Rewrite--Chapter 14
(Oh, Sister. I Can Almost See You.)
Chapter 1—Part One: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/michael-hatchers-unpublished-novel7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
Chapter 13: https://hatcherfictionwriter.substack.com/p/rewrite-chapter-13
Trenton: 12 miles, the sign announced. Fifteen minutes or less, Billy figured. He knitted his eyebrows.
What then? I don’t know. There is one thing I do know: I’ll either walk out a hero or die a martyr. No in-between for once. Can I be a hero?
Billy stared at his feet an inordinate amount of time, searching in his split-apart tennis shoes for an answer.
The brothers, crackling with nervous energy, babbled about anything that crossed their minds: University of Tennessee football; that damn bastard Stevens poaching game off their land; the pretty young woman who lived across the road stoking the brothers’ fantasies.
As if they were remembering each detail of their favorite Playboy, the brothers fell quiet, smiling.
A small tremor of envy crept through Billy, wrapping itself tight around his heart. The brothers were as familiar with each other as an old pair of blue jeans.
Kind of like Terry and me before all this. Will we ever have that again?
Elmer turned toward Billy.
“We’re about a mile out, son. Ready?” he said.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Billy answered, hands shaking.
Homer slowed the car and pulled onto the side of the road.
“Boys, I want to stop here before we get in too close,” Homer said, meeting their eyes, his gaze intense. “Me and Elmer have a tradition before we begin a job. We take a big ol’ drink of this.”
They stepped out of the truck, Homer holding his hip flask aloft. Billy arched his eyebrows.
“Moonshine, my boy,” Homer said. “Pure-T Tennessee moonshine, made by me and Elmer. We used to toast our success in advance because we always knew we’d kick their ass. And we’ll do it again. You can bet on that.”
“Here, here!” the Farrs shouted in unison. A covey of birds shot up into the heavens.
Homer took a swig and, grinning wolfishly, passed it off to Elmer.
“Wanna join us?” they said, high-pitched voices crescendoing to the heavens.
“No, I—uh, why not?”
Billy raised the jug to his lips and gulped down the homemade brew. His eyes grew round, and he held his stomach, barely making it to the edge of the road. He bent over and heaved chunks of his breakfast—undigested bits of egg and sausage—mixed with the alcohol he’d ingested.
When Billy finished, Elmer pressed a handkerchief into Billy’s hand, and the boy cleaned his face. The elder Farr put an arm around Billy’s shoulder and guided him back to the car.
“You ready?” Homer asked Billy.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m not gonna lie to you, son. There’s always a chance this’ll go bad. All it takes is one screw-up.”
“I know,” Billy replied. His eyes locked onto Homer’s. “But I gotta see this through. She’s all the family I got. I’m ready.” He forced down the phlegm that had clotted inside his throat.
“Alright,” Elmer said, a grin splitting his face. “You heard the boy. Let’s go knock some heads!”
They got in the car, and Homer prodded the engine to life. He slung the car onto the highway, a shower of gravel following it.
Billy was revved up, too. She’s close. I just know it.
He twisted his hair into knots and let it fall back again and leaned forward.
“Are y’all sure you want to do this?”
Homer swiveled his head around and frowned at Billy.
“Hell yeah, boy,” he said. “We’ve done this more times than you can even count. Poked around at the Biggins’s place some, looking for Horne. Never could find anything, but we got a funny feeling from the old lady. Never did set right with us. Always looked like she knew a hell of a lot more than she was telling. Didn’t have the pleasure of meeting the boy until last night.”
After a pause, he continued.
“I really wish we’d gone after them assholes harder than we did. We should’ve barreled their asses in the ground. Maybe your sister would still be at home.” Homer rubbed his eyes. “Shit. Damn pollen.”
Elmer took over. “In the back of our minds, we kinda wondered if Horne worked for the old woman getting her girls. Then he saw one he wanted to keep for hisself. And that all went to hell. And then in a fit of conscience, Horne just got all weepy and ate hot lead. Yeah, right.”
Silence settled inside the car. After a bit, Homer burst through the stillness.
“Well, maybe Elmer and me can set things right. Get your sister, get this burden off our shoulders.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. He touched Homer on his arm, draped over the top of the seat. The old man gave him a tight smile.
