Where All Light Tends to Go Read Online Free

close, but nothing ever came of it. Some of those bulls were on the payroll too, and the folks on the payroll were tight-lipped. They just brought in the cars and paid to have them serviced, and in return Daddy kept food on their tables when winters killed everything from field grass to dreams. The one thing he’d never done was allowed anyone cranked-out to get near the business. That was up until now, and now that one person was threatening it all.
    “You understand what I’m asking, Jacob?”
    I nodded.
    “This ain’t something you can just nod about, goddamn it. I need to hear you fucking tell me that you understand what I need done.”
    “You want me to head out to the camp with the boys and take care of Ro—”
    Daddy slapped me hard against the side of the head. “Don’t say his fucking name! Don’t you ever say his fucking name! You don’t know his name, you understand?”
    “I understand.”
    “Good.”
    That was all that was said about it and that’s the way it had always been. Daddy only said enough to ensure that what needed to be done got done, because any added details might lead to confusion. There was no room for confusion in a business like this.
    Daddy hoisted himself from the chair and wandered to the front door. He opened the door, stretched his arms wide, and yawned as he headed onto the porch. The Walkers were still howling, noisy even over the blare of “She Thinks I Still Care” from the speakers. Though the sun would still be shining for another hour or so in the flat land, here on The Creek it was already casting an orange haze through the open doorway as sunlight melted behind the mountains. I took the pack of smokes from the coffee table and lit another. The three of them stayed out on the porch, Daddy silencing the other two so the Hispanic and Josephine didn’t start cutting each other. I just let the record play.

4.
    The camp sat way back in a dark, damp holler between Walnut Creek and Ellijay. Though a full moon had kept the road nearly lit enough to ride without headlights for most of the drive, soon as the pavement ended and dusty gravel swept into the mountains, there wasn’t an ounce of moonlight that made it through the trees. The old logging roads saw little upkeep anymore, and it wasn’t a place many ventured without a good four-wheel-drive and a chainsaw.
    I’d been there hundreds of times through the years, and in the days before rich folks went to preserving this and preserving that, Daddy and I would spend many a night at the camp during open seasons for hog and bear. That’s really all the camp was good for, keeping folks dry and from freezing when the weather snuck in, but it was hardly good enough for that anymore. The shack was dilapidated and caving, just skeletal remains of curved gray planks and rusted tin.
    I could tell the boys were already inside. A rectangle of thin light around the door and a few sparse beams shooting through holes in the roof were all that shone in the darkness. I made my way down to the camp on a path cut through laurels. The sound of a small stream bubbled up from behind the shack, but I could hear them talking inside.
    Robbie Douglas was cinched down with wire thin as guitar strings binding his arms and legs to a metal folding chair. Blood ran from his forearms where the wire had sliced clean when he, at one point or another, tried to yank free. He was sitting there calm as a beat dog now, his shirt off and bare chest riddled with burns where the boys had pressed their cigarette butts. Despite his body giving out on him, Robbie’s mouth was in a constant struggle to detach itself from his jaw. Bug-eyed and vicious, his stare took on a wildness I’d only ever seen in a coon’s eyes after a night spent in a trap.
    “Where the hell have you been?” Jeremy spoke first. It was just him and his brother, Gerald, there in the room with Robbie. The brothers spent their days working for Daddy at the shop. Both of them were certified