Mississippi Noir

Pit Stop by John M. Floyd

State Highway 25

Anna McDowell stood looking out the front window of the roadside gas station/minimart at the empty fields across the highway and the stand of pines beyond. Adrift on a sea of memories, she moved not a muscle, said not a word. Her nine-year-old daughter Deborah, obviously weary of both the view through the window and the delay in their schedule, stood at her side. Deborah turned every few seconds to stare at the closed door of the men’s room, which supposedly contained her five-year-old brother Charlie.

“You think he fell in?” she asked.

Anna said, her eyes still on the distant woods, “He’s okay. Be patient.”

Deborah peered up at her mother’s face. “You look funny, Mom. What’s the deal?”

“Nothing, honey. Just thinking.”

“When are we supposed to get to Aunt Penny’s?”

“Late this afternoon.” Anna turned to her daughter and smiled. Both children adored her husband’s sister, a fact that greatly pleased Anna, and every summer for the past few years Anna and the kids had driven up to Nashville (Franklin, actually) as soon as school was out, to spend a week at Penny’s house. Unmarried and childless, Penny happily smothered her only niece and nephew with attention and affection. The one bad part was the seven-hour drive to get there.

Before Anna could say more, little Charlie McDowell emerged from the restroom and gave them both a What are we waiting for? look. Anna grabbed his still-soapy hand, gazed one last time at the trees across the road, and led her children back down past the shelves of candy bars and potato chips to the front door. Thirty seconds later the three of them were outside and headed for their minivan. The sky was overcast, the day breezy and blessedly cool for early June.

Anna had just taken her keys from her purse when a short, skinny, greasy-haired man appeared from behind a parked car. One of his hands was out of sight in his pocket; the other he clamped around her right arm.

“Open it,” he growled, nodding to the van, “and get the kids in. Now.”

Stunned, Anna dropped her keys on the pavement. The man glared at her, said, “Pick ’em up,” and turned to make sure they weren’t being watched. Both the children were cowering against the side of the van.

Anna knelt to pick up the keys, and when the man turned to her again she did something she would never until this instant have dreamed of doing: she leaned to the left, wrapped her left hand around her right fist, and pistoned straight up from her kneeling position, her right elbow jabbing upward like a spear. As hard as she could, with all the strength of both legs and both arms behind the surge, she drove the point of her elbow up into the hollow underneath the short man’s chin — it thunked like an axe being swung into an oak trunk. The man’s head snapped back, all his muscles went limp, and for a second or two he stood there staring up at the gray sky with eyes that were already rolling back into his head. Then he collapsed like a rag doll and lay flat on the ground, all his limbs extended toward the four points of the compass. A revolver he had taken from his pocket clattered onto the concrete.

Trembling, Anna kicked the gun underneath a car, gathered her children to her like chicks, and steered them toward the store while she took out her cell phone and punched in 911. Behind her, the hapless carjacker twitched, gagged, and staggered to his feet. Bent almost double, he stumbled away with his eyes squeezed shut and his tongue out and both hands holding his throat. Anna, safely inside the store now, saw him blunder headfirst into a parked truck and fall to his knees. Finally he disappeared around the corner of the building.

Half an hour later all the right questions had been asked and answered, and the police left with a bagged-and-tagged weapon, a detailed account of the incident, and an even more detailed description of the attacker. No one knew where he’d gone or how he’d gotten away, but Anna was repeatedly assured that they would find him. She didn’t much care. Her family was safe, and that was all that mattered. She was walking for the second time to her minivan with her children when a newly arrived state trooper approached her.

“Ms. Langley?” he said. “Is that you?”

She looked up at him, frowning for a second before recognition kicked in. She smiled. “It’s me. Last name’s McDowell now. How you doing, Keller?”

He nodded. “So-so.” He tilted his head toward the store behind them, where a second patrolman was speaking to the cashier. “I heard what happened. How in the world did you manage that?”

“I don’t know. I was mad and scared, I guess. And I just finished a self-defense class.”

“I think you got your money’s worth.”

She shrugged. “It worked only because he wasn’t expecting it.”

“He could’ve killed you, you know. The kids too.”

“He might have, if I had let him get in the car with us.”

The officer pondered that and nodded. “Probably right. Just glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks, Keller. It’s good to see you again.”

As she turned to leave, he said, “Guess this proves it, right?”

“Proves what?”

“Lightning can strike twice in the same place.”

Anna thought about that a moment. “Compared to last time,” she said, “this was easy.”

An awkward silence passed.

“Maybe what happened before...” He paused for a beat. “Maybe it made you tough.”

She nodded. “Maybe it did.”

Moments later the three travelers were inside their van. “Help your brother buckle up,” Anna told her daughter. “And hand me a Coke from the cooler before we get going.”

Deborah, her face still a little pale, stared straight ahead. “Mom?”

“What, honey?”

“That man. Did he just want to steal our car? Or did he want to... hurt us?”

Anna shook her head, reached over, and smoothed her daughter’s hair. “Doesn’t matter, Deb. Everything’s okay. He won’t be doing either one.”

“They’ll get his fingerprints, right? Off the gun?”

“Yes. They’ll catch him.”

Deborah hesitated, frowning hard in thought. “What did that policeman mean, about lightning?”

Anna sighed. “Something happened here, years ago,” she said. “Before you were born.”

“Here at this store?”

“Yeah. In the woods over there, actually.” She glanced again at the distant trees and, jutting above them, the old windmill she remembered so well. Even from this far away, she could see its blades turning lazily in the wind.

“What happened?” Deborah asked. “Something bad?”

This time it was the mother who hesitated. “Not really. Something good, in a way. Something that got rid of something bad.”

“Tell me,” Deborah said.

A long stare. “Maybe I will. Maybe it’s time. But first hand me that Coke.”

When everyone was strapped in and they had eased out of the gas station’s parking lot and onto the road, Anna popped the top of the can and let out a long breath. She glanced over at Deborah. “You sure you really want to hear this?”

“I’m sure.”

Charlie was already snoozing in his car seat, but that was okay, Anna thought. He was too young to understand what she was about to say. If she was able to say it, that is. She hadn’t talked to anyone about this for a long, long time.

Anna took a pull on the Coke, set it in the cup holder, and clamped both hands on the wheel at the ten-till-two position.

“Years ago,” she said, “two people left Jackson, south of here, to drive to a ball game in Starkville, over a hundred miles north. And to hike around for a bit, afterward. They were young and they were foolish and they were in love. The girl was Anna Langley—”

“That was you, right?”

“That’s right. And the boy was named Woody. Woody Prestridge. He was tall and blond—”

— and Anna thought he was just about the best thing that had ever happened to her. She stood there on the sun-dappled sidewalk in front of her dorm at Millsaps College and watched as Woody loaded her picnic basket and backpack into the trunk of his Toyota and slammed the lid.

“Done,” he said. “Prepare for takeoff.”

“How long will this game last?” Anna asked as she climbed in and buckled up. “I don’t care to spend all Saturday afternoon watching a bunch of guys bash their brains out.”

“We won’t, I promise.” Woody cranked up and headed across campus and out the gates and onto North State Street. “It isn’t even a conference game. We’ll leave early and hike around in the woods a little, on the way back.”

She stayed quiet awhile, watching the grand old homes drift by on both sides of the road. “Heck of a thing,” she said finally, “when you’re probably safer out in the woods than sitting in your own car. Right?”

He didn’t answer right away. Anna knew he didn’t want to talk about the Night Stalker. She didn’t either. She didn’t even like the name, something the stupid media had come up with because all three incidents had happened after dark. They could have at least been original, she thought. That name reminded her of the old TV movie about vampires in Las Vegas.

But this modern Night Stalker was plenty scary enough. It had been all over the news the past couple weeks, and she was worried. Everybody was worried — especially those who had to drive Route 25. It was on that highway — a four-lane that cut a bending path across the upper-right center of the state — that all three killings had taken place, or least all three disappearances; no bodies had yet been recovered. But the cars of the three missing women had later been found parked on the side of the road. The consensus so far was that the killer/kidnapper could be posing as a police officer, and had pulled his victims over beforehand. Whatever the case, Anna was less than thrilled to be traveling that same road today.

“Why don’t we take the interstate instead?” she asked him.

“That would add half an hour to the trip, Anna. We’ll be fine.”

“Why am I thinking, Famous last words?”

“Look,” Woody said, “people can’t let this nutcase dictate where they’re going or how they’re going to get there. That’s like refusing to travel by air because someone might hijack the plane and fly it into a building.”

“It’s not the same thing,” she said.

“Well, I really want to go today, and I think you do too. We’ll be careful, okay?” Before she could respond, he crooked a finger to her and pointed to something below his right thigh. When she leaned over she saw, underneath the driver’s seat, one of those padded, telescoping steel bars that can extend to two feet or so with one flick of the wrist. In its collapsed state, it was maybe ten inches long. Woody took it from under the seat and showed it to her. “Anybody comes along who looks suspicious, I’ll crack his skull with this.”

“I’m so reassured,” she said, frowning.

Her doubts were still there fifteen minutes later, when they stopped for breakfast at a Wendy’s on Lakeland Drive, on the way out of town.

The only highway patrolman Anna knew sat down at their table with a plateful of biscuits and gravy. Officer Jack Speerman had been Woody’s roommate in college and teammate on the football team when Jack decided to drop out and apply at the Police Academy. Some admired him for it, but some said he was throwing away a great future — maybe even the NFL. Jack didn’t care. He’d been determined to become a cop. Woody had once confided to Anna that he suspected part of the reason was that Jack’s brother Stuart, a year or two older, had been in and out of jail most of his miserable life, and that Jack might be trying somehow to atone for the sins of the sibling. Whatever the reason, Jack Speerman had done well, and seemed happy in his job.

He asked them where they were headed, and Woody told him. When Anna restated her concerns, Jack shook his head. “I agree with Woody,” he said. “Don’t change your plans because of whoever this guy is. He’s probably a thousand miles away by now anyway. Just be watchful.” He dusted some salt onto his gravy. “It’s the folks traveling alone that I worry about.”

“What?” said Anna.

Jack pointed his plastic fork at a young lady placing her order at the counter. She was tall and attractive in a sixties-hippie kind of way — straight black hair, long skirt, no makeup. A cloth purse was slung over one shoulder. “Said she’s looking for a ride to Kentucky.”

“Why worry about her?” Woody asked, chewing his egg sandwich.

“What?”

“When she finds a ride,” Woody said, “she won’t be traveling alone.”

The cop chuckled. “Problem is, she might not find one. I’m going that way myself when I finish up here, but I can’t take her with me — that’s strictly against the rules. And I don’t have a good feeling about her standing beside the road with her thumb stuck out.” Then he paused, looked at both Anna and Woody, and cocked an eyebrow. “Unless...”

“We’re only going as far as Starkville,” Anna said quickly.

“That’s on her way. From there she could find a ride to Tupelo, then maybe catch the Trace up to Nashville and points north. Or stay on Highway 45 up to I-40 and—”

“Sure,” Woody said. “We could take her to Starkville at least.”

Anna was scowling.

“You don’t want to?” Woody said.

She shrugged. “It’s just — well...”

“Well what?”

Anna swallowed and lowered her voice. “Nobody knows who this killer is, Woody. We don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman.”

