Down a Long Cotton Row and the Shadows of Love: Two Novels

By Franklin David Richardson

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 18, 2003
• ISBN: 9781465330833

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Down a Long

Cotton Row

and

The Shadows

of Love

TWO NOVELS

18293-RICH-layout.pdf

FRANKLIN DAVID RICHARDSON

Copyright © 2003 by Franklin David Richardson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Xlibris Corporation

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18293

Contents

DOWN A LONG

COTTON ROW

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINTEEN

THE SHADOWS OF LOVE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

DOWN A LONG

COTTON ROW

CHAPTER ONE

Daddy, you see that river over yonder?

The father leaned against the hoe and tilted his straw hat in the summer sun.

Jep, I been living here thirty-one years and you ask me if I see that river over yonder. Of course I see that river over yonder.

Jep hoed up a yellow-green weed and moved to the next cotton plant. sweat dotted his tanned bare back.

Well, I know you see it. But you know nothing’s wasted? The sun draws up the water and the clouds rain it down again.

That’s right.

Then maybe someday I’ll be drawn up and rained down. Maybe I’ll be an animal next time. Animals whine and howl at the moon and feel things like they might’ve been human.

Don’t pay no attention to him, Daddy, Phillip said from the other row. He wants to get rained down as a black person, so he can be with Wanda without people fussing about it.

Jep gazed at his older brother. Phillip had his father’s walnut eyes and wore round-rimmed glasses like his father but Jep had no glasses and his eyes were the color of honey. Jep felt homesick even through he was home. He wished he could vanish where Wanda’s house met the horizon. Clouds beckoned over the secret wandering of the river towards her shade-cooled yard.

I need to go to the spring, he said. To get us some water.

His father thumbed his overalls.

Do that. The jug’s in the hickory tree.

Phillip squinted in protest.

Let me go, Daddy. No telling when Jep’ll get back.

Don’t matter. He’ll have to finish his row anyway.

Jep took the jug from the hickory tree at the end of the field. The river seemed the best way to reach Wanda’s home since crossing the land would reveal him. Her olive-soft complexion aroused an itching in his heart and a current in his heels. The prospect of rattlesnakes and moccasins along the junglelike riverbanks ennobled the need to see her.

The sun slanted into blackjack oaks near the water where the surface reflected noonday clouds. Ripples shimmered like stars in a separate universe within which he pictured a black angel named Wanda. Once he had wrapped in a blanket that smelled like corn shucks and dreamed his footprints belonged to an Indian. Now he was a brave caught between white man’s law and tribal purity. The pursuit of Wanda projected numerous taunts. Affection seemed impossible against well-meaning family and friends.

Why do you dream about escaping us? his mother once asked. Don’t you love us? And he nodded with tears for loving too much, his family as well as a black girl. Ridicule from classmates bothered him even as her milk-chocolate image beckoned through the trees.

At the bottom of the deep river embankment his toes worked off his shoes to allow him to wade into the coffee-colored cool flow. He splashed back to shore and unzipped his dungarees. Naked, he stepped knee-deep and then dove underwater. His intention was to bathe before seeing Wanda but she became a mermaid that led him to the other side. The sandy banks coated his back before the support of his elbows revealed an erection. He re-crossed the river and stood on the bottom to restore the magic of her appeal without the shame of nakedness.

A rooster crowed in the distance. It proclaimed Wanda as his queen. Her penetrating narrow eyes matched her braided hair so that the oval face with sunken cheeks conveyed regal beauty. He told himself he was King Jep of the palefaces, joined in union with the rhythmic chant of insects that sounded like castanets from Africa.

Incredible, he exclaimed aloud.

Say what? a girlish voice asked.

Sarah Mae appeared on the shore in a thin frock that revealed plump curves. Her hair looked greasy even in the distance. He suspected she had nothing on beneath the dress. He swam into deeper water.

Sarah Mae, how about filling my jug from the spring and taking it to Daddy and Phillip?

No, I came to fill mine, to take to Mama and Daddy. We’re hoeing our cotton next to yours.

Jep treaded water till he touched bottom again.

