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like that.”
    For the first time Mitch raised his eyes and directly engaged the circle of faces. “Thing that gets to me is there’s people who still say I been out to take advantage of the old man’s kindness. Gets almost like I feel guilty going to the hospital.”
    Now Marlon, the old moonshiner, spoke up. “Folks know all about that, Mitchell Lee; how Deputy Kenny Beeman got that subpoena to go through the monument bank account you set up. How he implied you was skimming money.”
    “And how nothing come of it,” one of the women sniffed.
    Marlon raised an index finger. “People on this side of the county gonna remember that, if Beeman gets a mind to run for sheriff like some folks think he might.”
    “’Appreciate that, Marlon,” Mitch said. Just then his cell phone jingled in his back pocket and his imagination leaped.
    Christ, was it the old man? Already?
    “Excuse me,” he mumbled as he quickly whipped out the phone. But it wasn’t Ellie. He saw his cousin Darl’s number on the display and thumbed the pad to end the call. He replaced the phone and finished up: “Whatever else, I still have almost six months sober, so I thank God for this program.”
    Then he sat back in his seat and kept an attentive look on his face as he listened to several other people recount the difficulties they’d traversed during the week, thinking, Man, these are some white-knuckle bubbas just making it hand-over-hand one day at a time across the snake pit.
    After the group ended, they all stood in a circle, holding hands, and recited the Serenity Prayer. Mitch stayed behind with Marlon, folded the chairs, and volunteered to sweep out the room. Then he said good-night, went out, and got in his truck.
    Marlon stood in the parking lot with another man, named Luke. He inserted a pinch of Skoal in his lower lip and watched Mitch’s taillights recede in the dark.
    “So whattya think?” Luke asked.
    “Ladies’ man,” Marlon shrugged. “The gals go for the smile and his voice like a radio commercial. But you look in his eyes, it gets kinda cold and slippery.”
    “Uh-huh. What I heard was, when he married that banker’s daughter she kept her own name,” Luke said.
    Marlon spit on the gravel and said, “The way I heard it, Mitchell Lee was always a demon for work, never did drink much before he pulled that drunk stunt. Had him a hot-shit Corinth lawyer got him throwed in treatment to beat jail time.”
    “Uh-huh,” Luke said.
    “The way I heard it,” Marlon continued, “his little drinking spree got him out of going to Eye-rack with the National Guard. Yep,” Marlon stroked his chin, “that boy’s way smarter than his daddy.”

    MITCHELL LEE NICKELS GREW UP WEST OF CORINTH, MISSISSIPPI, near the small town of Theo, sweating like hell in Liberty overalls, cutting pulp wood for his keep on the Reverend Leets’s farm. He was three when his grandpa on his momma’s side came into his life. Mitch didn’t remember his mother. What he remembered was the smell.
    On the hot August afternoon when the McNairy County deputy found him in the back-road shack outside of Selmer, Tennessee, Pearl Leets was swelled up on the bare mattress, hatching bluebottle flies. She had a hypodermic needle protruding from her tied-off, puffed-up arm, and the deputy figured Mitch had been in there two days wearing the same diaper, living off stale potato chips and warm Dr Pepper.
    The reverend, being the white sheep of the outlaw Leets clan, did his best to steer his grandson clear of trouble. Mitch kept busy working on the farm, going to school, and regularly attending church. He was sixteen when two events altered his life. First, he discovered that girls really liked what he did for them. The downside of this revelation was that his grandpa caught him behind the tractor shed, minus his pants, with the older neighbor girl’s heels banging around his ears. Mitch expected a beating but instead the reverend thrust him into the old Chevy truck