“I doubt it’s a woman,” Jack said. “All three victims disappeared without a trace, or any sign of a struggle. For that to happen, there was probably some lifting and carrying of a body. Miss Flower Child over there’s not big and strong enough for that kind of thing.”

“He’s right, Anna. There’s no risk. We could at least help her out.”

Anna sighed, thought it over, and nodded. Who knows, maybe three traveling together would be even safer than two. But she kept that thought to herself.

When they’d finished their breakfast, Woody threaded his way over to the girl’s table — her name was Mary, she told him — and invited her to join them on their trip. Our good deed for the week, Anna thought. Mary gratefully accepted and, after they were introduced, gave Anna a smile that warmed her heart and made her ashamed of her doubts. The three of them waved a goodbye to the cop, left the restaurant, piled themselves and Mary’s travel bag into the Toyota, and headed east into the morning sun. Four miles later the route curved northeast toward the towns of Carthage and Louisville and Starkville. Lakeland Drive, when the trees beside it started outnumbering the businesses, was better known as State Highway 25. Anna tried not to think about that.

Besides, it was a gorgeous day for traveling.

Mary and Anna exchanged some polite small talk for the next ten minutes or so. Mary revealed that her brother was moving from their hometown in Lexington, Kentucky, to Jackson later this year, to work for an engineering firm there, and they all agreed that it was indeed a small world. Mary herself was on her way back to Kentucky, returning from a visit to an old girlfriend in Baton Rouge. Her junk heap of a car had died on a back road on Highway 61 near the Mississippi/Louisiana line, and was now in a repair shop owned by a friend of a friend in Natchez. She’d retrieve it later, after her brother moved here and got settled in, she said, although she wasn’t sure the car was worth retrieving. She traveled light, and despite the safety issues she didn’t mind hitching rides.

“Pretty trusting of you,” Anna said.

Mary smiled. “I’m a trustful person. It’s a prerequisite for my job.”

“Your job?”

“I’m a nun,” Mary said.

Woody almost ran off the road, and even Anna gasped aloud. “You’re kidding,” they blurted at the same time.

“Strange but true,” Mary said. “I’m Sister Mary Patrick. Or at least I will be, when I finish my training. St. Anthony’s Convent in Elizabethtown.”

“A nun,” Woody said, as if tasting the word.

“Don’t worry, I won’t try to talk you into choir practice or bless your car or anything.”

“Actually, my mother’ll be pleased,” Anna said. “She worries sometimes about the company I keep.”

“I hope you’re not referring to me,” Woody said.

She leaned over to Mary and whispered, “I’m referring specifically to him.” They both laughed.

Ignoring that, Woody said, “I couldn’t help noticing your jewelry.” He nodded toward a bracelet of sparkling green stones Mary wore on her left wrist. “It doesn’t look very nunlike.”

She grinned at him. “It’s not. It’s way too expensive. But it was a gift, and I never take it off.”

“Girls will be girls?” Anna said.

“I told you, I’m just a trainee.”

As they made their way north, Anna filled Mary in on her background, her family, her plans to be a schoolteacher. She’d been raised not far from here, Anna said; they would even be able to stop tonight on the way back and say hello to one of her uncles, since he worked at a Walmart right beside the highway up in Winston County. Most of her relatives still lived in that area, and most were miffed that she hadn’t chosen to attend the university in nearby Starkville. But the scholarship she’d gotten three years ago to Millsaps, in Jackson, had been too good to pass up.

“Did the two of you meet there?” Mary cut her eyes over to Woody, who seemed to have tuned them out and was focused on his driving.

“No, Mr. Cool over here went to Mississippi State. He graduated last year, I met him at a party that summer, and I’ve been trying to educate him ever since.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about the schools down here,” Mary said.

“He doesn’t either,” Anna replied, grinning.

The subject eventually changed to the Night Stalker — even Mary had heard about it on the news — and Woody said he’d been able to see in Jack Speerman’s face this morning the pressure he’d been under lately. Especially since most everyone knew about Jack’s brother’s errant ways and had never seemed entirely trustful toward him because of it. In Woody’s opinion, the fact that Route 25 was Jack’s assigned territory this past year or so, and the fact that all the killings had taken place along that highway, was both good and bad. Bad for the obvious reasons, but good because if Jack could somehow help break the case, he’d be a hero.

“Forget the hero part,” Anna said. “If I were him, I’d ask to get reassigned.”

Woody shook his head. “That’d be hard, in more ways that one. This is the ideal work territory for him — he lives near here, and only about a hundred yards off the road. Besides, he’s smart, and good at what he does. Hell, he really could — oops, excuse me, Sister Mary.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“—he really could be the one who solves all these killings.”

“Wish he’d hurry up and do it, then,” Anna said. She felt a chill ripple its way up her spine.

On that note they fell silent. The next half hour was smooth sailing: they cranked down the windows and cranked up the radio and occasionally hummed along with an oldies station, the autumn sun in their laps and the wind whipping their hair around. Anna was suddenly glad she’d agreed to the trip.

It was almost ten o’clock when Sister Mary Patrick asked Woody if they could stop at the gas station just ahead on their left — the last one, Anna knew, before a particularly long stretch of forest and pastureland. “Too much coffee back at Wendy’s,” Mary explained, and was the first one out the door when Woody pulled the little Toyota into the station. They parked beside a metal trash bin almost as big as the car.

“Think I’ll make a pit stop too,” Anna told Woody. She followed Mary into the minimart section of the building and waited in the hallway outside the restroom door until Mary was done. When Mary came out and they squeezed past each other, Anna said to her, “Tell Woody to amuse himself for a while — when I finish in here I’m gonna buy some snacks before we leave, to bring along with us.”

Fifteen minutes later Anna Langley took an armload of purchases to the cashier, who looked to be about a hundred years old. They exchanged pleasantries about the fine weather and the guilty pleasures of fast food (but, thankfully, no comments about the Night Stalker), then she paid up and pushed through the door into the sunlight.

She was annoyed to find that Woody had left the car unlocked. She tossed most of her purchases inside — several bags of peanuts and chips and pastries — and stuffed a six-pack of Sprite into the cooler they had put on the backseat. Neither Woody nor Mary was anywhere to be seen. Mary’s duffel bag and purse were gone as well. Anna hoped they hadn’t been stolen. There was such a thing as being too trusting, she thought.

Anna locked the car, headed back inside, described her traveling companions to the cashier, and asked if he’d seen them. He told her he had spotted Woody through one of the east windows, walking across the highway toward a stand of pines awhile ago, and had seen the young lady heading out there after him a few minutes later. That made sense, Anna thought; Woody was a photography nut, and couldn’t resist taking pictures of almost anything, and Mary had probably spotted him out there and followed him after visiting the restroom. But if so, where were her purse and duffel bag?

“If you go over there,” the old-timer said, “tell ’em to be careful — there are some dry washes and open wells around here, and things like that would be hard to see underneath all the grass and bushes. Most of it’s private property, but there ain’t no fences to tell you so. I’d hate for your friends to drop off the face of the earth.”

“I imagine they’d hate that too,” Anna said. But she doubted Woody would have any problems there. He had grown up traipsing through the backwoods.

She thanked the cashier and walked back out into the sunshine. After crossing the road and trudging through a weed-choked field with a sharp eye on the ground ahead of her, she spotted Woody’s blue windbreaker in the distance. Sure enough, he was snapping photos right and left. At the very edge of the trees was a tall, ancient windmill, its rusted blades turning in the breeze while accomplishing nothing at all. Something was rubbing against something, though, and with every rotation came a high-pitched noise: eeee-urrr, eeee-urrr, eeee-urrr. It was a metallic, irritating, and infinitely sad sound.

“Where’s Mary?” Anna called.

Woody looked up. “She hopped on the tornado to Oz. Found a better ride.”

“What?”

“An old couple, she said, on their way to Tupelo. Told me she met them in the parking lot. That’ll get her farther than we’re going, and besides, they had a bigger car.” He frowned and pointed to a spot near her feet. “Watch out — fire ants.”

Anna sidestepped to safe ground. “Probably the folks I saw inside, awhile ago,” she said. “I’m surprised, though, that she didn’t at least say goodbye.”

“She wanted to, but her new traveling buddies were ready to leave. I walked over to help her load her stuff into their car and they took off.”

“Didn’t she come out here with you?”

“Nope. When she found her new chauffeurs, she waved and hollered at me till I noticed her, then I hiked back over there to see her off and came on back. I’m getting some good pictures.” He looked at his watch. “You took awhile in there.”

“I bought some more provisions. I thought there’d be three of us.” Anna was a bit surprised to find herself sad that Mary had deserted them. “At least we swapped cell phone numbers.”

“Sorry she left,” Woody said, going back to his photos, “but it’s her loss. Now we can have all the snacks to ourselves.”

Anna looked around. The ground was damp, but grassy and covered in pine straw. “Why don’t we just eat lunch out here? You hungry yet?”

He grinned. “I’m always hungry.”

“Stay here and do your camera thing — I’ll fetch the vittles. Give me your car keys.”

“It’s not locked.”

“It is now,” she said. “I locked it.”

He dug his keys from his pocket and tossed them to her. “Just don’t go over there,” he added, pointing off to the south. “Poison ivy.”

“There are worse things out here than poison ivy and fire ants.” She told him about what the cashier had said to her about hidden wells and gullies.

“Danger,” he announced, drawing an imaginary sword, “is my middle name.”

Going back to the parking lot seemed a shorter trip than before. A good thing, since the temperature was steadily rising. When Anna arrived at the car she unlocked the driver’s-side door, started to pop the trunk to get the picnic basket, and remembered she needed her sunglasses. She thought a moment, then recalled that she had tucked them into the glove compartment. She hopped in, leaned across the middle console, reached into the glove compartment for her glasses — and froze.

Right in front of her, perched there in the compartment on top of Woody’s road maps and gas receipts and her sunglasses, was a bright green bracelet. Mary’s bracelet. Anna stared at it a moment, her mind reeling, then blinked and glanced across the road. Woody was still taking pictures.

Anna shut the glove compartment and stared straight ahead through the windshield. Her pulse was hammering in her ears.

What the hell is Mary’s bracelet doing here?

She decided she would ask Woody that question — but immediately changed her mind. Taking long breaths, she replayed the situation as Woody had described it. While Anna was in the bathroom Mary had come outside, spotted the other travelers, maybe spotted a Lee County license plate — Tupelo is its largest town (would she have known that?) — and decided to switch horses. Woody was supposedly already across the road, poking around in the pine forest. All that was understandable, and certainly possible. It could have happened. But none of it explained the bracelet in the glove compartment. I never take it off, Mary had said.

It also didn’t explain the fact that the cashier had told Anna he’d seen Mary walk across the highway and field to join Woody, something that Woody told her didn’t happen. Woody said Mary had remained on this side of the road, and had signaled to him when she was ready to load up the other car.

Anna swallowed, and forced her mind in another direction. A direction that terrified her.

What if Mary hadn’t found another ride? What if she had come back out and instead noticed Woody over there in the trees and walked over to join him, as the cashier said she’d done? What if no one else was around to see what happened then? What if—

What if she had fallen into a well?

That, of course, hadn’t happened. But...

Anna felt ice-cold fingers tickle her heart.

What if she’d been thrown into a well?

What if Woody had then lied about her catching the other ride?

