Rain came hard on the roof damaged by last week’s thunderstorm, rivulets of tar-smelling water puddling on the floor, soaking the wood and throw rugs and bed sheets and Jensie’s shirt and face. It was not the rain that woke her up, though. It was the TV, left on 24/7 to keep away the silence. No matter where she was, silence reminded her of her nine-fingered uncle with the rattlesnake cowboy boots, his violent breath waking her on too many rainy nights. She was legal now and thoughts of killing the old man throbbed in her head the same way a hangover lingers.

“Dale Earnheardt was killed today at the Daytona 500.”

The man’s voice on TV cracked with emotion, which struck her as odd. Did he know Dale? “Hell, everybody knows Dale,” came the voice in her head that answered her questions even when she did not ask any. She watched the tragedy play on the small screen, the news showing the wreck over and over.

Tiptoeing over to the window, the wet floor slippery under her bare feet, Jensie rubbed her eyes. They stung from the leaking roof. She hated rain. Out in the field, past the broken fence and bent half-trailer squatting in the weeds and wisteria vines next to a dog crouched under a warped piece of corrugated roof blown off the shed was a man in a dirt-brown coat and dirt-brown hat, the brim beaten down around his large ears. Smoke whirled away from his face as he dropped his hand, flicking ash on his pants leg and the dog.

Running her tongue around her alcohol-dried mouth, she eased to the side of the window, pulling her long t-shirt down to cover her teal underwear. The man was not looking at her. Bill collector? Thief? Killer? Big ears. Ollie, her little brother had ears like that, almost the size of taco shells.

Images of crying fans cut across the TV screen. Jensie heard only her own thoughts until she heard glass breaking in the kitchen. She never took her eyes off the brown-coated, wet man. He never turned her way. The old nervous reaction from childhood filled her gut and burned behind her chest. She glanced around the dim room, light undulating from rain running down the window. Wood cracked on the other side of the wall in the next room. The lock broke. Glass crunched under feet in the kitchen. The red painted drawer caught her attention. She slid down the wall behind her faded jeans and brown jacket hanging on a nail above a pile of dirty clothes. Reaching in the drawer, Jensie felt the long blade, its cool metal dulled by years of cutting up chickens after her mother died and left her with Uncle Glen.

Jensie pushed the memories away, dropping to her knees next to the window, holding her breath, her eyes wider than jawbreakers down the road at Tinsley’s store.

Footsteps. Crunching. Silence. Memories.

Two days later, the brown-coated man walked into Tinsley’s store wearing rattlesnake cowboy boots and a brown hat drooped down over his sunglasses like a felt veil, the stench of wet cigarettes following him all the way back to the beer cooler. No one noticed the blood on his cuff. People around the cash register watched the brown dog roam in tight circles, head down in the bed of a Chevy truck, a TV on the wall playing the now famous deadly Daytona wreck constantly.

The man never looked up, bought two Lone Star beers, paid cash in quarters, leaving 8¢ in change in a coffee saucer on the counter next to a child’s photocopied face and the handwritten words, “Help Little Josh beat Leukemia.”

Six miles down the road toward the state line, the truck pulled off the flat two-lane next to a bridge. A girl wearing faded jeans and a brown jacket crawled up from the riverbank, got in, and they drove east towards Louisiana.

A week later, buzzards circling the old house attracted a deputy who found a man with nine fingers frozen around a butcher knife sticking out of his chest, his milky eyes as big as jawbreakers from Tinsley’s store staring lifelessly up at the holes in the ceiling, his gapping mouth stuffed to overflowing with several pairs of female underwear, his swollen, bare feet half-eaten by rats, their bloody tittle footprints trailing under the bed and doors. A TV playing reruns of Dale Earnheardt’s wreck sat on a small cabinet with a red drawer next to a pile of wet clothes. The house offered no clues except for a note tucked in the man’s shirt pocket. The deputy fished it out with his pen, smiling as he read it. He radioed the sheriff. The coroner showed up first.

“What happened here, officer?”

“Justice.”