Author: Joe R. Lansdale
Date: 2014-01-10 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: Now complete in one volume, two of Joe Lansdale's works: The Magic Wagon and Written With a Razor. The Magic Wagon: When the Magic Wagon comes to town, folks get a genuine medicine show that includes a wrestling ape, fancy shooting, and a peek at the petrified body of Wild Bill Hickok himself. They also get bottles of a whiskey-laced elixir to drown their aches and pains. Old Albert drives the wagon, a rawboned youngster named Buster Fogg does the odd jobs, and "champion" trick shooter and fast talker Billy Bob Daniels owns the show. Billy Bob claims to be the illegitimate son of Wild Bill him
Publisher: Crossroad Press; Macabre Ink

A PAIR OF ACES

By Joe R. Lansdale

A Macabre Ink Production

Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Digital Edition Copyright 2014 by Joe R. Lansdale

WRITTEN WITH A RAZOR

Screenplay and Stories based on The God of the Razor

Created by Joe R. Lansdale

Screenplay by Joe R. Lansdale & Neal Barrett Jr.

Cover images courtesy of:

Glenn Chadbourne: http://glennchadbourne.com/
http://theartistdarklady.deviantart.com/
http://madamem-stock.deviantart.com/

&

THE MAGIC WAGON

A Short Novel of the weird, wild west

Cover images courtesy of:

http://juleesan.deviantart.com
http://rinymph-stock.deviantart.com
http://mellowmint.deviantart.com
http://maria-murphy-art.deviantart.com/

LICENSE NOTES

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.  If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Meet the Author

BIO: Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in eighteen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Hotep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror." He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Scienceand its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Other Crossroad Press Books by Joe R. Lansdale:

Shadows West

The Drive-In: A "B" Movie with Blood & Popcorn, Made in Texas

The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels

The Drive-In 3: The Bus Tour

Joe Landsale's Website

DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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CONTENTS:

Author's Introduction

Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale

Short Stories:

The God of the Razor

King of Shadows

Janet Finds the Razor

Screenplay:

THE NIGHTRUNNERS

Screenplay by Joe R. Lansdale and Neal Barrett, Jr.

Based on the novel by Joe R. Lansdale

Short Novel:

The Magic Wagon

Bonus:

Excerpt From The Drive-In: A "B" Movie with Blood & Popcorn, Made in Texas

WRITTEN WITH A RAZOR

Author's Introduction to Written With a Razor

This is a unique project. I wrote it with one of my writing heroes, Neal Barrett, Jr. The only bad thing about it is we never sold it. We did sell a script to MASTERS OF HORROR. A very good script, but, the show got cancelled. Still, our screenwriting collaboration was not for nothing; we got paid for it, even if we never got to see it made. THE NIGHTRUNNERS. It's based on a novel of mine. An early novel, but a novel a lot of readers really like and still talk about. Some have called it the scariest novel they have ever read. Actually, it sort of jacks me around as well; it is disturbing. But the point here is that the character, The God of The Razor, who appears in the novel inspired a number of God of The Razor stories. I should also note that in the novel, unlike in the stories, there's no guarantee that he actually exists. In the screenplay, Neal and I decided we'd write the story as if he did; thought it would make for a better film. I still think that. I like our script. It's fast paced and scary and disturbing in spots, and just downright weird. It plays to both the basic horror audience, as well as the audience that is looking for a little something different. We like to think you are that audience.

Pretend you are in a darkened theater, and that the script is the film, because we wrote it to be read and for it to be envisioned as a film in the head, hoping that it would become an actual film in time. We've got a lot of nibbles, but to date, no bites.

To sell the story as a script, you have to make the reader, the producer, the director, the actors, see the story. We do not believe a script is just a blue print. Reading blue prints is boring. A script shouldn't be. We violated some of the "rules" of screenwriting in how we presented it, but I think they were wise violations. We hope you like it. We enjoyed doing it.

Neal lives in Austin, Texas, and I live four hours away in Nacogdoches, Texas. To make this happen I drove to Austin and got a hotel room for a few days. It was written in that hotel room in Austin, Texas. Neal would meet me every morning and we would work until noon, go out for lunch, work again until dinner, have take-out brought to the hotel, and then we would continue. We did this until we had a draft. I went home then, came back later so we could do another draft; this one you hold in your hands or are viewing on some non-hand-held device. It was mostly fun to write and we had a great visit along with it, though I do remember a pretty powerful take out meatball sandwich I ordered that has put me off of that culinary delight forever.

As for the stories included here, well, as I said, the novel not only inspired this screenplay, but years before Neal and I wrote it, I took portions of the unsold novel (took me about seven years to sell the book) and turned those sections into short stories. After the novel, I wrote a few more tales about The God of The Razor. I even wrote a creator owned comic book about him for DC Comics, with the great artist Mark Nelson doing the illustrations. Not too long ago a tribute book to me and my creation was edited by Subterranean Press, and I had a new story there. Most of those tales are included here, minus the comic script. The old razor god seems to live on and on.

Want to know what would top it off for me and the God of The Razor? A film. Preferably from our script. But until that happens, here's a film for your head, as well as, what I like to think of as some pretty damn nifty stories.

Joe R. Lansdale

Nacogdoches, Texas

The God of the Razor

Author's Note:

This was another cannibalized piece from The Nightrunners, and it was the one that I lifted the most directly from the book, at least as far as the description of the God of the Razor goes.

I loved the way the God was described, and I know that sounds immodest, but, alas, it is true. He stayed with me for a long time before he found his way into the The Nightrunners. He is both fairy tale and every day and legendary and something you might see in a bad dream, which is where I found him.

The image and the idea of the God of The Razor haunted me, and I was, to put it mildly, disappointed that the book was not published immediately and that The God had not been revealed to the world. In the meantime, I came up with this idea suddenly, of turning the description of the God in the book into a story, and though I don't believe it to be my best written piece, I feel it is quite effective. It continues to live and has been reprinted and was even made into a kind of radio show CD that I enjoyed very much.

It would probably make a great episode of Showtime's recent Masters of Horror, something along that line. But, here it is in its best form. Prose. Enjoy.

Richards arrived at the house about eight. The moon was full and it was a very bright night, in spite of occasional cloud cover; bright enough that he could get a good look at the place. It was just as the owner had described it. Run down. Old. And very ugly.

The style was sort of Gothic, sort of plantation, sort of cracker box. Like maybe the architect had been unable to decide on a game plan, or had been drunkenly in love with impossible angles.

Digging the key loaned him from his pocket, he hoped this would turn out worth the trip. More than once his search for antiques had turned into a wild goose chase. And this time, it was really a long shot. The owner, a sick old man named Klein, hadn't been inside the house in twenty years. A lot of things could happen to antiques in that time, even if the place was locked and boarded up. Theft. Insects. Rats. Leaks. Any one of those, or a combination of, could turn the finest of furniture into rubble and sawdust in no time. But it was worth the gamble. On occasion, his luck had been phenomenal.

As a thick, dark cloud rolled across the moon, Richards, guided by his flashlight, mounted the rickety porch, squeaked the screen, and groaned the door open.

Inside, he flashed the light around. Dust and darkness seemed to crawl in there until the cloud passed and the lunar light fell through the boarded windows in a speckled and slatted design akin to camouflaged netting. In places, Richards could see that the wallpaper had fallen from the wall in big sheets that dangled halfway down to the floor like the drooping branches of weeping willows.

To his left was a wide, spiraling staircase, and following its ascent with his light, he could see there were places where the railing hung brokenly askew.

Directly across from this was a door. A narrow, recessed one. As there was nothing in the present room to command his attention, he decided to begin his investigation there. It was as good a place as any.

Using his flashlight to bat his way through a skin of cobwebs, he went over to the door and opened it. Cold air embraced him, brought with it a sour smell, like a freezer full of ruined meat. It was almost enough to turn Richards's stomach, and for a moment he started to close the door and forget it. But an image of wall-to-wall antiques clustered in the shadows came to mind, and he pushed forward, determined. If he were going to go to all the trouble to get the key and drive way out here in search of old furniture to buy, then he ought to make sure he had a good look, smell or no smell.

Using his flash, and helped by the moonlight, he could tell that he had discovered a basement. The steps leading down into it looked aged and precarious, and the floor appeared oddly glasslike in the beam of his light.

So he could examine every nook and cranny of the basement, Richards decided to descend the stairs. He put one foot carefully on the first step, and slowly settled his weight on it. Nothing collapsed. He went down three more steps, cautiously, and though they moaned and squeaked, they held.

When Richards reached the sixth step, for some reason he could not define, he felt oddly uncomfortable, had a chill. It was as if someone with ice-cold water in their kidneys had taken a piss down the back of his coat collar.

Now he could see that the floor was not glassy at all. In fact, the floor was not visible. The reason it had looked glassy from above was because it was flooded with water. From the overall size of the basement, Richards determined that the water was most likely six or seven feet deep. Maybe more.

There was movement at the edge of Richards's flashlight beam, and he followed it. A huge rat was swimming away from him, pushing something before it; an old partially deflated volleyball perhaps. He could not tell for sure. Nor could he decide if the rat was trying to mount the object or bite it.

And he didn't care. Two things that gave him the willies were rats and water, and here were both. To make it worse, the rats were the biggest he'd ever seen, and the water was the dirtiest imaginable. It looked to have a lot of oil and sludge mixed in with it, as well as being stagnant.

It grew darker, and Richards realized the moon had been hazed by a cloud again. He let that be his signal. There was nothing more to see here, so he turned and started up. Stopped. The very large shape of a man filled the doorway.

Richards jerked the light up, saw that the shadows had been playing tricks on him. The man was not as large as he'd first thought. And he wasn't wearing a hat. He had been certain before that he was, but he could see now that he was mistaken. The fellow was bareheaded, and his features, though youthful, were undistinguished; any character he might have had seemed to retreat into the flesh of his face or find sanctuary within the dark folds of his shaggy hair. As he lowered the light, Richards thought he saw the wink of braces on the young man's teeth.

"Basements aren't worth a damn in this part of the country," the young man said. "Must have been some Yankees come down here and built this. Someone who didn't know about the water table, the weather and all."

"I didn't know anyone else was here," Richards said. "Klein send you?"

"Don't know a Klein."

"He owns the place. Loaned me a key."

The young man was silent a moment. "Did you know the moon is behind a cloud? A cloud across the moon can change the entire face of the night. Change it the way some people change their clothes, their moods, their expressions."

Richards shifted uncomfortably.

"You know," the young man said, "I couldn't shave this morning."

"Beg pardon?"

"When I tried to put a blade in my razor, I saw that it had an eye on it, and it was blinking at me, very fast. Like this…oh, you can't see from down there, can you? Well, it was very fast. I dropped it and it slid along the sink, dove off on the floor, crawled up the side of the bathtub and got in the soap dish. It closed its eye then, but it started mewing like a kitten wanting milk. Ooooowwwwaaa, oooowwwaa, was more the way it sounded really, but it reminded me of a kitten. I knew what it wanted, of course. What it always wants. What all the sharp things want.

"Knowing what it wanted made me sick and I threw up in the toilet. Vomited up a razor blade. It was so fat it might have been pregnant. Its eye was blinking at me as I flushed it. When it was gone the blade in the soap dish started to sing high and silly-like.

"The blade I vomited, I know how it got inside of me." The young man raised his fingers to his throat. "There was a little red mark right here this morning, and it was starting to scab over. One or two of them always find a way in. Sometimes it's nails that get in me. They used to come in through the soles of my feet while I slept, but I stopped that pretty good by wearing my shoes to bed."

In spite of the cool of the basement, Richards had started to sweat. He considered the possibility of rushing the guy or just trying to push past him, but dismissed it. The stairs might be too weak for sudden movement, and maybe the fruitcake might just have his say and go on his way.

"It really doesn't matter how hard I try to trick them," the young man continued, "they always win out in the end. Always."

"I think I'll come up now," Richards said, trying very hard to sound casual.

The young man flexed his legs. The stairs shook and squealed in protest. Richards nearly toppled backward into the water.

"Hey!" Richards yelled.

"Bad shape," the young man said. "Needs a lot of work. Rebuilt entirely would be the ticket."

Richards regained both his balance and his composure. He couldn't decide if he was angry or scared, but he wasn't about to move. Going up he had rotten stairs and Mr. Looney Tunes. Behind him he had the rats and water. The proverbial rock and a hard place.

"Maybe it's going to cloud up and rain," the young man said. "What do you think? Will it rain tonight?"

"I don't know," Richards managed.

"Lot of dark clouds floating about. Maybe they're rain clouds. Did I tell you about the God of the Razor? I really meant to. He rules the sharp things. He's the god of those who live by the blade. He was my friend Donny's god. Did you know he was Jack the Ripper's god?"

The young man dipped his hand into his coat pocket, pulled it out quickly and whipped his arm across his body twice, very fast. Richards caught a glimpse of something long and metal in his hand. Even the cloud-veiled moonlight managed to give it a dull, silver spark.

Richards put the light on him again. The young man was holding the object in front of him, as if he wished it to be examined. It was an impossibly large straight razor.

"I got this from Donny," the young man said. "He got it in an old shop somewhere. Gladewater, I think. It comes from a barber kit, and the kit originally came from England. Says so in the case. You should see the handle on this baby. Ivory. With a lot of little designs and symbols carved into it. Donny looked the symbols up. They're geometric patterns used for calling up a demon. Know what else? Jack the Ripper was no surgeon. He was a barber. I know, because Donny got the razor and started having these visions where Jack the Ripper and the God of the Razor came to talk to him. They explained what the razor was for. Donny said the reason they could talk to him was because he tried to shave with the razor and cut himself. The blood on the blade, and those symbols on the handle, they opened the gate. Opened it so the God of the Razor could come and live inside Donny's head. The Ripper told him that the metal in the blade goes all the way back to a sacrificial altar the Druids used."

The young man stopped talking, dropped the blade to his side. He looked over his shoulder. "That cloud is very dark…slow moving. I sort of bet on rain." He turned back to Richards. "Did I ask you if you thought it would rain tonight?"

Richards found he couldn't say a word. It was as if his tongue had turned to cork in his mouth. The young man didn't seem to notice or care.

"After Donny had the visions, he just talked and talked about this house. We used to play here when we were kids. Had the boards on the back window rigged so they'd slide like a trap door. They're still that way…Donny used to say this house had angles that sharpened the dull edges of your mind. I know what he means now. It is comfortable, don't you think?"

Richards, who was anything but comfortable, said nothing. Just stood very still, sweating, fearing, listening, aiming the light.

"Donny said the angles were honed best during the full moon. I didn't know what he was talking about then. I didn't understand about the sacrifices. Maybe you know about them? Been all over the papers and on the TV. The Decapitator they called him.

"It was Donny doing it, and from the way he started acting, talking about the God of the Razor, Jack the Ripper, this old house and its angles, I got suspicious. He got so he wouldn't even come around near or during a full moon, and when the moon started waning, he was different. Peaceful. I followed him a few times but didn't have any luck. He drove to the Safeway, left his car there and walked. He was as quick and sneaky as a cat. He'd lose me right off. But then I got to figuring…him talking about this old house and all…and one full moon I came here and waited for him, and he showed up. You know what he was doing? He was bringing the heads here, tossing them down there in the water like those South American Indians used to toss bodies and stuff in sacrificial pools… It's the angles in the house, you see."

Richards had that sensation like ice-cold piss down his collar again, and suddenly he knew what that swimming rat had been pursuing and what it was trying to do.

"He threw all seven heads down there, I figure," the young man said. "I saw him toss one." He pointed with the razor. "He was standing about where you are now when he did it. When he turned and saw me, he ran up after me. I froze, couldn't move a muscle. Every step he took, closer he got to me, the stranger he looked…he slashed me with the razor, across the chest, real deep. I fell down and he stood over me, the razor cocked," the young man cocked the razor to show Richards. "I think I screamed. But he didn't cut me again. It was like the rest of him was warring with the razor in his hand. He stood up, and walking stiff as one of those wind-up toy soldiers, he went back down the stairs, stood about where you are now, looked up at me, and drew that razor straight across his throat so hard and deep he damn near cut his head off. He fell back in the water there, sunk like an anvil. The razor landed on the last step.

"Wasn't any use; I tried to get him out of there, but he was gone, like he'd never been. I couldn't see a ripple. But the razor was lying there and I could hear it. Hear it sucking up Donny's blood like a kid sucking the sweet out of a sucker. Pretty soon there wasn't a drop of blood on it. I picked it up…so shiny, so damned shiny. I came upstairs, passed out on the floor from the loss of blood.

"At first I thought I was dreaming, or maybe delirious, because I was lying at the end of this dark alley between these trash cans with my back against the wall. There were legs sticking out of the trash cans, like tossed mannequins. Only they weren't mannequins. There were razor blades and nails sticking out of the soles of the feet and blood was running down the ankles and legs, swirling so that they looked like giant peppermint sticks. Then I heard a noise like someone trying to dribble a medicine ball across a hardwood floor. Plop, plop, plop. And then I saw the God of the Razor.

"First there's nothing in front of me but stewing shadows, and the next instant he's there. Tall and black…not Negro…but black like obsidian rock. Had eyes like smashed windshield glass and teeth like polished stickpins. Was wearing a top hat with this shiny band made out of chrome razor blades. His coat and pants looked like they were made out of human flesh, and sticking out of the pockets of his coat were gnawed fingers, like after-dinner treats. And he had this big old turnip pocket watch dangling out of his pants pocket on a strand of gut. The watch swung between his legs as he walked. And that plopping sound, know what that was? His shoes. He had these tiny, tiny feet and they were fitted right into the mouths of these human heads. One of the heads was a woman's and it dragged long black hair behind it when the God walked.

"Kept telling myself to wake up. But I couldn't. The God pulled this chair out of nowhere—it was made out of leg bones and the seat looked like scraps of flesh and hunks of hair—and he sat down, crossed his legs and dangled one of those ragged-head shoes in my face. Next thing he does is whip this ventriloquist dummy out of the air, and it looked like Donny, and was dressed like Donny had been last time I'd seen him, down there on the stair. The God put the dummy on his knee and Donny opened his eyes and spoke. 'Hey, buddy boy,' he said, 'how goes it? What do you think of the razor's bite? You see, pal, if you don't die from it, it's like a vampire's bite. Get my drift? You got to keep passing it on. The sharp things will tell you when, and if you don't want to do it, they'll bother you until you do, or you slice yourself bad enough to come over here on the Darkside with me and Jack and the others. Well, got to go back now, join the gang. Be talking with you real soon, moving into your head.'

"Then he just sort of went limp on the God's knee, and the God took off his hat and he had this zipper running along the middle of his bald head. A goddamned zipper! He pulled it open. Smoke and fire and noises like screaming and car wrecks happening came out of there. He picked up the Donny dummy, which was real small now, and tossed him into the hole in his head way you'd toss a treat into a Great Dane's mouth. Then he zipped up again and put on his hat. Never said a word. But he leaned forward and held his turnip watch so I could see it. The watch hands were skeleton fingers, and there was a face in there, pressing its nose in little smudged circles against the glass, and though I couldn't hear it, the face had its mouth open and it was screaming, and that face was mine. Then the God and the alley and the legs in the trash cans were gone. And so was the cut on my chest. Healed completely. Not even a mark.

"I left out of there and didn't tell a soul. And Donny, just like he said, came to live in my head, and the razor started singing to me nights, probably a song sort of like those sirens sang for that Ulysses fellow. And come near and on the full moon, the blades act up, mew and get inside of me. Then I know what I need to do…I did it tonight. Maybe if it had rained I wouldn't have had to do it…but it was clear enough for me to be busy."

The young man stopped talking, turned, stepped inside the house, out of sight. Richards sighed, but his relief was short-lived. The young man returned and came down a couple of steps. In one hand, by the long blond hair, he was holding a teenage girl's head. The other clutched the razor.

The cloud veil fell away from the moon, and it became quite bright.

The young man, with a flick of his wrist, tossed the head at Richards, striking him in the chest, causing him to drop the light. The head bounced between Richards's legs and into the water with a flat splash.

"Listen…" Richards started, but anything he might have said aged, died, and turned to dust in his mouth.

Fully outlined in the moonlight, the young man started down the steps, holding the razor before him like a battle flag.

Richards blinked. For a moment it looked as if the guy were wearing a… He was wearing a hat. A tall, black one with a shiny metal band. And he was much larger now, and between his lips was a shimmer of wet, silver teeth like thirty-two polished stickpins.

Plop, plop came the sound of his feet on the steps, and in the lower and deeper shadows of the stairs, it looked as if the young man had not only grown in size and found a hat, but had darkened his face and stomped his feet into pumpkins…. But one of the pumpkins streamed long, dark hair.

Plop, plop…. Richards screamed and the sound of it rebounded against the basement walls like a superball.

Shattered starlight eyes beneath the hat. A Cheshire smile of shiny needles in a carbon face. A big dark hand holding the razor, whipping it back and forth like a lion's talon snatching at warm, soft prey.

Swish, swish, swish.

Richards's scream was dying in his throat, if not in the echoing basement, when the razor flashed for him. He avoided it by stepping briskly backward. His foot went underwater, but found a step there. Momentarily. The rotting wood gave way, twisted his ankle, sent him plunging into the cold, foul wetness.

Just before his eyes, like portholes on a sinking ship, were covered by the liquid darkness, he saw the God of the Razor—now manifest in all his horrid form—lift a splitting head shoe and step into the water after him.

Richards torqued his body, swam long, hard strokes, coasted bottom; his hand touched something cold and clammy down there and a piece of it came away in his fingers.

Flipping it from him with a fan of his hand, he fought his way to the surface and broke water as the blonde girl's head bobbed in front of him, two rat passengers aboard, gnawing viciously at the eye sockets.

Suddenly, the girl's head rose, perched on the crown of the tall hat of the God of the Razor, then it tumbled off, rats and all, into the greasy water.

Now there was the jet face of the God of the Razor and his mouth was open and the teeth blinked briefly before the lips drew tight, and the other hand, like an eggplant sprouting fingers, clutched Richards's coat collar and plucked him forward and Richards—the charnel breath of the God in his face, the sight of the lips slashing wide to once again reveal brilliant dental grill work—went limp as a pelt. And the God raised the razor to strike.

And the moon tumbled behind a thick, dark cloud.

White face, shaggy hair, no hat, a fading glint of silver teeth…the young man holding the razor, clutching Richards's coat collar.

The juice back in his heart, Richards knocked the man's hand free, and the guy went under. Came up thrashing. Went under again. And when he rose this time, the razor was frantically flaying the air.

"Can't swim," he bellowed, "can't—" Under he went, and this time he did not come up. But Richards felt something touch his foot from below. He kicked out savagely, dog paddling wildly all the while. Then the touch was gone and the sloshing water went immediately calm.

Richards swam toward the broken stairway, tried to ignore the blond head that lurched by, now manned by a four-rat crew. He got hold of the loose, dangling stair rail and began to pull himself up. The old board screeched on its loosening nail, but held until Richards gained a hand on the door ledge, then it gave way with a groan and went to join the rest of the rotting lumber, the heads, the bodies, the faded stigmata of the God of the Razor.

Pulling himself up, Richards crawled into the room on his hands and knees, rolled over on his back…and something flashed between his legs…. It was the razor. It was stuck to the bottom of his shoe…. That had been the touch he had felt from below; the young guy still trying to cut him, or perhaps accidentally striking him during his desperate thrashings to regain the surface.

Sitting up, Richards took hold of the ivory handle and freed the blade. He got to his feet and stumbled toward the door. His ankle and foot hurt like hell where the step had given way beneath him, hurt him so badly he could hardly walk.

Then he felt the sticky, warm wetness oozing out of his foot to join the cold water in his shoe, and he knew that he had been cut by the razor.

But then he wasn't thinking anymore. He wasn't hurting anymore. The moon rolled out from behind a cloud like a colorless eye and he just stood there looking at his shadow on the lawn. The shadow of an impossibly large man wearing a top hat and balls on his feet, holding a monstrous razor in his hand.

King of Shadows

Author's Note:

Outside of the novel itself, and a story that can't be published here, this is my favorite God of the Razor story. It came to me in a flash and I wrote it very quickly. I kept a decidedly Southern tone about it, and tried to write a story that came at the God of the Razor from an unexpected angle. Readers will have to decide if I was successful.

This first appeared in a book titled Lords of the Razor. This was a tribute to me and to my character, the God of the Razor, and had a number of authors writing about my character, all from their own perspective. Some of the stories were close to the original conception, and some went far afield and were unique in their own way. Some were humorous. It was a wonderful book and I was proud of it, and it was wonderful to have a publisher do something like this out of respect for my work and my creation.

All I can say is what Elvis would say. Thank you, thank you very much.

Actually, this is a common Southern way of thanking people, but Elvis's fame has sort of led it to be associated with him. I catch myself saying it all the time, and I think that some believe I'm imitating Elvis, perhaps because of my Elvis story, "Bubba Hotep."

I ain't. I'm just being Southern Texas Boy grateful.

So, once again: Thank you, thank you very much.

Leroy was as shocked as if someone had handed him an electrically charged wire. He got the shock when he learned he was about to have a little brother, and that his surprise sibling would make his first appearance at the age of eleven. Being fourteen himself and knowing full well how babies were made and where they came from, it twisted up all kinds of images in his head, and he didn't like a one of them. Some of them he hated with a deep sincerity that only a Biblical literalist could grasp.

His mama told him about his new brother and told him the boy's name was Draighton, and that Draighton would share his room with him, because there wasn't any other way, the house being small and all.

"I have a little brother? And he's eleven? And he's named Draighton? That's a real name?"

Now that the image of an eleven year old springing from his mother's womb ready to start fifth grade had fallen out of his head, a new idea came to him. His father had had a child by someone other than his mother, and there had been a discovery, and now this new child, branded with the name Draighton, would soon be coming to live with them, in his room, sharing his bed, eating part of the food that before Draighton's arrival had been his except for sharing with his parents and the garbage disposal.

He thought his mother was taking this all rather well, this new found son by another woman, till she said, "Now, he's not your brother by blood. He's a friend's boy, but he was good friends with your daddy, and this fella, Jimmy Turner, well, he was a nervous sort. And just the other day he took to drink and lost his head. He killed his wife, then himself. Cut her and his throat with a big old razor. He left a will that wanted Draighton to come live with Herman and me, and the court, after a bit of finagling here and there, decided to let him."

"Why didn't his daddy kill him too?" Leroy asked.

His mother thought this was nothing more than a simple question, but it was really a statement of disappointment.

"He was on a camping trip with the Boy Scouts when it happened. It was a two week trip. In some mountains or another out in New Mexico, or Arizona. Some desert place. Jimmy starting acting a little odd at work. Everyone said so. And he must have known things were slipping, and that's why he made out the will. Did it two, maybe three months before the tragic accident."

"It don't sound like an accident."

"Well, technically, I suppose you're right."

"Technically," Leroy said, "ain't it a murder and suicide?"

"Technically, yes."

Well now, this was all intense and surprising news, and Leroy took it the way he took most unpleasantness. Badly. He went to his room and jacked off twice, thinking he ought to get some of it out of his system now, since the operation was going to be more difficult in days to come, and he was not the sort of boy that liked the idea of talking about such things with a friend, or even a new brother, and the idea of them sharing in such an endeavor was unappealing, though some of the boys at school liked it, and had even participated in what they called a circle jerk. The thought of this alone made Leroy's stomach churn. The mere vision of some other boy seeing his equipment, or heaven forbid, touching it, sent shockwaves through him. What surprised him was that the other boys thought the whole thing funny and could see no homosexual attachments to the project, yet, due to his glasses and not overly attractive appearance, were quick to call him queer or fag, or at the least, four-eyes.

Leroy had only in the last year gotten to the point where he viewed the whole notion of sex as more than a fire that drove him to such episodes as he had just completed, lying on his bed drying from a humiliating activity with sticky Kleenex in his lap. He had lately realized the connection between his apparatus and that of the female of the species, it having been explained to him in the manner of plug and outlet by a senior boy, and the thought of it disgusted him. But none of this was as confusing or disturbing as the notion of a new brother, full blown with a personality, and close enough in age the kid might want to fight, and might even be able to beat him up. This was a real concern, as he had already taken two sound whippings from a girl at school, who besides being cursed with a massive facial outbreak of impetigo, a curse that extended throughout most of the first through eighth grade to such an extent that when those divisions of the school were on the playground it looked like a goddamn leper colony. And if that wasn't bad enough, like all the impetigo-cursed, this girl's sores were covered in a purple iodine medication that gave her the look from a distance of being a spotted pup parading on hind paws. Besides the impetigo sores, she was sick-bird-scrawny, had one eye that wandered, and rode the short bus to school and had to have help to find it at departure time every afternoon.

And this beating she gave him, it wasn't a beating he thought he deserved, having merely tried to point out that if she was going to stand around with a ping-pong eye, she might want to wear sunshades or some such thing, a pirate patch maybe. This suggestion had resulted in a sudden explosion that led to a legendary ass-whipping, that, a year later, was still referred to in quiet whispers, lest the Wandering Eye Girl, as she was known, get wind of it, and take to beating someone else's ass to the point of near terminal embarrassment.

It made no difference that six months after the fact it was discovered she wasn't retarded at all, just contrary, and that a doctor had fixed her eye and her impetigo had cleared up and her parents had moved her to another school, where rumor was she had gained weight, looked good, made excellent grades, and kept tabs on the old school and things that were said there by a horde of hidden informants.

Leroy thought this was all doubtful, but still, he was careful in what he said, least any reference to the former Wandering Eye Girl might in fact inform some hidden stool-pigeon and lead to her return for an even more brutal whipping and the final cap on his embarrassment, that even now resulted in his being called all kinds of names other than queer, fag and four-eyes, among them Retard Punching Bag and Ass-Whipped Fellow.

Therefore, the idea of a new brother who would attend the same school and might be willing to fight him was nervously unappealing. That's all he needed. Was a new addition to the list of all those who could whip his ass, which already included just about everybody.

What he thought he might do was jump the little bastard and beat him down right up front, therefore dispelling any future notions Draighton might have of pugilistic superiority. Of course, there was always the possibility of the turn-about. That he, instead of Draighton might in fact be the one who came out on the short end of the stick, even if he did spring a surprise attack and get in the first few licks.

And there was another thought. Though he had yet to meet Draighton, the name itself implied to Leroy that the boy might be a biter. Those old style hillbilly names often designated just that, though the fact that Draighton was a Boy Scout might temper his savagery a bit. They were supposed to be good citizens, though the truth was a couple boys he knew in the Scouts were great fans of the circle jerk, and found their camp outs perfect for such shenanigans. Bottom line was, it was hard to fight a biter. He knew, because this brought back an equally disturbing memory, one right there side by side with him having taken a severe trouncing from a thought-to-be retarded, wandering eye girl, and that was when he was nine he had tried to bully his seven year old cousin Wiley, who, in spite of generally wearing a sheen of dirt encrusted snot, proved to have the mind and tenacity of a pit bull. He bit. Leroy still had the scars. At least that little bastard went to a different school.

So it was with major trepidation that Leroy awaited the arrival of his new brother, Draighton.

Draighton came on a cloudy day when there was a threat and smell of rain and a severe push of wind. Leroy had been forced to take a bath and clean behind his ears and wear church clothes, and he thought this was ridiculous, dressing up for some kid with a goofy name and no parents. But he had to do it, least his mother break out the fly swatter, and when the moment came, he stood with her on the front porch, waiting. His mother was as nervous as if she were anticipating final judgment, moving from one foot to the other and talking as if words might be a shield against the weather, which, along with the rain and wind, was turning as cool as a well-digger's ass.

He watched as his dad's Chevy pulled up at the curve and his father got out, and a moment later the door on the far side opened and a boy knee high to a midget climbed out, proving that there were was no truth to the rumor that the Boy Scouts had height requirements, a factoid laid on him by the local Scout Master when he sought to join up. He'd have to look into that, this height business. He was beginning to think, for some reason or another, the Scoutmaster had lied to him.

The boy wore leg braces over his pants, carried a little bag by a handle and walked as if he were in a Nazi military parade, kicking one leg out front to be followed by another kick, and another and another. Leroy half-expected Draighton to give a stiff-armed salute.

Draighton didn't have a whole lot else going for him either. He had what was called a bowl haircut and his hair was the color of a fresh turd and his head was big and he wore thicker glasses than Leroy and his face looked as if it beaconed to receive flies and custard pies.

In spite of this, Leroy's mother came down off the porch and practically darted out to Draighton, grabbed his head as if she might make a free throw, and gave him a kiss on the forehead, said, "Aren't you just the sweetest-looking thing."

Leroy was astonished at such a bald-faced lie, as he felt Draighton might be best used to scare crows in a corn patch, provided you could teach him to stand on a stool and a phone book.

"This here is Draighton," the father said, as if he suspected Leroy or his mother might be anticipating someone else. Leroy came down the steps and went over and stuck out his hand the way he had been taught to do, and the boy took it, his little hand lay like a damp mitten in the palm of Leroy's paw. Leroy had a sudden charge of excitement. He was bigger than this boy in both height and hands, and probably equipment. The idea of having someone around might not be so bad, especially if he was superior to in size. It seemed unlikely that with those leg braces Draighton would have any chance of beating him up, or even chasing him down. A series of ideas ran through Leroy's head, some of them involving trip-wires, all of them ending with him in some mode of triumph, Draighton lying on his back, struggling to flip over like a toppled cockroach.

The first thing Leroy did was lay down the rules.

"Reckon you can put your stuff over there in that corner, long as you keep it organized and don't get it mixed with my goods or use any of my stuff, except maybe some of the crayons, if you ask."

"Thank you," Draighton said.

"All right, don't mention it. I was taught to be kind. But it's important you know whose turf is whose turf, lest we come to a misunderstanding."

"That's very nice of you."

"Just want you to know how things are. We'll share the bed, but I get the side I want, and if you fart, then you hit the floor with a pillow and a blanket. I get the bathroom first, if I want, and I get the towels first."

"Won't I have my own towel?"

"Doubt it. We don't do the towels that much. My mother says it saves on soap and water bills if you just dry with the same towel for awhile, and you'll be using whatever one I finish with, I reckon."

"All right then."

"Your legs hurt?"

"They do. I had some kind of problem with them, and with my spine. Doctor says I might outgrow it."

"Don't count on it. Doctors and mothers and such like to give you the good side, so you'll have hope and won't kill yourself or some such thing. I was you, I'd just plan on being a cripple. You could maybe get a wheel chair when you grow up. Get a job, licking stamps and envelopes and such. They got some chairs now that are pretty good. There's a kid I see now and then, a waterhead, and he's got one of them chairs. You could maybe do that. He sells pencils. It ain't heavy work and it ain't rich work, but it's work, and thing is, you don't have to have no education to get it."

"I like to think optimistically."

"See where that's gotten you. You're old man killed your mama with a razor then cut his own throat, and if you had been in town, instead of off with the Boy Sprouts, you would have been cut up too. He might have even taken them braces and sold them before he done himself in. You never know what kind of plan a crazy might have. And I ought to tell you, don't get too comfortable, you might not be around here long. My guess is the welfare will come get you. You might have to live in one of those big rooms with a bunch of cots. Just preparing you on how things are."

Draighton broke into tears and clanged out of the room, down the hall to the bathroom.

Leroy grinned, took a deep breath and tossed out on the bed.

Life was good.

Thing amazed Leroy was that the cripple seemed to like him. Draighton followed him around, and Leroy could hear him banging about behind him, as if everywhere he went there was nearby a dreadful machinery break down. It gave Leroy the creeps. If he sped up, Draighton sped up, and if Leroy looked back Draighton might be in the distance, but he would be coming as if on a mission, his face determined, his legs swinging out wide, tossing him onward.

At school he saw him in the halls, and Draighton never failed to acknowledge him by calling Leroy's name and waving. He seemed truly excited that he was Leroy's brother, and told others this was the case, though Leroy always said he was a homeless kid they were helping out. Considering Leroy had no status to begin with, having a miniature cripple for a brother was not beneficial, and tossed him into a rank just below the retards and the booger eaters who lined up outside during lunch hour to dessert on the contents of their nose in plain sight, relishing their bottom rung position as if it were an award.

The Draighton Connection made it so he was the butt of jokes that he wished were intended for Draighton. But no, he, as if by osmosis, collected Draighton's insults. "Hey, Four-eyes, you and your Mom have to oil your brother much." Or, "Have you thought about selling him for scrap?" Or, worse yet, "When you suck his dick, do the braces cut you?"

It was less than stimulating, and Leroy felt that it was only fair that some of this meanness directed at him should blow back on the source material.

About a month went by. Insults didn't seem to bother Draighton. He rode those out like a pilot in a hurricane plane. But there finally came a vulnerable day. It was the day they all went to the house where Draighton's father had killed the kid's mother and then himself.

The plan belonged to a therapist Draighton was seeing. The therapist felt enough time had passed that it would be a good idea for Draighton to confront where it had all happened. Leroy had heard his Mom and Dad talking at the bottom of the stairs one night, while Draighton was snoozing in bed. He had come out on the landing and hid up there to listen. They were discussing Draighton's condition, how fragile he was, and Leroy's father was against something or another, though Leroy was uncertain what.

"That fella hasn't ever been out of that goddamn office, except maybe to hang around the University or such," Leroy heard his father say. "What the hell does he know about the feelings of a little boy? Common sense should tell you that doing something like that ain't a good idea, even if it came with money and added six inches to that little kid's dick. Though I reckon in that case he'd have to have some lifts built into his shoes."

"Darling," Leroy's mother said, "you shouldn't talk like that."

"Maybe not, but I'm telling you, it ain't a good idea."

"He's the doctor."

"Yeah, well, I think we should actually talk to someone who's studied medicine, not a bunch of hooey."

"He has degrees. Certificates."

"Yeah, so does the tire man at Wal-Marts, and my goddamn tire came off. Remember that?"

Few days later, Leroy figured it out when Draighton was taken for a private discussion in the kitchen. Leroy leaned against the wall near the doorway and listened. They were going to take Draighton back to his old home, to look around, to make peace with its existence and what had happened there. That's what he heard his mother say. "Make peace with its existence." Leroy thought, well, it ain't the house cut the little kid's mother's throat, so what's the beef there?

