Rewrite--Chapter 13
(Billy and the Farrs Ruminate; Paul Greets the Day; Bradford--Poor Bradford (Lol!))
Welcome back! We are nearing the end of Rewrite! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my novel. I’ve certainly had loads of fun working with these characters again. Below are links you can click if you missed a chapter along the way. Enjoy!
Chapter 1—Part One: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/michael-hatchers-unpublished-novel7
Chapter 1—Part Two: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-1b
Chapter 2: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-2
Chapter 3: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-3
Chapter 4: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-4
Chapter 5: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-five
Chapter 6: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-6
Chapter 7: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-7
Chapter 8: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-8
Chapter 9: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-9
Chapter 10: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-10
Chapter 11: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-11
Chapter 12: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/chapter-12-rewrite
13.
Homer barreled down Highway 51, his brother beside him. Billy was hunched up in the back seat. The rhythmic pitter-patter of the rain and the deep rumble of thunder composed their own natural symphony. Barbed shards of lightning kept time.
“This is the life!” Elmer yelped.
“You got that right, brother! Makes me think back to when we were put on the trail of another idiot bastard, Horne. Ugly sumbitch. Back in ’95, ‘96, I think.” Homer fell silent for a moment. “Ran up and down the roads back in the ‘90s, raising all kinds of hell. Pure shithead.”
“Thomas Earl Horne, proud son of Sunny Springs, Tennessee. Ain’t that down in your neck of the woods, Billy?” Elmer asked.
“Yes, sir. Eight, ten miles north of Oakmont.”
“Thought so.” A smile settled on Elmer’s face. “Damn, he was as ugly as a donkey’s ass. Ain’t that right, Homer?”
Homer snorted. “Damn, that’s an insult to donkeys’ asses. Had a helluva ride, though. Cherry red Camaro. Souped up, too. That asshole’d run a hundred to beat anybody fool enough to race him.”
The brothers settled into quietness. Thinking. Thinking.
“He used that car, too, to get what he wanted from the girls. Young’uns, specially gals, like shiny things. Lord knows, he didn’t have any other qualities that stuck out, except a face that looked like it’d been worked over by a frying pan,” Homer said. “Back in ‘96, just when school was about to go back in, he took a girl named Janice Chilton. Fifteen. Didn’t bother to hide what he was doing, him at twenty-five, twenty-six.”
With violence, Homer spat a stream of chewing tobacco into an old RC can.
“After, we pieced together that Horne worked for somebody to get them young girls. Got the Chilton girl for himself, though.”
Billy sat up straight, eyes wide.
“Drove her west of town to a wooded area.”
The men’s hollowed-out eyes spoke of horrors worse than any they could ever say. Things they’d seen, tales they’d heard.
