BRENT HOLLIS

Brent Hollis was seventy-first in the Walmart layaway line at 6:15 a.m. and first at 6:50. Nobody could say exactly how. You'd have thought a man wearing a blue plaid shirt over two other shirts would've been easier to track.

He inched along saying, "'scuse me, my wife's up here," seventy times. Slow. Apologetic. Polite as a church usher moving you away from the good fan.

Brent ain't got a wife. He's got a Super Nintendo on layaway and a nephew he's already told. That's a hell of a promise to make a little boy, and God love him, he meant to keep it. His methods were shit.

The line caught on at the counter. A Missouri line in December has cold feet and a damn good memory. Peg hit him with her purse. A man held his collar till Deputy Stotts arrived, Brent still saying "'scuse me," apparently hoping manners might could reverse a felony.

In the Polaroid he's leaning back, looking serious off to the left, like that whole line's still behind him.

It is. Peg posted his bail so she could stand in front of him again Monday. Woman wasn't finished waiting.