It was all obvious now, Leroy's father didn't want Draighton going back to the house where his parents died, and it was the therapist's suggestions they were debating that night, but, in the end, Mother and the therapist prevailed. Leroy thought. Therapist and mothers, they can be so dumb.

The day was wet and cold and the clouds were full of shadows. The therapist, a skinny man who wore glasses and had a complexion problem, and gave Leroy some idea of how he might look when grown, sat with them in the car, in the backseat between Draighton and himself. Leroy's mother sat on the front passenger side, and his father, grumbling all the while about this and that, drove. Leroy was glad to be along. He was supposedly there for Draighton's support, which he thought was funny. He was sort of hoping Draighton would have some kind of episode, break down in tears, or maybe just flip out and have to be hauled off in a straight jacket, live out the rest of his time in a padded room.

The house wasn't what Leroy expected. It was just a house. Nothing creepy about it. No spider webs hanging from gables, and no weed-grown yard. Someone had kept it mowed and it was a brightly painted house, the only purple house on the block. The only thing bleak about it were that the flower beds were empty of blooms this time of year and the sky seemed to sit down on the roof of the house like massive wads of cotton that had been stained with sin.

The inside of the house was no less deflating. It too was as common as hand soap. There wasn't any blood and nothing was knocked over and there wasn't a chalk line on the floor. Not even a yellow ribbon with POLICE: DO NOT CROSS had greeted them at the door.

Nothing was unusual about the house in any way. The therapist, said, "Now, you weren't here when it happened, Draighton—"

"And that's the point," Leroy's father said. "He wasn't here. He's not dealing with anything. This is just not necessary and there ain't no way it's good for him."

"It's okay," Draighton said. "I want to see."

The therapist pursed his lips, as if to say: Told you.

"Now, according to the police," the therapist said, "part of what happened took place in the back bedroom."

Draighton nodded, as if this was only logical.

They went past the couch and opened the door and went into the room, and finally something was strange enough to have made the trip worthwhile. The walls were painted black. The windows were marked up solid black, and the instruments that had turned them that way lay on the floor under the window sills. Dozens of black markers. The bed had been turned over and was thrown up against the wall, and the closet door was thrown open revealing clothes hanging on a rod. The carpet in the bedroom smelled, and in one spot it was heavily stained and the stain had made the carpet in that area stiff as a wire brush.

"Here," said the therapist, pointing a finger at the carpet, "is where your mother was found, Draighton."

"This is just goddamn cruel," said the father. "It's okay, Draighton. You can go if you want."

Draighton shook his head. "No, sir. I don't want to go."

"I don't know Jimmy would have wanted this," said the father.

"Obviously, the father was confused," said the therapist. "He wouldn't have known what he wanted. Or, rather, what he wanted wasn't all that good."

"You know what I mean," said the father, standing up tall, pushing out his chest.

The therapist stepped back.

Leroy's father sighed, crossed his arms and looked defeated. The mother looked about the room carefully, as if more murderers or victims might be propped up in the corners.

"I think we'll go outside," the father said, and he and his wife went. They were in such a huff, they forgot Leroy standing there, actually enjoying himself.

Wow, Leroy thought. A murder. Cut from ear to ear. Wow.

"The room wasn't black when I went to camp," Draighton said.

"He must have finished a day or so before the murders," the therapist said. "No one knows why he made the room black, why he blacked out the windows. It's even possible he did it after the murder. No one knows."

"Is this where daddy killed himself?" Draighton asked.

The therapist shook his head.

"No. When he finished here, he went out this way."

Leroy and Draighton followed the therapist into the living room, then down the short hall that led through the kitchen, and to the door that led to the enclosed garage. The went down the short steps into the garage. The therapist asked where the light was, and Draighton turned it on. The car was still in the garage, sitting there like a great bomb waiting to be loaded. The place smelled really bad.

"He died here," the therapist said, and he pointed to a little storage door inside the garage.

"He went inside there, sat down on a stool, and cut his throat."

Leroy thought, wow, this therapist is great. If Draighton isn't fucked up now, he's sure gonna be.

Draighton stiff-legged over and opened the door to the closet quickly, as if he might do it so fast he would travel back in time and rescue his father from his final moments. When the door was open, Leroy leaned over Draighton and looked in.

The stool was still there and the place smelled of blood. When Draighton flicked the little closet light on, roaches darted away in a clicking rush. For a moment, in one corner, where shadows seemed to remain in spite of the light, it seemed to Leroy, at least for an instant, that the roaches gathered together and rose up into a tall, broad shape, then fell apart and scuttled away into…Well, he didn't know where they went. It had all happened in the blink of an eye. The floor and walls seemed tight together, didn't seem to provide any means of retreat, even for a roach. But, nonetheless they were gone and the corner no longer seemed to be shadowy. Leroy felt cold, as if water from an iceberg had been suddenly flushed down his back , and his testicles sought high ground, tightening up like string-drawn bags of tobacco.

Leroy looked back at the therapist, who was standing back in the garage, having paused to light a cigarette. Leroy had a feeling the therapist loved all this, and maybe hoped Draighton would seize up or go the other extreme, into a hissy fit.

Neither happened.

Draighton just stood there in the shadows, and then he walked inside and moved around the room, from one corner to the next, very slow, and then he sat down on the stool, lifted his head and looked up.

Leroy looked up as well. All that was up there was a fly-specked bulb of about forty watts. Draighton, however, took an inordinate interest in it, before lowering his head and letting it nod this way and that.

"Did he die on this stool?" Draighton said loud enough for the smoking therapist to hear.

The therapist came to the doorway, said, "Yes. Well, they found him lying beside it. His hand was outstretched toward the wall."

"Where is the razor? Do the police have it?"

"Well, Draighton, that was part of a little mystery. They didn't find it. They think it was a razor because of the way the cut looked. It could have been a knife. But the weapon wasn't found."

"Then why would they think he did it?"

"Because he wrote a note."

"Oh."

"It said. 'I had to.' And that was it."

The therapist studied Draighton carefully, and Leroy thought it was because he was still waiting to see Draighton go off his nut. But, if this was indeed his plan, he was disappointed.

"But where would the razor go?" Draighton asked.

"I know. It sounds more like murder. No murder weapon. But, the police believe, that due to the note, and the blood on the wall, your father cut his throat, and, well, hid it."

"But where?"

"It is a mystery, isn't it? But, that doesn't mean it was anything other than what it appears to be. A murder, suicide."

"He cut his throat and then hid it?" Draighton asked. "Wouldn't that be hard?"

"It would, but they think that's what happened. There was a cat in the house—"

"—Snowball," Draighton said.

"Yes. Your cat. And they believe it may have taken the razor in its mouth and wandered off with it. You know, the blood would have attracted him."

"Snowball carried off an open razor in his teeth?"

Leroy thought Draighton was asking some pretty good questions. Damn. This was great.

"I don't know, Draighton," the therapist said, "I'm telling you what the police thought."

"They're dumb," Draighton said.

"Well, they are the police."

"They're dumb. Even I know the cat wouldn't do that, and I'm a little kid. Where's Snowball?"

"Well, they determined the cat was in the house, but the window was open over the kitchen sink, and they believe he went out that way…He…Well, Draighton. He got run over."

"Killed?"

"I'm afraid so."

Draighton, finally overwhelmed, sitting there on the stool, hung his head and began to cry.

Leroy thought: Priceless. Even the cat is dead.

A few days went by and Leroy found himself growing somewhat pleasant toward the stiff-legged invader. Perhaps it was because he was impressed a bit with Draighton. He had liked the way he had talked to the therapist about the shortcomings of the police, and he felt, in spite of his temporary breakdown on his father's death stool, that he had recovered reasonably well. He even saw fit to sit with him at lunch at school.

But another thing had crept into the mix. He had helped William Townson with his homework one afternoon, or was forced to was more the truth of it, and William had taken a kind of liking to him. Oh, he called Leroy Four-Eyes and Numb Nuts, but from William they were more like terms of affection, like the sort of nicknames you might come up with for a beloved, if somewhat belabored relationship with an unattractive pet. A dog missing an eye, an ear, or a leg, possibly one with a cut off tail, or perhaps the whole list.

This relationship grew, and pretty soon Leroy found he was in the company of a number of the cooler and better respected boys, and that William ran interference for him. Saying stuff like, "Well, he may be a dumb shit, but he's my dumb shit. Don't hit him but once. And on the arm."

Leroy thought it was okay for William to say that stuff because it put him in the company of a number of the well respected boys, and this began to rub off on him. This was a good thing. Girls came around.

Certainly, they weren't interested in him. But it was as close as he ever got, outside of sitting behind some nubile sweetie in class, or passing them in the hall, riding home on the bus with one of them sitting in a seat nearby. They never even knew he was there, but when they came around and talked to William, who was smooth with them and was willing to touch them, Leroy felt that through his connection to William he was able, via a kind of pet ownership, to sniff at the asses of the female population, have dreams of someday mounting their legs. It was as close as he thought a dog deserved to the prize.

It was a dream, and it wasn't much and it wasn't going to happen, but it was all he had.

And then there was Draighton.

Therein lay a problem.

Now, for a time he had felt Draighton's presence was acceptable, because at school, it gave him a kind of pet, someone he could look down on and humiliate, but somehow stay connected to, but when William embraced his company, his stiff-legged, pseudo-brother became not too unlike a wound that wouldn't heal.

One time, out in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes with William, not because he liked them, but because he knew they made William look cool and therefore thought they might make him look the same, William said, "Who's that little retard I see you with from time to time? The gimp?"

"He's staying with us."

"He don't look cool, Four-Eyes. You hang with me, you got to hang with the cool. And I don't need two bumps on my ass. I ain't sure why I got the one, you know what I'm saying?"

"Sure, William. Sure."

"You got my homework?"

"Yeah."

"Miss a few? You got to. I get too many they know I'm a cheating sonofabitch."

"Our papers are different," Leroy said, scrounging in his pack, pulling it out. "I think I even managed to do it like your handwriting."

William took the paper and looked at it. "You four-eyed little prick. You didn't give me a folder to go with it."

"Oh. I have it here."

Leroy produced it and William clamped the papers inside. He flipped it opened and studied it. "This here looks good," he said.

"Thanks," Leroy said. "I did my best."

"I know you did," William said.

After that moment, Leroy began to push himself even farther away from his unwanted companion. Refused to sit with Draighton at school lunches, and instead sat with William and his friends. He was insulted there and made fun of and poked and sometimes tripped, but they wouldn't let Draighton sit with him, but when he came around the long table toward Leroy, Leroy stuck out a leg and tripped Draighton, sent his tray and food and utensils flying.

Draighton fought to get himself back on his feet, without so much as a helping hand, did this amidst ridicule and laughter, gathered up his plate and utensils, put them on his tray and kicked back toward the center of the cafeteria.

William stuck out his fist and Leroy stuck out his, and they bumped knuckles.

He was in now.

That night, up in their room, Draighton sat in the corner, his back against the wall, his bound legs stretched out in front of him. Leroy came in from having showered and found him that way. He assumed he had fallen and couldn't get up, but he didn't offer to help.

Draighton looked up at him, said, "Why, Leroy? Why did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah. I know. Because I could."

Over the next month Leroy noticed a change in Draighton. He no longer even tried to be friends. He was sullen in the room, and had taken to sleeping on a pallet near the far wall. This was all right with Leroy. It gave him all of the bed and he didn't have to put up with him at school. Seeing him now was like seeing a ghost. Nothing really there. Just a wraith kicking its away around the house and the halls at school.

When it all but seemed Draighton had turned to smoke and disappeared, Leroy began to notice peculiarities. Once, he awoke and saw that Draighton was gone. It was no big thing, as he assumed he had gone to the bathroom, but the next night it was the same, and from  his window, which was cracked to let in some of the winter wind, he heard a clanking sound. He arose and looked out. The moonlight was dim, but he could see going along the sidewalk, moving quite briskly in spite of his leg braces, the figure of Draighton. He watched until Draighton had kicked his way into darkness.

Maybe he'll get run over, thought Leroy. Or kidnapped. Maybe someone out there has a thing for cripples. If they did, it would be handy, because they could chase Draighton down quick and kill him. Maybe commit sexual abuse. Leroy had a hard time trying to imagine that, why anyone would want to have any kind of sex with Draighton. A robot, maybe. Someone made of steel. There might be some kind of appeal there. Outside of that, there was the killing part. Someone might do that. Someone who didn't like cripples.

Wouldn't that be a thing?

It was something to hope for.

Leroy went back to bed.

One night late in the bedroom, Draighton was over in the corner sitting on a stool, Draighton's daddy's stool, a lamp light on, his little bag between his outstretched metal-strapped legs. Draighton had the bag open and was plundering its contents. Leroy was in bed with pillows propping him up. He watched Draighton go about his business with a kind of amazement. It seemed it was only yesterday when the room was his and it was large, and now it was his to share and it was small.

"What are you doing?" Leroy asked.

"Looking for something," Draighton said, without glancing up.

"That bag ain't that big. You ought to be able to find anything pretty quick."

"I already found it."

Leroy watched as Draighton took out a long wooden box.

"What's that?"

"It belonged to my daddy."

"Well, what is it?"

"A razor."

"Like the one he cut your Mama with, then himself?"

"It is that one."

"It can't be."

"It can, and it is," Draighton said, balancing the box on his knee.

"It can't be, Wire Legs. It was never found."

"I found it."

"You been back to the house?" Leroy knew that he had, of course, or where would he have gotten the stool. Still, it was somehow a stupefying thought.

"Yes," Draighton said. "I've been back to the house."

"That's where you go at night?"

Draighton nodded, opened the box and reached in and took out the razor, and even from there Leroy could see that it was crusted with dried blood.

"Good God," Leroy said.

"He cut his own throat, put it back in the box, and hid it behind the wall in the garage storage closet."

"We looked there. The police looked there. There wasn't any place for it to be. He wouldn't have had the strength to do it."

"He cut his throat and he took it over to the wall board and pulled it loose and there was a little place for it back there. He put it in the box and put it away and sat back down on the stool and died."

"You can't know that."

"I know it."

"He cut his throat, he wasn't going anywhere. You know that."

"He did though. Did you know that there are eleven dimensions?"

"What are you talking about?"

"There are eleven and they bump against one another, and sometimes they collide. They can collide with great force, and perhaps in the past that was the source of the Big Bang, the colliding of dimensional matter. The dimensions exist alongside ours and we can't see them or touch them, except now and then when something slips through."

"Are you taking some kind of drug? They got like a drug they give cripples? I know you go to the doctor now and then. Mom and Dad take you. Is the doctor having you take something?"

"There is a lord of all things sharp, and he lives in one of those dimensions, and he can be called. He can be invited. He can slip through. His is the world of the razor, and he is the lord of the razor. The King of Shadows."

"You don't sound right. Where you getting this hogwash?"

"It's true. You cut yourself with the right tool, it can open your mind and it can open the worlds. The dimensions. Eleven become one. Sometimes, when they bump just right, they multiply, on down to the singularity of existence, and beyond. There is time beyond the singularity. Can you imagine that."

"No. I don't know what a singularity is."

"I've seen the distance. The great distance. It is forever and can make you mad. It's amazing. It's so much more than this. I tell you, you can open your mind."

"Only if your head is split," Leroy said.

Draighton shook his head. "No. You can open your mind with a simple cut from the right tool." Draighton held up his left hand. From there Leroy could see there was a big red mark on his thumb. A cut.

Leroy was beginning to feel nervous, because Draighton, sitting there draped in shadow, the razor in his hand, the box for it on his knee, didn't sound like Draighton. He wasn't talking like Draighton. He wasn't talking like anyone he knew and he wasn't talking about anything anyone knew.

"Way it works," Draighton said, " is the razor is made from a specific metal that was created when the dimensions collided so hard so long ago and banged everything into existence. When the great boom happened and all manner of matter knocked against itself, some of it was matter from planes we do not perceive, with physics we do not understand. My father, he bought the razor in an antique store. He thought it was strange. He accidently cut himself right before I went to Boy Scout camp. I remember. He cut himself and he said what I'm saying, and I thought it was strange. Mom thought it was strange. I understand it now. I don't think it's so strange at all. You know, there are cuts in all manner of tools if they are blessed with the words of opening, and these tools, like the razor, they can open your mind, and you can fall, fall, fall, down deep into forever."

"You're making me nervous," Leroy said.

"Am I?"

"Yeah."

"You made me very nervous at school. What you did, it embarrassed me. It made me feel even smaller than I am. It made me feel insignificant. But now, I feel less that way. The cut, it can open your mind."

With a flick of the wrist, Draighton sprang the razor open.

"Well," Leroy said, shifting in bed. "I didn't mean to. Make you feel small, I mean."

"I think you did mean to."

"Maybe. I was out of line. I admit it."

"You do?"

"I certainly do."

Leroy watched as the shadows that had been made by clouds and had come through the window to nest with Draighton moved away from him, and now he was just a little four-eyed dude with metal clamps on his legs, a big, open, shiny razor in one hand.

"You might want to clean that razor," Leroy said. "Clean it and put it away."

"Think so?"

"Sure."

"You seem nervous, Leroy."

"I'm fine. I just don't want you to cut yourself. That thing is huge. I don't see how anyone could shave with that thing."

"I don't think it's meant for shaving," Draighton said, and then Leroy watched as a kind of film moved away from Draighton's eyes, and they were just Draighton's eyes now, small and piggy, desperate behind his glasses.

Draighton studied Leroy for a moment, looked down to see the razor in his hand, closed it carefully, placed it in the box and put the box in his bag. He continued to sit on the stool, just watching.

"You look like some kind of owl over there," Leroy said. "You ought to go to bed."

"Guess I ought to."

"I don't think you ought to sleep up here in my bed. Go on and lay down on your pallet."

"Okay."

Leroy reached over and turned out the lamp light, which didn't seem to be giving the room much of a glow anyway, and pulled the covers up to his chin and turned his head on his pillow so he faced Draighton. He closed his eyes, but parted them slightly to watch. Draighton hadn't moved to go to bed. He hadn't moved at all. He just sat there on his daddy's stool with the razor box on his knee staring into empty space as if it were not empty at all.

Leroy didn't like it, and he thought he'd watch to make sure things were okay, but it didn't work out. He went to sleep anyway. But once, during the night, feeling cool, he semi-awoke to pull up the covers, and there in the dark he saw something that disturbed him. A wad of shadows in the corner on the stool were illuminated by a strand of moonlight wagging through the window. Very clearly he saw a figure on the stool. Draighton. Had to be. But he looked bigger and he was wearing a tall top hat. Then the moon was lost to cloud cover again, and there was only the squat shadowy shape of Draighton on the stool.

Leroy tried to awake, but couldn't. He fell back down into darkness, knowing what he had seen to be a bad and strange dream, something he could wish away. And he did. And in spite of the strangeness, or perhaps because of it, he fell asleep.

Once more, near morning, he awoke, and there on the stool, a notebook in hand, writing furiously, was Draighton. He was sure that Draighton had been up all night. He thought about that a moment, then realized it was Saturday, no school, so he closed his eyes and drifted off for a while.

That Saturday when Leroy went down for breakfast, Draighton was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Draighton?" Leroy asked.

His mother, who was busy serving him breakfast, said, "He came down early. He wasn't hungry. He said he was going to the park."

"The park?"

"That's what he said."

Leroy sat in his chair with his plate in front of him and watched it fill with eggs and bacon. He thought about what he thought he had seen last night, about the bad dream, and now, in the clear light of day he was uncertain what he had seen, if it was a dream, if it was real.

No. Couldn't be real. That didn't work. Did not compute.

"Your father and I are going to go visit your dad's aunt," his mother said when he had finished his breakfast and was polishing off a glass of milk. "She's been quite ill. We won't be back until late. Maybe very late. You can watch Draighton, can't you? Lock the house up before it's dark. Don't go out after it's late. I'll give you money for you and Draighton to buy hamburgers and go the movie before dark. But after dark, I want you home."

"Sure," Leroy said.

"We hope to leave within an hour. That's where your dad's been. Down at the station getting gassed up. When he gets back, we're going to go. Sure you'll be all right? We could find Draighton and we all could go. As a family. But I'm not sure you two boys would want to sit around a hospital all day."

"We'll be all right here," Leroy said. "I'll go find Draighton in a bit. Make sure he's back here around dark."

When his dad and mom left, Leroy went back upstairs and looked around. He looked carefully at the stool. Yep. It was the stool he had seen in Draighton's house, out in the garage storage room. He picked it up to see if he could see blood on it, and thought in fact he could. When he did that, something fell out of the stool.

A composition notebook. It had been in a kind of slot under the stool. A magazine slide or some such thing. You couldn't tell it was there just by looking, but you picked up the stool, you could see it.

He put the stool down and picked up the notebook and flipped it open. It was full of gobbledy-gook and drawings and bits of writing and some of the pages had dark splatters on them. Blood?

As Leroy thumbed through, he was startled to see a crude drawing that made him suck in his breath. It was a crudely drawn figure shaded jet black, wearing a top hat. He had very narrow ankles and his feet were fit into the open mouths of decapitated heads, wearing them like house shoes. The blackness of the man was not the blackness of a negro but the pure empty blackness that lay between the stars. This had been achieved by constant pencil shading, but there was something almost otherworldly about it. The teeth in the open mouth of the man, if man was the word, looked like needles and they had been colored with a kind of silver color with some kind of marker. It was crude but there was something about it that made Leroy uncomfortable. The main thing that made him feel that way was what the figure was holding. A razor. A large open straight razor.

Leroy turned the pages and saw there were drawings of old style razor blades, double-edged, and pictures of knives and a picture of what seemed to be a Roman solider sticking a spear into the side of an almost stick-figure Jesus, positioned on a cross. Leroy had to turn the notebook upside down to see this, as it had been drawn in such a way that Jesus' head and that of the Roman were at the bottom of the page. Had it been drawn upside down purposely, or had he merely turned the page wrong when he began this drawing? Or had Draighton drawn it at all. Maybe it was Jimmy, Draighton's father. That made sense.

He examined more pages and found that the writing was often English, but more often than not it appeared to be nothing more than symbols. As he tried to read, his head began to spin and the symbols appeared to move on the page.

Leroy tossed the book into the corner of the room, and as the pages fluttered shut, they gave out shadow and the shadow cut like the edge of a razor across the room and across Leroy.

Leroy felt cold, and for a moment he felt as if he were falling. Sideway. But when he put out his hand, he discovered he was not moving sideways at all, but was standing upright.

He stumbled toward his bed, and then he noticed something he should have noticed before, but his preoccupation with first the stool, and then the composition book, had distracted him. Lying only partially covered by a blanket from Draighton's pallet were Draighton's leg braces. And Draighton wasn't in them.

Leroy began at the park, but he didn't find Draighton. He went down town, and with the money his mother had given him for Draighton and himself, he went into the drugstore/cafeteria and over to the counter where food was served. He bought himself a hamburger and fries and a large cherry Coke made at the fountain, then he went next door to the movies and watched a horror film and went home.

Draighton was still not there.

Leroy read a couple of comics. The room darkened. Leroy got up and looked out. Night was not far away. His parents would probably not be back until late. What to do. Television was a thought, but he didn't feel any great drive toward that, and he didn't like sitting downstairs in the big living room alone.

Instead, he picked up the notebook again and thumbed through it, and had the uncomfortable feeling that the figure of the dark man with the razor had moved from one side of the page to the other, and that he was moving from the center of the book toward the front of it, because the page he was on now only held part of him, and one of his head-encased feet was in the gully of the notebook and extended onto the opposite page.

The light went out of the window and the darkness came in, and Leroy felt surrounded by it. He folded up the book, then jerked his hand to his mouth. A paper cut. He hated those damn things. He tossed the book aside. The room fluttered like bat wings with shadows, and Leroy decided he didn't want to be there anymore.

He got his coat and went outside and started walking. He walked to town again and went by the drug store, but it was closed. He went over to the drugstore/cafeteria again and had another hamburger there, and a Coke, and then he started walking again, thinking he ought to go back to the house. But the notebook was there, and he didn't like the idea of it, and he determined that when he did indeed return home, he was going to burn the damn thing.

He sucked at his paper cut as he walked, and without really thinking about it, he found himself standing outside of Draighton's old house.

It looked different at night. More forbidding than it had looked in the daytime. Leroy went up the walk and came to the door, but he didn't try the knob. Locked most likely. And even if it wasn't, he felt uncomfortable going inside. He went around to the side of the house, to where the black painted bedroom was, pressed up against the window with his face cupped in his hands, and looked through a spot where the black markings were not quite complete.

Being as it was dark and the room was dark, there was little to see, and Leroy was about to withdraw from the window, when something moved.

Draighton.

Leroy had only caught a glimpse, but it was him, and he was moving swiftly, not in his usual way. This baffled Leroy. How was he getting about without his braces? Had he been suddenly healed? And what was he doing back here?

"Draighton," Leroy said, but his voice was soft and he said it in a way that didn't sound like he really meant it.

He thought again of going home, but decided against it. He didn't like Draighton, but he wasn't crazy about being alone anymore. He thought about William, and how maybe he could go hang with him, but then the realness of it all occurred to him. He didn't know where William lived, and William didn't know where he lived, and probably didn't give a damn. William just liked him around so he could slug him on the arm from time to time, have someone to punish for any empty moment that might occur. There was no real relationship there.

Leroy took a deep breath. Damn. Thing was, he didn't want to do that anymore. He wanted to take William's place, make Draighton his bitch. That's what he wanted. He didn't want to be William's plaything anymore, he wanted one of his own, and so far, that hadn't worked out the way he expected. Shit had not flowed downhill enough. Some, but not enough. He was, after a great moment in the cafeteria, tripping the little turd to the floor, losing his ground, and he was letting Draighton control things, and there was no reason for that. Now he felt he should take command, set things right. And finding out Draighton didn't need his leg braces might give him an edge. Draighton was maybe messing with everyone, for sympathy. And it seemed to Leroy that he had heard that as long as Draighton was in those braces, he got some kind of government check. He wasn't sure about that part, but he believed that was right. This could give him something to hold over the little bastard's head, like an anvil on a very weak string.

Leroy went back to the front door, feeling courageous now. After all, what could a little turd like Draighton do to him? He felt angry that he had allowed himself to be overtaken by irrational fears, allowed a notebook to scare him. Yes sir, for certain he was going to burn that damn thing when he got back home.

But for now, he was going to take over, and quit letting Draighton pull all this mysterious stuff, all this boogie man shit. He was going to lay down the law and get that little gimp bastard back to the house. He had to still be a gimp. He didn't just get up one day from being stick-legged, to suddenly having juice in his limbs. He must have on another pair of braces. And he must have been wearing them when he saw Draighton through the window. He had moved quickly, all right, but that didn't mean he still wasn't on braces. Of course, where had he concealed the extra pair? They wouldn't fit in his bag, and there really was nowhere else. He couldn't just pull them out of his ass. And there was still the other possibility that he didn't need them at all.

Leroy stalked around to the front door and took hold of it. It was in fact unlocked and he pushed it open and stuck his head in and called out Draighton's name. But his voice hadn't been as strong as he intended. The name seemed to cautiously enter the house and not go too far into the shadows, like a mouse that feared the presence of a cat.

He tried again. A little louder. Draighton didn't answer.

"You need to come on now. Mom and Dad have gone for the day, but they'll be back later, and we need to be home. I've got some money for you a hamburger."

Draighton didn't answer.

Leroy slipped inside and gently closed the door. With it shut it was very dark. The house felt odd, as if he were in the belly of a beast, swallowed whole, awaiting digestion. He wished now that he had brought a flashlight. He thought of opening the door to let in more light, but the idea of leaving it open might reveal that he was in fact trespassing, and there was something thrilling, as well as frightening, about being here, and it wasn't all a bad feeling. For the moment, anyway.

Leroy moved through the living room toward the garage. He had a feeling that's where Draighton would be, out there looking over his father's death scene. When he came to the garage door, just off the kitchen, due to moonlight through the kitchen window, he saw that a large rat had been crucified with thumb tacks to the door and that it had been cut open and blood from it was smeared on the door in those strange symbols Leroy had seen in the composition notebook.

This was almost too much, but then Leroy remembered being alone at home and no one to have as his slap monkey, so he turned the garage door knob, horrified to discover that the knob was coated in blood. He wiped the blood on his pants without thinking, then felt the worse for it. That would be something he would have to explain. He was going to make sure Draighton got a good beating for this. Oh yeah, he was going to beat him down and kick him around like a soccer ball.

Leroy took the steps down into the garage cautiously. The garage was completely empty now, someone having removed the car and some of the junk that had been there, and there was nothing to see, but Leroy felt the hair on the back of his neck prick up, and this was almost enough to send him running. Then he thought, Draighton. He's in here. I can take a cripple.

The door to the garage storage was open, and Leroy went over there and looked cautiously around the end of the open door, into the storage room.

It too was empty.

The garage made Leroy feel as if a heavy weight was lying on top of him. No. It was more as if the shadows were like a thick wool overcoat, and that they were trying to hold him. He went up the steps and back into the kitchen. As he did, he heard the front door slam.

Leroy rushed over there, but the door was jammed shut. He pushed at it, but it wouldn't budge enough to open. Finally, he went into the bedroom where Draighton's mother had been murdered, and pushed up a window there. As he was climbing out, he had the distinct feeling that someone, or something had entered the room. He practically fell out the window, and when he looked back at it, there was nothing there to see, except the frame of the open window and the empty darkness of the room.

Leroy went around to the front door and looked. A stick had been shoved under it. It couldn't be pushed forward. Damn that Draighton, Leroy thought. I'm going to get him.

Leroy hustled on home, the air full of the smell of rain, the clouds thick and the darkness dripping. At one point, he saw a car that looked like his parent's car. It was parked near the curb and the door on the front passenger's side was open. It looked so much like his parent's car, he started to go over and look at it more closely, but then he saw, up the block, walking fast, what he felt for certain was Draighton. He was rounding the corner of a house, walking as briskly as if the bones and muscles in his legs were brand new, but there was something about his feet. Something strange that Leroy couldn't quite identify from that distance.

Hurrying onward, Leroy tried to catch up, but when he came running to the corner of the house and looked around, all he saw was an alleyway. He took it and crossed over to another street and walked up and came to his house, looked in the drive to see if his parent's car was there. It wasn't. He went up the steps and put the key in, but when he did, the door came open before he could turn it.

Draighton. He had a key too.

Inside it was dark, and when Leroy switched on a light, nothing happened. He tried other lights with the same results. He looked around downstairs but didn't find Draighton. He thought the house smelled funny, and was too cool. With the electricity off, Leroy assumed the heat had gone out of the house. As for the smell. Well, he wasn't certain. Surely the power couldn't have been off long enough for anything in the refrigerator to spoil.

Leroy started up the stairs, and as he climbed, he felt something sticky on his shoes. He paused, leaned on the railing and lifted one foot. He couldn't tell there in the dark, but he put out a finger and touched the bottom of his shoe. It was something wet.

All right. That was it. His parents got home, he was going to catch shit, not Draighton, not the cripple. And he was going to catch it because this loser had tracked in something from the street. He went on up more quickly, angry, and when he came to his bedroom at the top of the hall, he found the door open.

He went inside.

The room was full of moonlight and it framed around the shape of Draighton at the window. He was sitting, leaning back against the sill, and for just a blink of a moment, it had not looked like Draighton at all, but then the moonlight went behind a cloud and it was Draighton, and then the light was freed and it wasn't Draighton.

It was a tall dark man wearing a top hat with silver winks of razor blade in the hat band. He had silver stick pin teeth, and he smiled them at Leroy. Leroy tried to pull his feet out of the floor, but they seemed nailed there. At the end of the long thin legs were two large balls of something. Leroy squinted.

They were heads. Like in the drawing. And this man…this thing's feet went down and into them, and now Leroy realized that the car alongside the road had in fact been his parent's car, and they were back early, had pulled over to give Draighton a ride…and…

He couldn't figure it. Not really. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream. But all he could do was look at those heads. Those shoes. The heads of his mother and father.

"Slicing through dimensions is like slicing through flesh, except the dimensions have to be in the position to be sliced, and it is not so easy to achieve that, as it is to find and slice flesh."

Leroy was really frozen now. The thing had spoken and the voice was like cracked glass and tumbling razor blades. And the thing, it was smiling big, and Leroy knew as sure as he knew the Pope crapped in the Vatican, that he should run. But he couldn't. He felt warm all of a sudden, and urine ran down his legs and onto his shoes and the floor.

When the acrid odor of his mistake filled the room, the thing in the window stood up and sniffed the air. "Nectar," said the voice, and it dropped its hand to its side, and Leroy could see dangling from it the huge razor.

"Draig…Draighton?" Leroy said.

"He's here," said the thing, tapping his chest, "trapped by the shadows, held by the moon, one foot in, one foot out."

Leroy had no idea what this meant. A shadow rolled across the moon again, a cloud sacking it up, and when it did, there stood Draighton. He wasn't wearing his glasses. He stood there squinting, holding the razor. The heads were on his feet, his legs jammed down into the cracked-wide mouths of Mom and Dad.

"My daddy," Draighton, "bought the razor in an antique shop. It's very old."

Leroy swallowed, found his voice. "Draighton. You're not well. Mom. Dad. How could you?"

"They help open the worlds. Enough blood. Enough death. All manner of things can slide through."

Draighton stepped forward. There was no mincing movement in his step. It was sure and firm and without braces and the heads on his feet plopped nastily against the floor.

"He demands sacrifices," Draighton said.

That was it. Leroy's feet finally came unfastened from the floor, and Leroy bolted, and he could hear the movement of Draighton behind him, pursuing him. He looked over his shoulder as he came out into the hall and up against the railing, and when he turned, there was Draighton, his mouth wide open, clopping forward with his feet in the heads, and Leroy thinking in spite of himself (How do they fit?), and then he was running, almost making the stairs.

Draighton had him. Draighton grabbed his shoulder and spun him. When he did, Leroy saw the razor coming down. Instinctively he shot out both hands and grabbed Draighton's wrist, and the force of stopping the blow slammed him against the railing, and he heard the railing crack, then give way.

Leroy and Draighton fell through space.

The couch below broke their fall and they tumbled onto the floor. Draighton somehow rolled out from beneath Leroy and stood on those horrible shoes he had made and staggered back into the shadows, which seemed to consume him, and then Leroy saw a hand come out of the shadows, Draighton's hand, and it took hold of the living room curtain and jerked it loose.

Moonlight jumped into the room and Draighton was not Draighton now, but the strange thing. What had Draighton called him? Lord of the Razor?

"Cat and mouse," said the Lord of the Razor in his strange voice of broken glass and tumbling razor blades, two pounds of gravel and the screech of a dying cat.

Leroy was up and running. He went through the living room and into the kitchen and he could hear the plopping of those feet behind him, and he began to scream. Still screaming, he hit the side door and it came open and he leaped out into the night air, onto the yard, and when he did, the moonlight was bagged again by shadows, and Leroy realized now that the moonlight wasn't all there was to it, but it was part of it. He turned and saw Draighton coming. He kicked out hard and hit Draighton in the groin and Draighton doubled a little, but kept coming. Leroy, with nothing more than an instinctive move, stepped aside and slapped out with both hands and caught Draighton across the back, sending him stumbling in his horrid shoes, stumbling across the yard and up against the house next door. He hit his head with a sound like an anvil being dropped on a pumpkin, and Draighton fell and rolled over, his face facing the heavens.

Leroy looked up at the sky. The clouds were rolling across the heavens and some of them were very dark and he could smell even stronger the aroma of rain in the air. He saw too that soon all the strands of clouds would pass, and the moonlight would be full. He rushed to the storage shed against the house, jerked open the door and got hold of the shovel.

He rushed over to Draighton, and as he did Draighton's eyes opened and the moonlight shone and Draighton's face began to change. Leroy lifted the shovel with both hands, brought it down with all his might on Draighton's throat.

There was a sound like someone cutting a garden hose in two, then there was a spray of blood, and Draighton's hand that held the razor fluttered a couple of times, opened. The razor lay in the flat of Draighton's dead hand.

Just to make sure, Leroy gave Draighton's throat another slam with the shovel, this time freeing the head from the body completely. Leroy stumbled back and sat down in the yard. The yard was full of moonlight now and it lay over it like a thin coating of butter.

Leroy didn't know exactly what to do. He wondered if anyone would come out of the house next door. They didn't, and lights didn't go on. No one had heard or seen anything. He looked across the street. The houses over there were dark as well.

How was he going to explain this? What about Mom and Dad?

He wasn't sure he was doing the right thing, but he began to dig, and finally he had a big trench in the yard. He rolled Draighton and the heads of his parents into the trench and kicked Draighton's head in there with them. He covered it up.

As he finished, he saw that the razor was lying in the grass.

He picked it up.

He carried it in his hand, walked back down the street to his parent's car. Their headless bodies were there. Blood-covered symbols had been drawn on the inside of the windshield.

Numb, Leroy walked back to his house and went upstairs and sat on the stool that had belonged to Draighton's father. He sat there for an hour, then got up and got the composition notebook. He opened it and looked at the drawings, the symbols. They moved on the page.

He sucked at his papercut.

He looked out the window.

It was rainy.

Soon the rain would pass. It was that kind of rain. Pushing hard and passing quick. It would still be nightfall. The moon, which was full, would come out. Maybe the sky would clear of clouds.

He sucked the paper cut on his finger and looked at it.

His finger was the size of a frankfurter and it pulsed. The cut on his finger spread open as he looked. There seemed to be something there. He got up and found a match he used to air out farts, struck it on the window sill and held the match close to his finger. The heat from the match felt good. The cut on his finger spread open and he looked at it carefully. There in the wound made by the composition book with all its symbols, he could see more than eyes should be able to see. It was as if he had telescopic vision.

He saw his mother and father's heads hanging on hooks. Draighton's head hanging on a hook. And beneath them, sitting on a stool made of leg bones and rags of flesh, the Lord of the Razor, looking up and out the wound, smiling those stick-pin teeth. Closer he looked. There were all manner of bodies as well as living human beings, flayed alive, screaming, coming to the fore of the wound to look up with pitiful wounds for faces. All manner of strange bat-like things flapped up against the wound but did not come out.

