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the hospital, just waiting to
    die. So I took Janine to live with me. Since I’m a blood relative and
    all.”
    “Yeah, you’re a good-hearted woman, all
    right,” Tim said. “How big a check’s the government giving
    you for her?”
    “That isn’t why I did it,” Brenda
    said. “If I didn’t come through, Janine would have gone to a foster
    home. And you know what they’re like.”
    “Get to it,
    Brenda,” Virgil told her. “I got meat waiting that’s more
    important to me than you are.”
    “Who’s this?”
    Brenda said, looking at me.
    “None of your business,” Tim
    said. “
Nothing
around here is any of your business. This is a
    man
we
trust. You don’t want to talk in front of him, tell your
    story walking.”
    “She’s in the car,” Brenda
    said.
    “Who?”
    “Janine. I had to bring her
    with me. She’s only twelve. I couldn’t leave her in the house
    alone.”
    “Brenda.…” Tim didn’t sound so
    patient anymore.
    “Wallace has been messing with her!” she
    said. “I just found out, I swear. I don’t know what to do.
    She’s scared of him. I can’t go to the police,
    because—”
    “You stay here,” Tim said, cutting
    her off. “Stay here, and don’t say a fucking word. Nobody’s
    listening to you, anyway.”
    Tim walked down to where
    Brenda’s car was sitting. I saw him tap on the window. In a minute or so,
    the window came down. I could see someone was in there, but I couldn’t
    make out anything about them.
    “I’m sorry,” Brenda
    said to Virgil.
    He acted like she wasn’t there.
    Tim
    opened the car door. A little girl got out. All I could see was that she was
    real skinny, with light brown hair, wearing a big yellow T-shirt that covered
    her all the way down to her knees. She walked down the path with Tim until I
    couldn’t see them anymore.
    T hey were gone a good while. Brenda
    kept trying to say something to Virgil, but he never spoke to her.
    “Eddie, would you do me a favor?” he asked me.
    “Sure.”
    “Go in the house and get my
    pistol.”
    “Which one?” I said.
    “Any of
    them’ll do,” Virgil told me.
    “Virgil.…”
    Brenda said.
    By the time I got back with Virgil’s pistol, Tim and
    the little girl were coming back up the path. Tim opened the door to the car,
    and the little girl got in. Tim held out his hand, and she grabbed it for a
    second. Then Tim came back up the rise toward us.
    “ Y ou filthy
    whore,” Tim said to Brenda. His voice was so soft and quiet I almost
    couldn’t hear it. “You didn’t just find out about Wallace
    fucking that little girl. You also found out she was pregnant, huh? So now
    you’re worried about your own ass. Like always.”
    “She’s lying, Tim!”
    “Lying about what?
    Lying about when she came to you and told you Wallace was grabbing her, and you
    slapped her face and told her Wallace was the man of the house? Lying about
    when Wallace whipped her with his belt until she was bloody, and you
    didn’t do nothing? Lying about the time you woke up in the night and
    found Wallace in her bed?”
    Tim moved closer to Brenda. She took a
    step back.
    “Tell me, Brenda,” he said. “I really want
    to know.”
    “I swear I—”
    “I told
    you about swearing, Brenda. Remember before, when I said if Mom was alive
    she’d spit on you? Well, if Mom knew what you did to that little girl,
    she’d fucking
kill
you, sister or no.”
    “What
    am I going to do?”
    “
You,
huh? What
you’re
going to do, you’re going to drive Janine down to
    the Welfare and tell them the truth. The
truth,
you dirty bitch. If I
    find out you protected Wallace, I’ll come looking for you,
    understand?”
    “But if Janine tells,
    Wallace’ll—”
    “Here,” Tim said, handing
    her some bills. “You don’t go back home, understand? You go to a
    motel. There’s enough there for a couple of weeks, food and everything.
    It may take a few days for the law to pick Wallace up, but he’s not
    making bail once they do,