Black and Paid For
Part One: The Hayfield
Dustin had just dropped a bale out the back of the baler when Shane’s silver sedan pulled up at the field edge.
It was the second week of June. Late afternoon. Hot and still, the kind of Tennessee heat that sits on your shoulders like a wet towel. I was on the old Ford tractor, pulling the square baler down the windrows on the lower twenty. Dustin was walking behind, picking up bales and stacking them on the hay wagon.
The baler thumped and clanked. The bale chute dropped another one onto the stubble. Dustin grabbed it by the strings and swung it up onto the wagon.
Then he stopped.
He was looking past me. At the gravel road at the edge of the field.
I looked over my shoulder.
A silver Nissan Altima had pulled off onto the grass. Clean. Shiny. Way too nice for a hayfield.
I knew the car.
Jake had been gone thirty-one days.
