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“I got Billy,” he said.

“Good. I’ll be over tonight. I got a few more old clothes Bill can wear. My stuff is too big on him, but yours would swallow him.”

“Whatever. And Bubba?”

“Yeah.”

“Watch your ass.”

19

The rain had almost stopped and water dripped from the tree branches that overhung the road, fell in clear pearls onto my hood and windshield, exploded in all directions like shards of glass. The blacktop had the sheen of fresh-licked chocolate and there was a slight chill inside my truck that was more cozy than cold.

As I drove into Arnold’s driveway, I saw a hot, white, web of lightning patch its way across the sky above the mobile home, beyond the trees where the woods started. I killed the truck’s lights and engine and got out, leaned on the open door, cautious for Arnold’s dog, but the dog didn’t bark. The wind howled in the bottles in the bottle tree. I could see the door to Arnold’s double-wide was cracked slightly and light was falling out of there and onto the ground as if pressed there by a heavy weight.

Arnold’s truck was riding flat on all the tires, and I knew without having to look, they had been slashed, and I knew too that the universe had shifted slightly again, and this time I was not on the fringes of that crack, but was well within it.

I stood with the truck door open, feeling uncertain and nervous. The hair on my neck and arms pricked and I could feel my testicles growing small, pulling up inside of me. I was glad the inside door light of my truck no longer worked, so I wasn’t framed in a perfect light for someone to pop off a shot at me. Then again, if they were close enough, it wouldn’t take much of a shooter to hit me, not if they were behind me, leveling a rifle on my spine.

I looked around and didn’t see anyone. I slipped back into the truck and got the. 38 and stuck it in my coat pocket and took the shotgun off the rack and pumped one up. Through the windshield I saw the white web of lightning again. It had moved somewhat to the west.

I put the truck keys in my pocket and got out of the truck. The wind was blowing wet and cold, but I was streaming perspiration. Yet, I felt colder than the wind would have made me had I been bare chested.

I pushed the door of the truck almost closed and started walking wide of the mobile home, moving around back. I listened carefully as I went, half-crouched, not knowing what to expect, but thinking of Fat Boy and Cobra Man. I didn’t hear anything unusual, just the wind hooting in those bottles and whining out through the wrecks in the lot.

I went around the home and came up on the back end of the carport and slipped in there and found Arnold’s dog. He was lying in a pool of blood beside the right, front, flat tire of Arnold’s truck. I bent down and touched him. He was slightly warm. He hadn’t been dead long.

I tried to swallow, and it was as if I were trying to gulp down a whole orange. I finally got it down, forced myself to get up and move around the pickup, back toward the front door where the light fell out along the ground. I pushed my back against the home and slid along till I came to the door. I leaned out to look inside, hoping like hell I wouldn’t suddenly see the eye of a gun poking out of there.

I took a deep breath and held it and let it out slow and easy. I put one foot on the steps and used the shotgun to ease tghts dnhe door wide. I started to call for Arnold or Bill, but the words wouldn’t come. I knew I was taking a chance not calling them, because if they had been attacked, and were still in there, they might have a gun, and be waiting, and instead of who they wanted, they might get me.

The other side of the coin was whoever had done this might have dispatched both Bill and Arnold, and could be waiting for me on the other side.

And conceivably they had done what they wanted and gone home.

I wobble-kneed up the steps and into the home, crouching low, spinning left and right with the shotgun. When I turned right, I froze.

The light was from a lamp on the kitchenette counter, and the light was marred by a big shadow that hung in its beam; a shadow like a scarecrow dangling from a post.

Only it wasn’t a scarecrow.

It was Billy.

· · ·

In the center ceiling of the dining area was a false beam-a desperate decoration to make some fool think he was in a chateau-and from that central beam hung Bill. There was a belt wrapped around his neck, and it had cut deep into his flesh and the blood around it had crusted. The belt was connected to the beam by a large nail driven through leather and wood. The kind of nail you used when you’re doing some serious carpentry business; damn near a spike.

Bill’s body was motionless and his mouth was open, and though his tongue stuck out only a bit, it was thick and purple and nearly filled his mouth. His face was very dark and overripe and its darkness made his teeth appear false. His eyes were jutting from his head like quail eggs trying to roll out of a chute. The oversized pants I had given him had fallen down some and the Christmas shorts were revealed. His arms hung at his side. He had crapped his pants and the watery shit ran down his leg and into his socks and shoes, dripped to the floor beneath him, onto the hammer with which the nail had obviously been driven. A chair was overturned nearby.

The smell of shit and my fear were not the only thing that filled the room, there was another odor, sour and even more sickening, that I couldn’t identify.

I worked on the orange in my throat again, got it down and went across the trailer into Arnold’s bedroom, the shotgun before me like a talisman.

Nothing in there. No sign of a struggle.

I checked his bathroom. Nothing. Except the commode was full of shit and toilet paper.

I came out and went the length of the home and looked in the bedroom at the far end and found nothing. The bathroom yielded only the fact that Bill had used the razor I bought him to shave. It lay on the edge of the sink and the sink was filled with whisker stubs and shaving cream scum.

I came back and closed the front door and locked it. I laid the shotgun on the kitchenette counter and saw there was a note there, signed by Billy. I knew what that would be without reading it. A suicide note.

I ignored it.

I got the overturned chair and climbed up and took out my pocket knife and cut the belt and tried my best not to let Billy just drop, but it was too much weight and he did. He rolled in the puddle of shit and on top of the hammer. His face turned up, showing me those dull, blue quail egg eyes of his. From where I stood, it looked as if a tear, like a fish scale, was lodged in the corner of Bill’s right eye. The lamp light played off of it, magnified it.

I got down off the chair and went back to the counter and looked at the note. It was Bill’s handwriting all right. It read: To Everyone:

Satan held me in his arms for years. I leave now to join him because there is no where else to go. I hope God will forgive me for what I have done to the children more than anything else. I hope God will set me free from Him, the dark one, but if not, I join him now and will suffer his torments to the beat of his leathery wings. I hope that Uncle Arnold and Uncle Hank will let the Dark One go.

William S. Small.

The handwriting was Bill’s, but the purple style wasn’t. Bill wasn’t clever enough to be purple, and the reference to Satan was bullshit. And what was meant by he hoped Arnold and I would let the Dark One go? What was the stuff about the children? And Bill’s name wasn’t William. A few people called him that, but they didn’t know him well. They were making an assumption. His birth certificate name was Bill, not short for anything, and he never went by William of his own accord. He thought it was too stuffy sounding. Whoever had made him write that note hadn’t known that. Or maybe it was Bill’s way of trying to inform us that he was being made to write it; a private message from him to me.