Homer pulled off onto the side of the dirt road and braked the car, about a half mile from the Biggins’ back fence, Billy reckoned. The old man killed the engine.
“Well, boys, it’s time. I guess we’re as close to their place as we wanna get by car. We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.” Homer looked at Billy. “Stick with us, kid. Do what we tell you. We still remember all the old tricks. You ready?”
Billy nodded, face stretched taut, an adrenaline-laced jolt surging through him. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled overhead, mimicking the speed with which Billy’s face darkened.
“Wait a minute,” Billy said. “They’ve got Rottweilers. How are we going to deal with them?”
“Don’t worry, kid. They had them before. I’m assuming these are different from the ones they had then. But Rottweilers are Rottweilers,” Elmer said. “And we got something in the trunk that’ll take care of them.”
“You ain’t gonna shoot ‘em, are you?”
Elmer flashed a grin at Billy.
“No, son.” Elmer unsnapped the truck bed covers and opened up the cooler underneath, taking out two large freezer bags. “Two steaks soaked with morphine. They’ll tear that shit up and be out in no time. All we got to do is keep ourselves hid for about twenty minutes, and we’re good. These dogs won’t be coming back from that. At least not for a while. When the time’s right, we sneak up, take whoever they got guarding the place by surprise.”
Not the most detailed of plans, Billy thought. In fact, it seemed downright vague. His shoulders slumped, his eyes narrowed, and he sank into despair.
“Alright. Let’s go,” Homer whispered. They were so caught up in what was to come, they didn’t notice that Billy wasn’t with them. The kid, hands on hips, mouth slung wide open, stared at the two brothers.
“Good God, I can’t wait to get my hands on them shitheads,” Elmer said. “I hope they give me a reason to put a hole in their skulls. And that moment when your sister walks free… well, that’ll be a moment, won’t it, son? Billy?”
Elmer stopped talking and turned around, eyeing Billy.
“Billy? Are you coming, son?” Elmer said.
“To where? And what are we gonna do when we get there? There is no plan that I’ve been able to see. Except for one that’ll put us in an early grave. I mean,” Billy said, mimicking Elmer, “‘Just sneak up on ‘em and take ‘em by surprise.’ What kind of plan is that? This is not so you two can go for the gold one more time. This is for Terry. It may be my last chance to see her alive. Okay?” Billy threw his hands up.
Elmer looked as if he had been struck by a halo of arrows, tears starting to cloud his eyes.
“Damn it, you little shit,” Homer said. “Look what you done now. You made him cry.”
Billy glared right back at Homer.
“Look, you wanna know the plan, Billy?” Homer continued, voice rising in intensity. “The plan is for you to stay with us and do whatever the hell we tell you to do. We’ve been doing this shit more’n forty years, boy.”
Elmer walked over to Billy and put his arm around him. “Come on, son. We got this. Just take your cue from us.”
Billy, face tight as an army bed sheet, walked toward Homer, Elmer behind him.
“Okay.” Don’t notice folks just bustin’ outta the woodwork to help. “I have one more question. How will we know when it’s safe to rescue her?”
Homer sucked in his breath, but before he could answer, Elmer spoke.
“Son, you won’t know, but we will.”
Elmer smiled at the boy. Billy didn’t return it.
“Okay. If you got to know, I’ll tell you. There’s a guy we know. We’ll call him Bubba. We started hanging out together a few months ago. Drinking, grilling steaks. Shootin’ the shit.”
Elmer gulped down more moonshine and continued.
“Come to find out, he’d worked for some questionable folks in Memphis, Nashville, Cincinnati, and whatnot. Breaking legs and arms of people that owed his bosses money. Security at mobbed-up strip clubs.”
Elmer wiped the sweat off his cheek with a tattered blue handkerchief. Gnats swarmed to an open sore on his hand. Homer picked up the story.
“Well, Bubba got on a holy kick. Found a churchgoing woman. So he’d invite us to church near about every Sunday. Every now and again, we’d take him up on it. We’d usually go to his ladyfriend’s house after and eat,” Homer said.
“After we ate, Bubba and us’d usually go to the front porch and set a spell. Drink some lemonade, since his lady was a teetotaler, maybe eat a slice of store-bought icebox cake. Tell a few lies.”