You believe in reincarnation, Sarah Mae?

Re-in-what?

Reincarnation. Like you lived before, as an animal or something.

I don’t know. I never thought much about it.

Well I do. Like me swimming out here. You see me don’t cha?

Of course I see you, silly!

Well, the first time I jumped in here I swam. You know why?

Why?

Cause I worked my mind into thinking I’m a fish. So maybe I was a fish one time.

Oh, you act so silly sometimes.

I’m not acting silly. Now Phillip, when he jumped in here he sank like a boar hog and Daddy had to pull him out.

She gazed at Jep with adoring eyes.

The face he makes, Jep. And his hands, going plop, plop. She threw her arms overhead with a delighted squeal.

Jep paddled back waist deep.

I guess you know I don’t have no clothes on.

Prove it.

You want me to?

I dare you.

He turned sideways and lifted a leg to expose his thigh. Goosebumps showered him. He frowned at Sarah Mae. She shrugged.

All right, Mister Prissy-britches. I’ll take the water for you. You’ll be sad enough when your black girlfriend moves away.

Sarah Mae left with both jugs. He decided her remark was no worse than others made by his friends about Wanda. He pulled up his dungarees and gazed where the spring wriggled like worms toward the main current.

The river appeared to harbor deep within itself the substance of what it reflected, as though distorted patterns and upside down trees drowned an upright world. The twisted passage to the sea mirrored a dog-eat-dog concept along the path through the foliage. Killing to survive made him seek better thoughts; the banks offered heights where a bottle of wine was cooling in an island spring. Wanda had the cheese. A bottle of wine and a piece of cheese and an ocean to seclude them. A spider web tangled his hair as distant lands beckoned to secret hideaways.

A half-sunken boat twirled around the bend in the slow current and it seemed like a godsend. A silent approach to Wanda’s without detection felt as buoyant as the vessel. The weathered hull looked ancient when it edged into shore to welcome him. He pulled it forward with bubbly eyes.

Incredible, he whispered.

Two of the three water-soaked seats were broken but the stern looked all right. The bottom was coated with slimy green moss above which minnows and water bugs flitted. He bailed water with a nearby coffee can used at the spring. Humidity clung to his flesh like syrup. Gnats swarmed over his body so that a spell of coughing convinced him he had swallowed one.

He tilted the boat to drain the last water out and then tucked moss from the trees into visible holes around the rotten stern. His brown hair kept falling over one eye so that he blew upward while working the hull back onto the water. The ship seemed sturdy and seaworthy. His intention to greet Wanda in it placed her image like a figurehead upon the bow.

With an oak pole he pushed the vessel into the river and the current buoyed him between high banks. Distant clouds rose above the trees and proclaimed Wanda to the world. Occasional twigs fell and poked the water and spun within the confusion of their ripples. Shivers worked inside. He was king and the world was his kingdom. Incredible, he shouted, and the echo bounded back, agreeing.

He glided in such a reverie he forgot to bail.

Water touched his ankles and he grabbed the can. The boat’s descent caused a sensation he was sinking in a chasm. The patchwork broke and water poured faster. He bailed even after the boat was doomed.

The river crept up his legs and soon the stern was engulfed. He stood up and went down with his ship. Water rose along his body, cold and cruel-not at all like a voluntary swim. The swift current dragged at his clothes and persuaded him to paddle for shore. The oak pole floated around the bend like a broken rudder.

He sloshed to higher banks as tree-shades licked scaly tongues into him. The sun bore down and dried his scratched-up body. The day had lost its magic; he was not king: the incident seemed like an omen, a warning to give up his plans. Yet his imagination continued. He evolved into a southern planter returning from a sunken barge to the solace of his devoted black wife. Defiance grew against staring farmhands till he felt soothed by the real sight of an abandoned river shack that appeared under moss-covered trees.

