The driver shot him the finger back, then rumbled across the wooden bridge into another cane field.

"You see what that motherfucker just did?" Jimmy Dean said.

Tee Bobby looked straight ahead, uncertain as to what he should say, grit blowing in his eyes, the humidity like steam on his skin.

"Let me ax you, Tee Bobby, how much shit you willing to take in one day?" Jimmy Dean said. "Perry LaSalle do everything except put his dick in your mouth and a li'l white pissant give us the bone in front of the girl who tole you she ain't getting it on wit' no raggedy-ass plantation nigger from Poinciana Island. 'Cause that's what it is, man."

"I ain't saying you wrong," Tee Bobby said.

"Then do something about it," Jimmy Dean said, handing Tee Bobby the joint.

Tee Bobby put the joint loosely in his mouth and shotgunned it, huffing air and smoke along the paper until it burned almost to his lips, holding each hit deep down in his lungs. But he made no reply to Jimmy Dean's challenge.

"How 'bout it, Tee Bobby? You don't stand up in Los Angeles, they'll use you to wipe their ass. If I'm putting out my bread, you got to show me ain't nobody shoving you around," Jimmy Dean said.

Tee Bobby gave the joint back to Jimmy Dean, his hand trembling slightly. He started the engine and heard the transmission clank loudly and reverberate through the floorboards when he dropped the gearshift into drive, almost like he had begun a mechanical process that would take on a life of its own. For just a moment, as the car inched forward toward the wooden bridge, he saw Rosebud in the rearview mirror, her face drowsy in the heat, a strand of hair stuck damply to her forehead.

"Go back to sleep, Rosebud. I'm going to talk to a smart-ass white boy a minute, then we be back on the highway," Tee Bobby said.

He was surprised by the resolution in his own words. When he looked across the seat at Jimmy Dean, he saw an approval in Jimmy Dean's face he had never seen there before. Maybe Jimmy Dean was right. A day came when you stopped taking people's shit.

Amanda and her boyfriend had pulled the four-wheeler to a stop in a dusty space between the cane field and a grove of gum trees next to a humped cluster of blackberry bushes. Amanda and the boy were watching a hot-air balloon drifting high in the sky to the west, the engine of the four-wheeler idling loudly, and they did not hear Tee Bobby's car approach them. Jimmy Dean reached inside the gunnysack at his feet and removed the two watch caps he had placed inside it with the cut-down twelve-gauge and a box of shells.

"Put it on, my man. Let's see if Chuckie want to stick his finger up in the air again," Jimmy Dean said.

"Just shake 'em up, right? That's all we doing, huh, Jimmy Dean?" Tee Bobby said.

"It's their call, man. Watch me and go wit' the flow," Jimmy Dean replied. He pulled a pair of leather gloves on his hands, then got out of the car, his watch cap stretched tightly over his face, the pistol-grip shotgun held at an upward angle.

"Hey, motherfucker, you just shot the bone at the wrong nigger!" he yelled, and jacked a round into the chamber.

Tee Bobby hurriedly pulled his watch cap over his face, his heart exploding in his chest. What was Jimmy Dean doing?

But the answer was simple: Jimmy Dean had just forced Amanda and her boyfriend to get on the ground, inside the hot shade of the sweet gums, a child's jump rope hanging from his left hand. He threw the jump rope in the boy's face.

"Tie her wrists to that tree," Jimmy Dean said.

"I don't want to," the boy said.

"What makes you think you got a choice?" Jimmy Dean said, and kicked the boy in the ribs.

"Okay," the boy said, raising his hands, his face jerking with the blow.

Jimmy Dean looked back at the road, then at the hot-air balloon drifting across the sun, his palms opening and closing on the shotgun. When the boy had finished looping the rope around Amanda's wrists, knotting it behind the tree trunk, Jimmy Dean leaned down and tested the tension.

"Now you gonna take a walk wit' me, make up your mind if you want to live or be a smart-ass some more," Jimmy Dean said. "You heard me, cracker, move! And take off your belt while you at it."

The boy walked ahead of Jimmy Dean, his skin almost jumping off his back each time Jimmy Dean touched him with the shotgun's barrel.

Tee Bobby stared down at Amanda through the weave of his watch cap. She wore elastic-waisted jeans and red tennis shoes with dusty socks and a purple blouse that was printed with little rabbits. Her cheeks were hollowed with shadow, her lips dry, caked on the edges, but there was no fear in her eyes, only anger and contempt. The skin on her wrists was crimped, her veins like green string under the tightness of the jump rope. He knelt down and tried to rotate the rope to a narrower place on her wrists, but instead he only managed to bunch and pinch the skin even worse.

"You filthy scum, get your hands off me!" she said, and reared her forehead into his cheek.

He felt the blow all the way to the bone. He started to cry out but clenched his teeth so she would not hear and recognize his voice. Then he lost his balance and fell against her, accidentally hitting her breast with his elbow.

He looked down at her, propped up on his arms now, wanting to apologize, conscious of his own stink, the foulness in his breath, the sweat that crawled like ants inside his cap. Then he saw the level of loathing and disgust in her eyes, just a moment before she gathered all the spittle in her mouth and spat it into his face.

He rose to his feet, stunned, her spittle soaking through the thread in his cap, touching his skin like a badge of disgrace. He hooked his thumb under his cap and pulled it above his eyes, then whirled away from her and the shocked recognition he saw in her expression.

Suddenly he was staring at Jimmy Dean, who had just walked back through the trees from the coulee, where he had tied up the boy with the boy's T-shirt and belt.

"You done it now," Jimmy Dean said.

"No, she ain't seen nothing," Tee Bobby said, pulling his cap back over his face.

"We'll talk about that in a minute. But right now it's show time," Jimmy Dean said, and unzipped his pants, the tails of his scarf fluttering on his neck. "You up for it or not?"

"I ain't signed on for this."

"She dissed you 'cause you black."

"Don't do it, Jimmy Dean."

"You're hopeless, man. Go back to the car 'cause that's where you left your brains at."

Tee Bobby walked away, out of the shade into the sunlight and the dust devils spinning out of the cane field. The wind tasted like salt, like stagnant water and diesel fumes from the state highway and a dead animal in the bottom of a dry coulee. He heard Amanda cry out, then Jimmy Dean's labored breathing inside the trees, followed by a grinding noise that built in Jimmy Dean's throat and burst suddenly from his mouth as though he had passed a kidney stone.

It was quiet inside the gum trees now, but Tee Bobby stood in front of his gas-guzzler, looking at Rosebud in the backseat, both of his palms pressed against his ears, knowing it was not over, that the worst moment still waited for him.

The shotgun's report was muffled, not as loud as he thought it would be, but maybe that was because he had pressed his hands so tightly against his ears. Or maybe something had gone wrong and the gun had misfired, he told himself.

He turned and saw Jimmy Dean walk out of the trees, the shotgun smoking, blood splattered on his shirt.

"She fought. She kicked the barrel. I only had one round. Get the shells," he said.

"What?" Tee Bobby said.

"Snap out of it. She's still alive. Get the fucking shells."

Tee Bobby opened the passenger door and removed the box of twelve-gauge double-oughts from the gunny-sack, his hands trembling, and started to give it to Jimmy Dean. But Jimmy Dean was already walking back toward the gum trees, and Tee Bobby, for reasons he would never be able to explain to himself, followed him, without even being commanded. Jimmy Dean stooped and picked up the spent casing he had ejected from his gun, then fished two shells from the box in Tee Bobby's hands and thumbed them into the gun's magazine.