hasty retreat back to her.

He was white as a haint; she saw all the whites of his blue eyes.

Without saying a word he hauled Lorrie into his arms. She heard his heart knocking hard and fast against his ribs.

The sounds of the forest swirled around them: birds, bees, things moving in the undergrowth, all oblivious to the instrument of death parked in their mist. She heard somebody’s rough, uneven breathing.

Her own? Fear response. Absalom was shaking like a leaf.

The strangest thing was that Lorrie felt utterly, absolutely calm.

“Is it–”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” He stepped away from her and put both hands behind his head.

“We’re okay, Abi. I’m okay.”

“Christ!” he choked.

Lorrie felt sick herself. “Who could have done it?”

“Anybody. D’you have your keys?”

“No. They’re in your truck,” Lorrie stammered. “With my bags and everything. They can stay there. We’ll just walk back to the road.”

“And do what? Call an Uber?”

“We can hitchhike, maybe?” She suggested.

Absalom snapped into fearless-leader mode and said decisively, “No.”

“Well, what ?”

“We can’t leave our stuff here, and I can’t leave a fucking time bomb out here neither. Don’t want some innocent person setting it off. Or an animal.”

“Is there someone we can call?”

“Yup. Except I left my phone on the front seat.”

“Abi, no !”

“Nothing doing,” he said grimly. Horror climbed up Lorrie’s throat as Absalom, under the shaky reasoning that the bomb would have blown up already if it was a real threat, strode back to the truck and began removing their stuff, including his long-range Winchester rifle.

He put everything but the gun and his cellphone into Lorrie’s Suzuki and then walked back to her, talking into the phone.

When he hung up Lorrie could tell from his face it had gone poorly.

He put an arm around her. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, Abi. What did the man say?”

“Well, our local bomb expert is apparently tore up on White Lightning at the moment.”

“Is there anybody else?”

“There’s always the ATF,” said Absalom sarcastically. He scowled at the truck. “I don’t trust anybody else to handle this properly. So we got two options. Either I leave Ol’ Bessie here and risk somebody blowing themselves up.”

“Or?”

“I blow it up myself.”

Lorrie thought he was joking. He wasn’t. “Absalom, you love that truck.”

“She’s done,” was all he said, but from the set of his mouth she could tell it was tearing out his guts.

He drove Lorrie’s Suzuki down the holler road to a safe distance, then returned to Lorrie’s position. “Ready to blast it?”

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Life,” said Absalom woodenly, taking the Winchester’s strap off his shoulder. “Come on— we can stand a little more back. I hope I can still shoot it.”

They walked deeper into the trees until Absalom called a halt.

He took a hunter’s stance on his belly, and Lorrie sat next to him among the pine chips and leaves.

She stared down at the great broad lines of Absalom’s body as he primed the Winchester and adjusted its position, staring carefully through the scope.

Absalom had bought that truck a year ago, and spent months repairing it.

Many weekends passed at Lorrie’s house with Absalom laying on a piece of cardboard with his head and shoulders under the body, tinkering with this and that.

Hours later he’d be kneeling next to Lorrie’s tub while she scrubbed grease and oil from his hair with handfuls of detergent. Good memories.

“Maybe it’s fine. You took our stuff from it and nothing happened, right?”

Absalom shook his head. “That was a stupid risk I won’t repeat.”