Woody’s FarmH
e drove for an hour on Missouri 177 until he was southeast of Perryville. Wittenberg was just a few miles from where they’d had the encounter with Woodrow Cheeley, and he was fairly sure the stream on his right was the one they’d explored with the bass boat. He drove down a few farm roads with gravel rattling off his fenders before he found familiar ground. A cottonfield on his left, long split-rail fencing—and there was the Red Man sign. He parked the truck and began to walk. On the other side of a cottonwood stand, he heard the growl of a laboring engine.
Woodrow Cheeley was steering a muscular John Deere tractor and towing a disc harrow over a field, churning up long rows of loamy soil. As he made the turn at one end of the field, Shake saw sunlight glint off a bottle. H