The dilapidated wood structure loomed in a maze of bluish mildew, as dark and brooding as the boat had been. Jep pictured Uncle Jake, the defiant drunk who had lived in the shack provided byJep’s father, since Jep’s mother had disowned her wayward brother. The homeless vagabond had torn up the country on his motorcycle, picking fights and women in the stupor of a lost idealism, Jep’s father had said. The boy rode sometimes without his parents’ knowledge, thrilled by the non-permission of it. He was not aboard when the motorcycle crashed. His father and Wanda’s mother nursed the jaundiced invalid through the last days with the help ofJep since Phillip was too squeamish. Right here, Jep recalled. Uncle Jake died right here. Jep narrowed his shoulders to remember his father saying the wreck might not have been an accident. Defeat in Uncle Jake’s eyes seemed to bear that out; sorrow in his voice, the withdrawal from existence, quivered in the stillness.

I’m just tired of being a part of it, Jep.

A crumbling church beside the dilapidated wood shack made the boy peer upward. A welter of grapevines almost obliterated the cross on top. It became a transom in the structure of heaven and he closed one eye to sight God’s secret throne, but the sky was too massive against the lonely cross. Silver patches of clouds sailed across a wintergreen sea till darker masses intervened. Two patched-up outhouses curled below like withered giant snails. The boy told himself Uncle Jake quit living long before he died. Jep’s father had said the inability to accept life after Vietnam left the man a hopeless wanderer, drained of humanness. The funeral expanse beneath the trees resembled deteriorating remains, abandoned by people and vacated by God.

Air grew scummy in the broom sedge around the enclosure. Kids from the high school in town sometimes defiled the isolation he always felt here, for a person could kick around and find evidence of love snatched in the dark and gone at daylight. He coughed on his approach to the spidery shack that held deep memories; the abandoned church carried mysteries before his time, but the abandoned shack carried the last days of Uncle Jake.

The house was ancient with the smell of death, heavy with a sense of pain. Kicking the door opened it partway. A thin sliver of light fell upon the only object there, a crippled wheelchair with springs curling out like barren stems. It had been used by Uncle Jake. Jep’s childhood awe of the man caused being thirteen to seem old. Words that made no sense then rose now. The boy often played at being a king even as a child, and Uncle Jake once said, You’re never a king when you feel like a king, Jep. You become a king when you feel the kingdom.

Now, having lost his boat, Jep sensed the hurt, the broken dreams, the pain and agony within a kingdom. His eyes moistened against spontaneous tears. But UncleJake had something to say about crying too.

Never spill tears, unless it refills the well.

The shack smelled like rats and screw-worm medicine and he shivered at a moan from an owl or a ghost questioning his presence. I belong here, he answered. Me and my Daddy knew Uncle Jake was special. Longing for Wanda contained Uncle Jake’s longing so that the well, though less than full, was not empty. The rightness to seek her was like Uncle Jake saying A tree reaches for the sky. It might get cut down, or struck by lightening, but it reaches anyway.

The well was refilled. The boy continued on foot, recalling he had never seen Uncle Jake cry. He had seen his parents cry. He reasoned UncleJake must have cried too when he was younger, before the accident. After that maybe there was nothing to refill, no goal to reach for. Jep vowed to reach Wanda’s home, because hope was still in his cup.

The path to her house grew wider, trampled by generations of animals and humans. Ghosts from long ago church meetings seemed to lead to cozy warmth that exuded from the white frame home beneath the sycamore trees.

He opened the gate beside the cattlegap and approached the kitchen that extended from the main structure. Silence felt threatening; there were no pets, no livestock, no people, no life. An image of dead bodies prickled his scalp. Then a sudden hum sent lightning through his chest. He turned to realize the whine came from the pump house behind him. The fact the electricity was still on offered some relief.

Shrubs outlining the house seemed tended and the bamboo border in the rear looked healthy, but the usually neat lawn was overgrown. Even birds seemed to have flown away. Only a bee escorted him to the back porch. He peered through an unshaded window and all the furniture was gone. The flowery wallpaper spread emptiness into his bones. He sat on the rear step and buried his face into his hands.

