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Honey realized that his ear holes were plugged with dirt. As a test, she said, “Louis, you’re nothing but a rancid bucket of scum.”

He squinted quizzically yet gave no indication of registering the insult.

Swell, Honey thought. Now I get to play charades with a sex fiend. She tugged at her earlobes and shook her head.

“You can’t hear nuthin neither?” Piejack asked loudly.

Honey made a rowing motion and shouted, “Where’s your boat, Louis? Let’s go find the boat!”

“The boat?”

“Bravo!” she said, clapping.

Piejack smiled crookedly.

“Mom! Dad!” A voice from the woods.

Honey went white-it sounded like Fry, but that was impossible. Fry was far away, safe at home with his father, and neither of them would’ve known where to find her. Honey told herself that she was imagining what she heard; cracking under the stress.

“Hey, Mom?”

The voice was closer now-too close. Honey didn’t answer. With all her heart she wanted to shout back, but she knew better. If it was really Fry, he’d come running. No matter what she told him to do, he’d come running to save her.

And he couldn’t possibly save her, not all by himself. He was twelve and a half years old, for heaven’s sake.

“Mom, Dad, it’s me!”

Honey already knew.

Run away, kiddo, she thought. Please, God, make him go the other way.

There was still hope, because Piejack couldn’t hear him.

“Where are you?” the boy hollered.

He was dangerously close now. Tragically close.

Honey couldn’t stop herself.

“Fry, go away!” she blurted. “Go get help!”

Piejack was momentarily preoccupied, pawing at a string of fire ants that had greedily attached themselves to his neck.

“Fry, do what I say!” Honey cried out. “Go away-”

But there he was, sprinting out of the trees as fast as he could, which was fast indeed…and wearing, of all things, a football helmet.

Honey held out her arms and blinked away hot tears. Fry practically knocked her down with a flying hug.

“You okay?” he asked breathlessly. “God, what happened to your face?”

“I’m fine. Just fine.”

The boy stared at Louis Piejack and the stubby shotgun.

“He’s nearly deaf,” Honey said.

Piejack was glaring at both of them. “Git lost, kid!”

Fry whispered to his mother: “I heard the gun go off and I freaked. Have you seen Dad?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Dad’s tryin’ to find you. We came out here together.”

Honey thought: I’m gonna brain that man.

“I tole you to beat it!” Piejack bellowed at Fry.

“Chill out, Louis,” Honey said.

“It’s just you and me, angel, that was the deal. You and me for all time.” Piejack coldly leveled the sawed-off at Fry. “I ain’t gonna be nobody’s step-pappy. Now git movin’, boy. Go home to your old man.”

Honey firmly turned her son. “You heard him. Get outta here.”

“I’m not leaving. No way.”

“What’d you say?” Piejack tilted his head. “I can’t hear a goddamn word. You gotta speak up.”

Fry pulled free of his mother’s grasp and stepped toward Louis Piejack until the barrel of the shotgun touched the face guard of his helmet.

“I said, I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE!” the boy hollered.

Then he doubled over and puked on Piejack’s shoes.

Twenty-four

For once, Honey Santana’s head was absolutely clear. No tunes blared. No sirens whined. No trains whistled. A rare and welcome clarity prevailed.

A brutish criminal had clobbered her son, and there was only one appropriate response: Honey clamped both hands around Louis Piejack’s oily neck.

It felt right; empowering, as Oprah might say.

Honey knew that if the man shot her, she would die strangling him. Saving Fry was all that mattered.

Honey forced Piejack against a pigeon plum tree, trapping the shotgun between their bodies. The barrel lodged lengthwise in her cleavage, the dirty muzzle sticking up at her chin. Fire ants began pouring out of Piejack’s bandaged hand, which he flogged against his thigh until the surgical dressing fell off in a putrid husk.

To hinder his movements she pressed harder, though at first the lecherous fishmonger seemed to enjoy the rough frontal contact. He winked moistly and ran his spotted tongue around his lips.