Homer swatted away a squadron of gnats and continued.
“One day, Bubba asked us if we’d ever regretted anything so much we couldn’t sleep nights. Wouldn’t give no names about the people in Trenton he’d worked for. Scared, he said. Folks like these we’re facing’d kill you as soon as look at ya. He wouldn’t talk much more about it.”
Elmer grabbed the flask from his brother, took another couple of belts, and took over.
“So, we kept up with each other over the years. When you came along, I called him and started poking around to see if he knew anything about this place. Just a shot in the dark. Said he did a little work for these scumbags back in the day.”
Elmer rubbed at his sore again. The hovering gnats lifted off at the intrusion.
“Fortunately for us, God laid it on his heart to come clean so Bubba told me he’d worked there and told us exactly what we needed to know—shift changes, dinner breaks. When the guards started in on the girls. So, we do have a plan, my boy. Just stick with us like glue, and everything will work out, God willing.”
O-kay. That’s all I was asking.
As the darkness formed a canopy above them, Billy and the old men moved toward the back perimeter of the property. Elmer noticed the two Rottweilers tussling with each other. Signaling for quiet, he grabbed the steaks, doused them in morphine, and flung them in the vicinity of the dogs and moved back out of their sight line. The two canines snarled at each other and attacked the meat.
They waited for the dogs to pass into a morphine-aided slumber.
And waited.
And waited more still.
“Are you sure you put enough on it, Homer?” Elmer asked.
Contorting his face, Homer’s frown answered his brother’s question.
“Hell yeah. I ain’t no rookie. I put that shit all over it. Did exactly what Doc Blevins downtown said.”
Then... the two creatures circled and crouched low, finally collapsing. Billy moved toward the fence.
“Stop,” Homer whispered fiercely, casting a reproachful glance at Billy. “Just a few more minutes, and those mutts will be knocked out real good.”
Billy stood still as the scarecrow in old man Reese’s cornfield at home. Blood drained from his face, he wobbled a bit, his seventeen years of life reduced to this moment.
After a few minutes, Homer motioned for Billy and Elmer to get ready. Elmer touched Billy’s arm.
“Don’t worry, son,” Elmer said. “You got this. And we got you. These bastards we’re going up against are mean, worthless sons of bitches, but we’ve beat meaner. And we don’t intend to let these fellas be the ones to send us down.”
A forced smile wrapped itself tightly around Billy’s face.
“Alright, kid. Ready? We gotta go now, while it’s still a surprise.” Homer checked his watch. “It’s almost eight. According to Bubba, whoever’s on guard likes to have a go at the girls ‘bout this time before the johns usually show up, around nine or so.”
He continued to eye the dogs warily.
“Now just put on these rubber gloves and boots to climb the electric fence, and we should be good. Just don’t tarry too long at the top. Go ahead and jump off. Try to keep your feet when you land. Keeps down the noise.” He grabbed Billy by the shoulder. “And make damn sure that you don’t let any other body part touch the fence. I’m not sure how strong the charge is. You need to go first so you can help catch us if you need to. Our balance ain’t what it used to be.”
Wide-eyed, Billy gave a mechanical nod to Homer. He grasped his shotgun tightly and trudged toward the fence.
He scaled it more easily than he expected, with nothing but his rubber-sheathed feet and hands touching it. The Farr brothers scrambled up after him and landed with a grace that Billy would’ve never expected they still possessed. The sky, plunged into a starless black, served as cover.
They danced around the glare of the motion lights attached to the shed. It was an ugly building, squat and low-slung, its paint chipped away in large splotches. Its cracked windows were covered by garish orange curtains. To Billy, it seemed the entire building vibrated with an intense thrum.
Good God. The shed. She headed back there with breakfast the day we went to Memphis. Weird, I thought at the time.
Just then a breeze lifted the curtain, a flicker, really, so that Billy saw a young girl, who looked to be about his age, wearing just a slip, curled up on a twin bed in the back of the room, her head resting on a lumpy, dingy pillow. Her sadness radiated outward to Billy.
He reached out and grabbed Elmer and pointed to the window in which he’d seen the girl.
“What?” Elmer said.