The back door was opened as if from its own volition and he entered without fear. The wind that had pushed it pushed him past the kitchen through the hall beside the bedrooms. A lemon fragrance wafted from the living room and drained blood from his head. His knees felt like oatmeal. The association to Wanda’s perfume brought the immaculate pine floor to meet him the same time the wall supported his collapse. He gazed out the bay window past the out-of-view river that swept Wanda and her mother to a cold distance beyond a daylight moon.

He wondered why there was no message, no words to tell him why they had left. Only a newspaper about Elvis Presley’s health showed the house had been recently occupied. Nineteen seventy-seven reverberated through the boy’s head and The year of lost love through his heart.

The log barn with the steep tin roofbeckoned where he and Wanda had gathered in innocence. He had quelled sexy arousals from the smell of corn and hay and rain on the roof but compassion pervaded him now. The absence of chickens, pigs, and horses around the lot churned his stomach into spiritual longing. On his way past the bamboo, oppressive emptiness drew his gaze to the mule trough as if it were a manger. She had once hidden there under some hay in a hide-and-seek game, but the need to find her now projected her whereabouts far beyond a childish game.

There was no hay in the trough now. Just a bridle. He picked it up to discover the note attached within a buckle. He read it with trembling hands.

DearJep,

Mama could not stay here, the way things were. Please don’t try to find us.

I’ll never forget you, but let’s live with the memories.

Love, Wanda

He fell backward into the triangular deep trough so that his feet kicked the air. He squirmed out, frustrated by human cruelty. The determination to find her against the bitterness oflosing her twisted his countenance the same time a panel truck crossed the cattlegap as if to bring answers. The stocky driver alighted with tools strapped to his waist and strode out of view beyond the garage. The man soon re-crossed the yard back to the truck and reversed the vehicle onto the lawn before pulling forward to vanish past the cattlegap. The visit provided no answers, only the realization the electricity had been cut. The pump would sound no more. Water felt drained from Jep’s body.

Lowland pastures to the west held bark-stripped trees that lifted dead limbs like prayerful skeletons. Higher ground beyond them stretched where pine silhouettes marked verdant fields along the easier way home. But he wanted seclusion. The riverbanks beckoned to an isolation that made him less lonely than responding to good-intentioned farmers. Communication felt immediate in UncleJake’s two-room shack. Jep cringed with his hands crossed under each armpit as silence showered needles along the underside of his flesh. His uncle’s words emerged.

You can shrug off pain, Jep, unless it’s physical. Physical pain can dominate everything.

A mangy stray dog appeared at the open door as if in response to the words. The shaggy dark animal cringed with a white spot over one ear while its liquid eyes fixed a doleful gaze on the boy. Jep dropped to a knee beside the broken down wheelchair and beckoned with soprano voice.

Sho-mon, doggie. Sho-mon.

The animal crept forward as though ashamed its tail was wagging but helpless to do anything about it. It paused at a distance and would come no farther. Jep’s calling was to no avail.

Has your pain gone too deep? he wondered aloud. Has it saddened you like Uncle Jake?

The exposed ribs showed hunger with the sadness. The dog cowered past Jep like an untouchable and sniffed the wheelchair. Jep pulled on one of the protruding springs and sudden squeals revealed baby pink mice huddled in the fabric. He slung them one at a time by the tail and the dog chomped each in midair. Then the animal left with over-the-shoulder glances.

The impulsive means to provide food aroused a sense of betrayal, whether to UncleJake, Wanda, the mice, the dog, or himself. The animal’s departure conveyed guilt for sustaining life through death. But the world survived that way, the boy told himself. Playing the ruthless role was repeated in stockyards and barnyards everywhere.

An urge to urinate directed him outside. The thought that everything fitted a category seemed exemplified by sights and sounds around him. Birds were compelled to sing. Squirrels waved their tails. Snakes had to crawl. And he had to pee.

His bitterness was deepened when he almost urinated on the dog. The animal lay dead on its side near huge palmetto bushes amid pulpy vomit speckled with remains of the mice. Jep turned his back to relieve himself. Killing the mice had only killed the dog. A need to bury the animal offered some atonement, as if the gruesome ordeal could be used toward righteousness.