The Lord of the Razor waved a hand that was like a flash of shadows and the bat things fled and the flayed things fled, and there was just the Lord's face, looking up and partially out of the wound. Smiling those silver stick-pin teeth.

Leroy dropped his hand. He went back and sat on the stool. He looked down at his feet. He needed to do something about the way they looked. He thumbed through the composition notebook, used the razor to cut the paper cut on his finger open wider. The blood came freely. He wiped it on his pants at first, then he used his finger and the blood to draw in the notebook. He understood the symbols. They did things to the world. A small part of it. They helped crack open dimensions. They made things as the Lord, the King of Shadows, wanted them to be.

When he finished writing, he sat very still on the stool, the open razor in his hand. Waiting for the rain to come. Waiting for it to pass. Waiting for the moonlight. Waiting for the change.

Janet Finds the Razor

Author's Note:

This is more of a mood piece than anything, and it's probably better if you know about the God of The Razor, but it's not necessary that you do to enjoy the story. Bill Schafer thought it would be nice if we had a new God of The Razor story for this collection of book and associated stories, and I thought on it for a long time, and was about to give up on the idea, when this hit.

It came out of word association mostly, but there was some kind of germ growing in my skull the moment Bill mentioned doing something new, I just couldn't put my finger on it, and wasn't sure if it was really anything until the words Janet finds the razor appeared in my skull like a neon sign and the story came from that.

In the unsold screenplay that Neal Barrett, Jr. and I wrote for The Nightrunners, at the end, we had a boy and a girl find the razor, which made for a nice set up for another film. And if not, it gave the whole idea of the razor and the God that came with it a final impact.

I thought about someone else finding the razor. A girl named Janet, and this came out.

Janet found the razor lying in the grass. She saw it in the moonlight. It was shiny and the way the moonlight hit it, it threw off a blinding light. It was a big old thing, and the first thing happened was, when she picked it up, it bit her.

The blade didn't jump open and cut her, but something nipped at her, and when she switched the razor to her other hand, she discovered it was a pretty good nip. She was bleeding.

She looked the razor over but couldn't find any snags where she might have caught her hand, and the blade was well tucked into the frame, so she was uncertain how she had been hurt.

Sucking on the wound, she examined the bone handle of the razor. There were all kinds of odd things cut into the handle, shapes that reminded her of hieroglyphics.

Walking home she began to feel odd. It wasn't a bad odd, exactly, but it wasn't the way she usually felt. At fifteen, she thought she should be out having fun with friends, but she didn't have any friends, and she didn't really have much of a home life. Her parents didn't even know she was out at night. She didn't even have to sneak to go out, all she had to do was walk through the living room where they were watching TV and go out the door. They didn't ask where she was going, or what she was doing. Truth was, she didn't even think they noticed.

She went out and walked along and thought about things. Once, not long ago, on a walk, she had set fire to an old, out of business washateria. The window was open and she had slipped inside and found some old newspapers in there. Besides the newspapers, there were empty wine bottles lying about and rat droppings. Winos had probably been sleeping there at night, and later this night they would come to drink their wine and cover themselves in newspapers. Maybe they would come back soon. The idea that they might catch her thrilled her, and the thought of ridding the winos of their place to sleep, putting them out in the cold, humored Janet, so she took the newspapers and with a lighter she had stolen from her father, she set it afire, and it gradually caught along the window sill, but didn't burn long before it played out.

It was the best she could do, and she had gone home, and dreamed, and in her dreams the washateria had caught and gone up in a red hat of flames, licked at the sky until the moon caught fire. The moon had fallen blazing from the heavens, crashed into the ground, throwing flames and green moon cheese in all directions.

The dream had been better than the event, but deep inside of her, there had been planted some kind of seed, and she could feel it grow. And when the razor bit her, the seed seemed to receive some kind of fertilizer, and it grew fast and furious, and she felt so odd, and weak at first, and then anything but weak.

When she saw her shadow flowing off the sidewalk and into the street, crawling amongst the shadows of the elms and the shadows that the moon made with the houses, it didn't look like her shadow at all, but the shadow felt the way she felt. Big and strong and not even one ounce of feminine. The shadow was that of a large man, wearing a top hat, and there were things in the shadow that didn't look right, that didn't belong, like glints of silver where the teeth should be, and the shadow shape of the razor quit being a shadow and became a long slash of silver.

When Janet looked down, she saw the razor in her hand was open. She didn't remember opening it. And when she walked, there was a plopping sound, and looking at her feet, she saw that her legs were long and tapered and the feet small, stuck down into the mouths of decapitated heads, and it was the heads that made the plopping noise as she walked.

Plop. Plop. Plop. Plop.

She came to her house, and the way the moonlight shown on the window glass by the front door, she could see her reflection, and it wasn't that of a young girl, sixteen, with braces and a crooked nose and greasy, brown hair. It was the reflection of someone who had to stoop real low to look into that window's reflection; look and see an almost skeletal face with teeth like long, shiny, silver stick pins, and eyes that blazed like coals, all of this topped by a large black top hat, and bottomed on the feet by those bloody, splitting, decapitated heads, and when she looked down at the heads, she recognized them. They were the heads of the neighbors across the street. They were good neighbors, and they had always been good to her, and took care of her and listened to her when her parents did not, and she remembered something now. It came to her faintly. She remembered going to their house, and now she remembered opening the blade, and she remembered the way Mr. Jenkins had looked when he opened the door to her knock, and she had had to bend way down to look him in the face.

He wanted to scream, she could tell that, could remember that now, but the scream was trapped in his throat, like an animal that had died in a burrow. And then she had him. One quick swipe and he was headless, and then she was in the house, stooping as she came through the door. And there was Mrs. Jenkins, and she did scream, but not for long, because her blade moved fast and cut the scream out of her throat.

Janet, or that thing that had been Janet, gathered the heads then, sat on the couch and stuck them on her cloven feet, and out the door she had gone, on up the street to her house.

And now she went inside…

It was three days before anyone knew anything was wrong, across the street at the Jenkins place or in Janet's house. But finally people got worried, and the houses were checked out, and what they found made seasoned cops throw up their doughnuts.

The Jenkins house, it was bad. Decapitated bodies. The heads missing. Blood on the floor, on the walls. But at Janet's house it was really bad. The walls were painted in bloody symbols and the two headless bodies of her parents had been skinned and the meat that had been in them had big chunks bitten out of it and their skins had been draped on the coat rack. The dog had been decapitated as well. Like the heads of the Jenkins couple, the heads of Janet's parents and the dog were never found.

Janet was found in the bedroom. She was lying on the bed. She had been stripped of her skin from head to toe, and no one could figure it, because one of her hands, the left arm that had not been peeled of skin, was grasping her skin from her waist, and she had managed to peel it all the way down to her knees before succumbing.

It looked as if she had almost succeeded in skinning herself.

Except, there were no sharp instruments available. No one could figure how she could have done it.

On Janet's bed, and across the floor, and up the wall, and on the window sill, there was lots of blood, and a little crawl pattern that looked like something long and smooth had slid along there, and then it had used something sharp to climb the wall and make the window sill. The window pane was knocked out and there was a blood trail going out the window and into the grass and across the yard, and the trail finally stopped at the street where there was a grating and a city drain.

The grating was removed and the drain was sucked out, but they couldn't suck it all out, not unless they wanted to stick a hose down a hole many miles long and all the way under the city and into all the tons of sewage festering below.

So the whole thing was given up. The police didn't find the heads, and they didn't find the instrument that Janet had used on them or on herself, so they decided she didn't do it at all. That someone unknown had come in and done it, had killed the others and skinned her and put her hand like that, like she was peeling her own hide off, and then they had left.

No one talked about the bloody trail from the bed to the wall to the window, across the yard and down the drain. At least it wasn't talked about in the report. Actually, the cops, and some of the people the cops told about the event, talked about it for a real long time, and sometimes, even now, in quiet whispers, it is spoken of and worried over, and the whole thing remains a mystery.

THE NIGHTRUNNERS

Screenplay by Joe R. Lansdale and Neal Barrett, Jr.

Based on the novel by Joe R. Lansdale

BLACK SCREEN

a faint whisper of rain, the distant sound of an approaching storm–
then, without warning, a terrific BLAST of thunder that shakes the foundations of the earth, and a sudden, searing–

FLASH OF LIGHTNING

and we see crude, childlike drawings on a grimy concrete wall, and the–

THEME begins softly, the haunting theme of THE LORD OF THE RAZOR…a throb, a heartbeat, a babble of sound, like voices rising up from the cellar of a madhouse, words we can't identify…

Darkness.

Another long flash, and then a series of flashes, strobe-like, and in the strobe light, on the wall, the bizarre symbols. Demonic stick figures. Screaming faces, each entangled with the next, as if this is a map of hell.

Another big flash and we're seeing the same symbols, and for an instant we don't realize it, but–

WE ARE ON THE NAKED CHEST OF CLYDE EDSON

Now we get that strobe-like lightning again, and the shapes on his body appear to shift, and we go–

CLOSE ON ONE SYMBOL.

A shadow shape, tall and lean, wearing a top hat and what looks like big balls on his feet, and we HOLD BRIEFLY, before  a sudden period of darkness, and then the strobe-lightning picks up again, and we–

WIDEN TO

a three-quarter view of the man's face. We can almost see his features, but not quite.

ANOTHER ANGLE ON CLYDE

and we can see a barred window and behind the bars, a metal netting mixed with glass. We realize now we're in a jail cell.

He picks up a shirt and holding it between his two hands flips it like wash he's trying to wring out, and then we–

CUT TO:

JAIL CORRIDOR

JAILER walks by Clyde's cell, doesn't look in, hears a slight NOISE, pauses, turns back, looks in at US as we hear the sound of the clatter of a chair against the stone floor.

JAILOR'S POV: A chair clatters to the floor.

CLYDE EDSON drops abruptly, as the tangled shirt around his neck jerks to a halt, and we see he has hung himself. He hangs there, naked, and begins to turn.

The jailer rushes in and we go–

CLOSE ON CLYDE

His eyes bulge out like boiled eggs and his mouth is wide open and his tongue pokes out and his neck is turned awkward, and A BOLT OF LIGHTNING makes the weirdly decorated cell as bright as hell on Open House day. And in the brightness, this series of flashes: 1. A large razor snapping open. 2. The stick figures on the wall moving, central among them, the top-hatted figure. 3. The face of a beautiful woman in fear, eyes green as emeralds–BECKY JONES.

And then, there is only the brightness WHITES OUT with the full sound of thunder as we as we have a SOUND LIKE A STEEL DOOR being slammed closed, and with the sound we–

SLAM CUT TO:

BLINDING LIGHTS, a sudden ROAR, the GROWL of a souped up engine, coming right at us. We see the blinding light as headlights now, and just as we perceive this, we have–

ANOTHER ANGLE ON CAR

A cool black 66 CHEVY whines out of the night, and then we get a QUICK SHOT OF THE INTERIOR: Swinging from the rearview mirror is a crude pipe cleaner figure with a small torn out photograph of Clyde stuck on it for a face. The photo is cocked to the left, and around it's "neck" is a small noose made of twine. Scratched into the dashboard are the same crude figures we saw in Clyde's jail cell.

ANGLE SLIGHTLY and we briefly see the driver's face, like a strobe flash. This is BRIAN BLACKWOOD.

REAR VIEW OF CHEVY

The taillights zipping away like two eyes falling backwards into the abyss, and we watch them shrink a moment as they burn their way along the highway, and then…They're gone, baby, gone, but, on that–

SAME EAST TEXAS HIGHWAY

and we get a–

WHITE CAR and it's cruising along and the Chevy comes up beside it like a wraith, and–

INSIDE THE WHITE CAR

A MAN. He cranks his head to the left and sees the Chevy, and hears a rush of babble and clatter, and his reaction is like a man punched in the gut, and then the Chevy eases toward him, and we have the–

EXT. VIEW OF CHEVY

pushing across the line, making the White Car move far right, and–

INSIDE WHITE CAR the Man desperately turns the wheel and we–

CUT TO:

EXT. OF CARS

The White car is going right very quickly, and now its tires are off the road and the Chevy keeps pushing, and–

INSIDE WHITE CAR the driver is struggling at the wheel, the car bumping and bouncing him, and now we get–

WHITE CAR'S EXTERIOR and it's coming right at us, like it's going to leap out of the screen, but then–

ANOTHER ANGLE and we see it hit a ditch, bounce like a frog, slam into a barb wire fence, gather up the wire like a cat wadding up twine, and finally the car skids and comes to a shaky stop and we–

CUT TO:

MAN INSIDE WHITE CAR–CLOSE ON HIS FACE

He looks like he just shit the entire contents of New Jersey into the seat of his pants, and he turns his face to his driver side window, and–

A FACE

It's right there looking in at him, a monster, with a great dark eye.

WE PULL BACK

It's a cow.

INT. WHITE CAR

Man breathes a sigh of relief, goes limp,  and now we're–

BACK ON THE HIGHWAY and away goes that Chevy, burning up the night, flowing into the shadows, and WAY UP ABOVE WE SEE THE MOON, shining high and bright, and–

ON DOWN THE ROAD

we see sticking it's nose out of a little cattle run, the hood of a Highway Patrol Car, and we can just see the patrolman at the wheel, and guess what, dat ole–

BAD CHEVY

burns by so fast it's a blur and the wind from it makes the dry October grass rustle and little puffs of pollen burst from plants and fill the air like snow, and–

INSIDE THE PATROL CAR

Patrolman Trawler with his speed gun, goes–

TRAWLER

Shit a goose.

INSERT SPEED GUN

100 Miles An Hour.

PATROL CAR blows out of the roadside hideaway with a blast of siren and rotating cherries, leaving half his tires in smudge and smoke, and as he goes we shoot–

INSIDE THE PATROL CAR

Trawler, on the mike. And while he talks we look through–

TRAWLER'S WINDSHIELD

And let me tell you brothers and sisters and all in-betweens, that Chevy be hauling some serious ass, and its lights look like two red dots on a survey map as seen by distant match light inside a windowless room in the middle of the night, and it is moving away as–

TRAWLER

Ah, this is niner-four, in pursuit of Black 66 Chevy, going north on 59, no license. Back to you in a minute, Norma.

CHEVY slows. Backlights blink as brakes go on. And it pulls over to the side and Trawler pulls up behind it.

TRAWLER EXITS PATROL CAR with ticket book, and CAMERA FOLLOWS as he strolls up to the Chevy in that cautious cop manner, the flashlight out and on, and we've got–

TRAWLER'S FLASHLIGHT LIT POV

Through the back glass, three heads, and as he comes along the left side he sees, at the wheel, BRIAN BLACKWOOD, a blond, scrawny kid with greasy hair, and as Trawler comes alongside the car and throws his light across Brian, he sees a dead-faced kid with a square jaw, and that will be STONE.

Trawler turns the light to the backseat. Left side is a goofy–looking shit of a boy, LOONY Hispanic girl, ANGELA And another boy, not bad-looking, but cursed with that kind of acne that looks like his face caught on fire and someone put it out with a track shoe. This pock-faced kid is JIMMY.

Jimmy and Angela look like they're about to both give birth to kittens. But the other three are as cool as dead penguins.

DRIVER'S DOOR opens and Brian starts to step out. Trawler throws the light on him.

TRAWLER

Whoa. I didn't tell you to move.

Standing on the ground leaning on the open door.

BRIAN

Sorry officer…Guess I'm in for it, huh?

TRAWLER AND BRIAN

TRAWLER

You didn't see my lights?

BRIAN

No sir.

TRAWLER

Didn't use your rearview mirror?

BRIAN

No sir, guess I didn't.

TRAWLER AND BRIAN

TRAWLER

Let me see your license, son.

Brian takes his wallet out of his back pocket, fishes out the license, drops it to the ground.

TRAWLER

Pick that up, please.

Brian bends down, and as he does…

STONE opens the passenger door, almost in a blur, and in his hand is a sawed-off shotgun, and he brings it over the roof, and he's quick, but–

TRAWLER is quicker and he's already pulled his gun, Hickock-fast, but Brian comes up from his bent over position, license in his fist, and slugs Trawler in the balls.

Trawler grunts and stumbles, lowers his gun, tries to recover as Brian darts away, but when he looks up–

TRAWLER'S POV

shows us Stone has the shotgun leveled, the hammers back, and the openings on the barrels look like the mouths of subway tunnels.

There is a SLAP OF TRIGGERS and A FLASH, and then we go SLOW MO, and the pellets are coming for Trawler, like the vengeful flies of Beelzebub, and we–

CUT TO:

ANOTHER ANGLE ON TRAWLER

The shot hits Trawler's head and spins pieces of it off into the blackness, and down Trawler goes, and we go–

CLOSE IN ON TRAWLER'S FACE

What's left of it. It ain't pretty. Looks like a watermelon that's bit hit with a sledge hammer.

WE HEAR CAR DOORS SLAM and we have a LOW ANGLE SHOT over Trawler's body as the Chevy speeds away and it's red tail lights fall backwards and away like heat seeking missiles, and the red dots go OUT OF FOCUS and gradually become green dots, that swell into view and we–

MATCH CUT TO:

BEAUTIFUL GREEN EYES

PULL BACK on a face to match those beautiful green eyes. A fine face with long black hair and full lips, and as we PULL BACK MORE the face comes forward, and we find ourselves inside a car–

ANOTHER ANGLE as the woman, BECKY JONES, sits up right on the front seat of a car, and in the shot we can see the driver, a man, MONTY JONES. Nice looking guy, but a little stiff, academic, thinks he's a martyr, and when he speaks–

MONTY

It's okay, Becky. You're all right.

–he sounds condescending. This guy could grunt over a shit in a condescending way.

BECKY

No, Monty. I'm not all right. If I was all right, we wouldn't be going through this. I'm not all right. Should I write that down for you. I'm not FUCKING ALL RIGHT!

CUT TO:

EXT: THE CAR, A VW–NIGHT

It's chugging along. Lost in darkness. And as Monty starts to speak we hear some of what he says before we see him, but as he starts, we–

CUT BACK TO:

INT. VW

MONTY

Doctor said it'd be just the thing. Dean says he and Eva love it up here, figured we would too.

Not a house in three miles. Relaxing, you know? Pines all around, got the lake out front. Plenty of privacy, just the kind of place to sit back, take it easy…

Monty glances at her.

MONTY

You okay?

BECKY

(Astonished at this idiot)

Are you in this car with me? Do you possibly recall what happened to me? You don't know what that's like. The doctor doesn't know what's it's like. No one knows what it's like and I don't want to see a fucking lake!

MONTY

I didn't mean anything by it, Beck.

BECKY

Could you just be quiet for a while?

Monty nods, reaches out to take her hand. When he touches her she recoils.

BECKY

Sorry. Just not up to being touched.

MONTY

(pretends it's all right)

Sure, no problem, babe.

Becky turns her sad face to the passenger glass and we–

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. VW-SHORT MOMENT LATER

Car swings up a dark, pine-shadowed road; its lights strike a moderate-sized vacation log cabin sheltered among thick pines. There is an overhanging front porch. Out back, glistening in the moonlight, a lake.

A SHOT OF THE NIGHT SKY AND THE MOON

Dark clouds are rolling toward the moon. There is a hint of thunder in the background. A small flash of lightning.

INT. CABIN

Door opens and gives us a slice of moonlight, and framed in the doorway are Monty and Becky, Becky with an overnight case, and Monty with a suitcase. You can hear a bit of wind behind them.

Monty flicks on the lights. He and Becky walk in. Monty sets down the suitcase. The cabin looks comfortable, woodsy design. A kitchen is at the rear of the small living room. Against one wall, sheets of paneling, a few boards lying about.

MONTY

Nice, huh? What do you think?

Becky stays behind as Monty walks a few steps, peers into the small kitchen area. Monty stops at the far end of the room, where tools are scattered, more sheets of paneling, etc. As he comes back toward Becky–

MONTY (CONT'D)

Have to ignore the mess. Dean works on the place summers, so it lacks some being finished.

Becky is still standing just inside the front door, sort of watching Monty, mostly just blank, thinking.

MONTY

Dean says the fishing's good on the lake. I'm not too hot at that kind of thing, but I'll sure as hell give it a try. You'll have to promise not to laugh if I don't bring back dinner every night.

As we go in CLOSE ON BECKY and she says–

BECKY

(Not mean, just sincere)

Frankly, Monty. I don't give a shit.

–and we go even CLOSER ON BECKY'S FACE, and have a–

FLASHBACK SEQUENCE INSIDE A RESTAURANT –DAY

Becky and her friend, EVA BEAUMONT, at a table. Not many people around. Quiet place. There's a big glass window and through it we can see a busy Galveston, Texas street. Eva is in her mid-thirties, attractive, more hyper and outgoing than Becky. She reaches over and taps Becky's hand.

EVA

No phone. Unless you take your cell. Dean flat loves the place. It's so outdoorsy, so manly and all.

(imitates a man's deep voice)

The fresh air, hon, the trees, the pristine lake.  God, you ever hear John Wayne say pristine?

BECKY

Guess not.

Eva looks at Becky, notices Becky is somewhere else.

EVA

You are going to make it, love. Honestly you are. I know the dreams are perfectly horrid, but they will go away. Time heals all wounds, dear. It does.

BECKY

You think?

EVA

Just go up there and rest. Let Monty commune with nature. Take a couple of good books, some allergy pills. The place is ass deep in pollen.

BECKY

(looking away)

I see him, Eva. I see Clyde Edson, hanging there. Doesn't matter if I'm asleep anymore. He's there. It's not just a dream, he's there. I saw him hang himself? How could I have seen that?

FAVOR EVA

as she leans in toward Becky, very concerned.

EVA

You mustn't say that. You are all right, love. You are. You think you saw him hang himself–

BECKY

I did see him. And I saw those awful pictures on his body. On the wall in the cell. I could draw that cell for you.

Eva reaches across the table, takes Becky's hand. Becky seems uncomfortable with this. She is not fond of touch right now.

EVA

The mind plays odd tricks. You heard about him hanging himself,  and you remember it that way, though it's just not possible, Becky.

BECKY

I'm glad you're sure, Eva.

EVA

You're going to be fine. You'll be okay. You'll be–

FLASHBACK ENDS

The word that would have come out of Eva's mouth, comes out of Monty's.

MONTY

–okay, really.

BECKY

What?

MONTY

I said. Are you okay? You still with me?

She looks at him, studies his face.

BECKY

I'm with you. Still not okay. All right? Got it?

MONTY

Sure.

He tries to put his arm around her. She wilts, shies away. He sags. This is the same old reaction he's used to.

BECKY

It's not you, Monty…really, it's not. You know that. I don't mean to act so mean. It's just…hard right now.

Monty trying to look strong, but wanting her to know he's hurt as well.

MONTY

I'll, uh…you go in and lie down a minute. Looks like it's going to rain, so I'll hustle the rest of the stuff out of the car.

Becky tries to say something, but can't. Monty walks out the front door. Becky looks around a moment, walks into the bedroom. Lightning flashes outside, lighting up the bedroom, thunder rolls in the distance.

She goes in the bathroom, splashes water in her face, comes back, sits on the bed, kicks off her shoes. Clearly, the storm is intensifying. Becky rolls her eyes.

BECKY

Thanks a lot, Eva.

A TERRIFIC BOLT OF LIGHTNING strikes somewhere outside, brightening the room. We hear a tremendous CRACK! and Becky goes rigid, and we–

QUICK CUT TO:

A TREE OUTSIDE

It's receiving a lightning bolt and the shot causes it to split.

CUT TO:

MONTY AT THE VW

He looks up from unloading suitcases from the VW's trunk, sees the tree not far away, smoking, parts of it lying on the ground.

MONTY

Sheee-it!

He glances at the cabin, sees Becky's shadow in the window. Rain begins to pepper his face, wind howls.

BECKY IN THE BEDROOM

steps out of her skirt, spreads it flat across the dresser, begins pulling the blouse over her head, just as lightning strikes again, rattling the house. In that instant, the blouse nearly off, her eyes glance over the edge of the material and she sees a moving shadow on the wall, the top-hatted figure and she hears a sound, a kind of growling, as if an animal is trying to talk. She turns for a good look. Gone. Looks at the bed–

–and it's not the same bed. It's the rape bed in Becky's apartment. The bed spins and Becky spins with it, and she's no longer standing, but on her back. We see all this in vague, distended images, as if through the bottom of a Coke bottle.

And it spins and spins and as it does, Stone appears, just melts into the scene, and he's moving toward her.

And now we see Clyde moving toward her, and he's unfastening his belt, and we know what this is about, and we go CLOSE ON BECKY'S TERRIFIED face and we see her against the bed, her mouth wide open in a silent scream and THE CAMERA seems to fall from a great height, like a space craft captured by her gravity, and WE CRASH right into her open mouth, and–

–the images are gone.

Becky is sitting on the floor, sweating, dazed, hair soaking wet, hanging in her eyes, the blouse half off, tangled in her arms.

MONTY

He stands at the bedroom door, stares.

MONTY

Becky. You all right?

BECKY

(Weak)

Peachy.

Monty moves to her, helps her sit on the bed. She's limp. She pulls off her blouse with difficulty. Monty tries to help, but he's a moment late and a hand short.

Monty still doesn't get it.

MONTY

It's those damn, dreams, right? Hon, I know it's real hard right now, but they're just dreams, Beck. The result of drastic emotional and psychological trauma. The dreams will go away. You know what the psychiatrist said, he–

BECKY

(The lid comes off; Becky explodes)

FUCK THE PSYCHIATRIST, MONTY! They're not dreams, and they are not–going–AWAY!

MONTY

Christ, Becky…

Becky jerks, stands, forcing Monty to back away. She has totally lost it now.

BECKY

You weren't there, Monty. it didn't happen to you, it happened to me! He stuck his–his–rammed it in me in front, then rammed it in me in back. Then he let his buddies take turns and they found all kinds of fun things to do!

Monty tries to hold her.

MONTY

Oh, baby–

Becky violently shoves him off with both fists.

BECKY

Can't you ever have a thought someone else didn't put there, something you didn't read in a book? Can't you be a man for once in your goddamn life, Monty? Can't you listen to what I'm saying and be for me?

MONTY

Now that is simply not being fair, Beck. I am for you, I try to do what's best and–

FAVOR BECKY

Anger twists her features.

BECKY

Oh, God, I want to be fair. Don't want to hurt your delicate feelings. I–Fuck you, Monty! Fuck you. And if you ask me if I'm okay or all right again, I will scream until my goddamn head explodes!

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. OFF DESERTED ROAD–NIGHT

The black Chevy has pulled off by a wet, clay road in front of a barbed wire cattle gate. Cows are dark shadows in the background. A wooded area is nearby. A hint of lighting in the distance, bits of rain and wind.

Loony and Stone hang around the car. Angela and Jimmy are off in a distance, by an old oak tree, standing together.

Loony takes a drink from a bottle, offers it to Stone, who shakes his head. Loony leans over and speaks to Stone, slaps him on the chest and laughs. Keeps laughing, long after anything could possibly be that funny.

JIMMY AND ANGELA

standing by the oak, and we can hear Loony's laugh cackling on. Angela turns her head, reacts, shudders, holds her arms tight below her breasts.

ANGELA

I'm scared, Jimmy. I want to be with you, not a bunch of crazies.

Jesus, that cop. They just–

JIMMY

It's something happened, babe. It's over, it isn't going to happen no more.

ANGELA

No? How do you know it's not, huh? You love me, Jimmy? Me, or your asshole friends.

What Jimmy says doesn't go along with how nervous he looks.

JIMMY

Come on, lighten up.

ANGELA

You want me to lighten up? Get me out of this crazy place! Shit, Jimmy, you don't look all that light yourself. Know what I'm saying?

JIMMY

He just wants to hole up here, let things cool down.

ANGELA

(sarcastic)

Really? You think someone will be pissed off, just 'cause we killed a cop?

JIMMY

(not so confident now)

We didn't do nothing, Angie. You and me had nothing to do with that.

ANGELA

(rolls her eyes)

Oh, well that's all right, then…

LOONY AND STONE

Loony grins, makes a motion poking one finger through the closed thumb and forefinger on the other hand. He winks at Stone, looks in the direction of Jimmy and Angela.

LOONY

Hoooooooo–eee. Some of that, I want, man. Put me down for a piece, maybe two.

(jabs Stone in the ribs)

You don't want any, I take three, okay?

As usual, Stone is true to his name. He doesn't speak at all.

LOONY

What I want to do, is get on with it, know what I'm saying?

We ought to be doing something, not stepping in cow shit, man.

Stone doesn't answer, and as the babble of Loony's tirade fades away

WE TAKE THE CAMERA UP

so that it sails over the woods like a hawk, and then we come to a clearing, and in the clearing someone is walking, and we swoop down to the clearing, and we can see it's–

BRIAN

who is walking, and when he comes to the center of the small clearing he stops and looks up and there's the moon, showing through patches of clouds. There's rain on his face. He reaches in his pocket and takes out a razor big enough to shave the balls off a bull elephant. It's blade is long and very silver even in the muted moonlight, and it's got a white bone handle, and we–

INSERT BRIAN'S HAND AND RAZOR and we can see a bit of the symbols carved on the razor, and we note there's a similar symbol carved on the back of Brian's hand. It's just a strange-looking doodle.

BACK TO SCENE

Behind Brian the wind moves through the trees and the leaves and dead pine needles twist and the shadows move and come together slowly and the wind keeps blowing and the leaves and needles and shadows keep twisting, flowing out of the woods,  low to the ground until they are nipping at his ankles. We hear that animal voice again. Saying something we can't quite discern.

Then the mass of leaves, needles, and shadows whisper and rattle and rise up, and the leaves and needles form a face, and THE THEME RISES UP, and we go–

CLOSER ON THAT LEAFY FACE

looking over Brian's shoulder, and it's not a perfect face, but it's recognizable. It's Clyde.

But that ain't all, folks, because the shadows that lay behind the leaf-shaped Clyde rise up higher and begin to form a hazy shape of their own. It is more a PRESENCE than a shape, a mere shadow of a dark man-thing wearing a top hat.

It is the same silhouette we saw earlier in the jail cell, carved into Brian's dashboard, and the shape on Becky's wall.

Slowly, Brian turns, faces the Leafy-Clyde and the shadow shape.

Leafy-Clyde leans forward and puts his face close to Brian's face, opens its mouth, and there is a noise that comes from it like dried leaves being crushed between fingers, a blast of wind, a crackle of crunched pine needles. Somehow, it's reminiscent of a voice. Not an understandable voice to us, but Brian, he hears, and he's delighted, and he responds with–

BRIAN

Hey, you're here. It's you and me again, man.

Rattle voice the shadow shape quivers, leans forward. The Leafy-Clyde crumbles and rumbles, crackles and moans.

Brian, less delighted, fearful of the presence of the shape behind Clyde.

BRIAN

No problem, Clyde-man, I got it nailed…This waiting gets to me too. When I cut her, she's going to know it's you. That's a promise. That's a blood promise!

And we go CLOSE ON BRIAN'S FACE, and we–

FLASHBACK TO:

INT. HALL OF HIGH SCHOOL–DAY

Brian is talking to several kids. He looks around and sees Clyde Edson for the first time, walking toward him like he's the swingingest dick ever strode the planet.

POV BRIAN

He can't take his eyes off Clyde. He finds himself attracted to this guy, like metal shavings to a magnet. Can't do a thing about it, just got to go and cling.

Clyde stops. Turns his eyes on Brian.

CLYDE

You looking at something?

BRIAN

You.

CLYDE

That right?

BRIAN

Uh-huh.

CLYDE

Staring at me?

BRIAN

I guess.

CLYDE

I see…

In a blur of motion, Clyde grabs Brian by the hair, jerks Brian's head down, drives a knee into Brian's face. Clyde kicks Brian in the ribs, hits him in the eye.

Brian, dazed and breathing hard, aims a nose shot at Clyde. The blow connects. There's a look of pain and pleasure on Clyde's face as he receives it. This is his ball park, baby, and he loves it here.

CLYDE

Hey, hurts good, man!

Bleeding and happy, Clyde slams his forehead against Brian's nose. Brian falls back, gets his feet under him, rushes Clyde and slams him into a row of lockers.

CLYDE

Motherfucker!

THE PRINCIPAL

cutting through the crowd. He dives in between the two.

PRINCIPAL

Stop it, stop it right now!

Clyde lets go of Brian, grins, hits the principal in the gut with an uppercut.

Brian joins in, and they both shove him down, and then they're kicking him savagely. They go on and go, happily, as if they never want to stop, and the kicking–

DISSOLVES TO:

COURTROOM

Judge. Brian in a good suit is seated next to his lawyer, and there's a woman just behind the railing, watching him. His mother. She's in tears.

Clyde is there to. At a table. A lawyer. No mother.

Without moving his head, Brian rolls his eyes in Clyde's direction. Clyde looks bored. Sleazy. Arrogant.

THE JUDGE

and he's in mid-sentence.

JUDGE

…and it is the judgment of the juvenile court that the defendants shall serve one year of probation, and at the end of that period, the court shall–(fade off sound)

EXT. COURTHOUSE STEPS

Clyde and his lawyer pass Brian and his mother.

BRIAN AND HIS MOTHER

She pauses and takes hold of Brian, stops him from waling.

MOTHER

Son. What has happened to you? You brought your grades up. You were doing good. And now this. You're falling apart, Brian. What are you going to do with yourself?

ANOTHER ANGLE ON SCENE

Brian's face, and we can see he's considering.

He turns his head slightly, sees Clyde and his lawyer standing on the courthouse steps. Clyde is lighting a cigarette. Clyde turns his head, catches Brian's eye.

And they hold each other's attention for a long moment, and we–

DISSOLVE TO:

BRIAN'S ROOM–EVENING

Brian is sitting in the half dark, writing in his journal. We can hear the SCRATCH of his pen.

BRIAN V.O.

I've never kept a journal before, but the stuff that's going on inside me is boiling up something awful, and if I don't get it out there isn't going to be anything left of me but shit and blood stains on the goddamn wall…

FADE TO:

EXT. CLYDE'S HOUSE–EVENING

BRIAN AND CLYDE

walking up to the house. It is big, old, gray and ugly. Gothic, like something out of Poe or Hawthorne. Upstairs, two windows show yellow light through faded shades– cold, rectangular eyes considering their prey. This house might have been something before electricity.

They go up the steps.

INT. HOUSE

SOUND–PEN SCRATCHES

BRIAN V.O.

This guy, Clyde Edson, he's really different. He's changed my life and I can feel it down in my guts, squirming around like some kind of cancer, eating at me from the inside out…

FOYER

A hallway before a set of stairs which winds up a dangerous-looking landing. Brain gazes up the stairs, while Clyde kicks at some trash around the door, and snaps a latch.

BRIAN V.O.

Clyde, he's got the pure power, you know? The raw stuff. He gets what he wants because he don't let nothing stand in his way…nothing.

Brian opens a doorway at the side of foyer.

BRIAN V.O

Got no conscience 'cause a conscience isn't anything but a bullshit tool to make you a goddamned wuss.

BRIAN'S POV

as he looks through the open door and sees stairs, and down farther. Darkness.

BRIAN

I sorta expect old Count Dracula to come creeping up here any minute.

CLYDE

He's down there, buddy. Likes it real dark.

THE CELLAR

Brian and Clyde stand near the bottom of the stairs. A couple of rats squeal by. Cobwebs everywhere. Water standing at the bottom of the steps. Something floating in it.

BRIAN AND CLYDE

BRIAN

Didn't tell me you had a pool.

CLYDE

You don't want to try it.

BRIAN

How in hell you come by all this?

CLYDE

Scared the shit out of the gimp caretaker…told him me and the bitch I was hanging out with were moving in. Fucker knew I meant what I said.  People that own this house. They don't even live in town. Don't care happens to it. And now, neither does the caretaker.

The pair start back up the stairs. Clyde pauses.

CLYDE

About the bitch. Just so you know I play hardball. She isn't around anymore. She and the brat she was going to have are taking an extended swimming lesson.

BRIAN

You threw her in the bay?

CLYDE

(grins and nods "down.")

Down there.

BRIAN

Wow, man…

BRIAN AND CLYDE

They are climbing stairs. Clyde pauses. Brian stops.

CLYDE

Want to show you something.

BRIAN

Lay it on me.

Clyde reaches into his pants pocket where there's a considerable bulge.

BRIAN

Man, you ain't gonna…

Clyde smiles. Pulls out a razor with a white bone handle. It's got designs on it. It's the one Brian will soon possess. But right now–

Clyde holds it out.

BRIAN

Yeah…Okay man.

CLYDE

It's important you know about it.

BRIAN

Sure. You must like it, huh?

CLYDE

Liking and not liking's got nothing to do with it.

Brian looks at Clyde in a confused manner.

Clyde slips the razor away, starts back up the stairs.

CLYDE

Come on. Got some people I want you to meet. A girl I want you to fuck.

BRIAN

Yeah? Well, I like fucking just fine.

CLYDE

Only the dead don't like fucking, pal.

ROOM UPSTAIRS

Clyde has opened the door, and led Brian in. There is an antique mirror against the wall, one of those that swivels on hinges. It is high and dusty. A mattress is on the floor and a nude girl on the mattress, and Stone is on the girl. The girl's not moving, but Stone is moving a lot.

Another girl, with incredibly large breasts and large eyes, sits naked close to Loony on the other side of the mattress watching Stone and his girl. It is clear they are all stoned to the max.

Clyde nods toward big tits, talks like she isn't even there.

CLYDE

Got this one that's something else. A runaway. Totally wiped out in the brain department.

ANGLE ON GIRL

She's dirty and her hair is matted, but she's still worth looking at.

CLYDE O.S.

But man, does she have tits, in case you didn't notice.

BRIAN

(grinning)

Hey, what's it going to cost me?

ON CLYDE

He smiles. JAWS couldn't smile this big.

CLYDE

I want your soul, man, not your money.

DISSOLVE TO:

SAME SCENE–LATER–NIGHT

MONTAGE

Flashes of raucous sex..everyone naked, having all kinds of sex…tangled together…

Brian and Clyde having the stoned runaway girl.

Clyde watching Brian's naive enjoyment through the night.

