Beau and I shared a look.
“You mean, he trusts all of us to make important decisions,” Beau sought to clarify.
Cletus laughed—actually, he guffawed—as we pulled into our driveway. I wasn’t really offended as I watched Cletus wipe tears from his eyes. “That’s funny, Beau. Real funny.”
Cletus parked, still shaking his head as he exited the small car, puffs of laughter following him as he walked to our porch. Beau unfolded from Cletus’s clown car and made to follow him into the house, likely wanting to argue the point. I stopped him with a hand on his upper arm and a staying look.
Beau gave me a questioning frown and I shook my head, indicating he should be quiet. We waited, listening to Cletus as he mumbled to himself until the sounds of his trailing hilarity were cut off by the front door closing.
I counted to three, then I turned back to Beau. “I need to talk to you.”
“What’s up?”
“Not here. Let’s go to the hangar,” I whispered and lifted my chin to the Quonset hut some paces from the house.
I led the way, not waiting to see if he’d follow. I knew he’d follow. We could discern even the subtlest changes in each other’s expressions, so I had no doubt he recognized the urgency in my voice.
A little known fact about the Winstons, we can see at night. My momma told us we were part Yuchi Indian on our daddy’s side, and local legends said the tribe could see clear as day even during the blackest of nights. I had no idea if this was truth or fiction, made up to feed little boys’ imaginations. Regardless, we could all see just fine in the dark.
Thus, neither of us had a problem finding the path to the hangar and navigating the obstacles along the way.
Once inside the hut—which we called “the hangar” because it resembled a small airplane hangar—I flipped on the overhead lights, and navigated around the arbitrarily strewn tools and oil containers. At some point we were going to have to clean this place up. An orange 1965 Dodge Charger 273 sat ignored in the middle of our mess.
It was the car we’d been working on in August when we found out Momma was sick. We’d planned to give it to her for Christmas, after it was all fixed up and painted sky blue. Even Billy was helping with the engine work. But she’d died the first week of October. No one had touched it since.
I moved to a cluster of chairs at the back of the space and reached inside the small refrigerator to one side. Thankfully, it was still stocked with beer; I popped the top off a bottle and handed it to Beau, reserving the can of Guinness for me.
Drink in hand, I took a deep breath and tried to organize my thoughts.
“So, what’s going on? Why are we hiding out here?” Beau asked.
“I had visitors on Wednesday; Repo and Dirty Dave.”
Beau lifted a single eyebrow, his lips curving in to a sneer. “Those two morons? What did they want?”
I gathered a deep breath, not liking that I had no choice but to involve Beau in this. “You better sit down.”
He sat down. I didn’t. I paced while I drank my beer and related the story of their visit, their demands, as well as my trip into Knoxville for the disposable laptop.
“Damn,” he said on an exhale, shaking his head as he absorbed the facts. His expression mirrored my own anxiety. “What was on the thumb drive? Or do I not want to know?” Beau looked like he was imagining the worst.
“You need to know. Besides, it’s nothing…violent or disturbing. It’s traps.”
“Traps?” Beau’s forehead wrinkled with confusion.
I stopped pacing, most of my restless energy spent, and faced my twin. “Yeah. Traps. The thumb drive has a video of Jethro. A camera is following him around a garage I don’t recognize, as he shows some unknown person the location of secret compartments he installed in several cars, how to access them, how to keep them concealed.”
“Oh. You mean, like those vanity compartments? Like on that old MTV show, Pimp My Ride?”
“When have you ever watched MTV?”
“When you were off running around the woods and playing baseball with the Valley kids, I was over at Hank Weller’s house watching MTV and playing Grand Theft Auto on his PlayStation.”
“Oh…”
“So, the traps?”
“Yes, so they’re secret and hard to access. It’s actually kind of genius. In order to open the compartment, you have to have the car off, in neutral, with the windows down, the driver’s seat all the way to the front, and know where the release button is located. Then and only then will the trap open. Otherwise it just looks like regular carpet.”
Beau shrugged, “So what’s the big deal? So Jethro installed secret vanity compartments? How is this supposed to compel us to become the Iron Order’s chop shop?”