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“Car coming,” Archie said from the door.

Deacon did not turn. “Let me know if it stops.” He was relaxed, methodical. Deacon was not afraid of the man behind the counter, not afraid of jail or of committing violence. He had changed, Bone thought, since the Darcy house. Maybe he didn’t want to kill the storekeeper, but he would not hesitate to do so should the occasion arise; some part of him might even welcome the violence, the brief wild pleasure of pulling the trigger and proclaiming his potency. Bone perceived all this without words. The immanence of death boiled around Deacon like a thundercloud. He stank of it.

The storekeeper had frozen. He stared at Deacon, at Bone, at Deacon again. Beads of sweat started out on his broad forehead.

“The till,” Deacon said. “Empty the goddamn till!”

“Car gone by,” Archie said.

Bone watched the storekeeper’s fat hands delve into the cash drawer. He wadded the cash as he tugged it out, pushed the soiled green bills across the counter. “It’s not much,” he said, his voice cracking, “but it’s all—see—look—”

“All right, all right.” Deacon used his pistol to sweep the cash toward Bone. Bone took it without counting it and stuffed it into the pea coat.

“Archie?”

“All clear… no, wait, Christ, there’s another car!”

Deacon held the pistol steady. On the wall, a Pepsi-Cola clock ticked out seconds. The breathing of the storekeeper was stertorous and aggrieved.

“Gone by?” Deacon asked tightly.

“It’s—” Archie’s voice lost a beat. “Deacon, it’s slowing down.”

“Be damned,” Deacon said. He turned fractionally.

Bone watched as the storekeeper dived behind the counter. When he came up an instant later he had a shotgun in his hands. Deacon turned back but his comprehension lagged. Bone felt the seismic shift—Deacon’s confusion and fear, the storekeeper’s blossoming triumph.

The shotgun was inches from Deacon’s chest. The storekeeper tightened his finger on the thick steel trigger.

Bone reached out and took the gun in one huge hand. He jerked the barrel upward. The storekeeper’s finger closed convulsively and both barrels discharged into the ceiling.

“Oh my Lord, “the storekeeper said. Bone snatched the weapon away from him and threw it into a corner with the stitched cotton sacks of animal feed. “Oh, my sweet Lord.” And Deacon thrust forward his pistol.

“Deacon,” Bone said gently. “Deacon, don’t.” But it was too late. Feverish with hatred, Deacon fired.

The storekeeper lurched back gap-chested and bloody into a wall of patent medicines. Brown bottles of iron tonic fell about him like hail.

He was dead. It was that simple.

Death again, Bone thought sadly.

“Fucker tried to kill me,” Deacon said, trembling. “You saw him! Can’t deny it! Tried to kill me!”

And Bone looked at Deacon, a small man now, frightened in the aftermath of his own violence, and thought: I don’t owe him anything.

It was a new idea, startling and absolute.

Deacon was alive now because of Bone. Bone had discharged his debt.

White smoke coiled from the barrel of Deacon’s pistol.

“Tried to kill me! You saw him!” “Car gone by,” Archie said weakly.

They rode mostly empty boxcars. If they entered a crowded one, it would be empty at the next whistlestop. Bone’s reputation had grown among the hoboes.

“Fuck ’em all,” Deacon said cheerfully. They sat in a boxcar—empty—with the prairie night rushing past outside. It was no longer summer. The wind was cutting and Bone clutched his jacket around him. The Calling was elusive tonight.

Deacon had acquired a bottle of muscatel. He drank unstintingly and offered none to Archie. After a time, pacified, he talked in fragments about his life in Chicago, about the Great War, about the child he had abandoned. Then, with a violent finality, he passed out.

Bone and Archie sat in the rattling darkness, very nearly invisible. The door was open a crack and Bone watched the landscape pour by. A harvest moon hung on the horizon.

“He’ll do it again,” Archie said.

Talking to himself, maybe, Bone thought.

“I should walk away,” Archie said. “Walk away and be shut of the whole thing. I should. …”

Bone gazed at him inquisitively.

“Ah, no,” Archie said, taking up the remainder of Deacon’s muscatel. “No. I guess I’ve been with him too long. Maybe you don’t understand that. It’s not queer. Don’t get that idea. It’s just that I owe him some things.”

Bone nodded.

“I was never good on my own. Too damn dumb. Deacon’s a thinker. Smart. Smart as a whip! But that’s where he gets into trouble. Figuring angles all the time can make a person crazy. I’m not trying to stir up trouble, but listen, Bone, listen to me: to Deacon you’re just one more angle… you know what I mean?”

There was no fear about Archie now, only a sadness, a melancholy, like the scent of the rain in the air. Bone said, “I know.”

“It’s been sweet for him so far. Christ, he could do anything! He was right. He was right. It’s not Deacon they see, it’s Bone, the geek—you. Deacon’s sitting pretty.” The chill air made him shiver, and Archie took up the bottle and swallowed convulsively. “You, though, Bone, you’re out in the cold, you know that? Out in the snow and ice. When they hang somebody, it won’t be Deacon. And pretty soon Deacon’s gonna want to lose you. Oh, yes. They know you now. Hoboes know you, cops know you. Everybody. You’re getting to be a liability Bad to be with. You’re not much good to him anymore.”

It was true enough, Bone thought. But he guessed it didn’t really matter any longer. He had paid out his debt to Deacon. It worked both ways: Deacon was bad for Bone to be with, as well.

But he worried about being alone, about being recognized… especially now that he was so close.

The Calling was faint but very near. In recent days his mind had seemed to race,- he was filled with a new lucidity. He understood so much.

“I’ll stick with him,” Archie was saying. “I don’t care what he did. I know he killed those people. By God, didn’t we bury them? But he needs me.” Archie looked at Bone pleadingly. “He needs me… doesn’t he? Doesn’t he?”

“I guess he does,” Bone said.

They spent the next night outside a freightyard, camped by themselves, huddled over a weak fire while the wind came sluicing over the prairie. “Give me the money,” Deacon said, drunk again.

Bone, shivering, pulled the wad of bills out of his pocket.

Deacon counted it twice. It came to almost three hundred dollars.

Deacon gripped the fluttering bills tightly, as if the wind might carry them off. “We could go a long way on this,” he said. “A long way. Some warm place. Florida, maybe. What say, Archie? We spend the winter in Florida. Live like goddamn kings. Buy a piece of property maybe.”

“There’s no Florida property for three hundred bucks,” Archie said morosely.

“Then we’ll get more,” Deacon said.

Archie looked at Bone and then back at Deacon. “If you mean—hey, Deacon, I don’t think we should—”

“One more time,” Deacon said. “Maybe someplace a little ritzier. Someplace they keep more cash in the till. Someplace—”

“No!” Astonishingly, Archie had risen to his feet. “Deacon, it’s crazy! They’ll spot him a mile away! We’ll all be killed, all of us!”

Deacon didn’t answer, only sat back against his rucksack and gazed at Archie. In a moment Archie’s rage had faded; he looked foolish, outlined against the stars with the night wind picking at his tattered coat, and he sat back down again.