And while all this goes on, we have the–

SCRATCHING OF THE PEN, and–

BRIAN V.O.

It is fine, so fine. It's life as it was meant to be lived by those strong enough to live it, to take it and enjoy it, and not worry about the consequences. It's the bitch, baby, just as fine as it can be….

FADE TO:

CHEVY PULLS UP TO CURB–MORNING

Brian gets out, stoned and ragged, mumbling. He leans in the window at Clyde.

BRIAN

Man, I never did nothing like that…you are beautiful, man, you know? That's what you are, you are fucking beautiful.

CLYDE

Sleep it off, asshole.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. CLYDE'S HOUSE–LATER

Clyde carries the BIG-BREASTED girl down the stairs to the cellar. Down there, in the water, we see the OTHER girl from the night before, floating, dead, face-up.

He tosses the big-breasted girl in the water, and we end our FLASH BACK with a SPLASH and we–

MATCH CUT TO:

WATER SPLASHING ON BECKY'S FACE

PULL BACK

…and we realize Becky is in the shower. Her head is turned up to the water, eyes closed.

She reaches up, turns the shower off, steps out, grabs a shorty towel robe and puts it on, rubs another towel over her hair.

THE BACK PORCH–LATER

Becky, still wearing a towel on her head, is looking out at the trees and the shimmering lake. The world is nice after being wet down by the rain of the night before.

It looks like it's going to be a pretty nice day. She walks back inside where Monty is drinking coffee in the living room. The TV is on.

The two are tense and on edge after their argument the night before. Becky glances at the TV with irritation. Monty speaks to her without really looking at her.

MONTY

Made some fresh coffee.

Becky doesn't answer, but pours herself a cup from the urn on the table.

MONTY

Beck, I'm sorry about last night. I think we need to talk about this.

BECKY

(cold attitude)

About what, Monty?

She passes the TV and turns it off.

MONTY

(looks up)

What am I supposed to say, nothing? I open my mouth I've got an opinion about anything, I just mention psychiatrist and POW! I'm a no good son of a bitch, I'm not manly, I don't understand…

With the word "understand" he mocks her voice. Bad idea.

Becky turns on him, her calm attitude more deadly than her anger. The coffee shakes from her cup.

BECKY

Don't do that, Monty. Don't…

MONTY

Okay, okay… I don't think I should catch hell for not seeing your dreams as you do. How could I? I can't get in your head, but I can try to present some steady, logical point of view–

BECKY

As opposed to my totally out of my fucking estrogen jacked-up mind point of view.

MONTY

I didn't say that, I never said that. What I said was you–that after what you went through–

BECKY

–and you didn't. Let's come back to that little reminder.

Monty gets up, walks around. He seems a little bolder, quickly falling into the old routine.

MONTY

–right, and I didn't. After what you went through you can't be sure what these dreams are all about. The mind tricks you when something like this happens.

Becky sighs, gives him a look that could cut metal.

BECKY

You and Eva must be writing a book.

MONTY

It seems to you that you see that boy's suicide, that you actually see it happen. I'm just suggesting, and this is not just psychiatric mumbo-jumbo as you call it, I am suggesting that instead of thinking about the dreams, you might try to stay on the rape issue itself, the feelings you–

Becky turns on him. Now she's going right over the edge, close to hysteria.

BECKY

The–rape issue? Is that what it was? Well, if I had known it was only a goddamn issue–

MONTY

Becky…

Becky flat comes apart.

BECKY

Oh, God…I have–a–fucking–ISSUE!  I HAVE A RAPE ISSUE..WHY DIDN'T I REALIZE THAT!

Monty stunned, as Becky, tired of this shit, heads toward the bedroom, slinging her coffee against the wall as she goes.

DISSOLVE TO:

POP'S STATION–DAY

A big sign above the door says POP'S. There are other buildings and stores around this very small town. One sign reads MINNANETTE LAUNDROMAT.

JONES' VW

pulls into Pop's at the gas island. Monty gets out. An old man, POP, his own self, nods as he passes in front of Monty, going toward a pickup truck parked on the outside lane.

POP

Right with you.

MONTY

No hurry.

MONTY'S POV

He watches as Pop hands change to a WOMAN standing by her pickup, the door open. She's large-boned, attractive, shoulder length hair, eyes large like a doe's. She's wearing a loose dress and is standing in a way we can see her legs, her figure. Which, ain't bad.

The woman turns, looks past POP, who is limping back, and she smiles a sexy kind of smile at Monty.

BACK TO SCENE

Monty grins. Things aren't great at home, and he's obviously hungry for affection. Pop comes back out.

POP AND MONTY

POP

What can I do for you, young feller?

MONTY

Need a few things from the store. Think I'm okay on gas.

POP

Good. Gas cost you a bundle these, days, don't need to tell you that. Folks blame me for that. Hell, I look like a goddamn a-rab to you?

MONTY

No, sure don't.

INT. POP'S STORE

Monty walks around. Merchandise is stacked everywhere. He has already collected a few items in his cart. The store looks as if it belongs in another age. Everything is covered with dust. There's an old cardboard comb display.

Pop slides in behind the counter, calls out to him.

POP

You like the VW?

MONTY

Uh-huh.

POP

Have to push it up hills?

MONTY

Absolutely. Sometimes down hills.

Pop cackles.

POP

Nothing personal, sonny. Wouldn't have one of those foreign son of a bitches myself if you gave it to me free with gas in the tank and a piece of ass stretched out in the back.

MONTY

Take it you don't want a VW.

POP

You're new around here, aren't you?

Monty has moved down the aisle a bit, glancing over an ancient stack of magazines, not looking at Pop. He picks one up. A movie magazine. It is really old and yellow and brittle. On the cover, a picture of a not so current actor. He holds it up in Pop's direction.

MONTY

I believe this famous thespian is dead. He retired first. Then died. This picture is–old.

Pop looks at the magazine Monty is holding and nods.

POP

Yep. Ain't a sonofabitch in any of those old magazines ain't dead, and they was probably younger than me when them photos was taken. I'll be around until God takes the world again by fire. I don't sell those by the way. Wife used to read em. Never had the heart to get rid of 'em.

MONTY

Not buying.

He returns the magazine to the rack.

POP

I believe I asked if you were new.

MONTY

Oh. Kinda….Friends of Eva and Dean Beaumont. Loaned us the cabin down by the lake.

POP

Yeah, I know 'em. You from Galveston, too?

MONTY

Uh-huh.

Monty has spotted two rows of Halloween masks hanging from a hook.

ON MASKS

grotesque things, some of them the pullover latex kind. One is nothing but a skull with rubbery sprigs of hair. One has a rubber knife sticking in the forehead; a purple blotch of blood flows down the contorted face. The others are of werewolves and vampires and the like.

BACK TO SCENE

MONTY

These things pretty old too?

POP

Two, three Halloweens back. You thinking of trickin' and treatin' tomorrow night?

Monty, distracted, is looking out past the store to the highway.

MONTY

Guess not.

POP

(grinning)

That gal in the truck. Marjorie?  There's a trick and a treat both, I'll tell you that. What you got there's the kind of woman who'll drink her whiskey straight, and roll up with a man and fuck him like a snake.

MONTY

looks a little pained. He's pushing his buggy toward the counter now.

MONTY

You speaking from experience, are you?

POP

All my experience is passed, son. Used to wake up with a hard-on looked like I was sleeping in a pup tent. These days just happy to wake up and it hasn't fallen off. Don't guess that's any bother to a young fella like you.

MONTY

So…how much is all this?

EXT. OUTSIDE THE CABIN

BECKY is walking toward the trees. She passes a small storage shed, stops to pick up a stick, swishes it through the air once, looks up, and a squirrel looks down at her from a tree. It leans forward and chatters at her.

Becky tosses the stick at the squirrel. The stick doesn't even make it half the distance to the squirrel, falls back to the ground.

BECKY

Beat it, you little bastard. You sound too cheery.

Curious, Becky opens the shed door, which sticks for a moment. Inside are hoes, shovels, an axe, a hammer, saw, etc.

She spots a frog gig in the corner. It is a spring-cocked device with metal jaws. She picks it up, looks at it, and as she does there's a flash of Clyde's face, and a kid she hasn't seen before, but we have, Brian. There's a rumble of voices, the words at first unidentifiable, then very clearly we hear:

VOICE

Gonna cut her…cut her….cut her.

Becky reels, knocks over a couple of things, drops the gig.

VOICE

Ram it up…ram it all the way…

She stumbles out of the shed, reels with her hands to head and staggers toward the dock, collapses onto it, rolls over on her back and we see–

THE SUN

Becky closes her eyes in defense, turns her head, moans, curls into the fetal position. And in the darkness behind her eyes–

VOICE

Cut her…all the way…all the way up…

VOICE

Ram it…..ram it…

And now there's a VISION, and it comes at us in a swirl, like a tornado, and it spins apart and lays out a scenario, and in the scenario it is dark and the moon can be seen riding high above dark trees, the branches of which look like fingers spread wide, clutching at the sky, trying to reach up and take hold and pull down the moon.

ANOTHER ANGLE

on this vision, and we see through the trees, and the moonlight is draped over the branches, and near the ground the leaves and pine needles rise up on the wind and blow about, and out of the woods come shadows, from all directions.

The shadows come together like spilled black paint and the gold of the moon weakens and hangs high in the trees, but it throws no light on the ground.

Now Becky is in the vision. Standing in a clearing, looking toward the woods, and as we go CLOSER ON BECKY, we see she  is trembling, her face covered in balls of sweat, and behind her the lake, smooth and mirror-like. Now we have–

ANOTHER ANGLE

with Becky looking into the deep dark woods, watching as the leaves and pine needles gather up and make three human shapes with no appearance of leaf or needle. They are flesh and blood, but they are demonic. They creep toward her, backs bent, hands dragging, their faces grinning.

The haunting THEME starts up, creepy as wet, bony fingers under the sheets.

Out of the woods, behind the creepers, the shadows, gather up huge and tall and take the shape of a featureless figure. He is THE LORD OF THE RAZOR, and we've seen him before, but not as we see him now in this surrealistic dream. He is still a VAGUE, WAVY shape, not entirely clear.

He steps into the clearing, standing WAY UP tall behind the demons, so tall the moon seems to sit on the top of his shadowy hat.

The demons creep forward, slowly. Becky is frozen. And as they creep they seem less and less surrealistic and the woods seem real and the CAMERA TURNS at a variety of angles, and suddenly she comes unstuck, turns to run, but freezes once again as a body SWINGS down ahead of her, upside down, making a harsh, rushing sound.  It is a female body, her size, long black hair hanging down, and the body is twisting in the wind, starting to turn toward her.

ANOTHER ANGLE

As she stares, we see behind her, in glimpses, the demons, the shadow shape about to overwhelm her. We HEAR the babble of voices we've heard before, like things that once were human, trying to speak through glass pack mufflers, and then we go right back to Becky and we're in–

BECKY'S POV

The body turning, the face almost visible, drips of blood falling off of it, a crack in the forehead big enough to go camping in, and just as we are about to see the face–

THERE IS A LIGHT SO BRIGHT THE ENTIRE VISION IS ABSORBED and we can hear a voice, coming at us weakly, and it is not a demonic voice, but one coming from far away, words traveling down a great tunnel, and then the BRIGHTNESS THAT FILLS THE SCREEN has a shape in it, and as Becky blinks, we realize we

BECKY'S POV

are back in real time, and surrealism has taken a powder,  and the shadow shape becomes clearer.

Monty. Talking.

MONTY

Becky? Becky!

Monty scoops her into his arms.

MONTY

Hey, it's all right, it's okay, baby…

She's not pulling back now. She grabs him like a drowning rat mounting a floating two-by-four, and as she does we PULL UP TO THE SKY and it is bright, but as we watch it FADES to cob web gray and we have a–

FLASHBACK SEQUENCE

INSIDE CLYDE'S HOUSE on a dreary gray day. We know this because the light of that dreary day is coming through a once white curtain that has gone piss-yellow and the wind is whipping the curtains, and we–

EXPAND OUR VIEW to see Brian sitting on his sleazy bed in some sleazy underwear in a sleazy room of Clyde's house. The curtains flap. Clyde walks about. He can't stand still. He has the huge razor in his hand, flicking it open, closed.

CLYDE

I've been watching her. Watching her all the time. I could draw you a picture, man.

BRIAN

The one I'm thinking about?

CLYDE

Oh yeah, you know who I'm talking about.

BRIAN

I know her all right. What a piece. But she knows us too.

CLYDE

So? Knowing someone doesn't mean shit. When they're cut the way I'm talking about they go a certain kind of way, and that way is–

Clyde points to Brian to help him finish the sentence, and they do so in unison, saying–

BRIAN AND CLYDE

FUCKING DEAD.

CLYDE

Tonight, man. To-NIGHT…

They grin at one another, and Clyde whips the open razor through the air in a Zorro fashion.

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. BECKY'S APARTMENT COMPLEX-NIGHT–ESTABLISHING SHOT

DISSOLVE TO:

INTO BECKY'S APARTMENT

and we've got Becky and Eva sitting in the middle of the room playing chess at a small table. Eva sits in a chair, Becky on a couch. The room is about the size of a Conoco station washroom with kitchenette. This is before the badness, and we've got us a happy Becky here.

BECKY

Eva Beaumont, did you palm that bishop?

EVA

Shit, caught me!

BECKY

If you're going to cheat at chess, hon, you're going to have to do better than that.

Eva looks solemn and holds out her open left hand. She's holding a white plastic pawn as well as the bishop. Becky feigns disgust.

EVA

Does that mean I have to give back the pawn, too?

BECKY

(laughs)

You sneaky bitch. How long have you had that?

Eva reaches between her legs with her other hand, produces another pawn.

EVA

About as long as I've had this one.

Becky laughs and we–

CUT TO:

INT. BLACK CHEVY–NIGHT

Car is cruising a night street and ROCKIN' 88 is playing on the radio, and Clyde is driving, Brian beside him. Stone looking stone-faced, Loony, rocking to the music, are in the back seat.

CUT BACK TO:

BECKY'S APARTMENT

Becky, in the kitchen, fixing them both another glass of iced tea. Eva sits in the background at the chess table.

EVA

Sort of fun to get away from the guys for a while. I love my old jackass, but it's good not to hear him bray for a bit. Why didn't you go with Monty, hon? Get out of town.

BECKY

(frowns)

It's for soci-olo-gists, Eva. I'm a teacher. Those swell-heads don't spit on teachers.

(pause)

Monty's speaking on the alienation of the juvenile.

Becky brings drinks back to the living room, stops, still standing. A large cat winds it way between her ankles.

BECKY

God, you want to know about alienated juveniles? Teachers like us know all about those little creeps. They scare the hell out of me. I don't so much teach any more as I herd wild animals.

Eva stares thoughtfully at Becky.

EVA

Hon, you and Monty okay?

BECKY

I guess.

EVA

Okay's good.

Becky raises her ice tea glass.

BECKY

Here's to days when we got drunker than hammered dog shit and didn't have to go to work the next day.

They toast, then Eva starts to stand.

EVA

Only thing is…I do have to go to work tomorrow.

BECKY

Bummer.

EVA

But, hey, next weekend I'll send Dean here, and you can come over for a sleep over. We can watch bad movies and get drunk.

LOT OUTSIDE BECKY'S APT.

The Black Chevy coasts to a stop in the parking lot, and the lights go out. The lot is not empty, but there aren't a lot of cars, just a few here and there.

INT. CHEVY

Clyde and the gang.

LOONY

This the place, Clyde?

CLYDE

No, Loony, I've always wanted to park in this very fucking spot.

LOONY

Guess I'm not thinking.

CLYDE

Don't try, dummy, You might put your eye out. Leave the thinking to me and Brian. Got it?

LOONY

Sure, Clyde. I'm cool.

Clyde rolls down the car window, turns to look out of it,  and we have–

CLYDE'S POV

The front door of Becky's apartment.

Moments later, the door opens, shedding light on the parking lot. We see the shadow of a woman coming out, and down a flight of stairs, walking across the lot to her car, which is not parked too far away from a large dumpster at one corner of the apartment building.

It's Eva, and as she walks to her car, climbs inside, starts up and drives away, we hear the boys.

LOONY O.S.

How about her?

CLYDE O.S.

Got someone else in mind.

LOONY O.S.

What's it matter who? She looked good enough to me. All pink on the inside, ain't it?

INT. CHEVY

CLYDE

Got my reasons. I like the way the other teacher looks.

(Wistful)

One time, this other one was nice to me, and I haven't ever forgot it.

LOONY

She was nice and you're going to fuck her and cut her up? I like it!

Clyde puts a hand on the door handle, turns to look at Brian sitting beside him.

CLYDE

Me and Stone are going up, that okay with you?

BRIAN

Yeah. Sure.

CLYDE

I got to have a good man downstairs. Loony's too full of glue tonight. Stone does what he's told, but I need more than that.

Clyde snaps the razor from out of nowhere, wheels around to lean over the back seat, the razor open and shining.

CLYDE

(to Loony)

You keep your eyes open, glue-head. Don't mess me up.

LOONY

Sure, Clyde. Whatever you want, man.

Clyde relaxes, snaps the razor closed. He's focusing on Brian again.

CLYDE

You be ready with the car.

BRIAN

No sweat, man. Cut her for me.

As Clyde turns to open the door–

BRIAN

That stuff about her being nice to you. That true?

Clyde turning back to Brain.

CLYDE

Yeah. Long time ago. Kept some big guy off me. I could've licked him, though. I've wanted her ass ever since.

BRIAN

Hey, dreams do come true, brother.

CLYDE

We're not brothers, Brian. We're one and the same.

EXT. CHEVY

Clyde and Loony and Stone get out of the car, Loony has a pump twelve gauge shotgun.

INSIDE THE CHEVY

Brian slides behind the wheel.

SIDEWALK NEXT TO THE APARTMENT

It's out of view of Clyde's car. An elderly man, RAYMOND, is walking a small poodle, THOR, and he's got the leash in one hand and a pooper-scooper in the other. THOR is sniffing the ground. Raymond, he's a wiry looking old guy and he's in shirt sleeves and we can see a faded tattoo of an anchor on one arm with NAVY written above it on a ribbon.

CLYDE AND STONE

they're going up the stairs toward Becky's apartment, a little cautious, but not too cautious.

LOONY

he's over by the dumpster, near the edge of the apartment. He doesn't know, and Raymond doesn't know, but they are about to meet.

ANGLE RAYMOND

Thor sniffing along, and as they come to the end of the apartment building, Thor starts barking at something we don't see.

RAYMOND

Christ, Thor, put a lid on it.

INSIDE BECKY'S APARTMENT

Becky hears the barking, and, at the same time a knock on the door. She gives a resigned smile, and opens the door.

BECKY

God, Eva, what did you forget this ti–

IN THE DOORWAY–CLYDE AND STONE

Becky starts to scream but Clyde rushes in and slaps a hand over her mouth, pushes her back into the apartment, and Stone closes the door.

EXT. BY THE DUMPSTER

Loony looks around to see what the barking is about. He and Raymond are right on top of each other. Raymond sees the gun. Loony, he sees the pooper-scooper, and laughs.

Loony brings the gun around. Raymond slaps it with the pooper-scooper, knocking it aside, and before Loony can bring it back into play, Raymond makes with a back swing, striking Loony on the side of the head, causing him to stagger and drop the shotgun.

Thor leaps on Loony's leg, and takes a bite. It's pit bull city. This poodle is not letting go. He growls as Loony tries to shake him off.

The pooper-scooper, Raymond's Excalibur, swings again. This time it catches Loony upside the head with a strike that would send a baseball to the outer bleachers. Loony goes down, Thor still chewing on his leg.

INT. BECKY'S APARTMENT

SERIES OF FLASH SHOTS

The rape. Vague flashes. Her face. Stone's face. And Clyde's very wild and happy face. Scatters of sound-remarks from Clyde and Stone. Becky. Nothing completely heard. Just frantic snippets.

Clyde's hand over Becky's mouth.

Becky jerks her head and his hand slips free, and Becky SCREAMS.

RAYMOND

looks up in response to the scream. He tosses the pooper-scooper aside, picks up the shotgun, starts around the corner toward the noise, trying to place the location.

INT. APARTMENT

Clyde fastens his pants, produces the razor.

Becky SCREAMS. Stone slugs her. Clyde moves toward her.

CLYDE

A strip of skin at a time, baby, like human confetti.

APARTMENT DOOR BANGS OPEN

They wheel, and through the open bedroom door they see the front door of the apartment standing open. There stands Raymond with the shotgun, Thor by his side.

Stone jerks up a lamp and pops the plug free and charges at Raymond. Raymond raises the shotgun, but he's too slow, and the lamp bounces off his head, staggering him back out on the landing, and here comes Stone running like he's got the football, going for the goal, Clyde behind him, holding the razor.

Before Raymond can recover, Stone hits him with a shoulder and knocks him back against the stair railing, causing him to slide down on the landing and drop the shotgun through the railing.

SHOTGUN falls to the parking lot below, and the jar causes it to go off, spitting a burst of fire skyward before it slides along the cement to a stop.

BRIAN in the car. Jerks his head toward the shotgun blast.

BACK TO SCENE

Thor goes for Stone, bites him right in the crotch, hangs on like a tick. Stone loses his namesake demeanor, starts screaming, bounding for the stairs with both feet in a bouncing motion, Thor hanging onto his balls.

As Clyde runs up with his razor, Raymond puts out a hand, grabs his ankle, trips him. Down Clyde goes, hits the railing with his forehead, out cold. The razor flies from his hand, and we–

WATCH THE RAZOR fall SLO MO toward the ground.

CUT TO:

BRIAN

He's coming on like a marathon runner toward the stairs. He gets there just as Stone reaches the bottom and jerks the dog loose and flings it backwards where Thor hits and slides and scrambles back on his feet.

THE LANDING

Raymond crawls on top of Clyde quickly, straddles him, starts raining down one blow after another, and doesn't stop, even after Clyde quits moving.

LOONY

comes awake, stands up slowly, shakes his head. He hears commotion. He moves around to the side of the building, and Thor, like a shark attack, hits Loony's leg, causing him to cry out.

Brian is almost across the parking lot when we hear SIRENS.

LIGHTS AND SIRENS coming along the side of the apartment complex fence.

BACK TO SCENE

Loony comes limping along, Thor on his leg.

LOONY

Run! Run! Get to the fucking car!

Brian looks up, sees Clyde up there on the landing, lying on his back, and Raymond is still pummeling. He hesitates for a moment, agonizing over this, then races back to the car with Stone and Loony and Thor hanging onto Loony.

They dive in the car and burst out of the lot with a scream of tires.

CUT TO:

LANDING

Raymond doesn't even know he's hitting Clyde anymore. His breath comes in wheezes. He gets slower, and slower, startles slightly, throws his hand to his chest, collapses on top Clyde. Dead. Victim of a heart attack.

THE LOT

is full of lights and sirens.

INT. BLACK CHEVY

Brian is driving in a tearful rage, one hand tight on the steering wheel, with the other he is beating on it. Loony is on the front passenger side, trying to pull the growling dog off his leg. Stone in the back, holding his balls.

BRIAN

We ran! We fucking ran!

LOONY

It's what Clyde wanted, man. He didn't want us all to get caught.

This little cocksucker bit me to the fucking bone.

Loony, whose face bears the marks of the pooper-scooper, has finally extricated the dog from his leg, and is holding him out by the scruff of the neck. The dog is squirming and growling like a tiger. Loony works his knife out of his pants pocket and flicks it open.

LOONY

I'm gonna kill him and stuff him and fuck him every goddamn day.

Stone leans forward and pats Loony on the shoulder, indicating he thinks this is a swell idea.

BRIAN

GET RID OF THAT FUCKING DOG.

EXT. BLACK CHEVY

Window goes down. Loony holds out Thor. We go–

CLOSE ON THOR

Dead. Throat cut.

BACK TO SCENE

Loony drops the dog.

Now we focus on the departing Chevy's tail lights.

Going.

Going.

Gone.

COURTROOM–DAY

Quick shot of Clyde who bears the marks of Raymond's beating. He's standing proud before a judge, a slight smile on his face, acting like a dark god among lesser beings.

Babble in the courtroom, becomes the babble we've heard before, and we are–

CLOSE ON CLYDE

and we fall down inside his thoughts, and there are quick flashes of Becky's rape, and of the razor, and of something that moves dark and shadowy behind the images.

BACK TO SCENE

Clyde smiles.

DISSOLVE TO

EXT. OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL–DAYS LATER

Becky, in a wheelchair, going to the car, Monty, Eva and DEAN BEAUMONT on hand. Becky, looking solemn, gets in the car. The door SLAMS and we–

CUT TO:

INT. JAIL CELL

SLAMMING SOUND that is the slamming of the Far Side door, and Clyde is falling from the chair, the twisted shirt noose around his neck, and everything goes slow and–

DISSOLVES TO:

EXT. STREETS OF GALVESTON–NIGHT–LATER

MONTAGE

Brian walks through the night, down dark streets. Leaves rattle, the wind blows them in a twisty circle about him.

Brian stands on the sidewalk above the Gulf, watching the waves crash in.

Brian walking through a neighborhood, pauses, frowns, surprised to find he has arrived at the apartment where Becky was raped.

He walks into the parking lot, up near the dumpster. He puts one hand against it, unfastens his fly and pees, looking up at empty windows–Becky and Monty's windows. He stares at them for a while. When he finishes, he starts to fasten up, and his–

FOOT

beneath the edge of the dumpster bumps something and the THEME RISES UP SLOWLY, and Brian moves slightly to one side of the pool of piss and drops down on one knee, and–

LOW AND FROM OTHER SIDE OF DUMPSTER

we see his face looking under, and we see what's lying there.

The razor.

Brian's hand as it reaches under and, hesitates. He stands slowly, begins to back away.

Pauses. And walks away, briskly. And then he stops. And very slowly he looks back over his shoulder.

THEME PEAKS AND WE GO CLOSE ON BRIAN, and there is the sound of the steel door SLAMMING.

INT. CLYDE'S HOUSE–NIGHT

THE FRONT DOOR

Sound of wood breaking, lumber falling. The door flies open and Brian is there, having kicked it in.

CAMERA GIVES A VIEW OF THE HOUSE

The hall is full of dust, debris. Part of the stairway has fallen in. Cobwebs hang like vampire decoration. Brian glances once at the door that leads to the cellar.

Brian starts up the stairs, careful to stay on the undamaged side.

CLYDE'S ROOM UPSTAIRS

The door opens, and it creaks like chiller theater. Brian enters. AND THE THEME RISES.

ANOTHER ANGLE

The mattress on the floor. Spider webs. Cob webs. Dust. A rat makes a break for it, disappears into a hole in the wall. The curtains flap in the glassless window and the moonlight is sharp like the edge of a razor.

Brian turns. Looks at the antique mirror, studies his reflection in the grimy moon lit glass.

As he watches, the cobwebs he sees in the mirror gather up and move, and the shadows in the corners start to move, and the dust rises up in a wall of motes, and Brian slowly turns his head and looks at the room.

It has not changed.

Turns back to the mirror, gasps.

The cobwebs are wadding up and gathering the dust motes and pulling them in, and shadows are rushing in to group together, and it's making a shape, and the shape is the shape of the top-hatted Lord of the Razor, tall and black and shadow-colored.

As Brian watches, its dark, featureless face shows eyes for the first time, and they are nothing more than hot, wet winks of dread, and then a split of a mouth full of teeth like thirty-two silver-tipped stick pins. His top hat winks of chrome razor blades molded into a bright hat band.

The Lord changes again, and we see now he is clothed. This is our first view of that, and he's wearing a coat and trousers of skinned flesh.

Raw, bloody fingers stick out of his pants pockets like stashed after-dinner treats, and the Darkside Clock, an enormous pocket watch, dangles from a strand of gut attached to the god's vest pocket, a pocket that was once the fleshy slit that housed an eye.

The shoes he wears are human heads, and this is the first time we realize what those balls on his feet are. His legs go  narrow, goat-like in fact, and his feet fit right into the mouths, and the "shoes" are the worse for wear, dragging hanks of hair and strips of flesh.

And the god's fingernails are not nails at all, but razor blades, and he keeps rubbing them together as he moves forward, making them click and pop up sparks.

He grows in size as he comes forward, and finally, he stoops and sticks one leg through the mirror, and it pokes through like nothing is there, and his head-shoe thumps on the floor like a dropped medicine ball.

Brian staggers back until he is against the wall, next to the window. The curtains lick around him and the moonlight makes him look strangely silver.

The Lord of The Razor steps one foot out of the mirror, thumps the shoe-head on the floor. He steps with the other leg, and he's out…except his back won't come free. He's held by some unseen force, not completely part of our world.

Brian is trembling, and suddenly the front of his pants go wet, and then there is dribble coming out of one pants leg and onto the top of his shoe.

The Lord of the Razor stretches toward Brian, as far as he can go without breaking free of the mirror. It's like some unseen force is holding him back. His face almost touches Brian's, and the Lord sniffs.

He looks down at the pool of urine under one of Brian's feet and sniff's deeper. He smiles. He likes this business.

ANOTHER ANGLE

The Lord reaches behind him, and out of thin air and shadows and a strand of moonlight, he pulls a chair made of rib bones with a seat of what might be ragged flesh, and it's all tied together with hanks of hair. He snaps it down on the floor between himself and Brian, eases his ass down onto it, his back still held tight to the mirror. Now his head is even in height with Brian's face. The Lord takes off his top hat and rests it carefully on one knee, bends his head forward.

FAVOR THE LORD

He has a zipper across the top of his head, and he reaches up and grabs it with a razor tipped thumb and forefinger, and pulls it open.

CLOSER ON THE GAP IN THE LORD'S HEAD

Dark in there. The Lord reaches into his head and pulls out a ventriloquist's dummy, and while he lets it dangle in one hand, with the other he picks up his top hat, and without zipping up, places it back on his head.

CLOSE ON THE DUMMY

The dummy is a ventriloquist's dummy of Clyde. A damn good likeness. But the cheeks are too rosy and the cheek bones are too high. It wears tennis shoes, jeans, a black tee-shirt, and a leather jacket with zipper. The Lord sits the dummy on his knee. He sticks his hand inside it. Moves slightly. Clyde's mouth opens and snaps together a few times.

BACK TO SCENE

Brian stares in wonder.

The dummy opens its mouth, but now the wood face is more animated, and Clyde speaks.

CLYDE DUMMY

Been jacking around long enough, haven't you, man?  Time to get cracking….

ON BRIAN

Brian half smiles, takes the razor from his pocket and holds it out, like a little kid proudly showing daddy a prize.

BRIAN

I got it, Clyde. I found it.

BRIAN AND CLYDE

CLYDE DUMMY

I know you did, pal. See, you find it when it's time, like you're supposed to. And watch it. It'll turn on you. Did on me.

Clyde dummy holds up one puppet hand. It has a deep scar in the wood, like a gash. Clyde nods to the Lord. Then turns back to Brian.

CLYDE DUMMY

…He, my man here, knows when we're ready, man. He and his razor have always been there, and always will be. He's always looking for people like you and me.

Brian nods.

CLYDE DUMMY

Okay. Listen up. We got work to do.

That bitch of a teacher didn't get what she should have gotten, and it's up to you to see that she does.

BRIAN

Yeah…okay.

CLYDE DUMMY

You know who my pal here is, don't you? Well, maybe you don't. But you will, man. This is the Lord of the Razor. And watch your manners, all right? Me, you might say I"m the god's puppet,  Might say I have been all along. And you're mine, pal. I am going to live inside your head…and you're going to pay the utilities and rent. Got me?

BRIAN

Think so…

CLYDE DUMMY

Sure you do. Now–I want you to get those shitheads together, Loony  and Stone. Want you to go over and get that teacher broad and cut her heart out and hang her up by her toes. Got me?

Brian can't quit looking at the Lord of The Razor.

BRIAN

Yeah, but–

CLYDE DUMMY

No buts except your own if you don't do what I say.

BRIAN

I don't understand.

CLYDE DUMMY

Don't need to. What you got to know is, there's all kinds of places different from this, Brian. My big buddy here, the one who gave me and you the razor, he's from one of them places. Thing is, he wants in over here. Guys like us, we can get him in all the way. And he can do fine things for us over there.

Brian looks uncertain.

BRIAN

Clyde. You sure, man?

CLYDE DUMMY

Moves it's false eyes in its wooden head toward the Lord, and smiles broadly at the Lord.

CLYDE DUMMY

I wouldn't have the great opportunities I've got now. To be over here, I mean. Interesting people over here with me, Brian. Plenty of blood and beer and pussy. In that order.

There is a rumble from the Lord, a peevish sound that makes the hair on the back of the neck stand up and the scalp prickle.

CLYDE DUMMY

Now listen good, and don't fuck up. You got to do it as I say. We got a serious problem, man. Things aren't exactly right.

BRIAN

Whatever you want, Clyde. Honest–

CLYDE DUMMY

Shut the hell up and listen. Some fucking superman you turned out to be. Things have got to change, pal, we–

The Lord of the Razor begins to rumble, mumble, move about in anger. The Clyde dummy looks up, raises a placating hand to the god.

CLYDE DUMMY

Wait a minute, now, wait a minute, okay? Brian's all right, just a bit fucked over right now. The boy's not fully with it yet.

BRIAN

What?

CLYDE DUMMY

It's what you didn't do. Going off and leaving my young ass to be banged around by an old sailor, now that wasn't good. But, okay, I've told my friend here you're a good man. You were trying to do your job.

FAVOR THE LORD

A smile showing the Lord's thirty-two stick pin teeth.

BACK TO SCENE

CLYDE DUMMY

Don't fucking let me down, you hear?

The Lord rumbles.

Clyde dummy looks up at the lord.

CLYDE DUMMY

Okay, Brian, my man says we're killing time, not people. He's right, you know? Thing is, for him to come over here, we got to finish what we started. The bitch has got to go. That's set, man. For things to come out way they're supposed to, what you start, you got to finish. All right. We'll be talking again. Plenty. You'll be coming  over here when you finish. Be with me. Gotta run now, pal…

The dummy goes limp and cracks appear all through it. The Lord carefully removes his hat and places it on his right knee, and lifts Clyde from his left knee, leans forward, and drops the dummy through the gap in his head. A puff of smoke and a swirl of cobwebs puff out of there, then slowly the Lord draws the zipper closed, replaces his hat.

The Lord leans forward and pushes his face toward Brian. The Lord removes from his human skin waist coat pocket, an enormous watch. It dangles from a strand of gut.

INSERT WATCH

Two skeletal fingers serve as hands. There are no numbers, only a face. It is Brian's face, trapped inside, squirming and pressing its nose in little wet smudges against the smoky glass. His expression is considerably less cocky than when he was alive.

BACK TO SCENE

Brian leans slightly forward, trying to examine the watch.

Clyde's face moves to one side of the watch, and we see in the background silver flashes, and we see these flashes are flying blades, and they are skinning alive some running victim in the background, and there are all manner of horrors going on: Licks of flame. Squirts of blood. Decapitated and mutilated bodies. It all swirls together in a kind of horrible stew.

And now Brian notes another thing. He can see his own reflection in the glass, but the reflection lifts its hands to press at the inside of the glass, and the face looks very unhappy. And then it all fades, and there are just the skeletal fingers, and the watch is ticking, and the ticking picks up, becomes frantic.

LORD OF THE RAZOR

Tempus Fugit!

It's a surprise. The Lord can speak.

BACK TO SCENE

The Lord lets out a deep rumble, a hellish YELL, and then the shadows and cobwebs and dust that he is made of explode and scatter with no more noise than a mouse farting in cotton.

The shadows swirl and make a kind of miniature tornado, and with a soundless twisting movement, they dive into the mirror and spread back into place, to fit the reflection of the room, and Brian can see–

HIS OWN DAMNED SELF

in the mirror. Leaning against the wall, looking like a man who has just tried to give birth to a roll of barbed wire.

A beat.

And then that METAL DOOR SLAMMING SOUND and the moonlight fades and the darkness of the room is the blackness of the room and everything seems normal, and–

Brian drops the razor from his hand, and we go–

CLOSE ON RAZOR AND BRIAN'S PANTS LEG AND SHOE

It pops open with a loud SNAP, and hits the floor and as the blade springs open suddenly there is moonlight on it, bright as a lightning flash, and the blade as it snaps free cuts his pants leg, cuts right through and–

BRIAN

groans and drops to one knee and grabs his pants leg, and when he pulls his hand back, it has blood on it. He pulls up the pants leg, and we go–

CLOSE ON HIS ANKLE

Cut. Bloody.

He looks down at the razor. The blood on his hand, and we–

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. BRIAN'S HOUSE–ANOTHER DAY

Black Chevy is parked at the curb. There are two figures inside, indistinct for the moment.

Loony and Stone are moving up the sidewalk toward the house, but they are only halfway up when the door opens, and out comes Brian. They pause. Brian stands apart, looking at them, taking them in until they become nervous.

Then he comes down to join them, and just watching him move, we see this is a different Brian. More aggressive. More commanding. His eyes are Clyde's eyes now.

BRIAN

Listen up. Careful. 'Cause you got to get this right, and you got to get it now.

(beat)

Clyde's back. He came to me.

Loony and Stone look blank.

LOONY

I bet he smelled bad.

BRIAN

What you don't know could fill the universe, Loony. It's not like he's standing around, asshole.

(Brian taps his skull)

He's in here.

LOONY

Oh.

BRIAN

He says we're going to kill the teacher that got him caught. We got to do that.

Loony and Stone remain quiet.

BRIAN

I know you think I'm crazy, but this is the real thing. Clyde's inside me now. Living in my head. Banging around the furniture. It's what the Lord wants.

LOONY

Jesus?

BRIAN

Not that wimpy cocksucker. The Lord of the Razor….

Brian stops, for he has spotted the shapes in the car.

BRIAN V.O. (CONT'D)

Who the fuck is that?

Loony turns to look back at the car, like maybe he's never noticed them before.

LOONY

Oh. That's Jimmy and his split tail, Angela.

Brian sighs.

BRIAN

And who the fuck are Jimmy and Angela? I let you drive the car, and you start putting people in it. What the fuck is wrong with you?

LOONY

They're these two want in. They been letting us stay with them. Got their own place. I thought maybe you wanted some new blood, some help.