Anna thought back to what Jack Speerman had said earlier: the killer was probably big, and powerful. Woody was six three, and more than two hundred pounds. A former football player. And what better place to hide bodies than in an abandoned well? Maybe she was in there with the three other victims, right at this moment.

What if Woody Prestridge is the killer everyone’s searching for? My God, Anna, think about what you’re suggesting here!

But could it be? Woody had been acting strange lately — she’d figured it was just the pressure of his new sales job — and he also spent a lot of time traveling the state. He obviously knew these stops along Highway 25. And Anna had been in the restroom and in the store buying goodies for a long time; there would’ve been plenty of opportunity for him to do away with Mary, steal her bracelet, hide it in the glove compartment, and then take her belongings from the Toyota and toss them into the metal trash bin. Or forget the trash bin: he could’ve tossed them into the hole after her. No one would’ve noticed. The old couple Anna had spotted earlier, inside the store, were the only people she’d seen since arriving, besides the cashier. Thinking about it now, she remembered that Mary had been the one to ask to take a break here — but if she hadn’t, Anna wondered, would Woody have found another reason for them to stop?

On the one hand, this kind of thinking was crazy; she couldn’t imagine Woody doing something like that. But the truth was, she couldn’t imagine anybody doing it. And somebody was.

She looked again at the closed glove compartment, pictured the bracelet inside.

Suddenly Anna knew what she had to do. Call me if you need anything, Jack Speerman had told them, just before they’d left him at Wendy’s. And she had written down his number.

Anna dug her phone and notepad from her purse and stepped around the far side of the building. No one was out there except a mangy dog sleeping in the shade. She punched in Jack’s number and held her breath while she listened to the ringing.

“Speerman,” a voice said.

“Jack, this is Anna Langley. Woody Prestridge’s friend.”

“Sure, Anna. What’s up?”

She hesitated. So far this was just speculation, she reminded herself. Nobody had been accused, nobody had been hurt. But that was about to change.

“I think I might be in trouble,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She swallowed hard. “I’m at a gas station on Highway 25” — she gave him pinpoint directions — “and I think someone... someone here... might be the guy who’s making these women disappear.”

“What?”

“There’s no time to tell you everything now, but I think...” She stopped, took some more breaths. “That girl who caught a ride with us? Mary? I found something of hers, something she would never have parted with. And she’s vanished.”

“What are you saying, Anna?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m saying she might be dead.”

The phone went silent.

“Jack? Are you there?”

“I’m here. And you know my next question.”

She rubbed a hand over her face, forced her voice to stay calm. “You want to know who did it.”

“Do you know?”

She started to tell him her suspicions, then stopped. He and Woody were old friends; he wouldn’t believe her. Not on the phone. “No,” she said. “Not for certain.”

Another silence. Then: “Where’s Woody, Anna? Is he okay?”

“His cell phone battery’s dead,” she lied. “He’s here, though — he told me to call you.”

“Anna, you think it could be him. Don’t you?”

She paused. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. Okay, I’m on my way.” She heard, in the phone, the sound of hurried footsteps.

“We’re across the highway from the gas station. In the trees near an old windmill,” she said. “How long will it take you?”

“To get there? Twenty minutes.”

“Should I call somebody else too?” Now she could hear his car door opening, and then the roar of a motor.

“No, I’m coming. Keep an eye on him, okay?”

She disconnected and stuffed the phone into her pocket. Put both palms over her face and stayed that way a minute, then rubbed her eyes with her forefingers and stood up straight. Whatever would happen would happen, she told herself. She walked back to the car and took the picnic basket out of the trunk. The cooler and the goodies she left in the car for later, although she now wondered if there would be a later.

On an impulse, she opened the driver’s door again and groped underneath the seat until she located the padded steel club Woody had shown her earlier. She tucked it into her left shirtsleeve and buttoned the cuff to hold it tight and hidden.

At least she had a weapon.

After several long, deep breaths, Anna got out of the car and lugged the picnic basket across the field to where Woody was waiting. Actually, to where he was still snapping photos. If he’d just killed someone he was being pretty nonchalant about it. Above their heads, the windmill turned, tireless and eternal: eeee-urrr, eeee-urrr. In other situations, the grating sound would probably have driven her crazy. As it was, she had more pressing issues to think about.

She put down the basket, wiped sweat from her forehead, took a look around—

And saw it. Not far past where Woody was standing. A brick-rimmed hole in the ground, about five feet across. Several rotten boards lay in the undergrowth to one side. From what little she could see, the brick walls were chipped and blackened and the opening was half-hidden by clumps of what looked like Virginia creeper. Five leaves each, not three like poison ivy. Not that it mattered. A little itch wouldn’t matter much to someone falling down that pit.

Woody glanced at her, and followed her gaze. “Looks like you were right about the abandoned wells.”

But this one wasn’t totally abandoned, she noticed. There was a rough path leading east from the edge of the well, and what looked like a single narrow tire track rutted the muddy ground. Something had been hauled to the well, and recently. Her first thought was a body, but she had another idea, one that made a lot of sense. If there was in fact a body in the well — or more than one — it would be stinking to high heaven. Unless something had been dumped in on top of it. And for that task, what would work better than good old dirt, and what better to carry dirt in than a wheelbarrow? Because that’s what had been used to make the single rut beside the well.

She raised her eyes and studied the rest of her surroundings. No other clues presented themselves. Off in the distance, in the same direction as the tire track, what looked like the gray-shingled roof of a house rose above the trees. No doubt it faced an unseen road, somewhere farther off to the east.

Woody’s voice snapped Anna out of her musings. “Something wrong?”

She blinked, looked at him, and forced a smile. If you only knew, she thought. “Just wondering where to set up the feast.”

“Here, I’ll help you.”

“Aren’t you worried about being late for the game?”

“It won’t start till two thirty,” he said. “Plenty of time.”

They chose a clearing twenty feet from the well, although Anna was much more aware of its presence than he seemed to be. After he’d spread out the blanket she unloaded the sandwiches and thermos bottles and sat with her back to the distant gas station, barely visible from here. She’d decided it was more important to watch Woody than to try to watch the parking lot for Jack’s arrival. Woody insisted on taking a picture of her sitting on the blanket with the picnic gear spread out around her, then he sat down as well and dug into his lunch. Her stomach was doing backflips. She’d never been less hungry in her life.

She was trying to decide whether to try a sandwich, at least for appearance’s sake, when Woody said, “Aren’t you gonna eat anything?”

She felt her face heat up. “Guess I’m a little uncomfortable. What if we’re trespassing?”

He looked amused. “We’re not. I know the owner.”

She blinked and glanced at the distant rooftop. “Of the house over there?”

“The land too. I should’ve told you—”

Suddenly her cell phone buzzed. She dug it out of her pocket and checked the display. No name was shown, and she didn’t recognize the number. Keeping her eyes on Woody, she held the phone to her ear.

“Anna?” a voice said.

“Yes?”

“It’s Mary. Mary Patrick.”

Anna felt her heart leap in her chest. Mary?

“Sorry to call out of the blue like this. I sort of need a favor.”

Anna was breathing hard. She couldn’t believe it. Sister Mary Patrick is alive. “Where are you?” she managed to say.

“I’m at a McDonald’s in Louisville” — she incorrectly pronounced it Louieville, like Kentucky — “having lunch. The folks I’m riding with stopped here. Hope you don’t mind that I cut out on you.”

“No, that’s fine,” Anna said, trying to keep her voice steady. She pictured Louisville on the map in her head: Mary wasn’t far away. “What favor do you need?”

Anna looked at Woody, who was happily eating his turkey sandwich. He’s innocent, Anna thought, her eyes brimming with tears. Thank God. Thank God I was wrong. And she knew what Mary was going to say before she said it.

“Anna, I think I lost my bracelet, the green one, when I took my stuff out of the car. I remember snagging it on the door handle. I know it’s a long shot, but I was wondering—”

“Woody found it,” Anna said, loud enough for Woody to hear.

He looked up at her, his eyebrows raised. Anna pointed to her wrist and silently mouthed the words Mary Patrick. It took a second, then he understood and nodded and said, around a mouthful of turkey and cheese, “I found it after she left, put it in the glove compartment. Forgot to tell you.”

Anna turned her attention back to the phone, and to Mary’s gushing thanks. “You’re most welcome,” Anna said. “This is turning out to be a crazy day.” As the thought struck her, she added, “Your address is on the card you gave me. I’ll mail the bracelet to you soon as we get back.”

“Great. I sure appreciate it, Anna. And hey — thanks again for the ride.”

They exchanged goodbyes and Anna disconnected. She felt light enough to fly. One friend was alive and well, and another was innocent and exonerated. An incredible weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Just as she was about to confess everything to Woody, including her ungrounded suspicions, she realized she should call off the reinforcements; after all, Jack Speerman was on his way here at this moment. Already feeling guilty about the false alarm, she picked up her phone and was about to punch in Jack’s number when the phone buzzed in her hand. She checked the display and saw that it was Mary again.

“Anna? Sorry to be a pest, but I just remembered something. Could you just give that bracelet to Jack when he gets there? He can bring it to me.”

Anna frowned. “Jack?”

“The patrolman. He’s on his way there, right? He said he’d be back soon, and my ride says they’ll be glad to wait, so—”

“Wait a minute,” Anna cut in. “How’d you know he’s coming here?”

“I overheard him talking to you on the phone awhile ago. He called your name when you phoned him about your car trouble.”

Anna felt her head spinning. Car trouble?

“He stopped and was eating with us here at McDonald’s when you called him,” Mary said. A silence dragged out. “Anna? You still there?”

Anna’s brain seemed to have gone numb. Her head was roaring.

She had told Jack she thought Mary had been killed — and yet Jack had been there with Mary at the time, while they were talking? He was sitting right there with her? Why didn’t he tell me that?

There could be only one reason. Dazed, she peered up at Woody, who was still wolfing down sandwiches, and then looked past him, focusing as if for the first time on the roofline of the house just above the trees behind him. The house owned by someone Woody said he knew, someone who wouldn’t mind their trespassing...

Oh my God.

Anna felt her stomach turn over. She lowered the phone and said to Woody, “That’s Jack’s house, isn’t it?”

Woody had turned away and was digging around in the picnic basket. “What?”

But she knew it was true. Jack Speerman lived there — about a hundred yards off the road, Woody had said. He lived there — here — and the well was on his land. The well with the wheelbarrow ruts running toward it from the direction of the house. Anna’s thoughts were flying now, zinging around in her head.

And then she heard something behind her. She whirled around—

And stared straight into Jack’s face. Anna yelped and clapped a hand over her mouth.

Woody heard her and turned. “Jack?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

She just kept staring. This wasn’t the mild, friendly Jack Speerman they’d seen at Wendy’s. This face was drawn and flushed with anger — but also with something else. Frustration? Guilt? Regret?

Anna was breathing in ragged gasps, trying to think. Had Jack heard enough of the phone conversation just now to know she was talking to Mary? “Jack,” she said, panting. “Thank God you’re here.” She leaned closer and whispered, “I haven’t said anything to Woody about all this. In fact, I think I might’ve been wrong. I was just about to call you back and—”

Vaguely, as if from a distance, she could hear Mary’s voice in the phone she held in her hand: “Anna? Are you there?” Anna looked dumbly down at it, knowing that Jack had heard it too, but before she could say or do anything more, the phone was suddenly gone, slapped out of her hand and onto the ground six feet away. Her fingers were stinging.