Jep ripped the armrests from the wheelchair to dig the hole and then reused them to lift the dog into its grave. Respect for Uncle Jake directed the boy to return the armrests to the wheelchair, but feeling torn by futility brought the man’s words once more into memory.

I’m just tired of being a part of it, Jep.

The man’s death alongside Wanda’s unknown whereabouts multiplied wrongness across the land. Present failure made Jep hurl an armrest into a mangled cushion. A yellowing note was exposed with the words Amphetamines·. Property of Sheriffs Dept. No drugs appeared, but suspicions of dope on top ofbooze hurt to think Uncle Jake practiced both.

The boy stomped his own path through the underbrush toward home. Neither the ache of his blisters nor his thirst nor itches and scratches nor the prospect of snakebite could diminish inside pain. Pain could control a person, he told himself. Physical or mental. It could pound every part of the body and every part of the will-leave nothing; not hope, not kindness, not life-only love. A determination to avoid such a fate prompted him to find Wanda, even ifit meant death. He did not stop for his mother’s call beside the garden.

Jep? Jep, come here. You look sick.

I don’t have time now, Mama.

Ahead Phillip’s cowlick appeared above the fields. Jep bent forward. He stopped ten paces away with a purplish hue in his cheeks. His father stared at him.

What’s the matter, Jep?

Phillip strode forward and touched his arm.

You’re all scratched and dirty. What’s the matter Jep?

Nothing’s the matter. I’m just tired of being a part of it, that’s all.

Jep moved past his brother and father and began chopping the cotton with tears on this cheeks. He tilted his head away. The other two watched him. Finally they chopped along his row while silence embellished the boy’s sobs. At last he looked up.

Wanda’s gone. They’ve moved away.

The father hoed along Jep’s row as twilight promised darkness.

I knew they were going to, Jep. I didn’t know it’d already happened.

Well, I’m going to find her. Even if I’m an old man when I do.

You do that. You said it yourself, ‘Nothing’s ever wasted’. So you find her. One thing I’ve delayed telling you, though. Uncle Jake is her father.

Jep stopped hoeing. The man put a hand on his shoulder. Phillip hoed his brother’s row as Jep stood dumbfounded. Then all three hoed the same row. Jep held the impact of the father’s statement out of mind by bending to his work. Once when he looked up his gaze carried across dark fields to Wanda’s empty home beneath the sycamores. His voice was steady.

I still have to find her. I’ll deal with being cousins later.

CHAPTER TWO

When school started and Jep became fourteen in the eighth grade he grew more withdrawn due to Wanda’s absence. His desk with carved initials from long-ago students made him picture Jep Loves Wanda carved in the ancient brick schoolhouse. Sarah Mae sitting behind him traced her pencil eraser across his broad back till a commotion in the hall brought him to his feet. Phillip’s voice was shrill against a taunting chant from the older boy’s ninth grade classmates.

Uncle Jake was a dirty old drunk, Fathered Wanda in a rape that stunk, Went to jail and burned his bunk, Got out cheap for the stupid stunt.

Jep bolted around the desks in front ofthe teacher and raced toward four boys in the hall who were poking at Phillip. He lunged parallel to the floor and dropped two with one tackle. The other two plied their knees in his back and pounded his body till an upward thrust sent them reeling. The first two regained their feet and he pummeled them with wild jabs that brought blood to a blond one. The boys who had kneed him grabbed his arms but he whirled free and flailed like a windmill. All four youngsters edged backward and then the teacher appeared. One ofJep’s hands grazed her neck while the other paused in midair. He resembled a statue before his arms fell. Phillip let go a boy’s leg and stood beside his brother. Students stared at a distance as Jep spoke out-of-breath with wilted shoulders.

I’m, I’m sorry, Mrs. Reeves. But did you hear, did you hear what they were saying?

I heard it. If I hear it again somebody’s going to be expelled.

No one spoke. She continued.

All right. You four go to the first aid room. Jep, are you or Phillip hurt?

I’m not. Phillip might be.

No. I’m not hurt.

She studied their flushed features. Her voice was firm.

You two wait in the library across the hall from the principal’s office. He’ll call you when he’s ready to see you. Then these four boys will take their turn.