BRIAN

They know about us? What we did?

LOONY

Sort of. Jimmy, he's just a patsy. He likes what we're about. And his old lady, she's with him. She'll do what he wants.

BRIAN

Let's have a look.

LOONY

You don't like him, I'll waste him myself. Suck the girl's eye out like a grape.

JIMMY AND ANGELA

They get out of the car before the gang gets to them, stand by it, waiting as the boy's walk up to the car.

BRIAN

Love birds, huh? You a spic?

ANGELA

I guess.

BRIAN

You two want in? You sure?

We play hardball here. You do what you're told when you're told to do it. And don't even think about flaking out.

They never get a chance to answer. They just look baffled.

BRIAN

(To Stone)

Get 'em back in the car.

As they are ushered back into the car with little shoo-shoo waves of Stone's hands. He closes the door shut after they slide in, goes back to stand by Brian and Loony.

BRIAN

(To Loony)

Watch 'em. Anything happens, it's your balls.

(beat)

I don't want to see you guys till three days from now. And get a shotgun and some blades.

Brian takes the razor from his pocket, pops it.

BRIAN

I'm going to cut that goddamn teacher's heart out and eat it. She isn't getting away this time. Now, get out of here. Tempus Fugit.

INT. CAR

It's pulling away and we're focused on the backseat. Angela. She turns, looks out the window. And what does she see but a shadow. Out of nowhere, sliding darkness over the walkway where Brian stands watching them depart. It is a thick shadow and falls over him and hangs there like an ornament. Angela blinks hard. When she does. The shadow is gone.

ON BRIAN

Brian looks after the car. Hears something. And we do too. A whisper. Brian's face is amazed at first. He cocks his head like a curious spaniel, then breaks into a smile.

BRIAN

What? Fuck, you listening in? It's going to be fine, Clyde. You got my word on that…

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. BRIAN'S HOUSE–BEDROOM–SOME TIME LATER

The place is sleazy to begin with, now it's covered in blood, everything turned over, stuff ripped up in anger. The TV is on, in the middle of a dumb daytime quiz show. Brian's mother is dead in her bed, cut to pieces. Scrawled on the wall in blood is a note:

GOOD NIGHT, MOMMY. GONE TO HELL

WON'T BE BACK.

YOUR LOVING BABY BOY.

A SOUND: SCRATCHING OF A PEN

CAMERA ROAMS

out of the bedroom and down a gloomy hallway with little sentiment plagues on the walls. Shit like: IT TAKES A MOTHER TO MAKE A HOME. A verse from the Lord's prayer.

CAMERA finds the source of the scratching as it dollies into the kitchen and hangs over the head of Brian, writing away.

BRIAN V.O.

I am Clyde and he is me and the Lord of the Razor is all of us, if we will just let him come over. He brings not the blood of the lamb, but the blood of the world.

Brian drops the pen, sits there, and we–

SLOW DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. LOT–BECKY'S APARTMENT–NIGHT (DRIZZLE)

The Black Chevy gliding in like some hungry beast searching for prey.

INT. CHEVY

The gang, including Angela and Jimmy. It's tight in there, and Loony is sliding his hand over to touch the jean-wearing leg of Angela, just a bit. She notes it and moves her knee, but says nothing.

BRIAN

Jimmy, you're going in with us. Bring the knife and bring your balls. Angela, you'll stay in the car. Be ready to honk, anything comes down we ought to know about.

Don't be fucking napping and keep your hand out of your pants. I want you alert. Shit comes down, crank up and get over to the stairs quick. We don't want no repeat. Everybody got it?

Angela turns to look at Jimmy. The look she gives says much. She doesn't like this.

ANGELA

What…are you going to do?

BRIAN

Why, we're gonna take care of business.

THE GANG

gets out of the car and Angela slides in up front, behind the wheel, and now our gang is–

MOVING

across the lot, up the stairs. At the door, Brian works his pocketknife between the edge of the door and the lock. The others are crowded behind him.

Pop. The door gives.

INT. BECKY'S APARTMENT

They burst inside, ready for action. Brian with the razor. Stone and Jimmy with knives. Loony has a shotgun.

A cat, lying on the couch, lifts its head and looks at them.

BRIAN

Shit. Nobody's here.

Jimmy breathes a sigh of relief.

BACK TO SCENE

Brian sees a note on the refrigerator. He goes over and looks at it.

Brian reads the note in an angry, sarcastic manner.

BRIAN

DEAR DON AND EVA:

JUST THROW WILBUR'S LITTER BOX OUT ONCE. FRESH LITTER UNDER THE SINK. CAT FOOD IS THERE TOO. THANKS AGAIN FOR THE LOAN OF THE CABIN.

Brian looks up, pained.

BRIAN

Fuckers have gone camping or something.

Loony has picked up the cat and is petting it.

LOONY

They'll be back, man.

BRIAN

You gonna wait in the fucking closet? Pack you a lunch?

Loony doesn't respond. Brian has opened an address book on the kitchen bar.

BRIAN

We're not waiting for them to get back, asshole. We're going to find them…

Brian smiles as he puts his finger on a name.

BRIAN

Eva Beaumont, Safford Drive. 306. Let's go ask Eva where her cabin is.

He drops Becky's address book on the floor.

SAME SCENE–EMPTY ROOM–MOMENTS LATER

The cat is dead. The address book on the floor. The apartment door SLAMS shut, and we–

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. BEAUMONT APARTMENT

and horror, as the SLAM sound carries over and the THEME strikes up, and what we see is seen as if through a smoky distorted lens. Blood everywhere. Walls. Floor. Glimpses of slashing, plunging knives and gagged faces. Eva and Dean Beaumont.

Voices seem to be coming from another room as the gang talks over their work, like butchers at a slaughter house, and gradually, everything becomes clear and the sound becomes sharp, and what we see is–

Brian hovering over Jimmy, who is scared and horrified, as he is forced to mutilate Eva's corpse. The body of Dean is in the background. The other guys stand around, laughing. This is a sadistic initiation of Jimmy.

LOONY

Cut her, Jimmy. You didn't do shit. You didn't do nothing. Cut her, and we'll go do the other one.

BRIAN

Not tonight we won't. It'll be daylight soon.

LOONY

Who gives a shit.

Brian slaps Loony on the back of the head. Loony starts to turn, has his knife in his hand, but when he sees Brian's face, he stops. Brian is, at this point, not someone to fuck with.

BRIAN

We go when I say.

Loony nods. Jimmy tries to stand up from the corpse. He looks hysterical. Stone's hand comes down on Jimmy's shoulder. His other hand points at the already very messed up corpse.

BRIAN

He wants you to finish. We all do.

Brian holds out his razor so that the handle can be seen.

BRIAN

Cut these symbols into her forehead. Cut them to the bone.

Jimmy looks as if he might rebel, but he knows better. He swallows, turns back to the corpse, leans forward with his knife, and–

FLASH BACK ENDS, and we–

DISSOLVE TO:

LOGO APPEARS BRIEFLY: OCTOBER 31ST, HALLOWEEN

INT. OFFICER TED OLSEN'S BEDROOM–MORNING

ON LOUD ALARM

going off on bedside table.

WIDEN TO INCLUDE BED

TED OLSEN, scruffy, leans over to turn it off. He gets up, plods toward the bathroom in his boxer shorts. His gun belt is hanging over the back of a chair, his badge pinned to it. He leans in and turns on the shower, and as he starts to slip out of his boxer shorts we–

DISSOLVE TO:

OLSEN KITCHEN

ROXANNE OLSEN, Ted's wife, in a worn brown robe, is standing at the stove, frying bacon. Eggs are all ready on a plate. She is an attractive woman, mid-thirties.

Ted, dressed in his Highway Patrol uniform, wearing badge and gun, trudges into the room.

ROXANNE

Breakfast is almost ready.

TED

(groans)

Mmmmhhhhuh….

Ted falls down in a chair at the kitchen table. He turns and looks at Roxanne who is shaking bacon in a pan, and this movement shakes her behind. Ted smiles. He thinks she looks good.

Roxanne sets a plate of bacon and eggs down in front of him.

ROXANNE

You okay, baby?

TED

Sorry. Thinking about that dumb shit Larry. One day, and I already got an ulcer. He's racist. He's stupid. And strangely enough, I think he's a pretty good cop. But, I wish he were dead.

Roxanne pouring two cups of coffee.

ROXANNE

Sorry, hon. But the dead part. That's a tough wish.

TED

You ride around with him, you'd kill him yourself. I mean, it's Bad enough Jim Trawler getting killed like that, I got to chase the bastards down while Larry's spoutin' off about whoever else he's got it in for today.

Roxanne takes a seat at the table with their coffee.

ROXANNE

We've been over it. You want out, I think that's what you ought to do.

TED

Oh, I am getting out. Isn't any doubt in my head about that. Just as soon as I can figure what to do next. Harry was talking about this private cop deal. We'd maybe have to move, but I'm thinking it–

HONKING OUTSIDE

TED

Well, shit. Guess who's here?

Ted looks down at his breakfast.

TED

I'm sorry, hon. Don't have time.

ROXANNE

All right. Be careful. And when you get home, I'll let you touch my butt, which is what's on your nasty little mind.

Maybe I'll touch something, too.

Ted is up from the chair, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek.

TED

That's an offer worth coming home to.

EXT. OLSEN YARD

Ted is walking toward the car. Larry is outside the car, leaning against it. He has a toothpick in his mouth, working it from one side to the next. Roxanne comes to the doorway to wave at Ted. Larry waves too.

LARRY AND TED

sliding into the patrol car, Larry behind the wheel. As Larry fires the engine and starts out of the drive–

LARRY

I don't like waiting, Ted. It isn't professional.

TED

Waiting…You call that waiting? What was it…thirty seconds?

LARRY

I was here five minutes before I honked the horn.

TED

Honk sooner.

LARRY

What you doing in there? Knocking you off a piece? You should be standing in the goddamn yard when I show up.

TED

Just shut the fuck up, Larry. Don't get started on me today.

EXT. PATROL CAR

As the car leaves the drive and hits the highway, and we can hear–

LARRY O.S.

You drive me crazy. You're the damndest person I've ever known.

TED O.S.

Me? Me, you're talking about me?

INT. PATROL CAR

LARRY

You got weird ideas, you act weird. You like niggers and communists and–

TED

That's enough, Larry. I'm going to tell you this one more time–last time. That nigger stuff doesn't cut any ice with me. And in case you haven't been paying attention, the Soviet Union is long collapsed.

LARRY

They got Cuba…Are you a Catholic?

TED

What?

LARRY

I just asked. Are you a Catholic?

TED

You trying to find something else to fight about?

LARRY

You are one, then.

TED

I didn't say that.

LARRY

Didn't have to. Your Catholic person, he'll give himself away every time. You can fucking tell.

TED

How?

LARRY

Their eyes. They got those pope-eyes, you know. You can tell…

TED

Jesus…I'm an atheist, Larry.

LARRY

Ah, there's your problem. Jesus don't like atheists…

INT. THE CABIN–MORNING

Monty in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, shaving cream all over his face, a towel slung over his shoulder. He slips a blade into his razor, speaks as if someone is nearby.

MONTY

Seems like you slept pretty good, didn't you? Didn't seem like you were dreaming or anything.

Monty waits a moment for an answer. Doesn't get one. He puts down his razor and walks into the bedroom, shaving cream on his face. Becky isn't there.

From here he can hear a TV going. He enters-

THE LIVING ROOM

Becky is in her robe, sitting on the couch in front of the TV, hunched over with her coffee. She doesn't look up or acknowledge his presence in any way.

MONTY

I was looking for you.

BECKY

(Cold voice.)

Where would I be, Monty? Floating face down in the lake?

Monty's confident expression disappears. He goes back into his wimpy mode.

MONTY

Didn't see you…thought you might be outside or something…

She looks up at him a moment, then looks away.

MONTY

I, uh…wondered if we could talk, Becky.

He wipes the shaving cream off his face with the towel.

MONTY . (CONT'D)

I'd like to straighten this out if we could.

BECKY

Doesn't matter.

Monty makes a wimpy face. He's disappointed.

MONTY

It does, too. It matters a lot. And…I don't know exactly how to say this, but…I know you believe these are not ordinary dreams. And I am trying to understand that.

Monty moves restlessly around the room. He turns the sound off the TV.

MONTY (CONT'D)

(hesitant, nervous)

Obviously, I haven't handled this right. I want to start over; I want to listen to you. And I want to refrain from my…my pop sociologist manner. Which clearly pisses you off. I want to apologize.

She looks up now, deciding to get into this, but, from her voice, we see she's not giving him any slack.

BECKY

Monty…..I know it's hard to understand. I guess if it hadn't happened to me…that's the hard part to get across to you, or anyone else.

She looks right at him with no expression at all, speaks in a calm manner, with no emotion at all.

BECKY

See, they stuck their dicks in me, Monty. Got it? They were not friendly or invited dicks. Yours has been the only invited dick for some time.

MONTY

Becky…

BECKY

Oh, and they stuck them up my ass too.  Did I mention that? It hurt. Real bad.

She's getting it all out now.

BECKY

Since Clyde did that to me I have been in tune with him, Monty. He's got–some kind of electricity in that thing and it must have wired me to him somehow…

MONTY

For god sakes, Becky–

BECKY

No. You wanted to get into it. It's  really happening, Monty. I am seeing him and he is dead. I see him hang himself over and over and over and–he's in here.

(taps her head) In here with me.

She is on  her feet now.

BECKY

I see the others, too. Out at the dock I had a vision. Twilight Zone shit. They are coming for me, these…these goblins, or whatever they are.

FLASHES OF THE IMAGES SHE SAW AT THE LAKE, delivered semi-automatic quick, and then we're–

BACK TO SCENE

MONTY

Honey–

BECKY

Shut the fuck up, Monty. You wanted to talk, and I've heard all your bullshit before. So listen to me now. This is my goddamn Waterloo. This cabin. You have taken me straight to it. Driven me to my end.  It would have happened at the apartment if that old man hadn't heard me scream. And now, here I am, right where you've brought me, and you know what, I don't think there's a damn thing we can do about it. And I don't know if I even care anymore!

Monty looks sour, as if the world's biggest fart was trapped in his intestines. He starts to speak, but there really isn't anywhere for him to go with this, so he holds it.

Becky shows a moment of pain.

BECKY

There's another world out there, Mr. Sociologist. A terrible fucking world. It is not in my head it is there. And the minute I close my eyes I'm there too…

She's started to cry. She turns around, collapses on the couch, not looking at Monty.

Monty slides up to her, reluctantly places a hand on her shoulder. This time, she doesn't jump. She turns, faces him, but doesn't look directly at him.

MONTY

I…haven't been a whole lot of help, have I?

BECKY

I can't argue with that.

She and Monty laugh a little with this comment. Nothing to throw a parade over but something.

Becky tries to pull herself together.

BECKY

Want some breakfast?

MONTY

Good idea. I'll start the eggs.

Becky reaches up and wipes a finger of foam off his face.

BECKY

No, you go…look at the lake or something.

She walks away.

MONTY

You sure?

THE TV SCREEN

As they part, we see past them to the TV screen. An announcer is talking, and though we can't hear him, the big headline at the bottom of the screen reads: GALVESTON COUPLE TORTURED AND SLAIN.

GO CLOSER ON TV on the announcer talking, and then shots of the apartment house. Police moving about. Photos of Eva and Dean Beaumont take over the screen.

The screen sputters, crackles…goes back to normal.

Monty is outside now, closing the sliding glass door at the back of the house, and Becky has departed to the kitchen. We hear pots and pans banging. Obviously, they don't see any of this.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. THE HIGHWAY PATROL CAR.–DAY

Ted and Larry are driving through a small, slightly run-down residential district next to the highway.

LARRY

Shit, Ted, soon as we stop at another two, three hundred boogie shacks, I'd like to get something to eat, it's all right with you.

Ted sighs, shakes his head.

TED

What else we got to do?

LARRY

You haven't figured it out yet? You don't know it's niggers killed Trawler? Niggers aren't going to turn in other niggers.

TED

All right. That's it. Pull the car over.

LARRY

What?

TED

Pull the car over, I'm gonna stomp a goddamn hole in your ass.

LARRY

Already got one. Listen, we're on duty.

TED

You sonofabitch, you ought to be pitching tents at a KKK retreat, not riding around in a law car.

LARRY

We are gonna get something to eat, right? I know a place got the finest chicken fried steaks made by clean white hands.

Ted, exasperated.

TED

You just stay in the car. I'll interview.

EXT. THE PATROL CAR

Larry and Ted have stopped before a modest house with a garage next to it with a sign on it that reads: MECHANIC WORK. They remain sitting in the car.

LARRY

I'm backup. You don't know what you're going to walk into.

TED

Right. I'll ask the questions, you stay out of it.

TED

gets out of the car, walks up to the house, steps onto the porch, knocks on the door. Within moments, a big, elderly black man, MALACHI, answers. He has on blue khaki mechanic clothes and is covered in grease. He is smoking a cigar.

TED

Afternoon. Wonder if I could ask you a few questions. Mr…

MALACHI

Call me Malachi. My mama did.

TED

Won't take but a minute.

MALACHI

Sure. Ask away. But make it pretty quick if you can. I got to get back to the shop. Got a car waiting.

ANGLE LARRY

He has rolled down his window and is sitting with the door partially open, as if he might need to come running at any moment.

TED

A highway patrolman was shot and killed not far from here. He described a 66 Chevy before he pulled it over. Said it had several passengers in–

Malachi is already nodding his head.

MALACHI

I saw it.

TED

You sure? I mean, it's been a couple of days.

Malachi shivers, drops his cigar on the porch and steps on it.

MALACHI

Wasn't two days though, it was one.

MALACHI'S FlASHBACK

and as he talks, we'll have him relive the event.

Malachi going back into his house–

MALACHI V.O.

Seen that car about one or so in the morning. Big storm coming in. Some kind of weird cloud behind it. Maybe just a low storm cloud. But it was like it was dragging that thing. Or the cloud was chasing it.

Malachi walking through the house, coming to his bedroom, being careful as he turns the doorknob to enter.

MALACHI V.O.

Saw the lights, heard…hell, felt that car coming, just like some kind of black cat, carrying bad omens…

INTERCUT IMAGES

Lightning illuminates everything. The car with searing white head lights. Brian at the wheel, seems to jump out and right into Malachi's eyes as he stands on the porch. But he doesn't look like Brian. He looks demonic.

BACK TO MALACHI

Opening that door. Easing into the room.

MALACHI V.O.

I saw the people inside. If they was people…

OUT OF FLASHBACK

TED

Now what's that supposed to mean?

MALACHI

You can think me crazy if you like, but them wasn't people in that car, they were Evils. At least some of them were.

TED

What did they look like?

MALACHI

Felt them more than saw them.

TED

You sure about the car, the time and all?

BACK TO FLASHBACK

Malachi in his bedroom. He leans down. His elderly wife is in the bed, a book fallen on her chest. Her mouth is slightly parted, eyes wide open. Hold for a moment.

MALACHI (V.O.)

Mister, I can't forget. I'm going to my wife's funeral this afternoon. That was the night she died. No sir, I'm going to have that night in my head a long time.

OUT OF FLASHBACK

TED

I'm sorry about your wife.

MALACHI

Not half as sorry as I am. Now, I got to get back to work. I got a funeral to pay for.

Ted walks back toward the car, and Larry rolls up the window and cranks the engine. Before Ted gets inside the patrol car, Malachi calls out.

ON MALACHI

MALACHI

Officer? That car…it turned off toward Minnanette. That's all I know. Except it's evil…

Ted nods and slides inside the car.

INT. THE PATROL CAR–MOMENTS LATER

They're gliding back toward the highway.

LARRY

Da evuls be comin, lawdy me!

TED

Have some respect. His wife died…

They may not be from hell or anything, but they're evil enough for me. They blew Trawler's brains all over the highway.

LARRY

You finally got a point I can agree with, Teddy.

DISSOLVE TO:

THE WOODS

CAMERA WINDS THROUGH THEM

We hit a trail and on the trail is the Black Chevy. And we go close on the Chevy, and we can see shapes inside, and we–

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. CHEVY

Everyone is asleep in there. Stone up front. Loony in the back, his head thrown back. Angela and Jimmy pushed up together.

But Brian.

He's awake. At the wheel. Hands on the wheel. Just staring. Waiting. Brian turns to the mirror, thumps the effigy of Clyde.

CLOSE ON EFFIGY

As it swings back and forth, and we–

SLOW DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. POP'S STORE–EARLY EVENING

Pop inside the store, looking out the window at the fast-falling dusk and his–

POV

is the little road in front of the store, and beyond that a large field with woods on either side, and beyond that field, clear shot, the highway. He watches cars go by. One of them, and we'll go CLOSE ON THIS, is the patrol car with Larry and Ted in it.

BACK TO SCENE

Pop sings softly to himself (YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE, MY FUCKING SUNSHINE), picks up a girly magazine, BOOBS AND BUTTS, and digs in, and we–

CUT TO:

A FIELD NEARBY–EVENING

MOSES FRANKLIN, a black man, standing outside his pickup, at the open tail gate. A lazy looking spotted hound, BUFFY, is in the back of the truck leaning toward Moses. Moses has his shotgun lying in the truck bed and he's holding a beer in one hand and a sandwich in the other. The patrol car passes by on the highway. Moses looks up at the fast-rising moon.

MOSES

Look out, possums. Hide your children, Here I come…

And as he turns back to his sandwich, he finds that most of it is gone. He looks at Buffy standing in the truck bed near him. She's chewing.

MOSES

Buffy, you bitch.

DISSOLVE TO:

A CRICKET SOUND–NIGHT

LIGHTS. Two of them. Coming right at us. Growing. Growing. Overpowering us. And then we realize it's THE CHEVY cruising with a cat-like roar. It is on the little road in front of POP'S. It glides into the station in front of the pumps. Everyone gets out. They act rowdy. Except Jimmy and Angela. They have a kind of rabbit in the headlights look.

INCLUDE POP

as he comes outside, and he doesn't like what he sees.

POP

Help you boys?

LOONY

Boys?  Hey, old man, you call an alligator a lizard?

POP

No, but I call a pile of shit a pile of shit, and you look like maybe someone stacked an extra pile on you. All you turds, get back in that chunk of iron and get your gas somewhere else.

BRIAN

Ooooooh. You are so bad.

POP

Fuck with me, you little bastard, and you'll wake up with a crowd around you. Now get the fuck out of here.

Pop turns and stalks off.

Brian's hand clamps down on Pop's shoulder. Pop wheels, slaps the hand off, and slaps Brian.

Brian puts his hand to his face. A slow crooked smile works its way into place.

BRIAN

You're tough for an old dried up turd that–

POP hits Brian with an uppercut to the gut. Brian goes down on one knee, wheezing. Loony comes out of nowhere, hits Pop in the head with his fist and knocks him down. Brian stands, one hand on his stomach. Pop comes up on one knee.

BRIAN

You're going to wish you hadn't done that, old man.

POP

Am I?

Loony kicks Pop in the head, while Brian stands over him, grinning.

BRIAN

Oh, yeah, you're going to regret it, all right. Loony, pull this fucking senior citizen over to the pump.

Loony drags a limp Pop by the collar, and Stone grabs Pop and helps.

JIMMY AND ANGELA

They are huddled back by the car, terrified.

BACK TO SCENE

Loony starts filling up the car. Stone stands by while Brian kicks Pop hard.

Between kicks.

BRIAN

How about that? Kick it and it farts. Give me that nozzle. Loony, Stone, hold him.

Stone does. Loony passes the nozzle to Brian.

BRIAN

Jimmy, don't just stand there.

JIMMY BY THE CAR

He reaches out and takes Angela gently by the arm. She is standing with her arms crossed, amazed she has allowed herself into this business.

JIMMY

You do what you want, I'm not going to try and stop you…but you go on and do it without me and Angela. Just do your thing, but I'm not hurting anyone, not me.

INCLUDE ALL

BRIAN

Sure. I understand.

Loony gives Brian an amazed look, but says nothing.

BRIAN

Loony. Get over and help Stone with the old man.

Brian looks at Jimmy and Angela. They both look sick. Brian leans down and looks at Pop with false concern.

BRIAN

You doing okay, geezer? You look a little queasy to me.

Brian squats down, holding the nozzle with one hand. With the other, he forces Pop's jaws open, pinching his cheeks. Pop's false teeth fall out. Brian jams the nozzle in Pop's mouth.

BRIAN

Afraid you're going to have to put this on our bill, old man.

Brian squeezes the nozzle, and gasoline squirts into Pop's mouth.

BRIAN

Fill'er up!

Pop writhes in agony.

After a moment, Brian removes the nozzle. Pop coughs and spits.

BRIAN

Old man, I'm going to ask you a question. I'm looking for this teacher. Good looking bitch. Likely has a husband with her. Had this fellow draw me a map to the cabin up here, but the sonofabitch didn't pinpoint it for me. Might have got confused…Loony, wasn't Jimmy carving on the old lady about then?

Loony laughs, grins in Jimmy's direction. Jimmy tries to look away.

BRIAN

Bet you know the Beaumonts, and where their cabin is. Am I right, old man?

Pop, scared but defiant.

POP

Fuck you, sonny.

Brian lifts Pop up by his belt, sticks the nozzle down the back of his pants.

BRIAN

Hey, have it your way.

Brian jerks the nozzle out.

BRIAN

Loony, Stone, anyone got a match? We're going to play a little game, old man.

Loony reaches in his pocket and pulls out a box of matches, passes them to Brian.

BRIAN

Used to catch armadillos around the house. Get me some gas from the lawn mower can, pour it on their ass and chase 'em round tossing matches at 'em. Ready, set? You're the armadillo…

Pop somehow manages to pull himself up and limp away. Brian grins.

BRIAN

Cheater. I didn't say go.

Pop gets about three feet, and Brian casually opens the match box and takes out a match, strikes it lit, and then very carefully tosses it at Pop, striking him in the seat of his well-gasoline soaked pants.

Pop's ass bursts into flames and the flames lick up his back and grab his hair and take it away in a burst of illumination.

Pop limps a few feet, falls into a stack of tires in front of the store, lays over them screaming. He falls off of those and rolls around on the ground. Flames lick out of his mouth. He rolls over and over on the ground, comes to rest against the tires. The rubber catches and goes up slowly, sending black smoke to the heavens.

Pop tries to roll some more, putting out some of the flames. But his back and butt and legs are still blazing. He lays face down after a moment, making a strange noise.

Loony laughs.

LOONY

Cute, ain't he?

BRIAN

Precious….Jimmy, you two go in there and get something for us to eat. Get some kinda beer, make sure it's cold.

Angela vomits. Brian frowns.

BRIAN

You're getting it on the goddamn car. Get the fuck away from there! Both of you, go get the food. Do it now. Before the whole store catches on fire.

Jimmy and Angela scramble away. As they pass Pop, we see he is smoking and the tires are lit good and the flames are licking skyward.

ANGLE LOONY AND BRIAN

LOONY

What about them? You aren't going to just let them go, are you? Get away with that shit?

BRIAN

Get in there, hurry them up.

MOMENTS LATER

Jimmy and Angela return with sacks of goods. Loony trots out grinning like an idiot with both hands full of Halloween masks.

LOONY

Hey, look at these? Ain't tonight the night?

BRIAN

Yeah. Stone. You drive.

THE CHEVY

speeds away.

EXT. COUNTRYSIDE NEAR POP'S–NIGHT

Moses Franklin wanders through the trees and brush. He wears a helmet with a light on it. He carries a shotgun and a hunting horn. He pauses. Buffy is in the trail in front of him, squatting to shit.

MOSES

Damn, Buffy. Gonna have to change your food That's three times since we got out of the truck.

His attention is caught by a light through the foliage. He crosses the trail and pulls back some brush by a tree.

MOSES' POV

Across a stretch of field, across a little road. Pop's store. It appears to be wearing a wavy red and yellow dunce hat of fire.

BACK TO SCENE

MOSES

Damn, Buffy. POP'S is on fire.

Moses shoves through the brush, takes off toward the blaze.

ANOTHER ANGLE

Moses and Buffy running across the field, Buffy giving out with that hound yodel as she runs.

POP'S STORE

Moses and Buffy charge up. Flames flick up from the roof and crackle into the night sky, the windows are bursting. Tires are nothing more now than coils of flame. Pop, pretty well cooked and smoking, lies nearby.

Moses lays down his shotgun, darts for the pump island, grabs a hose, turns it on, and pulls it out on its runner. He starts spraying it onto pop, who though no longer burning, gives off a cloud of black smoke. Done with that, Moses turns the hose on the store. It's like trying to piss a volcano eruption out.

Buffy sits and watches. This beats chasing a possum.

EXT. THE PATROL CAR

Ted and Larry are on the highway, cruising back the opposite direction from when Pop saw them. In fact, they're about in the same spot, but the opposite side of the highway.

TED

I doubt we're gonna just run up on them. They've had a day to rethink things and cruise.

LARRY

God, highways, and women work in mysterious ways. Tonight, I'm praying to god, hoping for women, and depending on the highway.

TED

Well, good for you.

Ted gets a glance out of the side window.

POP'S, being eaten by flames.

TED

Goddamn. Turn around.

Larry hits the brakes and–

THE PATROL CAR

spins completely around, and Larry guns it bumping across the clearing that leads to Pop's store.

ANOTHER ANGLE

as they slide up to POP'S pumps and jump out, dash toward Moses, who is now using the water hose on pop again. Pop gives off smoke like a doused camp fire.

Moses, Ted, and Larry, and Buffy stand over Pop. Ted has picked up Moses's shotgun. He reaches out pushes the hose aside, knowing it's not doing any real good. What's happened to Pop has happened. He's alive, but it ain't pretty.

Moses turns to them. He's still got his hunting head lamp on.

MOSES

I was up there in the woods. Saw the flames.

Larry leans down over Pop.

LARRY

Wooo–eeee. Burnt to a cracker.

TED

Larry. Call an ambulance. Okay? Fire department.

Larry hustles back to the car.

TED

Might be a good idea to get away from these pumps, or turn them off.

MOSES

Switch is in the store somewhere. And ain't nobody going in there.

Ted squats down beside Pop. Ted tries not to make a face, but the burnt meat and the smell are obviously uncomfortable. Pop opens one eye. The other. Well, it's cooked shut.

TED

Ambulance is on the way. We're gonna move you back from the flames, away from the pumps. It won't be very comfortable.

Pop opens his blackened mouth. A puff of smoke comes out.

MOSES

Think he's trying to tell you something.

Ted leans down close to Pop. Pop tries to speak. Ted listens, lifts up, looks at Moses.

TED

Kids. He says kids did it. And he said…bow something.

MOSES

Beaumonts. That's what he's trying to say.  They got a cabin up around the lake somewhere. I've met 'em.

Ted nods as Larry comes up.

TED

Let's move him.

Larry bends down, looks closely at Pop.

LARRY

He's done gone to the great bake sale in the sky. Ain't no use bothering moving him back now. He'll just come apart on you.

Ted doesn't like this, we can see it in his face. But there's truth in it. He stands up and looks at Moses.

TED

What's your name?

MOSES

Moses.

TED

You can show us this cabin?

MOSES

Been awhile, but can show you there abouts. But I'm a citizen.

TED

And we need a citizen's help.

MOSES

What about my dog, Buffy?

TED

Load her up. And take that stupid light off.

Moses takes the light off his head as they start toward the car, and we–

CUT TO:

EXT. THE CABIN–NIGHT, A WIDE SHOT

Calm, woodsy setting. Warm light in the windows; the moon peeks through the surrounding trees; the sound of a loon calling on the lake. Peace at last…

CUT TO:

MONTY

Monty's night-fishing from the dock with a rod and reel. And not very well, either.

INT. THE CABIN

The TV is on, tuned to a funny sitcom. The laugh track laughs. Becky has gotten up to refill her tea. She grins, along with the track.

She walks back to the couch, curls up, sips her tea.

CLOSE ON BECKY

We haven't seen her this relaxed before.

And then there is a flash. It's the old business again, but this time it is so fast, it's almost subliminal, not actually identifiable, but we can pretty well assume it isn't an Easter parade.

A whisper.

Becky turns, as if someone might be standing behind her. She turns back and the whisper becomes harsh, and then it becomes a babble. She jerks back against the couch as if pushed, and we–

CUT TO:

MONTY FISHING

He slaps a mosquito, looks up as birds burst from nesting and hit the sky; a dark cloud rolls lickity-split across the face of the moon, dragging rips and rags of black clouds after it. The wind ripples the lake and the ripples move on across the lake as if something was beneath the surface.

Monty studies this, confused.

CUT TO:

BECKY

She's in the throes of a fit. Lights in the room blink. The TV scrambles.

CUT TO:

MONTY FISHING

Slaps another mosquito. He's had it with fishing. He reels in his line, starts back toward the house.

INTERCUT

CABIN/MONTY

Becky convulsing, lights blinking, room reeling.

Monty approaching the house.

The TV it's flickering. But something dark is moving behind the static.

Monty puts down his fishing gear, slides back the glass door and steps inside, stops, rigid with fright.

MONTY'S POV

Becky is fully convulsed, in spasm, arms and legs jerking out of control, sweat on he face, hair tangled, spittle on her lips. She leans forward suddenly and makes a kind of grunting sound, looks directly at the TV. And when she does, we–

CUT TO:

TV SCREEN–CLOSE

The snow blows away into the world of lost static, and what we see on the screen is what Becky sees in her head.

Dream symbolic. Seen through cracks and sizzles and spots of static. Figures with demonic faces creeping forward, the lake and woods in the background, and between that and themselves, lurking over them like a poison cloud, a huge top-hatted shadow.

MONTY'S POV

The TV. The images.

Then he looks at–

BECKY

who suddenly goes limp, falls backwards and unconscious.

BACK TO TV

The images jump away and the screen goes black.

FAVOR MONTY

He's frozen by the door. Now he comes undone and rushes to Becky, grabs her hand, starts slapping it, trying to bring her awake.

MONTY

Becky. Jesus. Honey.

EXT. VW–MOMENTS LATER

The VW ROARING out of the driveway, tossing gravel, heading onto the main road in front of the cabin.

INT. VW

Monty is driving; Becky jerks, shivers in the passenger seat. From the way Monty's hunched over the wheel, and the whine of the engine, we know he's going too fast.

MONTY

We're out of there, Becky, we're gone, okay, you do not have to go back, we're going home, we're all right–

Becky is weak, but coming around.

MONTY

I've been such a sanctimonious prick. I didn't know…

BECKY

Head hurts….God, head hurts.

Lights hit his windshield and a car passes coming the other way. For an instant, he is even with the car. The other driver turns his head toward them.

Brian. Whispers and babbles.

FAVOR BECKY

She stares past Monty at the car, turns and looks back through the rearview glass.

BECKY

It's them.

MONTY

What?

BECKY

Them. Them, goddamnit! Them.

Becky starts pounding on Monty, in sheer panic.

BECKY

It's–them, it's THEM! They've seen us.

INT. CHEVY

BRIAN

That's the cunt's car! Shit!

EXT. CHEVY

Churning up dust in a turn that takes puts them in pursuit of the VW. Loony yells and laughs hysterically.

LOONY

Mother–FUCKER! It's on now.

INT. MONTY'S CAR

The pair are horrified, as the lights of the Chevy explode into view in the rearview mirror, flood the VW with light.

INT. CHEVY

Stone is still, as always. Jimmy and Angela are terrified. Brian and Loony are ecstatic.

BRIAN

I'm the one gets to cut her heart out.

LOONY

Go, baby, go!

CUT TO:

PATROL CAR

It comes bumping down an almost non-existent road and pauses where it meets a larger road.

INT. PATROL CAR

Larry at the wheel, Ted beside him, Moses and Buffy in the backseat. The back left hand window is rolled down and Buffy has her head out of it, panting.

LARRY

You sure you know where you're going?

MOSES

I don't remember so good. But this is a shortcut to somewhere.

LARRY

Didn't want to go somewhere. Wanted to go to the cabin.

MOSES

It's out in this direction.

LARRY

China is in this direction.

EXT. ROAD

Right in front of the patrol car. Monty's car, then Brian's car shoot by so fast it shakes the cop car.

INT. PATROL CAR

LARRY

Shit. That's them. The fucking Chevy.

PATROL CAR

blows out onto the highway and the cherries start and the siren whines.

ANOTHER ANGLE ON PATROL CAR

speeding into the night, and Buffy has her head out the window, hound ears flapping. She's as happy as if she was on her way to a dog food commercial.

PATROL CAR'S FRONT RIGHT TIRE

as it blows, and then we–

SEE THE PATROL CAR

struggling on the highway, and then it skids and slides into a ditch, almost bounces out, and hangs, the tires throwing up dirt.

INT. PATROL CAR

Buffy is in the front seat now, squirming around in Larry's lap.

LARRY

Jap tires. Goddamn dog.

TED

Firestone, asshole. And the dog is American.

INTERCUT CHEVY AND VW

The Chevy bumps the VW hard.

Loony hanging out the window, trying to level a shotgun at the VW.

Monty slams on the brakes; the VW skids. Becky hits the windshield.

The Chevy shoots past the VW like a bullet.

Becky holding her bleeding nose. She lets go long enough to fasten her seat belt. Something she has been too frantic to do until now.

Monty jerks the VW into reverse, swerves around in a half circle, roars off back the way they came.

INT. CHEV

Loony is going nuts, shouting at Brian. Jimmy and Angela in the back seat, scared to death.

LOONY

They're turning around. Get 'em, get 'em, man!

As Brian turns the car–

BRIAN

Fuck you, Loony! Think I was gonna take you to the video store?

EXT. CHEVY

Hauling ass.

INT. VW

Chevy's headlights are so dazzling, it's like that moment when the H-bomb explodes and all goes white.

CLOSE ON BECKY and then we have IMAGES FLASHING BEFORE HER EYES: Demons, the great top-hatted shadow. It's all very fast, like psychic jabs.

GRAVELY VOICES

Hold her! Hold her! Jam it all the way up! Cut her! Cut her!

FAVOR MONTY he's hunched over the steering wheel, face covered in pop sweat. He is at this moment one driving sonofabitch.