Jack Speerman looked as if he wanted to hit her again, and not in the hand this time.

“So you know Mary’s alive,” he said softly, “and you probably know by now that I was with her when you called. And if you know that...” Jack paused and shook his head. In a voice heavy with sadness he continued, “What have you done, Anna?” He glanced past her at Woody, who was standing now, the picnic forgotten. “What in God’s name are you two doing here anyway, snooping around?”

“You invited me,” Woody said, sounding hurt. “You said to stop by sometime and take pictures—”

“A year ago. Things have changed since then.” Jack’s gaze moved to the gray rooftop beyond the trees and then back again, and Anna saw the heartache in his eyes. “What are the odds?” he murmured. “Couldn’t you have left well enough alone?”

Woody, Anna could tell, was beginning to understand. He had backed up several paces, his eyes narrowed and alert. He looked at the house too, then at the well behind him, and at the wheelbarrow tracks between the two. Putting it all together. Last of all, he turned again to stare at the pain and guilt on his old friend’s face.

Except for the regular screech and creak of the windmill, the scene had gone dead silent. Anna could feel her heart thundering in her chest.

“It’s you,” Woody said, with something like awe in his voice. “You’re the Night Stalker. He looked like someone impersonating a policeman because he was a policeman.”

Jack ran a beefy hand over his face. He had perspired all the way through his uniform shirt. “No,” he replied miserably. “It wasn’t me.”

“It was me,” a voice said, from off to the side. All three swiveled to look.

Standing there on the rutted path to the house was a carbon copy of Jack Speerman. The eyes, mouth, even the build was the same. The only differences were hair color and height: this brother was darker, and shorter. That, and the fact that there was something odd in his eyes.

And a gun in his hand.

“Stuart?” Woody said.

“Hello, Woody. Lotta water under the bridge.” Stuart Speerman turned to Anna, his face grave. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“But I know who you are,” Anna said. She felt strange, and disconnected. It was as if she were watching all this from someplace else. At this point she was beyond surprise.

At last everything made sense. The violent, unbalanced brother, living here with Jack, staying out of sight except for an occasional drive down the road behind the house to intersect with Highway 25 and the unsuspecting motorists traveling there. The perfect hideout, for both himself and the bodies of his victims. The perfect opportunity to strike and take cover and strike again.

“Why?” Anna managed to ask.

Stuart’s face grew even more solemn. “Voices,” he said. “They told me to do it. I had no choice.”

She shook her head. “Three innocent people. You’re insane.”

He shrugged as if that might indeed be a possibility.

Anna turned to Jack. “And you helped him.”

“I protected him. There’s a difference.”

“Was it your car that stopped those women?”

“No,” Stuart said. “But it was his light bar. It fits pretty well on the top of his other car. The one the voices told me to drive.” He grinned then, and for a moment Anna could clearly see the gleam of madness in his eyes. “It’s amazing — nobody worries if there’s no uniform, or markings on the car. That flashing light’s all it takes. Besides, I work at night.”

“Worked,” Jack corrected. “You promised me it was over.” He turned to Anna and Woody and said wearily, “It’s over now.”

“Well, it will be.” Stuart’s smile was back again. “After we do a little cleanup.”

Woody was staring at his old friend. “How could you do it, Jack? I mean, you’re a peace officer.”

The muscles in Jack’s face seemed to slacken. “He’s my brother.” As if that explained everything.

“So you’re going to shoot us both? Is that it?”

“He won’t,” Stuart said. “Somebody from the gas station might hear it.” Slowly, casually, he took a noise suppressor from his pocket and screwed it onto the end of his pistol. “Besides, there’s no real need for that. That well’s ninety feet deep.” Stuart grinned again. “Minus maybe ten feet of dirt and bodies. Still a long way to the bottom.”

“Wait a minute,” Anna blurted. “You’re forgetting about our other friend. Mary. I told her what I suspected — she’ll call the police. The real police, I mean.” Even in her terror she gave Jack a withering glare. “And she knows where we are.”

Jack shook his head. “No, she doesn’t. I never mentioned your location when I spoke to you on the phone, and I heard most of what you said to her just now. All she knows is what I told her — you and Woody had car trouble somewhere.” Jack still had a haunted, sorrowful look, but there was no fear of discovery there. He was in control, and he knew it.

But Anna and Woody were about to die, and Anna knew it.

As if to confirm this, Stuart raised the silenced automatic and pointed it at Woody. “Gentlemen first,” he said.

And Anna did the only thing she could think of to do. Moments earlier she had unbuttoned the cuff of her left sleeve so the collapsed steel bar resting against her forearm could be easily removed. Now she snatched it out with her right hand, flicked it to its full length even as she spun around, and hit Jack Speerman with it, square in his left temple. As he went down, she turned again and threw the heavy bar as hard as she could, end over end, at Stuart.

“Run, Woody!” she shouted. “RUN!”

But Woody didn’t run. He didn’t run and he didn’t attack. He didn’t do anything but stand there, frozen and wide-eyed. Stuart Speerman, who had frantically ducked the bar Anna had thrown at him, stood straight up again, aimed the pistol, and shot Woody once in the chest.

Anna screamed, a primitive, blood-chilling scream that made Stuart turn and point his gun at her this time. The problem was, this target wasn’t stationary. Anna was sprinting toward him, face contorted and teeth bared in fear and rage, and in his surprise both his shots missed her. She crashed into him at full speed, biting and clawing, and both of them fell to the ground. But as short as Stuart Speerman was, he was not weak. He pulled his right arm free and clubbed her viciously in the forehead with the heavy automatic, and then hit her once more, on the left side of the head. Anna rolled off him and onto her stomach two feet from Woody’s sprawled body and four feet from the edge of the well. She was still conscious but was so stunned her world was spinning and full of stars. She tried to move but found she couldn’t.

At the edge of her fading eyesight she saw Stuart’s shoes take a step toward her, heard him say, “Good try.” And knew, although she couldn’t see his hands, that his gun was now aimed at her.

In those final seconds, a dozen thoughts ricocheted through her brain. Memories, loves, thrills, regrets. One was the realization that she should’ve gone for Jack’s gun after hitting him, should’ve tried to grab it off the ground or out of its holster or wherever it was, and shot Stuart with it. But she suspected that wouldn’t have worked either. The only difference was, she’d have died already, and twenty feet farther west.

It was all over now anyway.

Just as she was wondering whether to close her eyes or leave them open, another pair of shoes, these black and gleaming, stepped into her field of vision. She heard a grunt of great effort, and saw Stuart’s brown loafers rise an inch or two off the ground. With a huge push she managed to force herself onto her side so she could see, and when she looked up she saw Jack Speerman, bright blood oozing from his ear and nose, lifting and squeezing his brother from behind. Stuart’s arms were pinned to his sides, his gun useless. Grunting, the two men struggled there for several long seconds.

Then something happened that Anna would never forget. Jack looked down at her, looked down past his shorter brother’s shoulder, and Anna saw a strange peace deep in those eyes. A moment later, Jack moved slowly past her, still holding Stuart in a bear hug, and stepped into the well.

Neither of the brothers screamed, or said a word. They just vanished into the pit. After what seemed an extremely long time, she heard a muffled thud as they hit bottom.

She turned her head to look at Woody, lying beside her in a spreading pool of crimson, and thought, Help him. I have to help him. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even help herself. A moment later her eyes clouded, the incredible pain in her head washed over her—

“—and she passed out.”

Little Charlie was still asleep in his car seat, but Deborah sat and stared at her mother with eyes as big as quarters.

“You passed out?” she said. “What about Woody?”

“She — I— didn’t know, for a long time. I woke up two days later, in a bed at Baptist Hospital in Jackson. I barely pulled through, they said. Woody was in a room down the hall. It took five months for him to heal, but the bullet had missed his heart, and he made it. Both of us made it, physically speaking. But...”

“You didn’t stay together.”

“No.” Anna McDowell looked at her daughter, then back at the road ahead. “Thinking back on it now, I realize that I could never in a thousand years have suspected your father of having done what I — incorrectly — suspected that Woody Prestridge had done. If you truly know and love someone, those doubts just wouldn’t be there, no matter what. I think Woody and I were never able to get past that.”

“And then you met Daddy.”

Anna nodded. “Six months later. We got married right away, and a year after that, a precious little girl named Deborah came along.”

The girl thought about all that for several minutes. “I still don’t understand. Who rescued you? Did someone hear you scream?”

“No. No one from the station, or the nearby area, heard or saw anything at all. We survived only because of a quirk of fate. The phone Jack Speerman slapped out of my hand stayed on, and the connection stayed open. Mary didn’t hear everything, but she heard enough. She called 911 and the cops and ambulances were there within fifteen minutes. Mary saved our lives.”

“A lady you’d just met earlier that day.”

“Yep. An angel, according to your dad.”

“But — like Speerman said — how did she know exactly where you were?”

Anna grinned. “The windmill. That rusty old windmill, squawking away in the background. She heard it through the phone.”

Deborah was frowning again. “But to have heard the windmill noise earlier — to know where it was — Mary must’ve been in the woods after all.”

“She was. Just like the cashier at the station said. She told me later that she’d crossed the street and the field all the way to the woods after coming out of the restroom — but then turned around and went right back to talk to the folks who wound up letting her ride with them. Woody never saw her until she called out to him a few minutes later.”

“So you were wrong. He wasn’t lying.”

“I was wrong about a lot of things,” Anna said. “Turned out Woody’s odd behavior was because of his new position. He later transferred from sales to desk work.” She took in a long breath and blew it out. “Nobody was lying that day except Jack, and nobody had killed anyone except Stuart.”

“But Jack was guilty too, right?”

“Yes, he was. And he knew it.”

Deborah blinked twice, her eyes still wide. “Whoa.” She looked a little overwhelmed. “Has Daddy ever heard this story?”

“Oh yes.”

“What about Aunt Penny?”

Anna smiled again. “There’s something you probably don’t know about Penny. She used to be a nun. Or at least she trained for it. Then she changed careers and moved to Tennessee.”

Deborah gaped at her mother. “What?! You said you were telling me the truth!”

“I was.”

“But you said your friend that day... you said she was named Mary Patrick.”

“That was the name the church gave her — they do that. Her real name was Penny McDowell.”

Deborah turned and stayed silent for several moments, watching the countryside glide past the windows. “So Aunt Penny didn’t just save your life; she wound up introducing you to her brother.”

“And by doing so, made sure she would have a niece and nephew to come visit her once a year.”

Deborah giggled. It was a good sound, Anna thought, after what they’d been talking about for the past hour.

She thought about what Officer Keller had told her, after the incident with the would-be carjacker this morning. Was it true? Had what happened to her that day long ago really made her tough?

Maybe it had. But right now she didn’t want to be tough. She wanted to be a regular mother, the kind her kids could love and trust and play with before the world around them tried to make them tough. That would come soon enough.

“Mom?” Deborah said.

“What, honey?”

“The story you told me. Do you think about it much?”

Anna waited a long time before answering. Because the truth wasn’t the answer she wanted to give, or the one Deborah wanted to hear. Of course Anna thought about it, those things that had happened there in the piney woods beside the highway. She would always think about it. Sometimes, late at night, she could even hear the windmill again, the sound of those ancient, rusted blades turning around and around and around. But maybe now, now that the story had been told, she would think about it less. Who knew?

