they had even pulled even with him. They were the sons of Coburn's foreman and the cousins of his hands, the kind of boys who had grown up understanding that their last names came with permission. The driver, a heavy-set one named Cody Pruitt, leaned out the window with his elbow on the door and coasted along at Arthur's walking pace, which was slower than any truck wants to go so that the engine bucked and grumbled under him.
There he is. Cody called loud enough for the others to laugh. The richest fool in Harlan County. Arthur did not look at them.
He had heard already that afternoon the thing the town had decided to believe, and he heard it again now in the way Cody said it. The story had moved faster than he had, the way an ugly story always does. A Callaway boy with $90. Where does a boy like that get $90?
The question was not really a question. It was an accusation dressed up in a shrug. And by supper time, it would be settled fact in half the kitchens in town that Arthur must have stolen the money from somewhere because the alternative that he had swept floors for two years to save it was not nearly as satisfying. The truck nosed ahead and swung to the shoulder, angling across his path, so he had to stop.
The three of them got out, taking their time, and stood in a loose half circle around the cart. They did not lay a hand on him. That was not quite the kind of thing they were. But Cody put one boot up on the lip of the cart and gave the safe a shove, testing how it sat, and the whole thing rocked hard enough that Arthur had to throw his weight against the handles to keep it from going over into the ditch.
"Careful," Arthur said. It was the only word he gave them. "Careful," Cody repeated, grinning, and gave it another push lighter this time, just to watch the boy scramble. "What you got in here anyway?
Your daddy leave you something? " One of the others snorted. "Heard your daddy went into the Beaumont to clean the place out, and the Lord turned the lights off on him. That what you're after, finish the job he started? " The words were meant to land somewhere soft, and they did. Arthur felt them go in, but he had a great deal of practice in not showing where he had been hit, and he simply held the cart steady and waited, looking past the three of them at the place