EXT. CHEVY

Now there is something new, and that newness is from the woods and from the shadows that fall over the highway, there is a gathering, and the gathering flows after the Chevy and once again appears to be tugged by it, sucked forward as if pulled by a vacuum.

INT. CHEVY

Brian at the wheel; all the evil in him comes to the fore now, as he leans forward, clutching the wheel. Super-imposed over his face is the grinning puppet head of Clyde, and the hazy, scarcely visible image of the Lord of the Razor pops forward as if about to leap out of Brian's body, and then it pops back and is gone, and so is the image of Clyde. It's just Brian again.

BRIAN

Gotcha, teach. Gotcha…

FAVOR LOONY

From the look on his face, we realize he has just seen all this happen; he couldn't be more surprised than if Brian had just turned urine to wine.

LOONY

(Almost reverent)

Man. That is some shit.

INT. MONTY'S CAR

Monty, his features framed by the pursuing headlights. Becky holding her hands to her face, trying to stop the drips of blood.

MONTY

You okay, you all right?

BECKY

Just drive, goddamnit.

PATROL CAR

Ted, Larry and Moses are standing by the car. Moses is holding a handkerchief to his bleeding head. Buffy is once again in the backseat, looking out the window. This sure beats hunting possums.

Ted and Larry are moving around the car, trying to figure how to get it out of the ditch.

LARRY

We can try and jack it out. That might do it.

TED

Don't think so. We got to change the tire, try and push it off in the fucking ditch completely.

LARRY

In the ditch?

TED

Sure as hell ain't going to drive it backwards. You got any better ideas, I'm listening.

MOSES

We could stay right here and consider it some.

TED

Flip the trunk, Larry. See if we got a fucking spare…

CUT TO:

VW

It passes the drive to the cabin, and we have–

BECKY'S POV

She sees the lights from the cabin, and we get a good look at it so we know it's the cabin where they were.

They race past, on down the road a ways.

Monty whips the car onto a little dark road and we see through the windshield a pile of garbage and a clutch of trees. It's a dead end.

INT. VW

MONTY

Damn.

ON VW

backing straight out of the dead end, back onto the road, heading back toward the cabin. Monty hits the gas.

LONG VIEW OF ROAD

We see the VW driving toward us, and then we hear the whine of the Chevy. It's coming toward them. And now it jets past the cabin, and past the VW, tries to slam on the brakes.

EXT CHEVY

It makes the corner and it's too fast and it fishtails and slides off the road and into a ditch.

INT. CHEVY

Loony looks at Brian, about to say something, but he sees Clyde's spectral shape sitting in Brian, and he can see Clyde's hands on top of Brian's, at the wheel.

Angela and Jimmy can see this from the backseat as well. They look like they wish they were anywhere but here. Even Stone looks a little surprised.

ANGELA

Oh, God, Jimmy. He's the devil.

Loony lets out a war whoop as Brian and Clyde hit the gas, and Clyde fades away again, and we see the–

EXT. OF THE CHEVY

and the tires are spinning like turbines, and we can see the dark cloud behind the car again and it seems to have hold of the car's rear end, like it's about to mate with it, and then the cloud of dirt grows thick and swallows the shadow, and the next thing we see is the Chevy, parting the cloud, moving back onto the road, almost in a jump. That bitch of a machine is unstoppable.

INT. VW

Lights in the distance, and as they make the curve they know those lights. It's the cabin again, as seen through the trees. Monty jerks hard right and goes onto the long driveway and speeds back toward the cabin.

BECKY

Are you crazy? This is where it happens.

MONTY

Haven't got any choice. Can't outrun 'em.

BECKY

(throws up her hands)

You son of a bitch, you've killed us!

EXT VW

bumping off the drive and over the grass, cruising behind the cabin. The lights go off.

INT. VW

As Monty starts to exit the car.

FAVOR BECKY

She's defeated.

Monty appears at her door, jerks it open.

MONTY

Get out.

BECKY

We're done.

MONTY

Get the fuck out of the car, or they won't have to kill you, I will!

Monty leans through the open door, grabs her and drags her out. He pushes her toward the back of the cabin.

MONTY

I'm going to grab something out of the shed to fight with. Go inside.

DARKNESS

Moonlight fills the frame. We realize it's the inside of the shed and Monty has opened the door. Monty comes in quickly, looks around. He picks up the frog gig, grabs a pole axe. He balances one in each hand.

MONTY

Well, it beats harsh language.

Monty rushes out of the shed with his weapons, toward the cabin.

CHEVY

racing along, and we go to the–

INT. OF CHEVY–THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD

What the gang sees are the lights left on in the cabin, and they pass the drive and keep on going, and suddenly Brian stomps on the brakes.

BRIAN

Whoa, we have arrived.

Loony cackles lightly.

LOONY

I ain't had this much fun since I beat my pet hamster to death with a chair leg.

EXT. OF CHEVY

The car is being backed past the drive. It stops, the car lights go out, and the Chevy eases forward, onto the drive, goes a short ways before it stops behind a smattering of trees. The lights of the cabin can be seen through the trees.

Suddenly, the cabin's lights go out.

INT. CHEVY

BRIAN

We got 'em, we got 'em!

CABIN

Becky and Monty are inside and they have turned out the lights, except one lamp. They are using it to light the room as they use the hammer and nails to put strips of paneling over the back glass door and fasten it on either side of the wall. Becky holds her end like she doesn't really know she's there.

Monty nails down his side, goes over to hers, slams a couple of nails in as fast as he can. It isn't the Rock of Gibralter, but it's something.

Monty turns to scrounge for more materials. Becky is wandering around like a zombie.

MONTY

Let's nail off the bedroom, too.  Fasten it down to just this one room. We can't cover every angle, we've got to make a stand, slow 'em down….

Monty turns to see Becky is just standing there. As he watches, she drops the board she's holding.

BECKY

Doesn't matter. I'm done. I've seen it. You've killed us, Monty, bringing us back here.

Monty drops the hammer and grabs her.

MONTY

I don't care what your dreams say. It's not like you to quit without a fight. It's me that's the chickenshit. Remember?

Becky studies his face.

MONTY

You aren't just going to stand here and let them come in without a fight are you?

BECKY

I'm not sure.

MONTY

Well, I am. Boil some water.

This strikes her so odd, for an instant she's her old self.

BECKY

A little tea, maybe.

MONTY

Goddamnit, that's it, Becky. Boil the goddamn water.

Becky can't believe this is coming out of Monty. She sidles over to the kitchen. He picks up the board, a hammer and nails, moves toward the bedroom door, starts placing it over the door way. We hear Becky clanging pans in the background.

EXT. PATROL CAR

Larry at the wheel, Ted and Moses pushing at the back of the vehicle. The old tire is on the ground. The engine whines. Larry yells out the window.

LARRY

Okay, hit it.

Dirt blows up in Ted's face

TED

Hold it, hold it, goddamnit!

The wheels whine, churn up dirt, and the car jerks into the ditch and charges on, dropping Ted and Moses on the ground as their support speeds away. The patrol car runs up to the narrow end of the ditch, comes out on the grass and spins out on the highway and stops.

Ted and Moses struggle to their feet, look at the car, waiting. Buffy sticks her head out the window as if to ask, "What the fuck you guys doing? Come on."

DRIVEWAY BEHIND THE TREES

Gang is out of the car. Jimmy and Angela are nervous as a couple of goats at a Fourth of July barbecue. Stone has the double barrel shotgun cradled in his arms like it's his baby.

FAVOR BRIAN

Out of the darkness of the woods the shadows move and swell up behind Brian, and they have shape, and that shape is the shadow form of the Lord of the Razor. His form is stronger than before. We can see those stick-pin teeth, those horrid eyes.

Clyde's features shift behind Brian's. We can see Clyde's body inside of Brian too. It shifts and shakes like a tired man trying to find a comfortable place to lie down.

And then it finds it. It fits just perfect. Clyde fades.

Angela lets her breath out in horrible surprise.

Jimmy just looks like someone has inserted a hot coat hanger up his ass.

LOONY

Now that is something, man.

STONE

Huh.

Brian is even a little surprised, as are the others, at this sound that comes from Stone. But it passes.

Brian turns his head. He really looks and acts different with Clyde secure inside him. He studies the Lord of the Razor standing just behind him. Solid, yet…not entirely here. And now the voice of Clyde takes over.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

(Looking at the Lord)

He's here. He's with us now. The Lord of the Razor.

Loony's mouth falls open.

LOONY

Shit. That is flat creepy. You sound just like Clyde.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

I am Clyde, pencil dick. I am he, and he is me. You get us both for the price of one. And you also get…him.

Loony looking at the horrid shape behind Brian. He's surprised, but he's too stupid to realize just how amazing this is. Stone…Well, he's Stone.

LOONY

I don't know I want him.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Well, you got him. He's here. He can't come all the way through yet. But he's getting stronger…Loony, you and Stone grab those two.

Loony takes hold of Jimmy. Jimmy jerks away from Loony's grasp.

JIMMY

Hey, we haven't done nothing.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

That's the point.

JIMMY

Whatever…Whoever you are.

(Indicating the Lord now)

Leave us alone. We don't want to do this, man.  This isn't what we signed on for.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Wrong. This is exactly what you signed on for.

Angela is looking at the shadowy, wispy shape of the Lord, mesmerized. You could knock her over with a fart.

ANGELA

It's the devil, Jimmy. We've sold our souls to the devil.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

The devil's not real, babe. The Lord of the Razor is.

Loony and Stone look at Brian, still amazed at this voice transformation. They're not bright enough to be truly amazed, but they know this isn't just normal business.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Goddamn it, what are you staring at? Get them over here!

Loony grabs Angela, and as Jimmy tries to help, Stone pops Jimmy in the back of the head with the shotgun stock, dropping him to the ground.

Stone with a grin, jabs the shotgun in Jimmy's ribs, forcing him up. Jimmy stands, holding his hand to the back of his neck. Angela just stares at the nebulous shape of the Lord of the Razor.

The Lord shifts and is almost solid, and then he's a cloud of shadow. A wink of teeth. A shine of hatband. Quick look at the Clock swinging from a strand of gut. And then he is gone. Just darkness.

Brian looks at the place where he Lord was.

Loony shoves Jimmy and Angela toward an old wooden picnic table placed among the trees.

JIMMY

Don't hurt us, let us go. We'll just go away, you know? Won't say a word, man.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Sure you won't. Move it. Over here, do what I–

Jimmy gives Angela a push, tries to get her running. He bolts after her.

JIMMY

Angela, go!

Brian sticks out a leg and trips Jimmy. As he goes down, Stone cracks him behind the head with the butt of his shotgun again. This time, Jimmy is out cold as a wedge.

Loony catches Angela by her long hair, jerks her to the ground by the picnic table.

BRIAN AS HIMSELF

Put her on the table. Can you fucking handle that?

Loony is already pulling Angela to her feet, and when he realizes he's heard Brian as himself again, he pauses.

LOONY

Brian. Man. You're back.

BRIAN AS HIMSELF

No shit.

LOONY

The shadow guy. Where'd he go? He gonna come back?

BRIAN AS HIMSELF

I told you goddamnit, he's always here. Just not all the way.

LOONY

Sure…sure.

Stone shoves Angela up against the picnic table.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Now, get that bitch up on the table like I said!

Stone does as he's told, and Loony helps. Angela cries out as the two roughly drape her over the table on her back. Brian leans over Angela.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

The question of the evening is do you love this asshole down there? There'll be a pop quiz later, so you remember your answer.

ANGELA

Yes, yes…

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Good, good. Got a prop-o-sition for you. I'll let you go if you'll tell me to cut him instead of you. You say: Cut him, Clyde. Cut him to pieces. And I'll let you go.

ANGELA

No. I can't do that!

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Put her hand down on the table….

Stone and Loony are still amazed at the voice transformation.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Hey, has everyone gone fucking deaf around here?

Stone holds her. Angela is SCREAMING. Loony holds her hand by the wrist, forcing it out on the table.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

I've got something for you.

Brian SNAPS the razor open. It pops open and catches the moonlight and reflects its beams.

Then Brian slams the razor DOWN.

INSERT RAZOR

as it sticks into the wood of the table, inches from Angela's head. She nearly loses it, as Brian pushes her face down to one side against the table.

Brian pulls the blade out of the table, appears relaxed, moves suddenly, slashes down.

Angela screams.

Brian holds up a severed finger, looks at it curiously. He uses the fingernail to get something out of his teeth.

Then he reaches down and holds her middle finger, the razor poised above her again. Angela is hysterical.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Quick, now, let's hear what you have to say about your sweetheart.

The moonlight strikes Brian's eyes, and something bad moves there. Angela, crazed beyond belief, looks up at him.

ANGELA

Cut him. Don't hurt me anymore, CUT HIM!

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Stone. Take his pants down, Loony. Get him up.

Loony and Stone pull down Jimmy's pants, hold him up, slap him awake.

LOONY

Come on, asshole, wakey time.

Stone has Jimmy's underwear down. Jimmy is barely aware of what's going on.

ANGELA

By the blessed virgin, don't!

BRIAN AS CLYDE

There's still time, spic. You or him, baby?

ANGELA

(she can barely get the word out)

Him….

Jimmy is awake now. And suddenly real alert.

JIMMY

For God's sake, Brian, don't…do this. I'm begging you!! God, don't, please don't…

Angela is crying, defeated. Brian reaches down and clutches Jimmy's vitals with one hand, and raises the razor to slash with the other.

ANGLE FALLING RAZOR

JIMMY

His body shakes. He SCREAMS and we HEAR ANGELA SCREAM as well, and then we–

CUT TO:

INT. CABIN–KITCHEN

Monty and Becky, near the stove and the pots of heating water, Monty clutching the gig, she the axe. They look at each other as they HEAR the SCREAM.

BECKY

God, they're here. They're killing someone. It's what they're going to do to us!

MONTY

No. No, damn it, they're not.

SERIES OF SHOTS–MOMENTS LATER

Monty hurries about the room, blocking off the front door with the couch..

Becky nailing paneling on the living room windows….

The water on the stove starting to boil.

BACK TO SCENE

Monty picks up the frog gig again, comes toward Becky who is standing at the stove with her axe, shaking.

MONTY

(exhausted)

How's that water coming?

BECKY

(still cool to Monty)

How does it look?

MONTY

I'm just trying to make us a little safer, Beck. That's all. If I knew anything else to do, I would do it.

BECKY

(sarcastic again)

Gee, Monty, there's one thing I can think of that would really help? Only it's a little late now…

Becky turns on him, holding her axe, the other hand clutched at her side.

BECKY

You could have taken us any goddamn place but back HERE!

MONTY

Oh, right.

BECKY

What–were–you–THINKING!

MONTY

What was I supposed to do?  Those lunatics were right on our tail!

BECKY

Exactly. And where ARE those lunatics now? Right outside, murdering someone and–and–

Becky shakes, starts coming loose.

BECKY (CONT'D)

…three guesses who's NEXT!

FAVOR MONTY

who is standing with his back to the window. He opens his mouth to speak as–

–the window EXPLODES in a shower of glass and we–

GO TO SLOW MOTION and the EXPLOSION continues, as Monty ducks and Becky throws up a protective arm, and we RETURN TO REAL TIME, and we get–

BRIAN'S FACE

at the window.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

TRICK OR TREAT, ASSHOLES!

He throws something inside.

Brian disappears from the window.

Monty and Becky look at the object lying on the floor.

INSERT OBJECT

Jimmy's BLOODY TESTICLES.

BACK TO SCENE

Beck and Monty moving.

MONTY

Cut the lamp.

The single remaining light goes out as Becky springs across the room and slams it with the axe. The bright moon throws a wedge of light through the broken kitchen window.

Monty cautiously moves toward the busted window over the kitchen sink. He sidles up there and looks out carefully, nervously. Becky eases over beside him.

MONTY AND BECKY'S POV

A strange figure. Brian as Clyde, with spidery arms and legs, capers back and forth, dancing in the moonlight.

THEME GROWS WITH AN EERIE BEAT.

He is graceful, yet jerky and alien, His razor FLASHES in the moonlight. He hoots, makes peculiar sounds.

Brian/Clyde spreads his arms like a heron about to take flight. He stands on one leg, then the other. He dances closer and closer to the house. He laughs at the moon at the sky, at the world.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Hey, teacheeeeeer, remember me?

BECKY AND MONTY

BECKY

It's him.

MONTY

Him who?

BECKY

Clyde…the one who raped me.

MONTY

Come on….get your shit together, Beck.

BECKY

It's him. I know that voice. It's him!

BRIAN/CLYDE'S DANCE

His shadow is unworldly, it swirls, distorts, almost disappears.

CLOSE ON

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Hey, teacher–want to go another round?

THE WINDOW

Monty leans out.

MONTY

Shut up. Shut the fuck up!

CUT TO:

THE DANCE

BRIAN AS CLYDE

We're waiting, teacher.

BRIAN AS BRIAN

Hey, buddy, we're going to cut the pretty teacher's heart out, man.

INT. CABIN

A SOUND, A BUMP

Monty turns quickly.

BECKY

What's that?

Monty grabs his frog gig.

MOVING

Monty runs toward the paneled back glass. Becky follows reluctantly with her axe.

SOUND: Something drips, like great globs of water off the roof, splattering the steps.

Monty peers between cracks in the strips of paneling.

MONTY

Something, I don't know. Hanging there, from over the porch. It's a–

WHAM!

CUT TO:

EXT. BACK PORCH

Hands grab at something. It's so quick we can't tell much, but we can see the hands, and then we get a glimpse of Stone's face, and him pulling the object back, and then–

–a blur of motion, and the heavy object swings into sight, coming right AT US.

MONTY POV

Through the split. A body swinging.

Monty shrinks back from what he sees.

MONTY

Jesus God!

CUT TO:

The shadow figure SLAMS right at us. Hits the glass door and fragments it and the paneling bulges.

CLOSE SHOT THROUGH SPLIT

It is the body of Angela, swinging upside down, eyes wide open, face covered in blood, hair hanging down.

CUT TO:

MONTY AND BECKY

BECKY

What–what is it?

CLOSE SHOT–MONTY

He has that thousand yard stare.

MONTY

The girl..the one.from your dreams.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. PATROL CAR–NIGHT

Larry driving, Ted in the passenger seat, Moses and Buffy in the back.

MOSES

As I recall, you hit a stretch of blacktop before the Beaumont's driveway. You got to turn left or right. I don't exactly remember.

LARRY

That's a big help. Don't see how we can miss it in the fucking dark.

TED

Just keep your eyes open, watch the road. I'd just as soon spot these bastards before they spot us.

LARRY

Good thinking. For a Catholic, I mean.

TED

Don't start.

MOSES

That what you are, officer? No shit. I never met one before.

Larry laughs.

NEAR THE CABIN

Brian, Loony and Stone standing close together, talking quietly. They wear the Halloween masks Loony stole from Pop's store. Brian wears the one with the knife in the skull. Loony holds the shotgun.

LOONY

Let's do it, let's splatter 'em.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

We will. But we're going to do this right. Stone, you go up the drive there, find a place to hang out, just in case we get visitors, like that patrol car we seen. What I want to do to that bitch might take a while, and I don't want to be bothered…Loony, give Stone the shotgun.

Stone takes the shotgun, disappears into the darkness.

DISSOLVE TO:

PATROL CAR–NIGHT

The patrol car comes over a high rise, and its lights pierce the trees and hit the black Chevy setting on the driveway of the Beaumont place.

INT. PATROL CAR

Larry slows the vehicle, stops at the mouth of the driveway.

MOSES

It's the drive that goes to the Beaumont place, I can tell that now.

LARRY

You can always tell something soon as it happens. That's a real talent you got there, fella. The dog could have told us that.

BRIAN AND LOONY

They're at the far end of the drive, watching. From where they stand, they can see the patrol car's lights through the trees.

LOONY

Who's that?

BRIAN AS CLYDE

A car, idiot.

LOONY

So what do we do?

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Not a thing. Stone's there.

INT. THE CABIN

Monty peers out the front living room window. The window is boarded over, but there are gaps.

BECKY

What is it, what's happening?

MONTY

Lights. I don't know.

BECKY

It's more of them. We can't stop them, they'll murder us, Monty!

MONTY

Shut up, Beck. Just shut the hell  up!

OUTSIDE THE CABIN

Brian and Loony are running crazily through the night toward the cabin, hooting like owls.

INT. PATROL CAR

MOSES

I did what I said I'd do, I got you here, didn't I? Just let me out.

LARRY

Sit tight. This isn't a bus, we don't make stops.

TED

Both of you, all right. I don't want any more hassle than we've got.

LARRY

We're wasting time, man. We need to get out there and get these little bastards.

TED

We're going to do just that, Larry, all right?  First, though, we're going to get our shit together and–

A slug cuts through the windshield at an angle, misses Larry by inches, hits Ted sitting on the passenger side just in front of the left ear. Fragments of glass, brains, blood and skull fly about inside the car like a meteor shower.

THE WOODS

Stone looses another blast from his hiding place.

A RED FLARE AND EXPLOSION

INT. PATROL CAR

Another blast blows holes through the hood. Moses jerks open the back door and jumps out. Buffy nearly runs over him, hits the drive, crosses the road, dives into the woods and is gone.

Larry snatches the riot gun down, grabs the door handle, rolls over Ted, hits the ground. Looks beneath the car. Moses, down by the back rear tire, whispers to him.

MOSES

Is he dead?

LARRY

Why don't you give him a shake and see if he comes around.

MOSES

Jesus God. He's going to kill us!

LARRY

No he isn't. I'm going to blow his ass away. Going to slip off in the woods over there, cross the road further down, see if I can get up behind him.

MOSES

You're going to leave me here? You can't do that.

LARRY

Yeah, I can. I'm going to get this guy…You know, old Ted wasn't bad for a commie Catholic. Stay sharp, and maybe you won't end up dead.

Larry rolls, bellies into the woods, and is gone.

MOSES

Yeah. Right.

Moses makes a break for it, darting down the drive, across the road and into the woods. Same place Buffy went.

EXT. OUTSIDE THE CABIN

Brian and Loony are sliding up against the cabin wall. Brian has the razor. Loony looks off into the woods where shots have just rang out.

LOONY

The shit is flying out there, man. What you going to do now?

BRIAN AS BRIAN

I'm going to do what needs doing. You stay close to the cabin. They try and come out of there, use your knife. I'll be back soon as I'm done.

LOONY

Where's old Clyde? He still hanging around?

BRIAN AS CLYDE

Right here, you fuck. And I'd watch my manners if I was you.

Brian vanishes into the darkness.

Loony pulls out his knife, snaps it open.

LOONY

That's some weird shit.

INT. CABIN

Monty and Becky. They are at one of the front windows. Their weapons are against the wall and they're boarding it up some more. As they finish, they peer through the slits in the boards.

BECKY

Anything?

MONTY

No more shots. I don't know what that means. Don't let the water boil over. Get some oven mitts handy.

Becky hustles over, keeping her head low. She turns down the heat, rustles a drawer open, finds pot holders.

Monty moves away from the window, over to Becky, leaving their weapons there. He brings a board, hammer and nails with him. He goes to the kitchen window, puts the board in the center of it, starts nailing it. Becky rushes over to help him hold it.

BECKY

You know that kid is the one who raped me?

MONTY

He's dead.

BECKY

That's him, Monty. The kid…He's in the other kid.

MONTY

In him?

BECKY

Possession. Call it what you want.

MONTY

Possession, I don't buy that. We're dealing with a severely disturbed mind here.

BECKY

Right. One of your "alienated juveniles." I should have gone to your fucking lecture.

MONTY

All right…

BECKY

If I had I wouldn't have gotten those boys in trouble. I'll bet Clyde came from a broken home, mom didn't love him, daddy was a drunk. All he wanted was a little pussy to make him feel better.

MONTY

STOP IT!

LOONY

suddenly appears, in his mask, at the kitchen window. He pops up and scares the hell out of Monty and Becky.

LOONY

Trick or treat!

Monty and Becky turn and scream, and Becky, still holding the pot holders grabs one of the pans and slings water through the gaps in the window, hits Loony in the face.

Loony screams, disappears from sight.

THE WOODS

Larry inches up slowly. He's got Stone in his sights. Stone, in his mask, looks straight ahead, keeping alert.

INT. THE CABIN–NIGHT

Monty and Becky, hunkered down low.

SOUND: LIVING ROOM WINDOW BREAKING

BECKY

Monty, he's broken a window. He's coming in!

THE WINDOW

It's the one where they were standing before moving to the kitchen. A knife blade moves up and down, prying one of the panels loose.

BACK TO SCENE

Monty runs to the scene, grabbing the axe. He swings, and the blow knocks down the paneling, revealing a masked invader.

Monty takes a wild swing, and the axe hits the invader in the forehead. The invader tumbles backwards, and as he does, Loony, still masked, runs out from behind the falling body.

BODY hits the ground and the mask, which is hooked to the axe, comes free. It's Jimmy. We realize Loony was holding him up, jacking with the couple.

MONTY

Goddamnit!

THE WOODS

Larry creeps up, the shotgun in his hand. He steps on a twig. Stone whirls. Larry jerks the shotgun to his shoulder, fires.

STONE

The slug snaps his neck bone in two, takes his head off. The shredded Halloween mask goes sailing, as blood spurts from the stump in Stone's neck.

MASK

sails into the bushes, hangs on a limb, dripping blood.

LARRY

stands over the body.

LARRY

I thought you'd be a nigger.

He turns as he hears something.

A FLASH OF SILVER

A BURST OF BLOOD

LARRY

jerks one hand to his throat, and his other hand points the shotgun downward. It goes off, blowing Larry's knee off, sending it spinning out of his pants and along the ground like a runaway tire.

Larry drops to the ground, spitting blood. He rolls over on his side, looks up and–

SEES BRIAN

wearing his Halloween mask, his razor cocked, dripping blood. Brian pushes the mask back onto his head, revealing the overlapping face of Clyde. Shadows gather at his back, swell up above him. The silhouette of the Lord of The Razor shimmers and disappears.

LARRY

dying, looks amazed.

ANOTHER ANGLE

as Brian drops down over him, and smiling, goes to work with the razor.

BRIAN–MOMENTS LATER

Carrying the shotgun in one hand, the razor in the other, his mask pushed up on his head, his body covered with blood, Brian pushes through the brush, comes to the patrol car, peers inside, sees Ted's body. Brian nods in satisfaction, turns his head toward the black Chevy parked not too far in front of the patrol car.

He looks at the shotgun in one hand, the razor in the other. He tosses the shotgun. Holds up the open razor. Light moves on the blade, and then shadow. The face of The Lord of the Razor reflects in the shiny blade.

Brian trots to the Chevy, climbs in, lifts his leg to reach in his pocket. He fumbles a bit. No keys. He starts looking around the car, in the ignition. The seat.

BRIAN

Shit.

NEARBY IN THE WOODS

Moses, back in shadow in the brush, sees all this. He closes his eyes in relief.

Something hits his face. He jumps. Turns. Buffy. She licks him again.

MOSES

(Softly)

You and me ain't worth shit.

BACK TO BRIAN

He's out of the car, looking around on the ground. Nothing. He starts back into the woods, toward Larry's corpse.

INT. CABIN

Monty and Becky at the window, looking down at the body of Jimmy.

BECKY

Think you killed him?

MONTY

Dead already.

BECKY

God, how many more of them are there?

MONTY

Don't know. It's the shotgun worries me.

BRIAN IN THE WOODS

He's knelt down beside the mutilated body of Larry. He's looking around for the keys. Here. There. Everywhere. And then he sees a glimmer.

The keys. They're lying beside Larry. He grabs them tight in his fist, a look of victory on his face.

INT. CABIN

Becky and Monty. They have paneling and are replacing the piece that Monty knocked down with the axe.

BECKY

We'll need another.

MONTY

Hold it while I get a hammer.

BECKY

Hurry!

Becky holds it in place while Monty picks up the hammer and nails. He puts the nail against the paneling, is about to drive it in when–

THE PANEL STRIP is hit and Monty and Becky are knocked backwards. And we have–

ANOTHER VIEW as what hit the paneling tumbles inside and comes up on its feet. LOONY. His mask has come off. He has a knife.

Loony attacks Becky, screaming as he does. She kicks. He slashes. Her leg takes a hit. She comes up against the wall, trying to avoid the knife. Loony grabs her by the throat with one hand, starts to slash down with the other.

Monty grabs his arm from behind. Loony wheels, hits Monty in the face with his free hand. Loony slashes him, causing Monty's shirt to burst open. Blood on his chest.

Loony comes at Monty screaming, runs him to the couch, causing Monty to fall backwards over it, slamming up against the paneling over the back glass door.

Loony leaps over the couch, comes down straddling Monty. Monty puts up an arm, takes a slash from the knife. Monty rolls and tangles up in Loony's leg, taking him down.

Monty scrambles to his feet. Loony is lying face up, pushing an arm under him, about to rise, when the axe comes down right in the middle of his face which splits like rose petals falling apart. The axe is swung so hard it not only has split Loony's head, it has stuck in the floor.

Monty turns to look.

BECKY, holding onto the axe handle, her features twisted.

MONTY

You're a goddamn Wonder Woman.

THE CHEVY

Through the windshield we see Brian. He's just sitting there, leaning forward, both hands tight on the wheel. He lifts the keys up, inserts them carefully into the ignition, as if he has all the time in the world. He starts the engine. He takes a deep breath. He pushes down on the gas pedal, making the engine growl.

Behind him, in the backseat, something dark moves. A glimpse of silver. The tick of a clock. Leaning forward over the seat. A shadow. A top hat sliding right through the roof as though it were smoke. THE LORD OF THE RAZOR. Brian pulls his mask down over his face. He carefully puts the car in gear.

BRIAN AS CLYDE

(humming a litte ditty off key; "Time In A Bottle".)

INT. CABIN

Monty and Becky, standing over the body of Loony, hear Brian revving the engine. They look a question at one another.

BECKY

God. What now?

THE CHEVY

Brian is easing it forward. Not in any hurry.

ANGLE ROAD

Moses and Buffy come across it. Moses slips around carefully to the patrol car, opens the door, reaches across Ted's body and takes hold of the microphone. Buffy sits, watches as if she might learn something. Moses messes with the microphone, trying to get it to work. We hear a hissing.

MOSES

Anybody there. Anybody! Ten four. Something. Hello. Is this on? Can you hear me. Anybody there. Say something.

Hissing sound from the microphone, and we–

CUT TO:

INT. CABIN

Monty and Becky hear something. A roar.

EXT. THE CHEVY

Coming fast around the house, past the VW.

INT. CABIN

Monty and Becky. They hear the car sound again, only really loud. THE RAZOR THEME BUILDS, and they look up, and–

WHAM! The car hits the panel-covered back glass door and smashes through, carrying the formerly dangling body of Angela with it, draping it over the hood like an ornament.

The Chevy is sticking through the doorway and into the house and glass and wood are shattered and spinning throughout the cabin. The bumper hits Monty and knocks him over the couch.

ON MONTY

as he grabs at his very bloody leg and groans.

BACK TO SCENE

The driver's side door opens with a creak, and out slips the masked Brian with his razor. And flowing out of the car and along his feet, what looks like a roil of black smoke.

Brian snatches off his mask, looks at Becky. The shadow has risen and has coiled around him. Above him it twists into a top hatted form.

Becky gasps.

When Brian speaks, it is in stereo. He and Clyde.

STEREO OF BRIAN AND CLYDE

It's us, teach. We're going to open the door and let him come through…

The Lord swells at these words.

BECKY

Sweet Jesus.

Brian comes toward her, and Becky, still holding the axe, starts to back away. And then suddenly she steps forward and throws the heavy axe. But it's too much for her in her exhausted state. It merely sticks in the floor three feet in front of Brian.

STEREO OF BRIAN AND CLYDE

Fighting is good. The Lord likes a good fight. And by the way. Trick or Treat, teach.

Becky backing toward the kitchen. Brian easing forward.

And now she's trapped in the little cul-de-sac. She jerks open a drawer, snatches out something, and we go–

CLOSE ON HER PRIZE

and when we do we see in her hand, a butter knife.

BACK TO SCENE

Not what she had in mind. She looks out of the corner of her eye, sees the obvious, what she has forgotten about, the–

STOVE

The pots and their boiling water.

BACK TO SCENE

She grabs one of them and screams as she does, it burns her hand. But she manages to launch pot and water into Brian's face.

BRIAN

yells and stumbles back, blisters of pus rise on his face.  Becky has blinded him in one eye. Then the shadowy shape of the Lord lets loose with a bellow, spreads inky-black across the ceiling like a rain cloud, and–

BECKY

grabs the pot holders on the counter and uses them to get hold of another of the pots, flings it at–

BRIAN

He steps back quickly, taking some of the water in the face again, slashing wildly with the razor, and then we've got–

BECKY

with the last pot of boiling water, rushing at him, flinging it, and now we've got–

BOTH OF THEM

as Brian comes rushing in with the razor, about half-blinded, and Becky, she ducks just in time as the razor slashes where her neck would have been. She dives across the floor and snatches the frog gig, and rolls on her back and tries to push her legs under her, and here comes Brian–

STEREO OF BRIAN AND CLYDE

Gonna ram it up you. All the way up, up your ass, teach…

ON MONTY

He's trying to struggle to his feet.

BACK TO SCENE

Becky snaps the gig open, and as Brian comes forward, she jabs with it, catching his crotch. He screams, and Becky rising up on one knee, jerks the gig back, and Brian doesn't come with it, but part of his pants, and something else does.

He screams so loud you think the cabin will shake loose and fall, and we go–

CLOSE ON BRIAN'S SCALDED, BLISTERED FACE

and we can see Clyde's face superimposed over it, and then it's back to Brian, and then the Lord is there, behind him, making wild gestures that equate the slashing that Brian does with the razor, working him like a puppet. Slashing at the air as if there's something there, stalking her like a cat with a mouse.

Becky, on her feet. She cocks the gig, jabs again. But this time Brian swats it aside with the razor, knocks it to the floor.

MONTY

He's trying to crawl toward them, leaving a swath of blood behind on the floor. A pause in his movement, and he takes in The Lord of The Razor and his puppet show, making Brian stalk toward Becky in a crazy manner.

BACK TO SCENE

Brian, he's not fucking around now. He runs at her, slashing the razor, the Lord working him with shadowy strings. Becky twists, lets him go by. In that instant, as Brian's back is to her, Becky snatches up the gig, jams it beneath his buttocks, into his scrotum, and pulls the trigger.

Brian screams, staggers, pulling the gig from her hands. It pops along the floor like a tail.

Becky reaches down and grabs one of the tossed pots from the floor. She bounces it from one hand to the other. It's still warm. She finally gets hold of it good, moves her fingers around the handle until she's comfortable.

Brian, manipulated by the dark shadow of the Lord, mince steps toward her, dragging his obscene tail. Blood is dripping from him all over the floor.

Becky rushes Brian, wild as a bear with muscle balm on its balls. She tries to conk him in the head. Brian is too quick, he leans left and the pot misses, and he grabs her arm, pulls her to him, spins her around.

He pushes at her, drives her toward the open window where Loony entered, popping the gig shaft along the floor. The Lord rises up above him, working those invisible strings.

Becky is forced to lean way back through the window, glass fragments cutting into her back. She nearly goes over the sill.

MONTY

he's still on the floor, trying to crawl forward. He picks up a hammer from among the tools, and throws it.

BRIAN

The God of Thunder couldn't have done better. The hammer strikes Brian in the temple. Blood sprays. He lets go of Becky, staggers back. His mouth falls open. He looks as loose as a goose and the only thing holding him up are the invisible puppet strings of the Lord. The razor falls from his hand.

The Lord lets out a fierce groan of agony and disappointment.

THE RAZOR

The Lord's reflection in it. The sudden ticking sound of the Lord's Clock.

ANGLE BECKY

she's in the scene now, and she still got that pot, and she comes forward in a rush, and beans Brian with all the force she can muster, right between the eyes. Once…Twice.

ANOTHER ANGLE

Brian staggers back. He stumbles and falls, leaning between sink and stove. The gig in his ass is holding him up like a tripod post. The Lord's Clock ticks like thunder. The Lord bursts in all directions, like dirty cotton torn apart.

Becky strides in like she's ten feet tall. She grabs Brian by the hair, leaps up, pulling him down, slamming his face against the stove and hot burner. She holds his face against it.

Sizzle. Smoke.

She lets him go. Brian falls to his knees. Rolls over on the floor. He looks up at Becky. His face is a ruin. Burned. Dripping flesh and muscle. Clyde superimposes over Brian's face.

CLYDE'S VOICE

Good work, Brian. Now we're both…fucked…

Becky stands over Brian, looks at him with a "what the hell" look. And then she kicks him in the head as hard as she can.

Blood runs out of his ear and flows across the floor and swells and darkens and there is a sound like someone poking a hole in a semi-truck tire, and the Lord rises up from the flowing pool and the blood becomes the shadow that is the Lord, and it floats to the ceiling in its poisonous cloud state.

THE LORD

swelling up to almost fill the room, and he leans way forward and his arm reaches way out, and he snatches at the razor on the floor, and he's got it, and we can see the Clock swinging on its gut from his shadowy skin coat, and we go–

CLOSE ON THAT CLOCK

as it ticks onto what would be High Noon, and then there is an explosion like an elephant fart, and the room ripples, and we–

GO BACK TO SCENE

and away goes the Lord, past the Chevy, out of the remains of the lake side doorway, which he causes to crack and shatter even more, and as he passes out of the cabin, he swells, and the–

CAMERA FOLLOWS

as the Lord of the Razor becomes huge, roaring thunderously, and fills the night and blots out the stars, and then suddenly the razor falls, and we–

FOLLOW THE RAZOR SLOW MO

which hits hard, puffing up leaves, some of which cover it, and then we go back to–

BACK TO SPEED–LORD IN THE SKY

and he's coming apart as if ripped by invisible hands. The silvery eyes and thirty two shiny stick-pin teeth explode outward like stars, and fall, and fade. And the real stars The Lord's shape was hiding, jump into view, because suddenly there is nothing left of him, and what we see is a calm sky full of moon and stars and soft silver light.

And THE RAZOR THEME which has hit a crescendo.