“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes I do.”

Deborah nodded, as if to acknowledge that the truth was always the best approach, honestly the best policy. They exchanged a knowing smile, Anna popped open another Coke, and little Charlie woke up in the backseat and rubbed both eyes with his chubby fists. Outside, State Highway 25 became 82 and then 45 and then pointed them north toward Tupelo and Corinth, straight as an arrow. Just south of the Tennessee line the sun broke through the clouds, waving them on.

It was a good day for traveling.

Anglers of the Keep by Robert Busby

Olive Branch

Hunched over my ex-father-in-law’s front yard, molding a layer of pine straw around the purple lilac hedges and crawl-space grates wrapped around Lafayette’s sprawl of a brick one-story rancher, I heard the tires of Erin’s rental car massaging the gravel drive leading up to the carport. Erin had found a new breath of life after our divorce, quit her job as first-grade teacher at Bodock Elementary to pursue her PhD in American folklore at Oklahoma State University. Except for the semester she took off after Betty, her mom, was murdered a year and a half earlier, she’d been in Stillwater for four years of the five we’d been divorced. I was between gigs. Holding out for a management position, as they say.

Erin eased the car to a stop just short of the carport even though her father’s El Camino had not been parked there when I pulled in this morning. I’d assumed Lafayette was at the Feed Mill on Main Street, slugging coffee and shooting the shit with the other old-timers. Lafayette’s lungs were bad sick, figured he’d want to get in all the breakfasts he could. But it wasn’t like him not to welcome Erin home. The car door slammed. I stabbed the shears through the pallet of pine straw into the red clay underneath, made my way around the house along the stone path embroidered with monkey grass I’d planted for Lafayette last spring.

“Thought you might be over here,” she said.

She pushed herself off the hood of the blue Saturn. She wore a black wool turtleneck and when she uncrossed her arms her tits became ambitious. Her teeth gripped a peppermint candy. I folded my work gloves into the back pocket of my jeans and gave her a hug.

“I just came from the hospital,” she said. “Dad shot himself last night.”

“He all right?”

“He was cleaning that damn.22 revolver of his,” she said. “He forgot to unload it first. I flew in as soon as I got the call from the hospital.” She removed her plaid-lined parka from the car hood. “The bullet only got his ear.”

“Shit,” I said. “Should’ve called.”

She tumbled the set of keys around her finger. “Wasn’t so bad he couldn’t drive himself to the hospital. They’re keeping him there another night. I came by to get him a change of clothes.”

Erin invited me inside. A short, lopsided pyramid of empty beer cans squatted next to the garbage bin. Towers of newspapers and dirty plates had been erected on the dining room table when the kitchen sink had refused further occupancy. Erin reheated the leftover coffee in the carafe on the burner while we rinsed the dishes in the sink and sorted them into the dishwasher. Erin had always been attractively one diet away from what might be considered thick or hungry, filled out her jeans as if she’d been dipped up to her waist in a vat of liquid denim and left to air dry. Considering she’d flown into Memphis the night before and had immediately driven two hours south to the North Mississippi Medical Center in Gum Pond, twenty-five miles east of Bodock, and slept all night in a hospital room because her father had grazed a bullet off his head, she looked pretty damn good.

The first thread of steam rose from the coffee. Erin poured two cups and leaned against the counter. She grimaced at the stale, scorched Folgers. Said she needed a favor.

I smirked. “You wanna get remarried? Want me to be Lafayette’s emergency contact?”

Erin fingered some coffee off the edge of her lips and said, “Found Lafayette a donor.”

The night Betty was shot, Lafayette had ambled into their house after work to find a pair of men jacked up on methamphetamine holding her at gunpoint in their living room while robbing the place. Lafayette startled the man training the .357 on Betty into pulling the trigger. The other one, a black guy, managed to make the back door, but the ol’ boy who put a bullet into Betty’s sternum tripped and fell. Lafayette had just enough time to retrieve the revolver and put a round through the back of the man’s skull as he scrambled away. Lafayette chased the other meth head down two backyards over, lodged a bullet in his spine while he climbed over a limestone retaining wall I’d installed for Gray Sherman, the neighborhood queer, the summer before. The man fell unarmed and off Lafayette’s property. Before the trial was over, the black one died in ICU at the hospital, which elevated the case from attempted murder or manslaughter, to committed. Lafayette probably would’ve won against either charge given the circumstantial grounds of his case and his standing in the community. He stunned everyone when he insisted on a plea bargain, took two years for involuntary manslaughter. The best most of us could figure was Lafayette just wanted to move past the ordeal.

Erin and I were already three years into our divorce when Lafayette was admitted to the minimum-security wing at Parchman. A little over six months into his two-year sentence he nearly keeled over during a physical. His blackout led to a biopsy and the diagnosis that sarcoidosis had completely scarred his upper respiratory system. Lafayette’s sentence was commuted to probation by Governor Fordice, courtesy of the urging of Judge Polk, who’d played football with Lafayette at Ole Miss. The convenience mattered little: as a seventy-year-old felon still technically serving out a manslaughter sentence, Lafayette had a lung allocation score — determined by a number of variables set forth by the United Network for Organ Sharing — that was too low for any viable shot of finding a donor in the seven months the doctors gave him to live.

Erin sipped her coffee and explained how she had discovered this loophole called the Good Samaritan clause, which allowed a donor to bypass any UNOS regulations and choose whatever nonfamily recipient he or she wanted at her own discretion. In Lafayette’s case, that donor was a Pentecostal preacher dying of liver disease. The preacher’s church had burned down last year. Erin had set all this up over the phone from Stillwater. Said the man was crazy, obsessed with all the old martyrs or something, had agreed to donate his lung to Lafayette on the grounds he turn over the deed to his house to the First Pentecostal Church of Bodock so that the ministry could continue in his absence.

“Huh.” I nodded at the rest of the house. “So this place is going to be filled with snake-handlers this time next year?”

“They’re not those kind of Pentecostals.”

“So you want Lafayette to trade his house for a lung,” I said, “and you explained all this to Lafayette over the phone yesterday morning, after which he shot himself in the head?”

“It was his ear.” Erin considered the window above the sink, the white oak limb framed there like a pillar of cigar ash. “What am I supposed to do, sit on my fat ass and do nothing? He’s all I’ve got.”

Our marriage had not so much dissolved as imploded after a streak of impulsivity landed me between the thighs of a stripper named Sugartits one night a month shy of our five-year anniversary. We’d married young, while she was still studying elementary education at Ole Miss, a compromise I wasn’t aware of until she enrolled at OSU. I was still building pinewood couch frames then at National Furniture out on Highway 54. We weren’t living hand-to-mouth, but I’d lost out on a supervisor promotion one Friday afternoon to a man I still regard to this day as a fundamental douche bag. Because I was young and dumb-ass enough back then to think Lafayette was the barometer by which Erin measured me, I said hell with it and drove a few counties over to DeWerks La’Rey — spelled backward: Yer Al Skrewed — and spent a good chunk of my paycheck crafting a dollar-bill hula skirt out of Sugartits’s thong. Got drunk and self-deprecated enough for it to seem perfectly justified to hand over what was left of my paycheck if Sugartits would just accompany me to a nearby motel.

Erin explained her favor. There was no guarantee she would be granted enough of a heads-up to fly back in time. I assured her I’d see that Lafayette made it to the transplant center two hours north of here.

Sometime later we ended up on the kitchen floor, our clothes on to protect against the cold brown linoleum. It wasn’t the first time since the divorce: every couple of months or so when she came back home we’d get together to fulfill the more carnal of marital conditions that somehow manage to slip through the cracks of a divorce.

“Have you thought about starting a landscaping business?” she asked. “You’ve done a hell of a job on my father’s yard. Seriously.”

I told her I hadn’t.

Erin stayed at Lafayette’s through the weekend to get everything squared away with the preacher, make sure things with Lafayette were settled down. Monday morning she headed back to Stillwater to teach her evening composition class. The class canceled on account of some arctic front from Canada pairing up with a wet weather system before sweeping through and shutting down the whole state of Oklahoma, delaying all incoming and outgoing flights. The storm then wound its way southeastward, gathering strength the entire time.

The preacher went into a coma Wednesday evening about the time the storm reached Mississippi and dumped six inches of ice and knocked power out across the Mid-South. Hospitals would retain electricity but the Pentecostal preacher had a living will instructing not to put him on life support. The preacher lasted thirty-six hours before he suffocated early Friday morning. The Memphis International Airport was closed when the lung was harvested a little after eight a.m.

When I wheeled into Lafayette’s yard Friday morning his lung was hurling through the air in a helicopter a few thousand feet above us. Lafayette was standing on his roof in a pair of Clorox-stained boxers, a loosely knotted noose around his neck, the end of the rope tied to a branch of the sweet gum stretching its bare, knotty limbs out over the front of the house. His wrists were cuffed behind his back. Gumballs from the tree overcrowded the gutters and piled up the slanted roof, accumulated around his bare feet. The tree had largely survived the storm but the branch he’d tied the rope to had sustained substantial damage. Probably Lafayette would take the branch with him to the ground and fracture a hip instead of stopping midair and snapping his neck in that pivotal moment when the rope and gravity became acquainted. Well goddamn, I thought. Lafayette’s efforts to mount the roof had pulled loose the stitches in his ear; skinny swirls of blood colored the white bandage like a peppermint. I stepped out of the truck and asked him what the shit it was he thought he was doing.

“Had been contemplating killing myself,” he said.

“Yeah, I gathered that much. You forget about us fishing?”

“Nah,” he said. His breath pulsed like a chimney pipe in the chilly morning air. This was the dead of February, when fish hunkered down at lake bottoms, barely moving in their dormancy. But Erin had insisted on the fishing euphemism, something about perceived reality and helping her father to feel as comfortable as possible about not riding with her to his transplant surgery. Last night, I went over to check on Lafayette after the hospital pager Erin had given me alerted us that the next page would mean the lung had been harvested. Instead of sticking around after a supper of hot dogs roasted on clothes hangers over the gas heater in his living room, I headed home to bed. Did not give thought to leaving the old man unsupervised and fending for himself in a powerless house, only the specter of his murdered wife for company.

“Nah, guess not,” Lafayette said again. “Suppose we can go fishing now.”

Lafayette’s operation was scheduled for noon. He was due in Olive Branch at 11:15 to get prepped for surgery: blood tests conducted to determine the type and strength of anesthesia, a tissue test to make sure his body wouldn’t reject the lung. It was 8:45 now. I’d filled the gas tank that morning on a generator-run pump at a buddy’s farm, which left Lafayette and me plenty of time to make the hour-and-a-half haul up US 78 to the transplant clinic just outside Memphis. I called up to Lafayette to get a move on then. He stepped forward and twirled his fingers to remind me of the predicament he’d gotten himself into. “Be right up,” I said.

I retrieved the ladder lying out in the front yard and propped it against the house. When I reached Lafayette he had his head down. The plow lines of his gray comb-over revealed freckled sections of scalp. Erin could write a thesis on the number of tales her father contributed to the community mythos, like when he very nearly pummeled the testicles of an unfortunate rival while in a dog pile on the thirty-yard line during the county football jamboree. Rode through pharmacy school at Ole Miss on an athletic scholarship, played for the legendary Johnny Vaught. Returned to our good town after graduation to open Bodock’s second drugstore. That was all before I was born, thirty years ago about. But Lafayette wasn’t indomitable. The inflammatory lung disease and his wife’s murder and six months in a low-security prison wing had left him a pathetic reflection of the man he used to be.