“I saw a girl. A girl up there.” His finger stabbed at the window once more.
“Did she see you?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Good,” Elmer said. “We don’t want to cause a stir just yet. That’s coming. You can hurry a thing too much.”
Homer turned his head and put his finger to his lips, demanding quiet. “Y’all want to keep on the right side of the ground or not?” he muttered in a raspy growl.
As the trio crept closer to the entranceway, Homer froze and motioned for Billy and Elmer to hold back. Waving his hand, Homer tripped the motion detector. At the same time, he howled like a coyote, lone and desolate.
Stirring inside. Homer motioned Elmer to go in front of him, so that he was at the front corner of the building, shotgun ready. Homer let loose with another mournful squall, luring out his prey.
The guard, round and dumpy, with tangled eyebrows and unkempt hair, toted a pistol. He stood under a harsh halo of light that did him no favors. Clad in tattered jeans and a t-shirt adorned with grotesque cartoon characters fornicating, he fiddled with his zipper, his gun on the table beside him.
Elmer suddenly burst out of the darkness, shotgun cocked and aimed in a blink.
“Put your gun down real quiet now, asshole!”
The squat, beefy man saw the boy and the two old men, guns outstretched. The incongruence of what he expected to see and what he saw caused his mouth to twist up in a grin. The guard let out a series of staccato guffaws. Homer squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet whizzing an inch from the guard’s left ear. Billy stole a quick glance at the house. Quiet.
“What are you laughing at, son?” Homer snorted.
The guard, eyes stretched wide, slowly placed his weapon on the ground.
“What do y’all want?” the guard said, his face pale and marked with zits.
“What’s your name, boy?” Elmer said, his gun still at the ready.
“Duane Riggs.”
“Well, Du-ane.” His nose wrinkled up like he was downwind of a chicken house. “We’re here to get the boy’s sister, so you need to stand the hell out of the way. That is, unless you wanna be a cowboy.” Elmer lifted his firearm, nudging the guard’s chin.
Duane froze, slack-jawed. He trained his eyes on the gun right under the first of his two chins.
“Hell, boy. We know what kind of place this is,” Homer said. “I’ll bet you sample the merchandise every night. Ain’t that right, Lumpy?”
“Naw, I don’t have to bang these girls in here.” His throat was dry, his voice squeaky. “Hell, I got plenty of options.”
“Yeah,” Homer said. “Sure you do, livin’ in your mother’s basement. I’ll bet the girls are all over that shit.” Homer poked Duane’s bulbous stomach with his shotgun.
The guard recoiled involuntarily. “Whatever, man,” Duane returned. “Besides, I wouldn’t touch those whores in there with a ten-foot pole. Or a ten-foot dick.”
Homer cocked his rifle.
“You ain’t wrapped too tight now, are you, boy? I’m going to need you to apologize real quick like.” He gestured toward Billy. “You’re talking about the boy’s sister. Any whorin’ done, she and the others were forced into.”
Duane’s face broke into an ugly, misshapen grin. He coughed, and a cloud of stinky breath filled the air.
“Well, shit. I didn’t know this was Family Visitation Day. Hell, bossman never tells us anything.” A sneer took dominion over his face. “Did you come to get some or just a blowjob this time? We give family discounts, I think.”
Quick as the lightning flashing overhead, Elmer took his pistol, flipped it around, and crashed it into Duane’s skull, knocking him out cold.
Elmer shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t say he didn’t have a chance. Dumbass.”
Homer gestured at Duane, blood trickling from his forehead.
“Damn, that was a good one, brother. Okay. Help me get this fat toad onto the chair, and I’ll tie him up while you two find the girl.”
They lugged him to the chair and pushed the desk up close, laying Duane’s head on it. Homer pulled a thick roll of duct tape out of his backpack. Elmer searched Duane’s pockets. He gave Billy the contents, a cell phone and a switchblade. The kid grabbed Duane’s gun from the table. Homer bound Duane’s legs and arms together with the duct tape and put a triple piece of it over his mouth.
Elmer looked around, checking to make sure all was done. “Okay. That’s that. Now, let’s go get ‘em, son!”
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Chapter 15 will be released on June 22, 2026, at 1:27 p.m.
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