Dies

INT. CABIN

BECKY'S WORN BUT SATISFIED FACE

And then she gasps. Looks down. Brian has grabbed her ankle.

The fear flows out of her. She takes a deep breath. And begins to kick with her other foot. Again and again. Hitting Brian hard, using his head like a soccer ball.

The hand on her ankle releases.

BECKY

Trick or treat to you, motherfucker.

FLASH ON BRIAN

his eyes going cold, and then we have a melting of the scene into this sequence: Brian, tumbling down a long bloody corridor and we see all kinds of horrible things going on to his left and right. Mutilations. Decorations being made by threading eyes and chopping limbs and hanging testicles, and then he stops tumbling and is sliding, and a hole opens up big, and the hole pulses blood red at the edges, but beyond, darkness.

And down he slides, and now we see that he's going to slide right across a giant razor blade. And he does. And pieces of him fall this way and that. Down these pieces fall and they gather together, and he is whole again, and below, another blade, and the same action, and he is whole again, and as he falls, his mouth wide open in a scream, we see on a rack, Clyde, and slowly his head is being pulled from his body, and there is the sound of the Clock, and we glimpse as Brian continues to fall, the Lord of The Razor's eyes and teeth, poking out of shadow, and then the fall continues, and we hear Clyde yell in a voice that echoes hoarsely as if from the bowels of the cosmos:

CLYDE

You fucked us, Brian!

And then it all dissolves, and we're–

BACK TO SCENE

Becky is on the floor, hugging Monty. They look toward Brian, lying dead on the floor.

MONTY

You did it.

HOLD ON BECKY

BECKY

We did it.

And we gradually–

PULL UP TO

the ceiling, and now we are above it all, above the cabin and the forests and the lake. We can see cop lights flashing, hear sirens, and we can see Moses and Buffy down there, standing in the middle of the road. And Moses is waving his arms, and the cop cars are slowing, and he is pointing down the tree-lined drive, and we see Becky beside Monty, each of them helping the other down the drive.

FADES

Momentarily. Because we gradually–

FADE BACK IN

to show a couple of teenagers, a BOY and a GIRL. They are in outdoor clothing. It's a calm, autumn day. The girl carries a stick. They chatter to one another.

They are out by the lake, and they are walking, and they see the cabin where Becky and Monty fought the great battle. It's clear a very long time has passed, as the house is boarded up, some shingles have fallen, the porch has sagged. A very barren scene.

The girl runs ahead of the boy, laughing.

BOY

I'm not chasing you again.

She kind of bounds ahead, looking back over her shoulder. The leaves rattle, a slight wind comes up.

GIRL

You're getting old.

She does a series of stiff-legged wild deer leaps, acting foolish, gets ahead of him. Then stops.

A DUST DEVIL

swirling amongst the leaves.

BACK TO SCENE

Girl walks over to it and the dust devil plays out.

HER POV

Something shiny from under the leaves.

BACK TO SCENE

She picks up a stick. Pokes at it, leans down closer, and when she does, we–

GO CLOSE ON THE LORD'S RAZOR

amongst the leaves, and as the stick pokes again, it POPS OPEN LOUDLY, and we–

POP OUT

THE MAGIC WAGON

All of the characters in this hook are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This is for Phyllis and Harlie Morton, and Ann and Herman Kasper, for their faith, love, and support.

CHAPTER 1

Wild Bill Hickok, some years after he was dead, came to Mud Creek for a shoot-out of sorts.

I was there. Let me tell you about it.

About an hour before sunrise, mid-July, 1909, we came rolling into Mud Creek in the Magic Wagon—Billy Bob Daniels, Old Albert, Rot Toe the Wrestling Chimpanzee, the body in the box, and me.

Night before we'd sort of snuck out of Louisiana and made the Texas border on account of some medicine Billy Bob sold this fella, telling him it would cure the piles. Which it hadn't. Not that any of us thought it would. It was just some water, coloring, and a little whiskey. Well, mostly whiskey.

But the fella who bought the stuff was a teetotaler and it made him drunk enough to hit his wife some and have a bellyache. And later when he passed out on the bed drunk, she sewed him up in the bedsheets, got herself a broom, and whaled the tar out of him till he was bruised enough to pass for a speckled pup.

When his wife finally did let him out from beneath the sheets he had sobered considerable, and he got to figuring on what he'd done and the fact that he had the piles bad as ever, and he came looking for Billy Bob.

Normally we'd have been long gone, as that was the smart thing in our business. Talk the crowd up good, sell them some watered whiskey, smile big, wave a lot, and soon as we had their money and they were walking away, we'd pack up and hightail it out of town like a jackass with his tail on fire. Avoided a lot of unhappy customers that way.

But now and then we didn't get on our way soon enough, like this evening I'm telling you about, and usually that was because Billy Bob had spotted some gal in the crowd he'd taken a hankering to, and with the way he looked, they often took a hankering back. He was tall and lean with gray eyes and he wore his blond hair long like them old gunfighters you read about in the dime novels. Lot of times he wore guns and did trick shooting, which was something he was darned good at. But this time he didn't have no guns, and that was for the best.

He was spruced up and leaning against the wagon, ready to go gal'n, when this fella with the piles and the broom bruises shows up with a piece of cordwood in his hand and a converted .36 Navy revolver stuck in his belt. Since Billy Bob was the one who had given the talk on the medicine, told him how it could shrink them piles, it was him he wanted. He tells Billy Bob the whole sad story about how he took the medicine and it made him drunk, how he hit his wife, got sewed up in the sheets and beat, and how his piles weren't any better. In fact, he thought they might be considerable worse. Told Billy Bob the whole shooting match. If he'd had any sense he'd have just walked up and conked Billy Bob on the head with that stove wood, but I figure he was aiming to talk him into giving him his money back before he took to raising knots.

Well, all the time this fella is telling Billy Bob his story, Billy Bob is leaning up against the Magic Wagon with a hand-rolled hanging out of his mouth unlit. When the fella finished, Billy Bob brought a match out from somewhere, lit the hand-rolled and puffed up a little cloud, squinted his eyes and said, "Ain't nothing to me."

That Billy Bob always was a considerate sort.

"It's either my money back," says the speckled pup, "or I'm going to take this here stove wood and work you up a new hat size."

"I reckon not," Billy Bob said.

That fella moved pretty quick then, swung that wood at Billy Bob's head, and Billy Bob caught his wrist with one hand and hit him in the stomach with the other, just above where that old Navy stuck out of his belt. When Billy Bob pulled his hand back, the Navy was in it and the fella was on the ground making noises like a loose treadle on a sewing machine.

Billy Bob pointed the gun and cocked back the hammer. That old cap and ball had been converted over to a cartridge loader, but it looked worn and dangerous, like it was just as likely to blow up in Billy Bob's hand as shoot that fella on the ground.

"Figure I ought to put a hole in your head," Billy Bob said.

I tensed when I heard that. Billy Bob of late had lost his sense of humor, which before had been about like a kicked badger's anyway.

But right when I thought things were going to get their ugliest, Albert said, "Mr. Billy Bob, don't reckon you ought to do that."

Albert was colored. About fifty, with snow in his short kinky hair and shoulders so wide he had to turn sideways to get inside the wagon. He looked a little bit like a bear that had been trained to wear clothes.

All the while things had been going on between Billy Bob and the fella, Albert had been standing quietly by with his arms crossed, showing about as much interest as a cow watching a couple of stumps.

"You talking to me?" Billy Bob said, glancing at Albert. Billy Bob reckoned the war wasn't over yet, and he'd never cottoned to a colored fella telling him anything. Hated it worse than anyone I'd ever seen. Once, in Kansas, I saw him beat a little colored man to his knees just because the fella brushed up against him and didn't say pardon me with enough feeling. But when he talked to Albert like that, the talk seemed mostly just talk. Somehow, Albert had the Indian sign on him, and Billy Bob, who didn't seem afraid of nothing as far as I could tell, didn't give Albert a whole lot of trouble, in spite of Albert being hired help. I sort of got the feeling there was something between them I didn't understand. Something going on I didn't have no sense about.

Even if Billy Bob wasn't scared of Albert, he wasn't shy of brains at that moment. A man Albert's size and strength—I'd once seen him set the Magic Wagon upright after it had been turned over in a storm—could take a .36 Navy slug pretty good and still get his hands on you and rip you apart like so much pine bark.

Albert's voice, which had been sharp as a knife edge, now went firm and flat. "Ain't got no right shooting this here fella on account of some stuff we sold him didn't work. It don't never work on nothing besides sober. Kill this fella and you won't have a minute's peace from the law.”

"And if I decide to go ahead and do what I want?" Billy Bob asked.

"Then I'm going to have to take that pistol away from you and tie it around your neck and you'll just have to tell folks it's a bow tie."

Billy Bob looked at Albert and smiled.

Albert smiled back. They were just a couple of friendly grinners now.

I could never tell about those two. Didn't know if they were really smiling or possum smiling. But Billy Bob said, "Ah hell, I wasn't going to shoot nobody."

"No sir," Albert said, "didn't reckon you was."

Billy Bob unloaded the gun, tossed it in the street. He looked down at the fella in the dirt who was looking up. "Good drunk didn't hurt you none," Billy Bob said. "Any old battle-axe who'd put up with you deserves a hitting, and a broom whipping didn't do you no harm neither."

Billy Bob turned around and climbed in the back of the wagon, yelling, "Albert, get us out of here."

"Yes sir, Mister Billy Bob," Albert said. Billy Bob was in control again, and Albert was like a plantation slave. I couldn't figure it. I didn't say nothing. Just climbed up on the wagon beside Albert and watched him take the lines. He looked over at me and winked. "Guess Mister Billy Bob going to be leaving him another little gal hanging."

"Reckon so," I said.

"Git up there, Ishmael," Albert called to the head mule, and off we went.

I leaned over the side and looked back at the fella in the street. He was standing now, holding his stomach. He stooped to pick up his hat and gun. I turned back to watch the road.

Albert had the mules talked up pretty good now, and they were stepping on out. Which was a good thing. I figured we'd darn near seen a shooting, one way or another. And after that fella spread word around about what we'd done, it would be right wise of us to be a fair piece on down the road.

That Billy Bob seemed determined to get himself in trouble, and for some reason, Albert seemed determined to keep him out of it. Me, I was just determined and didn't know what for. From time to time I figured on leaving the Magic Wagon, going my own way. But truth was, I didn't know nothing else. And me and Albert were friends, good friends.

On the other hand, Billy Bob and me never had got along. We wasn't even friendly. All I knew about Billy Bob was that he'd taken me in after my parents were killed, fed me, clothed me, given me a job and some spending money. All this was on account of Albert pushed him to do it, but nonetheless, it was Billy Bob's wagon and I figured I owed him. That's all the feeling I had for Billy Bob, nothing else. Least that's the way it was until we got to Mud Creek and some new light got shed on things. Then I knew damn good and well how I felt about him.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So Albert drove the mules through the night, stopping only twice to let them blow, and then just for a few minutes.

Finally, just after sunup, we made Mud Creek. Good thing. The mules were tuckered out, and so were we. All that fast moving had my guts jostled something terrible, and both my legs were near asleep.

We stopped just past the sign that read MUD CREEK, and I climbed down from the wagon to stretch. Just a rawboned kid then. Seventeen, with an old gray cap and a grayer shirt and pants that had such a shine to them that they'd have blinded you had the moon or sunlight hit them just right.

Soon as my feet touched ground, I knew things were going to happen in this town. It was like a ripple had run under my feet, or maybe more like it feels when there's a real bad storm in the air and the lightning is stitching so thick it makes your hair stand up and your skin feel prickly. Mud Creek felt like a town with a soul, and a bad old soul at that.

It wasn't nothing to look at neither, there in that early morning grayness. It looked like someone had taken a handful of old ugly buildings and tossed them like dice onto a dirty hunk of ground and surrounded them with the biggest, darkest East Texas pines you'd ever seen. Most towns you come to the buildings are on either side of the main street, but here the street just sort of wandered down between the buildings as best it could. Like there wasn't no plan or nothing. Just build as you will, do as you will.

Albert climbed down, took care of the mules and came around to stand by me. He put his hands on his hips and stretched his back until it popped. When he was stretched out, he looked at the town and grimaced.

"I tell you, Little Buster, that town's full of all manner of bad spirits. It's done gone and had it a real bad life, and it ain't going to get no better. "

Now I really had the shakes. Albert claimed he could feel and sometimes see spirits. He believed all things had souls, even rocks and trees. Sounded like some of the stuff I'd heard Indians say, only Albert got his beliefs from his grandfather and great-grandfather, both of which had been slaves, and the great-grandfather had been direct from Africa. He'd told Albert all manner of stories about over there. About spirits and goblins, and little short folks that lived in the woods and had poisoned arrows and such. Some of it sounded pretty wild to me, especially that stuff about the short folks, but Albert believed it all. And from the things that had happened to me since I'd teamed up with the Magic Wagon, I was beginning to believe most anything.

I could feel the bad in Mud Creek too, though it could have been Albert's tall tales rubbing off on me. But there was the stone cold fact that I'd felt that badness before Albert even stepped down off the wagon.

I was considering on all of this, when the back door of the Magic Wagon came open and out stumbled Billy Bob, drunker than a fly in a cider barrel. He'd been right heavy into our Cure-All. He made a few steps, turned, looked down the road at the town, and said, "Well, I'll be damned." Then he passed out and hit the dirt, half a bottle of Cure-All spilling out on the ground.

Albert and me pulled him inside the wagon, laid him out on his stoop, and after Albert went out, I listened a bit to see if I could hear the wood talking like it did sometimes, but it was quiet. Which really suited me best. It gave me the rabbit tops when it talked, but I couldn't keep from listening for it just the same. I tried to tell myself wasn't nothing to it, but I knew better. Each day things seemed to get stranger and stranger with Billy Bob and the Magic Wagon, and I didn't see no letup in sight.

Since we'd fixed them busted sideboards up with them sacred trees from the Dakotas and Billy Bob had bought that rock-hard body in the box, things had gotten considerably curious. Strangest thing was this storm that had taken to following us wherever we went, though it hadn't caught up with us yet. Sometimes we got a little wind and rain from it, that sort of thing, but never the full blow. We always managed to stay about three days ahead of it. But it was like a hound dog for us, and I knew if we stayed put anywhere long enough, it would show up. And I knew too, if it wasn't for all them pines, I'd be able to look out the back of the Magic Wagon and see lightning flashing way off in the distance. When we was in Kansas, I remember being able to see it darn near all the time, and it was unsettling to always look behind you, night or day, and see lightning forks cutting across the sky, getting closer and closer, until finally you could feel the first licks of the wind and the rain.

When I first noticed the big blow was following us, I told Albert, and he knew right off what I was talking about. He'd noticed it too, and like me, he figured it was either them sacred trees or that body in the box that was responsible, since both was supposed to have a curse on them.

Course, Billy Bob wouldn't have such talk. He just laughed. "Ain't nothing following us but your own silly daydreams," he'd say. But I'd seen him watching the skies from time to time, and he never let us stay in any place more than a night, and we always moved out real early the next morning, and he made us move faster than you'd really have a need to unless something was behind us.

In fact, I sort of think he was glad that wife-beat fella with the stove wood and the pistol came along, as that gave him a good excuse to put a few more hours between him and that storm, and he could tell himself it didn't have nothing to do with fear of curses and such.

But he didn't fool me. He was as worried and scared of that storm as me and Albert, and he'd taken to drinking a whole lot since the Dakotas and sometimes he cried out in his sleep and shook like a wet pup.

"Them ole Injun spirits in the wood, they talking to him," Albert would tell me. And Albert believed that. He'd quit sleeping inside the wagon since we'd put in those sideboards from the sacred trees, and you couldn't hardly get him inside of it unless it was to do business of some sort, or it was raining real hard.

Me, I'd lay there on my stoop at night—Billy Bob across the way and listen to that wood moan and groan, and sometimes, when the back door was open—which was most of the time in the summer—and the moonlight was thick, I'd think I could see eyes looking out of that wood at me, or mouths moving. But when I'd light a match for a look-see, it would just be pine knots. One night I even thought something had reached out of the wood to take hold of my hand, but when l jerked awake, I didn't find nothing there.

And there was the body in the box. Thinking on that thing didn't improve my sleep neither. The mere thought of it gave me a cold rigor.

Considering all this as I stood there in the wagon, I turned to look at it and got a start. The box was propped up where it always was, but the lid was open and the body was gone.

My back felt like a batch of big spiders were crawling up it. I turned and looked around the dark wagon; saw the shape at Billy Bob's feet, between the foot of his stoop and the wall by the door. It had been there all along. Albert and I just hadn't noticed it. That crazy drunk had pulled it out of the box and propped it up so it could look over him, like some kind of bodyguard.

My eyes were used to the dark enough now that I could see it, but fortunate for me I couldn't see so good I could make out its features—the ones it had left. Even when Billy Bob showed it to folks and said his talk about it, I never really looked straight at it. I somehow figured if I did it would get the whammy in on me, or something. No matter from where you looked at it, it always seemed to be looking at you with them hollow sockets and that half-open mouth with the little thin teeth gone copper-colored and yellow. And I think the wisps of hair that stuck out in spots on the skull like the last down on a near plucked goose were worse. And I didn't care for them pistols that were clenched in them skeleton fists. They looked too shiny and too well-oiled and ready to go. Course, it was Billy Bob that kept them oiled and put hinges in the corpse's elbows so he could set the guns where he wanted them, but the thought of that thing standing there with them old pistols clutched in its bones made me want to wet myself

I believed that story the Indian had told Billy Bob about whose body that was, and about the curse that was on it. There was some that would argue Wild Bill Hickok was in the cemetery at Deadwood, but I wouldn't be one of them. They ever dig his grave up they're going to find there ain't nothing in there but worms and dirt. Wild Bill rides with us.

I went out of there, staying as far to the other side of the door as I could, and stepped out into the morning light. When I was breathing better, I went around to the side of the wagon and peeled up the tarp and looked in on Rot Toe.

The old ape looked at me and let out a hoot, but didn't move. Big as he was, he looked-tired and miserable. He'd been that way a lot lately. Albert says it's because he's getting old and Billy Bob don't treat him right, poking him with sticks and such like he does. He thinks Billy Bob ought to let Rot Toe cut the wrestling act, just start being there for folks to look at for a nickel a peek. Albert would like to keep him on a long chain when we were in a town, and the rest of the time let him run loose on the wagon, ride up front with us. Billy Bob don't see it that way, though. He's scared of Rot Toe. And good reason. He's picked at that ape enough, that he can't be alone with him. Rot Toe, given half the chance, would tear Billy Bob apart.

Well, Albert's ideas seemed good to me, Rot Toe being old and all, though when he got that muzzle and them gloves put on him, and got out there to wrestle two-hundred-and-forty-pound men, he didn't look old then, gray hairs or not. He just looked big and strong and scary, and the way he slung them fellas around, it was hard to believe he didn't weigh but a little over a hundred pounds.

"You okay, old man?" I said.

Rot Toe let out that little hoot again, brought his hand up and touched his face. If he'd been willing to move and come across the cage, he'd probably have reached out and touched me. Touching himself or someone else, unless it was Billy Bob, always seemed to make him feel better. And reckon if he could touch Billy Bob in the way he wanted, he'd have felt mighty good then too.

"Take it easy, old fella," I said, and I lowered the tarp.

I looked off to the east, and now that I was out of the wagon, I could see the sky above the pines. l looked for lightning to be sewing through the sky like some kind of crazy seamstress, but there wasn't nothing there. Didn't hear no thunder neither, but I knew that storm hadn't given up on us yet. We'd see sign of it soon.

I went around to the front of the wagon, up to the head mule, Ishmael. Albert was there, rubbing the old critter on the forehead and looking out at the silly-laid-out town.

"Well, Little Buster," he said, "what'cha think?"

"I don't like it none."

"Me neither, but Mister Billy Bob is set."

"To hell with Billy Bob," I said braver than I felt. "I got a feeling that whatever bad that's been waiting to happen in this town has been waiting on us."

"That may be," Albert said with that accepting way of his, "but Mister Billy Bob's the one buys the bacon."

I didn't say anything back. Albert went around and climbed on the wagon and picked up the lines. I got up on my side and Albert softly called to the mules and we started rolling into Mud Creek proper, and the closer we got the lighter it got, and the more it looked like any other little town, except for the way it was laid out, and I could see people moving around now, starting their day, and it looked just as normal as could be.

But that didn't make me feel no better.

CHAPTER 2

It was a hot day already and I thought about that and wished I'd left Rot Toe's tarp up. Sweat was coming from beneath the brim of my cap and streaming down my face, running into the edge of my mouth. It tasted like salt, dirt, and sadness, mostly sadness, because sweat always reminds me of tears.

There was the smell of animal lots on the warm wind, and it wasn't too bad. Not bad like some of the cow towns we'd been in. So bad in some that the stink made you have to lean over and throw up what you'd eaten. This was small-town animal stink, not the months old, ankle-deep mess of a Kansas cow lot. In fact, it was almost pleasant. Reminded me that I was once again in my old stomping grounds, East Texas, and that the place where I'd grown up wasn't all that far away.

And though I didn't want to think on it, that barnyard smell took me back a few years, back to the baddest old winter we'd ever seen, the winter I came to believe in signs and omens. The winter I turned fifteen.

It had come a rare snow that year, and even rarer for East Texas it had actually stuck to the ground and got thick. Along came the wind, colder than ever, and it turned the snow to ice. It was beautiful, like sugar-and-egg-white icing on a cake, but it wasn't nothing to enjoy after the excitement of first seeing it come down. I had to get out in it and do chores, and that made me wish for a lot of sunshine and a time to go fishing.

Third day after it snowed and things had gotten real icy, I was out cutting firewood from the woodlot and I found a madman in a ditch.

I'd already chopped down a tree and was trimming the limbs off of it, waiting for Papa, who was coming across the way with a crosscut so we could saw it up into firewood sizes. While I was trimming, I heard a voice.

"Got a message. Get out of this ditch, I got a message."

Clutching the axe tight, I went over and looked in the ditch, and there was a man lying there. His face was as blue as Mama's eyes, and Papa says they're so blue the sky looks white beside them, even on its best day. His long, oily hair had stuck to the ground and frozen there so that the clumped strands looked like snakes or fat worms trying to find holes to crawl into. There were icicles hanging off his eyelids and he was barefoot.

I screamed for Papa. He tossed down the saw and came running fast as he could on that ice. We got down in the ditch, hauled the fella up, pulling out some of his frozen hair in the doing. He was wearing a baggy old pair of faded black suit pants with the rear busted out, and his butt was hanging free and drawerless. It was darker than his face, looked a bit like a split, overripe watermelon gone dark in the sun. His feet and hands were somewhere between the blue of his face and the blue-black of his butt. The shirt he had on was three sizes too big, and when Papa and I had him standing, the wind came a-whistling along and flapped the fella's shirt around him till he looked like a scarecrow we were trying to poke in the ground.

We got him up to the house, and stretched him out on the kitchen table. He looked like he'd had it. He didn't move an inch. Just laid there, eyes closed, breathing slow.

Then, all of a sudden, his eyes snapped open and he shot out a bony hand and grabbed Papa by the coat collar. He pulled himself to a sitting position until his face was even with Papa's and said, "I got a message from the Lord. You are doomed, brother, doomed to the wind, 'cause it's gonna blow you away." Then he closed his eyes, laid back down and let go of Papa's shirt.

"Easy," Papa said. But about that time the fella gave a shake, like he was having a rigor, then he went still as a turnip. Papa felt for a pulse and put his ear to the scarecrows chest, looking for a heartbeat. From the expression on Papa's face, I could tell he hadn't found any.

"He's dead, Papa?"

"Couldn't get no deader, son," Papa said, lifting his head from the man's chest.

Mama, who'd been standing off to the side watching, came over. "You know him, Harold?" she asked.

"Think this is Hazel Onin's son," Papa said.

"The crazy boy?" she said.

"I just seen him once, but I think it's him. They had him on a leash out in the yard one summer, had this colored fella leading him around, and the boy was running on all fours, howling and trying to lift his leg to pee on things. His pants was all wet."

"How pitiful," Mama said.

I knew of Hazel Onin's boy, but if he had a name I'd never heard it. He'd always been crazy, but not so crazy at first they couldn't let him run free. He was just considered mighty peculiar. When he was eighteen he got religion worse than smallpox and took to preaching..

Right after he turned twenty, he tried to rape a little high yeller gal he was teaching some Bible verses to, and that's when the Onins throwed him in that attic room, locked and barred the windows. If he'd been out of that room since that time, I'd never heard of it, other than what Papa had said about the leash and wetting himself and all.

I'm ashamed of it now, but when I was twelve or thirteen, me and some other boys used to have to walk by there on our way to and from school, and the madman would holler out from his barred windows at us, "Repent, 'cause you all gonna have a bad fall," then he'd go to singing some old gospel songs and it gave me the jitters 'cause there was an echo up there in that attic, and it made it seem that there was someone else singing along with him. Someone with a voice as deep and trembly as Old Man Death might have.

Freddy Clarence used to pull down his pants, bend over, and show his naked butt to the madman's window, and we'd follow his lead on account of not wanting to be called a chicken. Then we'd all take off out of there running, whooping and hollering, pulling our pants and suspenders up as we ran.

But we'd quit going by there a long time back, as had almost everyone else in town. They moved Main Street when the railroad came through on the other side, and from then on the town built up over there. They even tore down and rebuilt the schoolhouse on that side, and there wasn't Tm need for us to come that way no more. We could cut shorter by going another way. And after that, I mostly forgot about the madman prophet.

"It's such a shame," Mama said. "Poor boy."

"It's a blessing, is what it is," Papa said. "He don't look like he's been eating so good to me, and I bet that's because the Onins ain't feeding him like they ought to. They figure him a shame and a curse from God, and they've treated him like it was his fault his head ain't no good ever since he was born. "

"He was dangerous, Harold," Mama said. "Remember that little high yeller girl?"

"Ain't saying he ought to have been invited to no church social. But they didn't have to treat him like an animal."

"Guess it's not ours to judge," Mama said.

"Damn sure don't matter now," Papa said.

"What do you think he meant about that thing he said, Papa?" I asked. "About the wind and all?"

"Didn't mean a thing, son. Boy didn't have a nut in his shell, is all. Crazy talk. Go on out and hitch up the wagon and I'll get him wound up in a sheet. We'll take him back to the Onins. Maybe they'll want to stuff him and put him in the attic window so folks can see him as they walk or ride by. Maybe they could charge two bits to come inside and gawk at him. Pull his arm with a string so it looks like he's waving at them. "

"That's quite enough, Harold," Mama said. "Don't talk like that in front of the boy."

Papa grumbled something, went out of the room for a sheet, and I went out to the barn and hitched the mules up.

I drove the wagon up to the front door, went in to help Papa carry the body out. Not that it really took both of us. He was as light as a big, empty corn husk. But somehow, the two of us carrying him seemed a lot more respectable than just tossing him over a shoulder and slamming him down in the wagon bed.

We took the body over to the Onins, and if they were broke up about it, I missed the signs. They looked like they'd just finally gotten some stomach tonic to work, and had made that long put off and much desired trip to the outhouse.

Papa didn't say nothing stern to them, though I expected him to, since he wasn't short on honest words. But I figure he didn't see any need in it at that point. The fella was dead.

Mrs. Onin stood in the doorway all this time, didn't come out to the wagon bed while the body was there. After Mr. Onin unwound the sheet and took a look at the madman's face, said what a sad day it was and all, he asked us if we'd mind putting the body in the toolshed.

We did, and when we got back to the wagon, Mrs. Onin was waiting by it. Mr. Onin offered us a dollar for bringing the body home, but of course, Papa didn't take it.

Before we climbed up on the wagon, Mrs. Onin said, "He'd been yelling from upstairs all morning, saying how an angel from God wearing a suit coat and a top hat had brought him a message he was supposed to pass on. Kept saying the angel was giving him a test to see if he deserved heaven after what he'd done to that little girl."

Papa climbed on the wagon, took hold of the lines. With his head, he motioned me up.

"Then we didn't hear nothing no more," Mr. Onin said. "I went up there to check on him and he'd pulled the bars out of one of the windows and got out. I don't reckon how he did that, as he'd never been able to do it before, and them bars was as sturdy as the day I put them in, no rotten wood around the sills or nothing. "

Papa had taken out his pocket knife and tobacco bar, and he was cutting a chaw off of it. "Reckon you went right then to the sheriff to tell him your boy run off," Papa said, and there was an edge to his voice, like when he finds me peeing out back too close to the house.

"Naw," Mr. Onin said, looking at the ground, "I didn't. Figured cold as it was, he'd come back."

"Don't matter none now, does it?" Papa said.

"No," Mr. Onin said. "He's out of his misery now"

"Them's as true words as you've spoke," Papa said. "I'll be getting that sheet back to you," Mr. Onin said. "Don't want it," Papa said. He clucked up the mules and we started off.

When we were out of earshot of the house, I said, "Papa, you reckon they thought that crazy fella would go back because he was cold?"

"Why in hell would he want to go back to that attic? Even if it might have been warm."

We didn't say anything else until we got home, then, wasn't none of the talking about the madman or the Onins. Mama didn't even mention it after she saw Papa's face.

Just before supper, Papa went out on the porch to smoke his pipe, and I went out to the barn to toss some hay to the mules and the milk cow. I was tossing it, smelling that animal smell, thinking about how it reminded me of my whole life, that smell. Reminded me of Mama and Papa, warm nights with very little breeze, cold nights with the fire stoked up big and warm, late suppers, tall tales in front of the fireplace, standing on the porch or looking out of the windows at the morning, noon or night, spring, summer, fall, or winter. And that smell, always there, like a friend who had some peculiar, if not bad-smelling, toilet water. It was in the floorboards of the house, on the yard, thick in the barn. A smell that even now moves me backwards and forwards in time, confuses me on which are the truths and which are the lies of my memory.

So there I was, throwing hay, thinking this fine life would go on forever, and all of a sudden, I felt it before it happened.

I quit tossing hay, turned to look out the barn door. It was like I was looking at a painting, things had gone so still. The sky had turned yellow. The late birds quit singing and the mules and the milk cow turned their heads to look outdoors too.

Way off I heard it, a sound like a locomotive making the grade, burning that timber. Only there wasn't a track within ten miles of us. Outside the sky went from yellow to black, from still too windy. Pine straw, dust and all manner of things began whipping by. I knew exactly what was happening.

Twister.

I dropped the pitchfork, dove for the inside of an old shovel-scoop mule sled, and no sooner had I hit face down and put my hands over my head, then it slammed into the barn.

I caught a glimpse of a cow flying by, legs splayed like she thought she could stop the tug of the wind easy as she could stop the tug of a rope. Then the cow was gone and the sled started to move.

After that, everything happened so quickly I'm not certain what I saw. Lots of things flying by, for sure, and I could hardly breathe. The sled might have gone as high as thirty feet, 'cause when I came down it was hard. Hadn't been for the ice, I'd probably have been driven into the ground like a cork in a bottle. But the sled hit the ice at an angle and started sliding, throwing up dirty, hard snow on either side of me. Pieces of ice hit me in the face and the sled fetched up against something solid, a stump probably, and I went flying out of it, hit the ice, whirled around like a fly in a greasy skillet, came to rest in the ditch where I'd found the madman.

I passed out for a while, and I dreamed. Dreamed I was in the sled again, flying through the air, and there was our house, lifting up from the ground, floor and all. It flew right past me, rising fast. When it moved in front of me, I glimpsed Mama. She was standing at the window. All the glass was blown out, and she was clinging to the sill with both hands. Her eyes were as big and blue as her china saucers, and her red hair had come undone and was blowing and whipping around her head like a brush fire.

The house shot on up, and when I looked up to see, there wasn't nothing but whirling blackness with little chunks of wood and junk disappearing into it.

"Mama," I said, and I must have said it a lot of times, 'cause that's what brought me to. The sound of my own voice calling Mama.

I tried to stand, but my ankle wasn't having it. It hurt like hell, and when I looked down, I saw my boot and sock had been ripped off by the blow, and the ankle was as big as a coiled cottonmouth snake.

I put a hand on the edge of the ditch, dug my fingers through the ice, and pulled myself up, taking some of the skin off my naked foot as I did. It was so cold the flesh had frozen to the ground and it had peeled off like sweet-gum bark.

Once I was out of the ditch, I started crawling across the ice, dragging my useless foot behind me. Little chunks of skin came off my palms, so I had to pull myself forward on my coat-sleeved forearms.

I hadn't gone far before I found Papa. He was sitting in his rocking chair, and in one hand he held his pipe and it was still smoking. The porch the chair had been sitting on was gone, but Papa was rocking gently in what was left of the wind. And the pitchfork I'd tossed aside before diving into the sled was sticking out of his chest like it had growed there. I didn't see a drop of blood. His eyes were open and staring, and every time that chair rocked forward, he seemed to look and nod at me.

Behind Papa, where the house ought to have been, wasn't nothing. It was like it hadn't never been built. I quit crawling and started crying. Did that till there wasn't nothing in me to cry, and the cold started making me so numb I just wanted to lay there and freeze at Papa's feet like an old dog. I felt like if I wasn't his killer, I was at least a helper in the murder, having tossed down the very pitchfork the twister had thrown at him.

It started to rain little ice pellets, and somehow the pain of those things pounding on me gave me the will to crawl toward a heap of hay that had been chunked there by the wind. By the time I got to the pile and looked back, Papa wasn't rocking no more. Those runners had froze to the ground and his black hair had turned white from the ice that had stuck to it.

I worked my way into the hay and tried to pull as much of it over me as I could. Doing that wore me completely out, and I fell asleep wondering about what had happened to Mama, hoping she was still alive.

The wind picked up again, took most of the hay away, but by then I didn't give a damn. I awoke remembering that I'd had that dream about Mama and the house again. Even though I didn't have much hay on me, it didn't seem so cold anymore. I figured it was either warming up, or I was getting used to it. Course, wasn't neither of them things. I was freezing to death, and would have too, if not for Mr. Parks and his boys.

Mr. Parks was our nearest neighbor, about three miles east. Turned out he had been chopping wood when the sky went yellow. Later he told me about it, and he said it was as strange as a blue-eyed hound dog, and unlike any twister he'd ever seen. Said the yellow sky went black, then this dark cloud grew a tail and came a-waggin' out of the heavens like a happy dog, getting thicker as it dipped. When it touched down, he figured the place it hit was right close to our farm, so he hitched up a wagon and came on out.

It was slow go for him and his two boys, on account of the ice and them having to stop now and then to clear the road of blown-over trees and a dead deer once. But they made it to our place about dark, and Mr. Parks said first thing he saw was Papa in that rocker. He said it was like the stem of Papa's pipe was pointing to where I lay, partly in, partly out of that hay.

They figured me for croaked at first, I looked so bad. But when they saw I hadn't gone under, they loaded me in the wagon, covered me in some old feed sacks and a couple of half-wet blankets, and started out of there.

That foot of mine was broke bad. The doctor came out to the Parks' place, set it, and didn't charge-me a cent. He said that was on account of he owed Papa for a bushel of taters from last fall, but I knew that was just one of them friendly white lies. Doc Ryan hadn't never owed nobody nothing.

Mr. and Mrs. Parks offered me a place to stay after the funeral, but I told them I'd go back to our place and try and make a go of it there.

Johnny Parks, who used to whip the hell out of me twice a week on them weeks we both managed to go a full week to school, made me a pair of solid crutches out of hickory, and I went to Papa's funeral on them.

Mama, as if there was something to my dream, wasn't never found, and for that matter, they couldn't hardly find no pieces of the house. There was plenty of barn siding around, but of the house there was only a few floorboards, some wood shingles, and some broken glass. Maybe it's silly, but I like to think that old storm just come and got her and hauled her off to a better place, like that little gal in that book The Wizard of Oz.

Mr. Parks made Papa a tombstone out of a piece of river slate, chiseled some nice words on it:

HERE LIES HAROLD FOGG, KILT BY A TORNADER? AND HERE LIES THE MEMRY OF GLENDA FOGG WHO WAS CARRIED OFF BY THAT SAME TORNADER AND WASNT NEVER FOUND, NOT EVEN THE PIECES.

Beneath that were some dates on when they was born and died, and a line about them being survived by one son, Buster Fogg, meaning me, of course.

Over the protests of Mr. and Mrs. Parks, I had them take me out to our place and I set up a tent there. They left me a lot of food and some hand-me-down clothes from their boys, then they went off saying they'd be back to check on me right regular. Mrs. Parks cried some and Mr. Parks offered me some money and the loan of his mule, but I said I had to think on it.

This tent Mr. Parks gave me was a good one, and I managed to get around well enough on my crutches to gather barn siding and what tools and nails I could find, and I built a floor in it. I could have got Mr. Parks and his boys to do that for me, but I couldn't bring myself to it, not after all they'd done. And besides, I had my pride. Matter of fact, now that I think on it, that was about all I had. That and the place.

Well, it took me a couple of days to do what should have taken a few hours on account of having to pull nails out of boards and reuse them, but I got the tent fixed up real good and cozy finally. It wasn't no replacement for the house and Mama and Papa, but it was better than stepping on a tack or getting jabbed in the eye with a pointed stick.

I wished I could have turned back time some, been in our house. I'd even have liked to have heard Mama fussing over how much firewood Papa should have laid in, which was one of the few things he was always a little lazy on, and was finally glad to pass most of the job along to me. I could hear Mama telling him as she looked at the last few sticks of stove wood, "I told you so."

On the morning after I'd spent my first night on my finished floor, I got up to take a good look at things, and see what I could manage on crutches.

There were dead chickens lying about, like feather dusters, pieces of wood and one mule lying on his back, legs sticking up in the air like a table blowed over. Didn't see a sign of the other mule or the cows.

Wasn't none of this something I hadn't already seen, but now with the flooring in, and my immediate comfort taken care of, I found I just couldn't face picking up dead chickens and burning a mule carcass.

I went back inside the tent and felt sorry for myself as that's all there was to do, besides eat, and I'd done that till I was about to pop. I wasn't such a great reader, but right then I wished I had me a book of some kind, but what books we'd had had been blowed away with the house.