When I removed the noose from his neck and asked what pocket the handcuffs key was in, it was hard not to show my frustration when he raised his head and said, “The yard, somewhere.”

“You not think to tell me that before I got up here?”

“Shit, Topher. This ain’t exactly one of my best days.”

The key had landed on some plastic sheeting I’d covered the hedges with when news of the possible storm first reached Bodock. After I got him off the roof, I brushed the asphalt grit from my hands on the legs of my jeans and looked at him bent over in the lawn. The scar on his calf from when he last went hunting and his bare feet positioned on the spiny gumballs. Chest heaving whatever was left of his lungs.

When he was finished coughing, I said, “You ready to go?”

Lafayette Cummings, standing straight as he could in the front yard, wiped a spot of blood from the corner of his mouth on his boxers and said, “Been waiting on you.”

While Lafayette was in the house getting dressed, I waited out in the truck, honked the horn once, rested my arm on the Igloo cooler I had forgotten to unload.

It wasn’t quite nine o’clock, but I appreciated the obvious sense of urgency lent to the task of escorting a transplant patient. I honked again.

Gave it exactly two minutes. Then honked a third time.

Lafayette appeared on the front porch then. He wore a denim jacket over an Old Milwaukee T-shirt tucked into his beltless jeans and a pair of sunglasses draped around his neck by a red Croakie. Boat shoes on his feet. I retired the cooler to the backseat. In one hand Lafayette had a Shakespeare rod and reel he set in the truck bed. In his other hand was a half-case of Old Milwaukee which, when he tucked the box between his feet on the floorboard, I saw held only four bottles.

“Lafayette.” I nodded my head as I turned over the ignition.

He inspected the cab as I backed downhill out the long drive. Just the walk from the house had spent him. What the hell sort of adrenaline had to have pumped through his old arteries this morning, allowing him to climb up on his roof without keeling over?

“Notice you ain’t brought any fishing gear with you,” he said. “Don’t you think it would’ve helped the illusion some if you’d at least put a fishing pole in the back there? A tackle box at least?”

I forced a laugh. “I think you got the imagination for it, Lafayette.”

“Shit. You got the cooler though, I see. I guess that could work. Coolers’re essential for a day on the lake.”

At the end of his street I threw the truck in park. “You want, I can go back and get my damn fishing gear, Lafayette.”

“Nah,” he said and winked. “I’m just yanking that rod and reel you did bring with you.”

I shifted back to drive. “You was easier to get along with on the roof.”

I made a left out of the neighborhood and then hung a right, which put us northbound on Highway 54. Lafayette cracked open a beer, the bottle sneezed. He cleared the neck and said, “Want one?”

“They ain’t going to use anesthesia on you if you’re drunk.”

He bent down and handed me a beer. “So help me drink ’em then.”

I imagined the shit storm of arriving in Olive Branch only to have Lafayette denied for surgery because I didn’t deny him a preop beer, a mock-fishing-trip beer. Figured I should be less worried with whatever condition he arrived in so long as I got him to the surgery. Besides, there were all the stories of Lafayette’s drinking exploits before a pregnant Betty ultimatumed him into sobering up. Hauling ass down back roads with a fifth of Evan Williams between his legs, the green cap discarded out the window miles behind him as a sort of insurance the bottle would be emptied in that single sitting. Usually it was. That kind of tolerance doesn’t desert a man. Further, he only had four beers on him — two if we split them — which I reckoned would leave plenty of time in the next couple of hours or so for him to piss it all out before surgery.

I nursed the Old Milwaukee and we rode up Highway 54 in silence except for the news station out of Memphis and something between a wheeze and a growl from Lafayette’s chest. According to the news lady’s voice, power had been restored in Nashville and parts of Memphis that morning, and some of the larger towns in north Mississippi: Corinth, Gum Pond, Oxford. We hit the US 78 on-ramp in New Albany at 9:15, which would take us north all the way to Olive Branch. Out on the four-lane we saw not one wooded acre that had been spared. Many hardwoods — oaks and hickories, some of the older, more resilient gums — were still standing, but even their spread had diminished some. The bright wood of their exposed flesh marked their shed poundage, a pallet of broken trunks and branches carrying for miles across the roll of ridges. Besides the occasional eighteen-wheeler, there wasn’t much traffic. Cleanup crews were set up every ten miles or so, removing branches or the occasional utility pole that had fallen onto the highway.

“Be better if we could keep them beers cold,” Lafayette said at some point, and nodded toward the backseat. “There ice in that cooler?”

I told him no.

“Too bad we couldn’t transport the lung ourselves. Would’ve appreciated seeing what a Pentecostal lung looks like.”

“Perhaps they’ll let you look at it just before surgery.”

Lafayette gulped the last of his first beer as we passed a group of orange vests catapulting branches into a dump truck. Then northbound US 78 relaxed back into two lanes and Lafayette rolled down his window and sailed the empty beer bottle at the Myrtle corporate limit sign. The bottle missed high, swallowed up by the kudzu spilling from the tree line, where some of the more flexible pines made top-heavy by the ice collected in their branches were bowed over toward the highway like the Pentecostals who’d soon be congregating in Lafayette’s living room. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and coughed violently into it, wiped his mouth, and folded the handkerchief back behind his wallet.

“Be too drugged up then to remember.”

The .357 that drilled Betty’s chest belonged to Lafayette. He wore the piece everywhere as if it were a nickel-plated watch: Sitting in the concrete stands during high school football games, depositing his pharmacy’s weekly cash flow at the Peoples Bank. Fighting off sleep in the back pew at Bodock Baptist where Betty dragged him. He even pulled the hand cannon on a customer once for being generally disruptive because the man didn’t want to wait five minutes over the estimated hour for his prescription to be filled on account he was a distant cousin of Mayor Duff’s.

But Lafayette would leave the gun at the house that morning, probably for the first time in years. That evening two unarmed men, high on crank and thinking the house vacant, would break in. A kitchen light sparking to life, perhaps, Betty’s voice addressing whom she assumed was Lafayette home from work. And instead of abandoning their mission, one of the men would see an opportunity in Lafayette’s pistol on the side table next to the recliner.

It was nearing ten o’clock when we passed Hickory Flat, about halfway to Olive Branch.

“How bad did that hurt?” I asked, pointing at his bandage in the side mirror.

“Ashamed to admit I cried some,” Lafayette said. “Was a lot like getting your ear flicked in cold weather, except instead of thumping you with their finger, someone shot you. Still hurts like hell. I ain’t never fallen asleep with my head in a fire ant bed before, but I’d venture a guess that the two was comparable.”

“You mean to do it?”

“Why the shit would I mean to shoot myself in the ear?”

“Meant why’d you have a loaded revolver pointed at your head in the first place?”

Lafayette reached down to get his second beer, popped the cap, and offered it to me. I declined. He shrugged and hooked his fingers on the oh-shit handle above him. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’d do anything for Erin. She’s my daughter. If she’d requested back then to fillet your pecker with a rusty boning knife or to simply shoot you in the face, I’d’ve obliged her. No questions asked. No offense.” He pulled on the bottle. “So if she wants me to get my sternum cracked open or my side split like the underbelly of a bream or however the hell them doctors plan on fitting that crazy Pentecostal son of a bitch’s lung inside me just so all his hair-legged-and-armpitted, ankle-length-denim-skirt-wearing female disciples can speak in tongues like retards, so be it. But it’s not what I want for myself, and I ain’t about to feign enthusiasm for it.”

“So how was jumping off your roof this morning with a noose around your neck doing what’s best for Erin?” I asked.

“Ain’t what I said.”

“Huh?”

“Ain’t said I’d do what’s best for Erin. Said I’d do what she wanted.” Lafayette stared out the window and took two quick pulls on his beer. Said, “I admit I wasn’t in the most logical of frames of mind this morning.” He held his bottle up to me. “Stayed up last night drinking the other eight of these.”

“Shit,” I said.

“What? Power was off. Didn’t have Sanford and Son reruns to distract me, I guess. Guess at some point I thought it was a good idea. Thought better of it once I got up there on the roof.”

“You would’ve taken that branch down with you anyway,” I said. “I suppose it’s good you ain’t gotten any better at committing suicide.”

“Keeps me entertained at least,” he said.

“How long was you up there this morning?”

“Couple hours. Maybe four. It hit me what extent of a bad idea it was soon as I tossed that key out in the yard.”

I felt pretty shitty for pressing the issue and waited for Lafayette to say something else, but he seemed done with that talk. My beer had gone lukewarm. I finished it and held it between my legs and waited until we’d passed another cleanup crew before rolling down the window. For all the debris we’d passed, it seemed the crews’ efforts at present were futile and they’d caught on to that fact as well. The crews this far north simply removed the fallen timber from the highway into brush piles ten or so feet high instead of fighting to stack each piece in a dump truck. The rush of air through the window was a welcome relief to the silence that’d swelled the cab.

It was twenty minutes after ten when we passed the Holly Springs exit. Thirty, thirty-five minutes from the transplant center. I asked Lafayette to hand me the last beer.

“What?” he said.

I pointed down at the box.

“Roll that window up,” he said. I obliged. He popped the cap and handed the beer to me. On the radio, reports on the storm’s aftermath continued. Some of the more rural areas of the state would be without power for upward of a month. Lafayette turned the volume down.

“Tired of hearing about that damn storm.”

“All right,” I said. Beads of sweat big as ball bearings had formed on his brow. “You all right?”

He fiddled with the heater some, trying to turn it down. I intervened.

“That better?” I asked. “You want, I can roll the window back down.”

Lafayette said, “I ever tell you the story about the time I lost that old bird dog of mine?”

He had on several occasions. About how he and his black lab, J.R., were headed in from the field when a pack of feral pit bulls intercepted them, appearing from the tree line like gray ghosts. How Lafayette couldn’t have taken them all on at the same time by himself, how the lab’s efforts distracted the other bulls long enough for Lafayette to defend himself, first with the over-under, then with the .357 which was easier to load, more efficient. He had to put the lab down right there in the hay patch, not fifty yards from the safety his truck offered. Would end the story each time by showing where a large chunk of his calf was missing from where one of the pits stayed latched onto him even after he mowed the top of its head off point-blank with the over-under.

“I’m a little blurry on the particulars, tell you the truth, Lafayette.”

“Was going to make you listen anyway,” he said. He hung his arm on the oh-shit handle above him and commenced his detailed account. “Not thirty yards from us I remember J.R. and see him fighting the good fight but just getting tore at by about half the pack. Four of ’em had abandoned the crowd around J.R. and was headed my way. I popped off one of them with the over-under and abandoned it for the .357 because the over-under’s too slow, too bulky. Get three of the cocksuckers before the other one runs off. Then I hobble toward J.R. but only make it a few yards because of the pit that’s jaws’re still attached on my leg like some badass tick. I shoot the two pits around J.R. but can barely see him for the pit on top of him. Looks like it’s already dug into J.R.’s throat, only a matter of time. So I put a bead on the pit.

