Chapter 1
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Elijah “Big Eli” Washington stared at his large, dark
hands under the harsh yellow light of the barn.
Blackened knuckles, a jagged, poorly healed scar cutting
across the back of his left thumb. He smelled burnt wiring
and ancient diesel, the distinct metallic stench of a
combine harvester giving up the ghost. The heat of the July
evening pressed down on his broad, powerful shoulders
like a physical weight.
Out in the fields, the cicadas screamed in a steady,
deafening drone. Big Eli dragged a rag over his hands,
doing nothing but moving the grease around. The
alternator was shot, sizzled into a useless lump of copper
and iron. A replacement was $500.
He had $83 in his checking account, a mortgage payment
due on the first, and thirty acres of winter wheat that
wouldn't harvest itself. At sixty-four years old, he didn't
want to go to town. He wanted to sit on his porch, drink a
cheap domestic beer, and let the quiet ringing in his ears—
a parting gift from a mortar shell in Vietnam more than
forty years ago—lull him to sleep. But the wheat didn't care
about his fatigue, and neither did his young grandson who
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Chapter 2
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was counting on him to keep the family land.
Thirty minutes later, Big Eli’s rusted Ford truck
crunched onto the gravel lot of the Iron Horse Tavern.
It wasn't really a tavern. It was a corrugated steel pole barn
sitting on the county line, reeking of stale cigarette smoke,
spilled draft beer, and the sour tang of nervous sweat.
On Friday nights, Russell "Rusty" Cobb cleared away the
pool tables. He ran an unsanctioned bare-knuckle-adjacent
fight club for the local farmhands, off-duty deputies, and
anyone stupid enough to think they had an iron chin. Big
Eli walked through the heavy wooden doors. The air
conditioning was broken, replaced by two massive
industrial fans that merely circulated the humid, swampy
air.
The noise hit him first—a chaotic wall of shouting, clinking
glass, and the heavy bass of the jukebox fighting against
the roar of the crowd. He stood near the back, keeping his
massive six-foot-four frame hunched forward, making
himself look smaller. He wore faded overalls stiff with