When Honey squeezed harder, Piejack’s smirk faded. His yellowed eyes began to bulge and seep. Brownish spittle bubbled from the corners of his mouth, and his rank breath came in short, croupy emanations. As she dug her fingertips into his Adam’s apple, Honey regretted having trimmed her nails the week before. She nonetheless felt capable of inflicting mortal damage, and, despite his narcotic intake, the sonofabitch was definitely uncomfortable. She could tell by his gurgling.

“Watch out!” It was Fry.

To Honey’s immense relief, the boy hadn’t been hurt. Piejack’s gun butt had cracked the football helmet and knocked him flat, but Fry had sprung up quickly. Honey caught glimpses of him circling the scene, darting in to throw wild, ineffectual punches.

“I told you to get outta here!” When she opened her mouth to yell, her broken jawbone clacked like a castanet.

“No way!” Fry shouted back.

“Do-as-I-say!”

“Mom! Look!”

“Oh shit.”

From wrists to shoulders, her sleeves shimmered with fire ants. They were abandoning Piejack en masse, using Honey as a bridge. By the hundreds they streamed down her arms, but she was afraid to release her grip on Piejack to slap them away. He’d need only a moment, Honey knew, to regain control of the sawed-off.

As Fry flayed at the insects with a palmetto frond, Honey tried not to think about where the blood-red hordes might be heading. Piejack’s misshapen face was darkening due to loss of oxygen, yet he continued to grapple ferociously with good hand and bad for possession of the shotgun. So heated was the scuffle that Honey failed to notice a column of ants disappear between the top buttons of her shirt. The stings seared, like a sprinkle of hot acid, and she wondered how much she could endure.

Not enough, it turned out. Within seconds she was breathless from the pain. She let go of Piejack, tore off her shirt and flung herself down. When she stopped rolling, he stood over her panting and clutching the sawed-off. His shoes still reeked of Fry’s vomit.

Honey sat up and crossed her arms, to cover her bra. Her chest was burning along a sinuous track of tiny crimson bites.

“They’s one in your curls,” Piejack croaked.

As shaky as he was, the man had managed to hook one of his reconnected digits, possibly a pinkie, over the shotgun’s trigger. With the more nimble fingers of his good hand he was grubbing dirt from his ears.

Honey flicked the ant from her hair and thought: Where the hell is my son?

To find out if Piejack’s hearing had returned, she asked in a level tone, “What’re you going to do now, Louis?”

“What the hell d’ya think? I’m gonna shoot yer fine ass,” he said, “but first I’m gonna fuck it.”

He coughed up something, scowled at the taste and spat. Honey peered out between his knees, looking in vain for Fry.

Piejack said, “Your kid’s run off. But I’ll catch him later, don’tcha worry.”

His eyeballs rolled and he gulped slowly, like a toad. It was plain that Honey had injured him.

“Lose them pants,” he told her.

“Not a chance, Louis.”

“You know damn well I’ll shoot.”

“And that’s the only way it would ever happen between us-if I was dead,” Honey said.

“Now, that ain’t too bright.” Piejack touched the sawed-off to her forehead. “But if that’s how you want it…”

Honey expected her whole life to flash past, like people said it would, yet only a single event from her thirty-nine years replayed in fast-forward: Fry’s arrival.

She’d gone into labor on a Monday afternoon, six weeks early. Radioed Perry out on the crab boat. He raced home, carried her to the truck and sped ninety-five miles an hour across the state to Jackson Hospital in Miami. A sweet old Cuban doctor asked if she wanted an epidural, and Honey answered no because she figured the baby would be small and it wouldn’t hurt so much coming out. But it hurt plenty, and lasted way longer than she’d expected: fifteen hours and forty-one minutes. Perry stayed by her side. When there was pain he’d squeeze Honey’s hand, and when there wasn’t, he’d read to her from a book of fishing stories by Zane Grey. Honey had no interest in fishing, but it was the first time she’d heard her husband read aloud and for some reason she found it calming.