“But let’s just say,” Lafayette went on, tapping his middle finger on the dash twice for dramatic effect, “let’s just imagine for a moment it only looked like that pit got ahold of J.R.’s throat, and just as I feel the trigger in the bend of my finger, that J.R., in some impressive maneuver and demonstration of resiliency, somehow manages his mouth around that pit’s fat face and the pit rolls over to break free and it’s my round that goes right into J.R. So that it’s me who kills my dog out of no necessity whatsoever.” He paused and looked for me to answer.

I said, “It’d change the whole dynamic of the story, I guess, Lafayette.”

“About would, yes,” Lafayette said.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him drape back his denim jacket to make for the handkerchief again. Then I directed my attention back to the road. When my eyes drifted toward Lafayette again, I saw a black semiautomatic pistol resting on his leg. Had never known Lafayette to own the pistol — just the revolver and shotguns, hunting rifles. Knew he couldn’t’ve bought the pistol anywhere legally.

“Why the hell did you bring a gun with you, Lafayette?”

Before he could answer, he suffered another violent coughing episode, this time before he could reach the handkerchief. Traces of blood and phlegm sprayed on the glove compartment. Lafayette’s beer tipped over onto the floorboard. In his fit I grabbed the gun away from him. He didn’t fight me for it. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the dash.

“Shit. Sorry about that,” he said.

I felt the heft of the gun in my hand. “Why the hell did you bring a gun with you this morning?” I asked again.

When he was finished smearing his muck off the dash, he dropped the handkerchief into the empty beer carton, deposited the bottle he’d knocked onto the floorboard in the carton as well.

“Don’t know anymore,” Lafayette said and moved the carton to the backseat. He closed his eyes and leaned into the headrest. “Don’t know. Had my .357 on me as always, Topher.” He pointed at the gun in my left hand. I could tell he was fighting back tears his chest was trying to convulse out of him. “So that white-trash piece of shit was holding that gun on her instead. Didn’t know there was another man in the house, so when his Negro buddy saw me, sumbitch registered his friend’s surprise, moved just as I pulled the trigger.”

Ahead of us an exit sign bounced like a green buoy in the waves of cool air thawing off the highway. I took the exit, turned right on Hacks Cross Road. Power still hadn’t been restored. Truck stops sat squat and dead and empty. The only life, some smoke pillaring from the side of one of the stores. I pulled around. It was 10:45 and we were only ten minutes away from the transplant center. Olive Branch was the next exit down 78. But the beer in my empty stomach reminded me how I hadn’t eaten anything yet that morning. I felt claustrophobic.

A red horse-trailer was parked back behind the truck stop. A gas generator growled power into the trailer, MALONE’S CATFISH AND OTHER FINGER LICKIN GOOD STUFF painted on the side of the truck. Only a few customers were standing in line. I pulled back around the building and parked in a space facing the large panes of glass at the front of the store. The tires nudged the curb. A pay phone stood just beyond the truck grill.

“Shouldn’t’ve told you that,” Lafayette said, then opened his eyes. “Don’t tell Erin.”

“Of course.”

“We there?”

“Sit tight,” I said. “Got to get some food in me. You want something?”

“Probably shouldn’t eat before surgery.”

“But you can drink beer?”

“Just a little something to snack on then. A biscuit, pack of Nabs. Whatever they got.”

Two ladies were working the truck. The black one manned the register and the other one, a Mexican, held a pair of tongs over matching beige Crock-Pots. Both women were wearing hairnets. Not so much the smell of frying catfish wafted from the truck as chorizo and what I recognized as tamales. The first man in line paid and carried away a Styrofoam box. Two customers remained in front of me. The next customer ordered. The Mexican lady with the tongs waited for her coworker to indicate which Crock-Pot. The black lady pointed with three fingers at the one on the right. Aluminum foil draped from the Crock-Pot. The Mexican lifted the lid and produced as many tamales.

Perhaps the pay phone actually worked, fed from lines below the ground, immune to the storm. What would I tell Erin then? That the best possible result today would be the operation going just about textbook and Lafayette living out the five years his new lung might afford him at a retirement home, all while the guilt over having shot Betty continuing to consume him much less quietly than the sarcoidosis had or ever would. Blame laid as much with me for how far this had gone. I ignored what Erin could not see with Lafayette’s first suicide attempt because I still and always would love her enough to harbor some hope of a past revisited despite what all another man, who had not just broken his wife’s heart but had gored it with a bullet, would be wrung through.

My reflection caught in the rear glass window of the quick stop. I needed some time I didn’t have to figure this out. I focused past my reflection and examined the inside of the vacant store. All the usual suspects of quick-stop merchandise were present: junk food and beer, videocassettes and country music and gospel and gospel-country music cassette tapes and CDs. CB radios and wiring, exaggerated antennas and bracket mountings. Several cheap brands of fishing poles hung on the wall.

To hell with the phone. Better I didn’t find out if it worked.

Back behind the wheel I told Lafayette we had some time to kill, that the black lady at the food truck said the store owner’s catfish pond was nearby, a place we could cast a few quick lines in while we ate the tamales. They were selling hot dogs from the other Crock-Pot and I’d bought an opened pack of raw ones to hook on our cheap lines from the quick stop. A couple of miles down the frontage street I made a left onto a narrower gravel road, maneuvered the truck like the lady said her old man sometimes did around the padlocked gate that did not stretch across the entire width of the path, wasn’t met on either side by fencing. Branches slapped and scratched the side panels of the truck.

The path yawned into a cove and a man-made lake of about fifteen square acres sprawled out before us. At the far end two tractors held between them a seine which would drag the length of the lake during harvest. A wire-netted hopper waited at the other end of the lake to lift from the water the catfish caught between the seine and the bank. I parked. Tall pines untouched by the storm darted from the ground around the rectangular perimeter of the lake like the makeshift walls of a medieval keep. There was some cloud cover and from the truck the water looked murky. Lafayette tried opening the door of the truck while balancing the hot dogs on top of the box of tamales in his lap.

“Don’t worry about all of that,” I said, reaching for the food. “I can get it.”

“I ain’t completely helpless yet.” He swung open the door and stepped down and the opened pack of hot dogs slipped off the Styrofoam and landed in the grass. Two of the hot dogs rolled from the plastic. Bits of dirt clung to them. “You can get them,” he said.

We walked to the far end of the floating pier that would retract onto the bank during harvest. Lafayette’s breathing was labored and he set the tamales and his pole on the dock, propped himself up on his knees, and wheezed. When he could manage his respiration he sat down on the pier. I handed him my pocketknife. He cut up one of the hot dogs against the pier and baited his hook. Cast out into the lake. His arm jerked the rod in his hand, the other reeled the slack out of the line. I offered him another tamale.

“Can’t say I’ve had any of these before,” he said.

I told him the first time I’d ever tried them was when Manny, a coworker when I was a produce clerk at the Jitney Jungle, offered me one from his lunch box left over from dinner the evening before.

“They ain’t bad.” Lafayette licked tomatillo salsa from his fingers. “You know? A little different but taste good. You still got that Ruger on you?”

I slipped the gun out of my pants, wanted to tell him I didn’t feel comfortable with him having a loaded gun, but he’d been through enough. “Long as you ain’t fixing to shoot me or you with it.”

He cast the line again. “Would you believe they broke in with only one bullet in that gun?” He swiped a finger across the bandage on his ear. “Used it to pull this here van Gogh what’s-his-face.”

I broke the breech of the gun, ejected the clip. The chamber and clip were empty so I handed the gun to him. He looked at the unloaded Ruger and tossed it off into the water. Then my father-in-law cast once again, the line clicking as it unreeled and stretched fifteen, twenty feet from us. “Way the wind’s moving this water, kind of looks like we’ve launched out from land,” he said. “Always appreciated that particular illusion.”

I said I had as well and bit into another tamale. I was killing time, was aware of as much, waiting there for Lafayette to give the word to head out or, if he never did, for some explanation why to arrive at me.

Sometime later, most of the hot dogs gone and nothing to show for them, I joked that it was too bad we didn’t have the organ with us. That if we planned to stick around out here, we could’ve changed our strategy some. Maybe have given his lung a go.

Jerry Lewis by Jack Pendarvis

Yoknapatawpha County

An open box of doughnuts on the coffee table. Little bullets lined up in a pretty little row. The girl working on the chamber of a revolver with a little tool like a Q-tip expressly designed for the purpose. Her yellow hair hanging in her eyes.

Girl with a half-fastened holster, like a male gangster in a movie.

Girl in a sleeveless corrugated T, low-scooped neck, like a male gangster in a movie.

Girl in striped boxers, like a male gangster in a movie.

She looked up.

Humphries jerked back his head, away from the dirty window into which he had accidentally peeped.

What was he supposed to do now? Something?

She opened the door.

“Hi,” said Humphries. “I’m looking for a cat.” His eyes went to the empty holster. “Are you a policeman?” he blurted.

“What gave me away, the doughnuts?”

“What doughnuts?”

She laughed like a sexy crow. The way she talked was also like a sexy crow, one of those crows that can talk. But sexy. Her teeth were so white they were almost blue. They looked like happy ghosts. She said, “Have you ever seen the movie Hardly Working?”

“I don’t think so. What’s it about?”

“Jerry Lewis is on a job interview at the post office. He’s really hungry. He hasn’t eaten for days. So while the guy’s trying to interview him, all he can see is this box of doughnuts on the desk. He’s not listening at all. The guy finally asks him, Do you want a doughnut? And Jerry goes, Where ARE DEY? Just like that. Where ARE DEY?” She laughed some more.

Humphries made himself laugh. He was nervous because where was the gun? In the dewy small of her back, tucked in the waistband of her boxers? He had seen something like that in a movie.

“I’m not a cop,” said the woman.

“My wife’s cat is missing,” said Humphries. “He’s orange? Sometimes I see a black cat on this porch, sitting on this thing.” He pointed to the rusted glider, its filthy vinyl cushions illustrated — defiled — with big blotchy flowers. “I don’t know, I felt my wife’s cat might have sought out the company of another cat? He’s not used to being outside and she’s very worried, understandably. We recently moved here to Mississippi from Vermont, which is generally considered a more civilized state, no offense, and my wife is understandably concerned that there might be some barefoot children who have reverted to some kind of savagery and walk around trying to shoot little cats with a bow and arrow.”

“I’m from Chicago, dude. I don’t give a shit. Want to know what I would have told you if you hadn’t seen the gun? My cover story is that I’m looking for a place to live out in the sticks because I want to have a baby. I’m thirty-nine. If I wait any longer, there’s some danger involved for the baby. I mean, there’s a pretty good chance of something going wrong chromosomally, am I right? Where am I going to bring up the baby I want to have? Chicago? All the neighborhoods are getting too expensive, even the bad neighborhoods. There was a torso on a mattress. Where we lived. In the alley below our apartment. They found a headless torso on a mattress. And the place was still too expensive for us. Is that where I’m going to raise a kid? Like, Look out the window, there’s a torso on a mattress. Like, Mommy, what’s a torso? And we can’t even afford that. Like, Sorry, lady, the torso on the mattress is extra. Jocko had some prospects down here — my cover-story husband who doesn’t actually exist, that’s Jocko — so here we are, anyway. He wants to do voice-overs. He wants to be a voice-over guy, my made-up husband does. He can do that from anywhere. He just needs a good microphone and a special phone line.”