Books in the library stretched to the ceiling and imbued Jep with regret. Grown-up novels he had read left unread ones in an immensity from which he wondered which book, which page, told how to avoid brawls. Heroes in the stacks righted wrongs without shame so that parallels ennobled the fight while the situation remained ugly. His father once said knowledge was not the same as wisdom and since knowledge of rumors had built no wisdom to halt consequences, loyalty justified the boy’s action. Being Uncle Jake’s sidekick persuaded Jep the drunk did not rape, no matter what anyone said. If Wanda resulted from an affair, it was consensual; if rape came from an intruder, his uncle was not to blame. Jep guarded Uncle Jake the way knights on the bookshelves guarded kings, unaware too much devotion could be unwise in either case.

Phillip’s cowlick above his glasses gave an impression of wide-eyed disapproval. The older boy embodied reason more than emotion. Yet he was too trusting, Jep thought. The possibility his brother’s so-called friends had learned about Uncle Jake because the boy told them, then used the discovery to mock him, aroused more affection than blame. Still, Uncle Jake being in prison must have been news to Phillip as much as Jep. Had the man really been there or was it a rumor like the rape? Jep was thinking someone put the boys up to the incident when the secretary came in with hips as wide as a crinoline.

Come along, boys. Mr. Bryers will see you now.

The office had no books, only cabinets filled with files and folders.

Jep sensed dullness,a jaillike enclosure, though he felt no dread. The man’s gentleness confirmed the boy’s respect against the Brier Patch nickname. Words flowed more like a poet than an administrator.

Well, it’s sort of unusual, you two being in here.

Neither boy spoke. The principal’s tie was awry. Jep imagined it defied conformity. Discipline seemed difficult for the hefty man.

So. Brother helping brother isn’t so bad. What was said about Uncle Jake wasn’t so nice either.

Jep spoke in an upset tone.

Nobody felt deep like Uncle Jake did, and those boys were too stupid to realize putting him down caused his misery.

The principal turned his swivel chair to gaze out the window. He turned back.

Your father said something like that. The administrator paused to face the older boy’s frown. I think whatJep means, Phillip, since putting people down continues today, misery continues, even though Uncle Jake’s dead. The principal turned back to the brother. Is that what you meant, Jep?

The younger boy sat straighter.

I reckon. Misery everywhere. Mine. Ours. Vietnam. The whole world.

Including your bitterness?

Nossir. Yessir. Am I bitter?

I don’t know. Something was written on your fists.

Jep had slouched again. He straightened once more.

Maybe I am bitter. Maybe some of Uncle Jake’s bitterness rubbed off on me.

It almost rubbed off on me too. We were friends, you know, since before Vietnam.

Jep’s father had mentioned the friendship. The boy searched the principal’s countenance. The man’s far off gaze reduced infinity.

Jep, Uncle Jake told me once the inner self can cure you or make you sick, the way cells in the body can grow healthy or grow cancer. He’d make statements like that, after which we’d communicate for hours, saying nothing.

The boy had communicated that way, with Wanda as well as Uncle Jake. Being together in silence was good enough sometimes. He remained silent now.

I can understand if you’re bitter, Jep. My friendship with Uncle Jake endures, in spite ofbitterness. The principal paused as ifin reverence. His voice grew husky. I hope what happened to him doesn’t happen to you. Multiply his ideals, not his bitterness.

Jep sensed solace from the suggestive tone. His response reflected the same restraint.

Daddy says UncleJake saw too many decapitated heads in Vietnam, so for me to keep mine on straight. Absorb the poetry, Daddy says. He claims I personify Uncle Jake’s ideals too much for the bitterness. But I feel both. That’s why I believe the best way out is to defend the ideals. Ridicule leaves only his hell, for him and me and Daddy too.

Oh, but Jep, if you need a way out, you might be deep, deep in. Phillip, do you ever feel like that, needing a way out?

I don’t reckon. I don’t know what you mean, exactly. Then you’re safe. Stick with your brother. Watch him. We watch each other. I think we stay close that way.