Humphries couldn’t believe she was thirty-nine. She looked like a girl, like a college kid or something. Like an inspirational young teacher fresh from the academy with a lot of exciting notions about how to change the world. She had a gun.

“Come on in,” she said.

“I really need to keep looking.”

“Could be I have some information about your cat. Sorry. Your wife’s cat.” She said it like she didn’t believe he had a wife.

“Really?”

She shrugged.

Humphries was scared but titillated. He followed her inside.

The place was dank. It smelled the way other people’s places always do: like the long-unwashed pillowcase of a much-sought-after courtesan — sour milk and violets.

“What’ll it be?”

“Ovaltine?” said Humphries.

She turned from him without humor and headed for the kitchen, scratching her ass in an elegant way.

Humphries sat on the couch where he had seen her sitting. The bullets and pistol were magically gone. The doughnuts remained. There were two flies walking on the doughnuts. He thought the seat cushion felt warm from her, or maybe everything was warm.

Who was she? Why did she need a cover story? Obviously she knew nothing about Mr. Mugglewump. Chicago was where hit men came from. Something awful was going to happen and Humphries would never be seen again. Part of him thought that would be okay.

She came back with a couple of Rolling Rocks and handed one to Humphries. It was fairly warm, like everything else.

She sat catty-corner to Humphries, on an armchair that looked to be upholstered in some sort of immensely uncomfortable material, like tweed. It would make little red marks on the backs of her bare legs, he thought. Fascinating crosshatched patterns.

“This place is a hole,” she said, then twisted the switch on a shabby lamp. It seemed to have a brown bulb. At least it leaked a brownish light that made things darker.

“Please, officer, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” joked Humphries. He shielded his eyes as if from the bare bulb of a searing interrogation.

She didn’t get it.

When Humphries and his wife were trying to find a place, they had attended an open house for which the realtor had decorated the gates with brown balloons in welcome. Brown balloons! It was an odd choice. It was odd that expensive factory machinery would be put into place to manufacture brown balloons.

“Stay right there,” she said. “If you ever want to see Fluffy again, ha ha.” She got up and went back to the kitchen. For cigarettes, Humphries assumed somehow. His hands were sweating. There were sexual feelings mingled with terror. He got up and ran out the door, knocking over a small table, clattering.

He ran down the street. He hadn’t run anywhere since boyhood.

Thank goodness Mr. Mugglewump came home that night.

“Where have you been?” Humphries cooed over him, as did his wife, Mrs. Josie Humphries.

The cat couldn’t tell where he had been. Neither could Humphries.

Now I have a terrible secret, he thought.

He lay in bed next to Josie and had private visions of torment.

It was a small neighborhood. He would run into the mysterious siren. Maybe Josie, who loved a pleasant stroll, would be on his arm when the confrontation occurred! All scenarios were distasteful.

He couldn’t sleep.

Humphries read the New York Times on the Internet every day like a big shot. He disdained the local rag. It was a way to get back at his wife, who had moved to this Podunk burg for a job. Humphries was a landscape painter, so he could live anywhere. That’s what Josie said. But what was he supposed to paint around here? A ditch? He stood on the back porch every day and painted pictures of turds for spite. Josie said they were good.

She was all right.

She noticed that Humphries had started walking down to the drugstore in the morning and picking up the local paper. She made knowing faces at him. Now that Mr. Mugglewump had survived on the streets, Mississippi was looking okay to her. Humphries cringed and shuddered at her implicit optimism and got back to the paper. He was looking for a story about some local jerk getting assassinated.

On the third day he almost gave up because he didn’t want to give his wife the satisfaction. But he rose in the first smeary light, while Josie was still asleep, and walked to the drugstore. He didn’t have to bring the paper home. Without that clue, Josie wouldn’t be able to guess he was happy. Because he was happy. He was happy being miserable. He was happy that living in Mississippi would give him a great excuse to be a failure.

There were some old codgers spitting in a cup for some reason. Humphries stood on the corner reading about Buddy Wilson, who had owned a struggling poster shop. He was a large, fat man who had been found at the county dump, his head nearly severed from his body. Police suspected garroting by banjo string because there was a banjo lying nearby with a missing string.

It was cool out. Humphries’s palms were sweating. He threw the paper in a trash can and wiped the slippery newsprint on his pants. For the first time, he went back to the house where he had spotted the girl with the gun.

The window glowed. He could see everything from the street. It was like a different place, draped in fabrics, oranges and pinks, full of light and life. There was a homey smell of bacon in the air.

A young couple — nothing like the yellow-haired girl with the gun — pulled a twee red sweater over their little white dog. They had a string of white Christmas lights blinking along the mantle, though Christmas was miles and miles away.

The dirty old glider was still on the porch. It was the only thing to convince Humphries he wasn’t crazy.

He had a bad day and couldn’t get any turds painted.

That evening, just before the sun went down, he went back to the odd little duplex. The young couple had put up curtains. The black cat, a fixture of the neighborhood, was back in its place on the soiled glider. The white dog in the red sweater stood smugly on its hind legs between the curtain and the window with its white forepaws on the window ledge, safely behind the glass, staring at the cat with sick superiority.

Cheap Suitcase and a New Town by Chris Offutt

Lucedale

Betsy had been raised to hold grudges forever, but long ago realized it required more effort than she cared to exert. She remembered the very moment when she’d understood that forgiveness had nothing to do with an adversary, but would benefit solely herself. Her entire worldview had shifted, like discovering her house contained a new room full of light, a chamber she wanted to occupy forever.

Ten months before, Betsy had moved to Lucedale and found work in a breakfast café, becoming the very person she detested most — a woman in a shapeless uniform serving eggs to workingmen, the oldest waitress in the place, alone and not wanting to be, living in a dump and drinking herself to sleep. She was not yet forty. She thought she should know better and felt worse for it.

An eighteen-year-old girl named Thadine joined the breakfast crew. Betsy envied her youth and vitality, the cheery optimism, her slim hips twitching among the tables. Betsy had been the same as Thadine twenty years earlier in another town and had progressed nowhere. Worse, Thadine actively sought Betsy’s attention, craving approval, trailing behind her like a pup who’d been kicked but never with severity.

During the midmorning lull before lunch, their side work included refilling salt and pepper shakers, marrying half-empty ketchup bottles, and topping off the sugar containers. Thadine chattered about inconsequential subjects, a running narrative of what lay immediately before her, a commentary on the obvious. Occasionally she tested safe opinions. She laughed readily. The boss liked her and the cooks strove to conceal her errors. In another context, Betsy might have found her adorable — slight and needy in old loafers — but Betsy was reminded of all that she herself had lost: everyone she’d ever loved, a familiar landscape, the security of deep belonging, but most of all the naïveté of seeing life as fraught with promise.

For two weeks the girl had gotten on Betsy’s nerves. Fed up, her voice hard, Betsy finally said, “Get away from me. I’m your coworker, not your friend.”

Thadine’s face turned red as if she’d been slapped. Her eyes, formerly as brimful of hope as an egg is of yolk, filled with tears. She hurried to the kitchen and Betsy ignored her during the rest of the shift, grateful for the efficiency of working alone. She counted her tips at the Formica breakfast bar, cashed her change into folding money, and left.

The incessant heat pressed against Betsy as if she’d stepped into the sea. Though mid-September, there was little autumn to behold. In the parking lot Thadine was leaning against Betsy’s car, her face downcast.

“Why do you hate me?” Thadine said. “I only want to be like you.”

Betsy’s knees seemed to give, as if the struts that held her upright had become elastic. Her polyester uniform clung to her skin, smelling of bacon, stained along the perimeter of her apron. She was tired. Perspiration sheened her face. This was the girl’s hometown. She no doubt wanted out, same as Betsy had wanted out of her own. It never occurred to Betsy that seeing her young self in Thadine was a two-way enterprise. Thadine’s life must feel drastic for Betsy’s to appear worthy of emulation.

The unforeseen arrival of forgiveness relieved Betsy of a burden she didn’t know she carried, an invisible shawl of stone. She’d felt the burn of betrayal many times — lied to, taken advantage of, abandoned — left alone with the numb opacity of loss. But she had done her share of hurting people too. It all worked out in the end. The balance of life was achieved by weighted extremes. She had no appetite for moderation, no patience for people who did.

With the stunning clarity of sunup after a fierce storm, Betsy realized that her life wasn’t a case of failing to learn from her mistakes, but one of repeating the same patterns again and again. Waitress shoes, a narrow bed, a damaged man. A cheap suitcase and a new town. She wanted to warn the girl, to give her advice Betsy had never received: Don’t let them hit you, don’t drink on an empty stomach, don’t cry alone. But Betsy knew it wouldn’t have done her younger self any good to hear it, no more than it would for Thadine.

Only two things ever helped in life — love and money. Any love Betsy could muster was reserved for the next reckless man, not this waif weeping in the harsh light. She offered the day’s tips.

“You’re wrong,” Betsy said. “I don’t hate you.”

Thadine started to speak, then didn’t. She took the cash.

“You hate this town,” Betsy said. “Get out before you hate yourself.”

She got in her car and drove past a fancy house with a large expanse of grass, automatically watered at night. The grass didn’t actually grow, but had been unfurled from trucks and pressed into place. Few people trod upon the slim shards of yard.

A mile farther she entered her own neighborhood of cement and asphalt, a used-car lot and front yards of weed and dirt. Betsy parked and climbed an exterior staircase composed of premade concrete to her one-room apartment. She removed her greasy waitress smock and cursed herself for the day’s work with nothing to show. What kind of life was she leading? What kind of name was Thadine?

The last time she lived in a house had been in Alabama. She’d gotten mixed up with a man who’d spent three years hand-building a stone enclosure of water for koi fish. He was proud of his project, which Betsy considered a lot of work simply to maintain overgrown carp. In the afternoons they drank beside the pool. He liked to talk and she didn’t like to be alone. He fired a BB pistol at neighborhood cats that skulked about, attempting to prey on his fish. Betsy asked him to stop and he set wire traps instead. One trap caught a gopher, which drew a coyote that ate all his precious koi. He blamed Betsy. She left him and quit living in houses, returning to single rooms.

In her apartment, she poured vodka and drank it, facing a fan in her underwear. The AC was a window unit that didn’t actually cool the air, just barely cut the heat and blew dust that made her sneeze. After two drinks she laughed at herself — she’d gone from saving cats in Alabama to giving her money away in Mississippi. She closed her eyes. Awhile later she awoke disoriented from a dream she’d had consistently since childhood — lost in a vast house, wandering long halls, opening doors and encountering people she’d met in different places. They were quite friendly with each other, but ignored her as if she was a ghost. She ran down a long hall, trying to ward away the awareness that something serious was amiss.

Betsy sat in the chair, blinking herself fully awake until the imagery faded. Each time she had the dream, the house was bigger, as if her continued existence furthered its renovation. After a shower she ate leftover food from the refrigerator. She packed her clothes, loaded the car, and left for New Orleans.

Each time she began a new life she momentarily wished she had a pistol, a small one. She didn’t know why. She supposed it was about confidence and fear. If she’d bought one, she’d have pawned it by now. Someone else would own it, and no telling what they’d do with it, who they’d shoot, maybe Thadine. Betsy hoped the girl would get out before someone did. It could happen easily. Anything could.