About a week went by, and I'd maybe got half the chickens picked up and tossed off in the ditch by the woodlot, and gotten the mule burned to nothing besides bones, when this slick-looking fella in a buckboard showed up.

"Howdy there young feller, "He said, climbing down from his rig."You must be Buster Fogg."

I admitted I was, and up close I seen that snazzy black suit and narrow brim hat he had on were even snappier than they'd looked at a distance. The hat and suit were dark as fresh charcoal, and the pants had creases in them sharp enough to cut your throat. And he was all smiles. He looked to have more teeth than Main Street had bricks.

"Glad to catch you home," he said, and he took off his hat and held it over his chest as if in silent prayer.

"Whatsit I can do for you?" I asked. "Maybe you'd like to come in the tent, get out of this cold?"

"No, no. What I have to say won't take but a moment. My name is Purdue. Jack Purdue. I'm the banker from town."

Well, right off I knew what it was and I didn't want to hear it, but I knew I was going to anyhow.

"Your father's bill has come due, son, and I hate it something awful, and I know it's a bad time and all, but I'm going to need that money by about" he stopped for a moment to look generous—"say noon tomorrow. Least half"

"I ain't got a penny, Mr. Purdue," I said. "Papa had the money, but everything got blowed away in the storm. If you could just give me some time—"

He put his hat on and looked real sad about things, almost like it was his farm he was losing.

"I'm afraid not, son. It's an awful duty I got, but it's my duty."

I told him again about the money blowing away, how Papa had saved it up from selling stuff during the farm season, doing odd jobs and all, and that I could do the same, providing he gave my leg time to heal and me to get the work. Just to play on his sympathy some, I then went on to tell him the whole horrible truth about how Papa was killed and Mama blowed away like so much outhouse paper, and when I got through I figured I'd told it real good, 'cause his eyes looked a little moist.

"That," he said, not hardly able to speak, "is without a doubt the saddest story I've ever heard. And of course I knew about it, son, but somehow, hearing it from you, the last survivor of the Fogg family, makes it all the more dreadful."

He kind of choked up there on the end of his words, and I figured I had hold of him pretty good, so I throwed in how us Foggs had pride and all, and that I'd never let an owed bill go unpaid, and if he'd just give me the time to raise the money, he'd have it in his hand before long.

He told me he was tore all to hell up about it, but business was business, sad story or not. And as he wiped some tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand, he told me he would give me until tomorrow evening instead of noon, because he reckoned someone who'd been through what I had deserved a little more time.

"But that ain't enough," I said.

"Sorry, son, that's the best I can do, and that goes against the judgment of the bank. I'm sticking my neck out to do that."

"You are the bank, Purdue," I said. "Who you fooling? It ain't me. We all know you're the bank."

"I understand your grief, your great torment," he said, just like one of the characters from some of them dime novels Papa bought from time to time, "but business is business."

"You said that."

"Yes I did, young sir." With that, Purdue turned -and walked back to his buckboard. He called out to me as I stood there leaning defeated on my crutches. "I tell you, son, that is the saddest story I've ever heard, and I've heard some. Tragic. This will hang over, my head like the shining sword of Damocles from here on out, right over my head," he showed me exactly where it would be hanging with his hand, "until my dying day."

He stood there with one foot on the buckboard step a moment, looking as downcast as a young rooster without any hens, then he climbed up and cracked the whip gently over the heads of the horses. There must have been some pretty heavy tears in his eyes as he left, ''cause when he turned the buckboard around, the left wheels rolled right across Papa's grave.

My farming days were over before they even got started. And I'll tell you, right then and there, I decided I wasn't going to pick up another dead chicken to make the place look nicer. In fact, I went over to the ditch, got the ones I'd throwed down there out and chunked them around sorta like they'd been. Then I went back to my tent and wished I hadn't burned that old dead mule up. It was all mighty depressing.

The smartest thing to have done was go on over to Mr. Parks's place, even if it did take me all damned day on crutches, but I just couldn't. Us Foggs had our pride and I didn't want no handout. No one taking care of me when I was old enough to take care of my ownself. I decided to set out for town, get me a job there, make my own way. Even if I couldn't save the farm, I could start me some kind of living. There was probably something I could work at until my leg healed up and I got me a solid job.

I figured if I started early, like tomorrow morning, I could make town by nightfall, crutches or not. I'd most likely fall down and bust it a few times, but that didn't matter none.

Well, as I said, us Foggs are proud, and maybe just a bit stupid, so come morning I put some hard bread, jerked meat, and dried fruit in a sack, and saying adios to the dead chickens, the mule bones, and Papa's grave, I started crutching on out of there.

I must have fallen down a half-dozen times before I got to the road, but when I was on it I could crutch along better because there was a lot less ice there.

By noon my underarms were so sore from the rubbing of the crutches, they were bleeding and making blisters that kept popping as I went. Instead of making it to town by nightfall, I was beginning to think I'd be lucky to make it by next year's Thanksgiving. In fact, I was counting on dying at that moment, just keeling over beside the road there and kicking out the last of my worries.

I stopped, sat down on a rock and my coattails, ate some bread and jerky, and fretted things over. Thinking back on it now, I'm surprised I didn't hear it coming before I did.

Guess I was wrapped up in my lunch and my thinking. But I finally caught sound of this tinkling, and when I looked up I seen it was bells and harness I had heard, and the harness was attached to eight big mules pulling a bright, red wagon driven by a big colored man wearing a long, dark coat and a top hat. When the sun hit his teeth they flashed like a pearl-handled revolver.

As the wagon made a little curve in the road, I got a glimpse at the side, and I could see there was a cage fixed there, balancing out the barrels of water and supplies on the other side.

At first, I thought what was in the cage was a deformed colored fella, but when it got closer, I seen it was some kind of animal covered in black fur. It was about the scariest, ugliest damned thing I'd ever seen.

Right then I was feeling a mite less proud than I had been earlier that morning, so I got them crutches under my sore arms and hobbled out into the road waving a hand at the wagon. I was aiming on getting a ride or getting run slap over so I could end the torture. I didn't feel like I could crutch another mile.

The wagon slowed and pulled alongside me. The driver yelled, "Whoa, you old ugly mules," and the harness bells ceased to shake.

I could see the animal in the cage good now, but I still couldn't figure on what it was. There was some yellow words painted above the cage that said, "THE MAGIC WAGON," and to the right of the cage was a little sign with some fancy writing on it that read: "Magic Tricks, Trick Shooting, Fortune Telling, Wrestling Ape, Side Amusements, Medicine for What Ails You, and And All at Reasonable Prices.

Sounded pretty good to me.

"You look like you could use a ride, white boy," the big man said.'

"Yes sir, I could at that," I said.

"You don't yes-sir a nigger" I turned to see who had said that, and there was this fella standing in faded, red long johns and moccasins with blond hair down to his shoulders and a skimpy little blond mustache over his lip. He had his arms crossed, holding his elbows against the cold. He'd obviously come out of the back of the wagon, but he'd walked so quiet I hadn't even known he was there till he spoke.

When I didn't say nothing, he added, "This here's my wagon. He's just a nigger that works for me. I say who rides and who don't, and I say you don't."

"I got some jerky, canned taters, and beans I can trade for a ride, and I'll sit up there on the seat."

"If you was riding you sure would," the blond man said. "But you ain't riding." He turned back to the wagon and I noticed the flap of his long johns were down. I snickered a little, and he turned to stare at me. He had eyes like a couple of big nail heads, cold, flat, and gray. "I don't need no beans and taters," he said sharply, and turned back to the wagon.

"He can ride up here with me if he's got a mind to," the colored man said.

The white fella spun around and came stomping back. "What did you say?"

"I said he could ride up here with me if he's got a mind to," the colored man said, moving his lips real slow like, as if he was talking to an idiot. "It's too cold for a boy to be out here, especially one on crutches."

"You don't say," said the blond man. "You're getting awfully uppity for a nigger who works for me."

"Maybe I is," the colored fella said. "And it worries me something awful, Mister Billy Bob. I get so worried abouts it I can't get me no good sleep at night. When I lay myself down I just keep tossing and turning, wondering if Mr. Billy Bob is put out with me, and if I truly is getting uppity."

Mister Billy Bob pointed his finger at the colored fella and shook it. "Keep it up, nigger. Just keep it up and you're going to wake up with a crowd of buzzards on you. Hear?"

"I hear," said the colored man, and it was almost a yawn.

Billy Bob started back for the wagon again, gave me a glimpse of his exposed butt, turned, and came back. He shook his finger at the colored fella again. "Albert," he said, you and me, we're going to have to have a serious Come-to-Jesus Meeting, get some things straight about who's the nigger and who ain't."

"I do need me some pointers on that, Mister Billy Bob. I get a trifle confused sometimes and it just sets me to shuffling my feet trying to figure on the straight of it."

Billy Bob stood there for a moment, like he was going to stare Albert down off the wagon seat, but finally he gave up. "All right," he said to me. "You can ride, but it's going to cost you them beans and taters, hear?"

I nodded.

This time Billy Bob turned and went inside the wagon, the moon of his butt my last sight of him for a while, the slamming of the wagon door my last sound.

I turned and looked up at Albert. He was leaning down with a big hand extended. Just before I took it, I got me another look at the critter in the cage, and when he looked at me, he peeled back his lips to show his teeth, like maybe he was smiling.

When I was on the seat beside Albert, he said, "That Mister Billy Bob's gonna need to get them buttons fixed on the seat of his drawers, ain't he?"

We laughed at that.

After we got moving good, Albert said, "You keep them beans and taters, boy. Taters upsets my stomach, and beans, they make Mister Billy Bob fart something awful. Just ain't no being around him."

"That's good about them beans and taters," I said, "'cause I ain't got none. All I got in this bag is some hard bread and jerked meat."

Albert let out a roar, like that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. I could tell right then and there he didn't have no real respect for Billy Bob.

"That critter in the cage?" I asked. "Is that some kind of bear what caught on fire or something?"

Albert laughed again. "Naw, it ain't no bear. That there is a jungle ape. Comes from the same place as all us colored. Africa. They calls him a chimpanzee. Name's Rot Toe on account of he got him some kind of disease once and one of his toes on his right foot rotted off. Least that's what the fella who sold him to Billy Bob said."

I remembered the sign I'd read on the side of the wagon. "Wrestling ape." I said. "That thing wrestles?"

"Now you got it," Albert said.

I found a place for my crutches and the food bag, then I leaned back with my hands in my lap.

"You look a might bushed, little peckerwood. You wants to lay your head against my shoulder to rest, you go right ahead. "

"No thanks," I said. But we hadn't gone too far down the road when I just couldn't keep my eyes open no more and I realized just how tired I really was. I lolled my head on Albert's big shoulder. I could smell the clean wool of his coat. And wasn't no time at, all until I was asleep.

CHAPTER 3

I was thinking on this, feeling sorry for myself, when Albert brought me out of it.

"Best get your butt down from here and get to doing."

I'd been so lost in my thoughts, I hadn't noticed we'd stopped. We were under a big oak that grew out to the edge of the street, and around the oak were curled vines big as well ropes. Out to the right of the tree was a big clearing. It looked to have been made by fire. It was just the place for us to have our show.

Behind the clearing, and to the left of the oak, there was nothing but woods. And I do mean woods. It was thick with all manner of brush and brambles. It was just another thing that got me to thinking on the town and how odd it looked. Even the woods around it seemed different from any I'd seen before, and I found myself not wanting to stare out there for long for fear of seeing something I didn't want to see.

I got down and went around to Rot Toe's cage, limping as I went. That foot that had been broken got stiff when I rode too long or, on the other hand, walked on it too much.

I pulled back the tarp and let some fresh air in on the ape, and he grunted at me. There in the sharp, morning light, as the twilight died and the day came in, he suddenly, and for the first time, looked more than tired and old to me, he looked pathetic.

I said some words to him, got his leash off the top of the cage and used my key to let him out. He took my hand and walked with me around to the other side, and I put his leash on him without any trouble. While I did, he stood staring out at those woods, making soft sounds. He didn't care for them any better than I did.

Albert had come around and I said how I didn't like the woods and neither did Rot Toe.

"There ain't a thing to like about them," he said, and he didn't look out there when he said it. "You stay out of 'em, Little Buster, you hear?"

"Yes sir," I said.

Albert smiled at me. "You know what Billy Bob says?"

"Yeah." And we said it together, "You don't yes-sir a nigger."

"All right, boy," Albert said. "Get up there on the wagon and get them posters, start putting them up. And you're going to need to talk to the sheriff."

"Me? That's Billy Bob's job."

"He ain't rightly in the condition to do it. And you might as well get used to it, 'cause he's going to make it your job anyhow."

"How do you know he is?"

"I know Billy Bob, and the less work he has to do the happier man he is. He always finds me a new job or two at the end of the month, don't he?"

And he did. Albert and I did all the work. What Billy Bob did was shoot his pistols, talk about Hickok, read dime novels, and chase gals. That seemed like a pretty good career to me.

But there wasn't any use arguing. Billy Bob would just leave me somewhere high and dry. And the truth of the matter was I didn't want to leave Albert and Rot Toe. Them and that wagon, scary as it could be sometimes, were all the home I knew.

I got the posters, a hammer and some tacks, and started up the street.

When we came to a town, we always went about getting the sheriff's permission for our show, if we could. If we couldn't we pulled the Magic Wagon outside the town sign where his star didn't count and went ahead with it.

Course, some sheriffs didn't care for that, and they'd come out and run us off, a sign or no sign. I hated it when we had to spend a few days in jail. It just made Billy Bob all that harder to get along with. He'd blame me for too much starch in his long johns, go around frowning and kicking things, yelling at Albert and hitting Rot Toe with sticks until he got all the meanness out of him, or enough of it anyway. He was too full of it to ever get empty.

But most sheriffs were cooperative, and if they hesitated, Billy Bob could turn on the butter when he wanted to, and talk most of them into it. A sheriff is just like any other fella, in spite of what you might think. He likes a bit of a change now and then, and our show was better than spending his afternoons and early evenings with his heels on his desk, or going over to the saloon to pistol-whip a bunch of drunks into a stupor. Our shows had the added advantage of entertainment before the pistol-whipping, as most of the drunks would show up to see our acts and get looped as usual, only on our Cure-All if they didn't remember a pocket flask of their own. This being the case, the sheriff could watch our little act, then beat the drunks over the head with his gun barrel instead of having to make a special trip on over to the saloon.

So it was with only a few misgivings that I made my way over to the sheriff's office.

When I found it, the door was locked and there was- a messy written sign tacked to it:

I AINT HERE NOW AND AINT GONNA BE TILL SATERDEE. HOLD ALL KILLINS AND SICH TILL I GIT BAK OR LOK YER OWNSEF UP. RILEE OVER TO THE SALOON HAS THE KEE.

I could just imagine that lawman spit-wetting his pencil and snickering over that sign as he wrote it. As Albert told me time and again, "You can say what you wants about them sheriffs, but them that I've known of has mostly got a sense of humor."

It also brought to mind a story Albert told me once about this sheriff down San Antone-way that could tell a joke better than you ever heard. Way Albert told it, he could get a fella laughing all the way out of the jail, up the gallows steps, and still cackling till the rope cut him off. Which is understandable at that point.

But Albert said this sheriff was good. He was not only a joker, he was a prankster. When things got slow around the jail and he had a prisoner, one of his favorite things was to unlock the cage while the fella was asleep, sneak in and put matches between his toes, light them, and sneak out.

You can imagine the chuckles this sheriff got when the matches reached the meat and that fella came leaping off his bunk and went rain dancing around his cell.

But in spite of this sense of humor, or maybe you could say because of it, this sheriffs story ended kind of tragic. As Albert pointed out, there's always someone out there lacking a sense of humor, and as fate would have it, the sheriff I'm telling you about got just such a stick in the mud in his jail.

This stick in the mud was known as a sour customer anyway, and what he was in jail for didn't liven his personality any. He'd gone on a rampage killing his wife, mother-in-law, and as good an old blue mule as ever pulled a plow. Can't recall what the wife's and mother-in-law's names were, but the mule was called Old Jesse.

What got this farmer riled in the first place, as is often the case with a man, was his mother-in-law. She lived with them, and didn't have any table manners to speak of. She was kind of elderly, and bad about breaking wind at the supper table. Maybe she could help it, maybe she couldn't. But it seemed to this farmer that she didn't give it a passing thought, and did it mostly to irritate him, never so much as offering up an excuse me, or asking how the most recent one compared to the last. It wasn't nothing to her, and he felt certain she was laughing behind her hand at him 'cause she knew it got on his nerves and spoiled his appetite.

Well, one evening, things simmered to a head. They were sitting at the table, spooning some ham and gravy and sweet taters, or whatever, and what does this old lady do but cut loose with a honker that would have shamed a pack mule. This farmer claimed it was so powerful the kitchen curtains billowed, but I think either the farmer or Albert exaggerated a little there. Anyway, she went on to choose this time to finally comment on it, and it wasn't a thing that charmed him in the least.

"Catch that one and paint it green," she said, and giggled.

The man went beside himself, snatched up the kindling axe and dove for her. As fate would have it, his wife got in the way and tried to stop things. All she got for her trouble was a new part in her hair, about six inches deep. Then the mother-in-law bit the hatchet. And if that wasn't enough, the farmer turned drunk-Injun mad, went out to the lot, and axed the mule.

This mule killing was quite a blow to the community. Old Jesse had been borrowed by every farmer in the county, and it was said that he was such a good plower lines weren't needed. Didn't even have to say gee or haw. You just took hold of the plow handles and Old Jesse did the rest without so much as lathering up.

Yep, that mule's fame was spread far and wide. Later on they had a funeral for him, and Albert said he heard a right smart number of folks showed up to attend the laying away services and do some gospel singing.

Well, Mule Slayer, as he came to be known, was brought to jail, and while they were waiting on trial, things got slow around the cell, and this sheriff with the sense of humor decided to liven things up with his famous hot-foot routine. So, one afternoon, Mule Slayer was all stretched out on his bunk, catching a few winks, digesting his jail dinner, when the sheriff snuck into his cell, put matches between the fella's toes, lit them, and snuck out.

When the matches burned down to Mule Slayer's foot, he let out a roar, hit the floor two-stepping and barn dancing around the cell.

The sheriff thought this was real funny, and he had to lean up against the bars so he wouldn't fall down laughing. He started clapping his hands and singing one of those do-si-do-grab-your-partner songs, and that's just what Mule Slayer did. He promenaded on around there and shot a hand through the bars and got the sheriff by the goozel, reached the gun out of the old boy's holster, and took the keys off of him.

Damned if Mule Slayer wasn't suddenly in a joking mood himself. He put the sheriff on the bunk, strapped him down with pieces of the sheriff's gun belt and suspenders, and set the bed on fire, and as it was stuffed with feather ticking, it lit up right good.

Albert said folks claimed later they could see smoke, hear that sheriff screaming and Mule Slayer laughing for a half mile or better, but I sort of doubt that myself.

When the townsfolks got there, they beat out the sheriff with a couple of brooms and throwed water on him, but it was too late. There wasn't enough left of him or the feathers to sweep up in a dust pan. Most of the old boy was soot on the walls. Even his badge had hotted up considerable. It had melted into a tiny ball, fallen between the bed springs, and rolled off into the corner.

They hauled Mule Slayer off to a place that wasn't burned up and smelled like a community barbecue, and made him a makeshift jail till things could get repaired at the real place, or until a trial came around.

Now Mule Slayer had caught a sense of humor, and he had caught it good. He laughed through the night, and the shed they had him in practically rocked with it.

This went on for several days, and it got so tiresome to the townsfolks, who could hardly sleep at night for the noise, that the gallows got built in no time, even though they had to rip the front porch off the general store to have enough lumber to get it done in a hurry.

A judge was appointed quickly, and the fella was tried, legal-like, though he laughed through the proceedings, which were cut down to five minutes, and he was sentenced to hang. Before they went out to do that, a prayer was said for Old Jesse.

Mule Slayer was still laughing when they put the rope around his neck, and would have kept on laughing if someone in the crowd hadn't yelled something about the sorry thing he'd done to that good mule.

This hit a note with Mule Slayer and he stopped laughing. He looked heavenward and said a few repentive words concerning the sad and unnecessary death of Old Jesse, and how he should have just stuck to his big-mouthed wife and stomach-ailed mother-in-law. Which was the general sentiment of the crowd.

In the process of saying these words about Jesse, he led on up to the jail and what happened there, and darned if he didn't get tickled all over again. This time he was giving all the details on the sheriff burning, which he hadn't before. He told how it was a lucky thing the suspenders and gun belt didn't burn up quick-like, freeing the sheriff, and he gave a real good description with mouth noises that perfectly imitated the sound of fire catching to feathers, bed springs squeaking, and the sheriff yelling. He then went on to the description of the sheriff wiggling around and sputtering like fat pork in a frying pan, and if Albert is to be believed, Mule Slayer was just getting to the good, nasty part when the eager beaver at the switch jerked the lever and dropped that kidder, mid-story, through the hole.

There was darn near a riot.

Albert said that it was fair to say some good came out of the entire mess, and you might say the sheriff's fun-loving spirit had been passed onto Mule Slayer. One can only hope that same spirit, like a dose of pox, latched onto the fellow at the gallows switch, so next time there's a story going he ain't interested in, but others are, he'll have the good manners to hold out till the tale is told before giving his charge a hemp necktie.

With the sheriff gone, the permission problem was out of the way too, so I nailed one of my posters over his sign and went on down the street asking folks if I could do the same in their stores. I even went down to the church and tacked one on the door there, just in case the preacher wanted to come.

We liked to save a little space at the first of our show for a preacher, just in case he had a hankering to talk on the sins of the world and such, and how we were all going to hell in a handbasket.

Time he was finished the crowd's eyes would be glazed over good, like a horse that's fixing to die on you, and they'd be darn near ready for most anything but another dose of Get Jesus Saltz.

Another thing, those preachers were good for three, maybe four bottles of Cure-All. Reckon they liked to have that much on hand in case of snake, bite, as they had to travel pretty far out in the country sometimes to find the sinners that are minding their own damned business and not putting anything in the offering plate. And all those dinners and suppers preachers ate, as they have a way of showing up at meal time, were bound to upset their stomachs now and then. And a good slug of Cure-All after a meal of fried chicken, flour gravy, mashed potatoes, buttered biscuits, and two slices of fresh apple pie with cream on top was just the thing to set a belly straight.

Finally I came to the saloon and hesitated outside the bat wings, sort of getting the lay of the land. Sometimes a bartender will consider me too young to be in a place and will throw me out. But most of them could care less if I was twelve years old, armed and dangerous, long as I was white and had the price of a beer. I was trying to decide which kind of place this was.

Like most saloons it smelled like beer, sweat, and cigar smoke. I thought it over, decided the odds were on my side, put a hand on the bat wings, and went inside.

For early morning, there was a right smart crowd in there. I figured with the sheriff gone the owner had most likely kept the place open all night, grubbing for the extra drunk dollars.

There was a farmer and a bony saloon gal at one table, and they were entwined tight as a couple pieces of cheap rope. They had their eyes closed to show how in dreamy wonder they were of each other's company, and since it was as hot as a bitch dog in heat in there, they had a sheen of oily sweat on their faces thick as a swath of hog lard. I reckoned that farmer's wife thought he was in town buying seed, not sowing it.

At another table a fellow lay face down, and the only thing holding him up was his face and the edge of his butt in the chair. His arms hung by his sides like limp horse tails, and the one nostril that wasn't mashed into the table was making a noise like a busted bagpipe.

At a table behind him were two other fellas. One of them was about my age, and duded up. He had on a tall sky blue hat and his brown hair grew long out from beneath it. A red neckerchief was tied loosely around his neck, and he wore a fringed cotton shirt all the colors of the rainbow. The boots that stuck out of his cuffed jeans were so bright and new-looking I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd mooed at me.

He was holding a dime novel close to a low-lit lamp at his table, moving his lips over the words. I could have saved his lips a lot of work. I could make out the title of what he was reading, Young Wild West and the Salted Mines, or The Double Game for a Million, and I had read it. It was about five years old and it wasn't worth the match it would have taken to burn the sucker up.

Wasn't no use saying anything, though. Just my opinion. And it might have resulted in me being beat up by a little fella in a dude outfit. He had that same look Billy Bob gets when he's reading those things. It's somewhere between the one a man gets when he's having his first peek at a naked woman, or is getting pulled into a religious soul-saying fever. Either one makes for a dangerous time if interrupted or disagreed upon.

Sitting next to Blue Hat was a fiftyish man, thick around the middle, with bull-wide shoulders, a black derby hat gone green, and a face that looked like lumpy gravy poured over peanuts. I figured he'd once had the pox. On his upper lip were a few stray hairs that he probably called a mustache, but they reminded me of the prickles around a porcupine's butt. The way his eyes were squinted, you got the impression he was bored and wanted to shoot someone, just anybody, no matter how small the 'cause.

And he had the equipment to do the shooting. In a half holster hooked at his middle, dangling like a metal Johnson in leather underwear, was a single action Colt's .41 short barrel. It was engraved with all manner of gee-gaws, and the grip was faded, yellow ivory.

You didn't see folks toting guns like that out in the open much anymore, but this fella looked as comfortable that way as a pig in slop.

I didn't look at him long, least he catch me staring and decide to end his boredom by seeing how close he could space six rounds in one of my eyeballs.

I went over to the bar. The bartender was behind it, sweeping furiously with a broom. Dust was whipping up and around him like a twister, but if he was doing any good I couldn't tell it. It all settled down behind him as he swept forward.

He was skinny and wore an apron with more spots on it than a pinto horse. Most of the spots were beer, but there were some real interesting, crusty ones that I couldn't make out. His hair was the thing that had my most attention, however. It was suckered down with what looked like axle grease, and he was wearing some foo-foo water that made me dizzy before I got to him.

Behind him on the wall, just above the flyblown mirror, was a sign that read: NO GUNS ALLOWED IN HERE, and just under that: WE DON'T SERVE NIGGERS, FREED OR OTHERWISE.

I would have bet they backed up the bottom sign, but I didn't see anyone rushing to throw the fella with the derby and the pistol out in the street.

I sat down on a stool and the bartender came over. When he got up close I could smell something familiar and unpleasant, underneath all that foo-foo water. I saw too, that a couple of big blue-bottle flies had lit in his hair. They were buzzing and beating their wings something furious, as they were stuck there like dog hairs to molasses.

"What's fer ya?" the bartender said, leaning over the bar at me. I could smell peppermint candy on his breath, but it wasn't enough to overpower the foo-foo water and what was underneath it. I couldn't help but lean back on my stool.

Earlier, I'd thought I might buy a beer without a fight, but at that moment, I wasn't so sure my belly could handle it. The bartender's aromas were about to smother me.

"Nothing for me, thank you," I said. "I just come by to ask a favor." I went through my rigmarole about the poster, and was just about to hand him one to look over, when out of the back of the saloon came this stocky man with a thatch of brown hair on his head that looked like a little dead animal. He had a determined stride, like a miner on his way to a free lunch. He walked right up to the bartender and slapped him a lick on the head with the flat of his hand. The blow was loud enough to be mistaken for a rifle shot. I think the passed-out drunk even flinched a bit. I know the farmer and his gal came untwined for a moment, probably thinking the wife had showed up mad with a Winchester. Behind me and to the left, I heard the man with the derby laugh. I knew it was him without even turning to look. I figured the kid hadn't looked up from his dime novel.

I got back on my stool, because I'd already started for the door, and put my bottom on it lightly, just in case I needed to run after all. I leaned over the bar to look for the bartender. He was stretched out on the floor, face down, flat as a rug. The man who had slapped him was looking at his hand. His face was crunched up and a low moan came out from between his lips. There was some of the little man's hair slickum on his hand and one of his flies—mashed now.

"Damned idiot," the stocky man growled, and he kicked down behind the bar. The skinny fella had only been playing dead, because now, like a big toad, he hopped to his feet and darted for the door. The stocky man sailed a half-full bottle of whiskey after him, but his aim was off and slow, and the bottle went over the bat wings and into the street just as Skinny took a sharp left and disappeared. Way that apron had slapped around him as he ran brought to mind something, but right at that moment it wouldn't come to me.

"I told you not to slicker your hair down with that damned cow mess," the stocky man yelled after Skinny. He turned to me, gave me a kind of grin, then he bent down behind the bar and came up with a nasty-looking rag. He used it to wipe his hand off, saving the fly and the spot it was on for last. He thumped the fly with his forefinger down the length of the bar where it skidded in a puddle of beer and skipped like a stone to the floor. Then he used the rag on the spot and tossed it under the bar again. He sniffed his hand and frowned. He got a bottle of whiskey and poured a smidgen on his palm, sniffed again, and looked pleasant. He put the bottle back and smiled at me. "What's fer ya?" It was exactly the same voice and words Skinny had used, and I realized then that Skinny had the same knack mockingbirds do, except with people. He could copy perfectly whatever he heard spoken.

"I take it he ain't the bartender?" I said.

"No, he ain't. He ain't nothing but an idiot-fella I let sweep up now and then for a few beers and peppermints, and he ain't worth them. He tries to pretend he's me from time to time, but he ain't supposed to do nothing but clean up some. God . . . can you imagine, combing your hair with cow pies?"

"Well, it ain't something I'd do," I said.

"I think it's them blue bottles he likes, thinks they're pretty. I've seen him looking at them in the mirror here. I don't know why I even let him come around."

"Some of us are just big-hearted and foolish," I said.

"Reckon that's the truth. And it don't get you nowhere, nowhere at all. There's such a thing as being too damned good. Kind of a curse to me. My mama's at fault. She used to say to me, 'Riley, ' she called me Riley, 'you take a care for other folks now, you hear?' and I always have. Not that it's done good by me, no sir. I'd be rich if I wasn't always giving of myself and my money. That addle-brained bastard is just a waste of my time. He don't do nothing I don't have to do again."

"It is a burden," I said, "I can see that. What I was trying to do here, Mr. Riley—

"Just Riley."

"Riley. Was find out about putting these posters up. One inside, one out. They've got to do with a medicine and magic show this afternoon and tonight."

"Just as long as it ain't a tent preaching poster. I don't allow them kind of posters in here. Makes business fall off. How old are you anyway, boy?"

"Seventeen . . . and a half?"

"Old enough. How about a beer on the house?"

"I'd like that, Mr. Riley."

"Remember, just Riley." He reached under the bar and brought out a half-filled glass of beer and slapped it on the counter. It tasted lukewarm and it was as flat as Amarillo. I figured it was what a customer had left undrunk and Riley had saved it for just such an occasion, being so big-hearted and neighborly like as he was. I didn't drink no more of it, just sat there and tried to look fat, dumb, and happy. The first part was the toughest, as I wasn't a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet with rocks in my pockets.

About that time I heard a chair scrape. I looked over to see Derby getting up and Blue Hat following, bending the dime novel into his back pocket. As they walked out, Derby grinned at the drunk and kicked the fella's chair out from under him. The drunk smashed to the floor and lay there with his face down and his butt up, a little stream of red running out of his nose. Derby and Blue Hat both laughed, and to get in on the act, Blue Hat kicked at the drunk's butt and sent him topping on his side. The drunk lay there, bent up like half a doughnut, breathing hoarsely. One of his eyes half opened, then closed down quickly, like an old biddy lifting and lowering the shade, casuallike, for a peek at the neighbors.

"You need you some practice sitting in them chairs, don't you, you old souse?" Blue Hat said.

The drunk didn't say anything.

"You'd best answer when I talk to you," Blue Hat said, and he kicked the drunk in the belly.

The drunk made a gurgling sound and threw up some of what made him a drunk.

"Now you answer me," Blue Hat said in that sour, whining voice of his, hitching up his pants at the same time. "You don't sit in chairs so good, do you?"

"No," the drunk managed.

"What's that?" Blue Hat snapped.

"No sir," the drunk said, and more vomit bubbled out of his mouth.

"Filthy, old fool," Blue Hat said. "You puke on me and I'll kill you." He looked over at Derby to see if he was doing his meanness right. He must have been. Derby was grinning some tobacco-stained teeth at him.

Blue Hat's head bobbed in my direction. "What you looking at? You need something?"

"Not a thing," I said and turned back to the bar. I put my hand around the glass of beer just to have something to do. The beer in the glass wobbled from side to side.

Riley suddenly took an urge to wipe the bar. He grabbed the nasty rag out from beneath it and worked on down to the far end, quick-like. I watched Derby and Blue Hat in the minor, trying to look like I was just staring into space.

"You keep it that way," Blue Hat said.

Derby smiled at me, and there was something in that smile that chilled me to the bone. If Blue Hat had been carrying a gun I'd probably have felt the same way about him.

They laughed and went out.

When I was sure they were gone, I went over and helped the drunk back into his chair. By the time his head touched the table again, he was out. I used a snot rag I had to wipe his mouth and nose, and left it on the table in case he wanted it when he woke up. The two lovers opened their eyes to peep at me, then closed up again. I went back to the bar and took my seat. My hands were still shaking so I put them around the beer glass. I felt sort of weak,

"Who were those knee slappers?" I said to Riley, trying to sound a lot braver than I felt. "Father and son?"

"Dog and flea," Riley said softly, and he glanced toward the door when he said it. "That there fella in the derby hat," he added picking up one of my posters and pointing to the part about Billy Bob and his expert pistol shooting, "he'd most likely make your man look like a blind nigger with a slingshot."

"Billy Bob is the best shot I've ever seen," I said. And that was the truth. I didn't like him any, but he could shoot.

I'd seen him challenged many times, and no one came close. He could toss nickels in the air and hit them dead center. He could hold a mirror in one hand, lay his pistol over his shoulder, and shoot a playing card in half edgewise. Even on his bad nights he was better than anyone else.

"Well, you ain't seen that fella bang at it," Riley said. "Ain't no slouch on the fast draw neither. Maybe you've heard of him? That there was Texas Jack Wentworth."

Texas Jack. I'd heard of him all right. Even read about him in some of Billy Bob's dime novels. He wasn't as well known as Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill, and some others, but he did have a rep as a crackerjack of sorts.

Of course, now that I'd seen him, I was a mite disappointed. The dime novels had painted him out to be a tall Greek god. Hell, he wasn't even tall. And that face of his wasn't recent. That was a mug he'd carried with him all his life, and those smallpox lumps weren't new either. Worse than that, he wasn't nothing but a bully and had a pet bully he took around with him. It was downright disappointing. At least Billy Bob looked like the characters in the books, even if there wasn't one written about him.

But it was pretty much on record that Jack had once out-shot Doc Carver, and at one time Carver was the finest shot in the world. With a Winchester 73, Carver broke five-and a-half thousand out of six thousand glass balls tossed in the air, and he did it in a seven and a half hour stretch. I heard too that he let some of his opponents use shotguns, and he used that Winchester, and still showed them up. So if Jack beat them like the stories went, even if Doc Carver was at the end of his career, he did some good shooting. That into consideration and there being a story that he'd once backed down Wild Bill Hickok, it was fair to say that Riley was right ; when he said the man wasn't no slouch.

"That Jack is a corker," Riley went on, suddenly talking as if the man were his brother. "I know all about him and I've heard tell more. He grew up around here before he went off and got famous, became an Injun fighter and buddy to John Wesley Hardin. Not that he wasn't known around here when he was your age. But it wasn't nothing special like later, he just shot a couple of nigger farm hands over some peach wine. Seems like maybe he shot his uncle too, but it's been a while since I heard that, and it could have been a cousin or something.

"Anyway, he went off and was wrote about in them dime novels. Then, about five years ago, a winter colder than the far side of a widow's bed, I was in here polishing the fly tracks off the glasses, when in walks this sombreroed greaser, big as you please. Strolled up to the bar like he was a white man, sitted himself on a stool, about where you're sitting I think, and called to me for a whiskey.

"Well, you can bet I didn't hop to it, that's what I'm trying to tell you. I don't cotton to niggers and greasers and I sure don't cotton to them in my place trying to order me around like common help. I told him we didn't serve niggers, even if they was Mexican niggers.

"He got uppity on me and argued, then he jumped off the stool and pulled a pistol out from under his coat. And I'll tell you, for a Mex he was fast. I was standing here tonguing my teeth, waiting to hit hell's hot water, when a loud voice from the rear of the place yelled, 'Hey, peppergut!"

"That Mex turned, bringing his gun around, and there was Jack, though we didn't know it was him at the time. He'd come in and nobody had recognized him. It was winter, you see, and he was bundled up coats and shirts and had on this derby. And it had been some years.

"Well, I was thinking that this fella—Jack, but I didn't know it then—was going to get his big mouth shot off, and to be honest, that was all right by me, 'cause that meant I wasn't going to get bucked off my ride, you see. But before I could hit the floor and crawl off, Jack drew.

"Let me tell you, sonny, that was the prettiest draw I've ever seen, especially with it coming out from under all them coats. Ever seen a rattler strike, boy? It's something if you're not on the biting end of it.  A rattler can coil, come off the ground and throw its head back, pop them fangs and hit you faster than you can blink. Well, this was even faster, I swear.

"Before that Mex could level his pistol, Jack fired. His shot hit the Mex solid between the eyes, and that peppergut folded up like a pair of fresh-washed long johns and hit the floor. Wasn't nothing left for him but to be hauled off to the trash ditch on the other side of town. I kept the Mex's pistol."

Riley reached under the bar and came up with it. It was a big, old, heavy .44.

"Ever since that night, Jack's had free drinks on me and run of the place. And that kid in the blue hat is Noel Reasoner. He was working for me at the time, sweeping up in the back there. He saw the whole thing. He was always reading them dime novels, you know, and had just read one with Jack in it. And lo and behold, the top dog his ownself shows up and blows a spick's brains outright in front of him. Kid loved it. He's been following Jack around ever since, learning to shoot from him, and I hear he ain't even half bad. "

"That's why Jack can tote a gun in here? He saved your life?"

"Jack could tote an elephant in here if he wanted," Riley said. "I ain't no fool. I just let him be. Homer, that's the sheriff, he don't bother him none neither, and we don't fault Homer none for it. He was something in his time, best sheriff in these parts. He tracked down and arrested Wild Bill Longley single-handed once. But now he's seventy and he and Jack get along good. And the town, they don't care that Jack totes a gun when they can't. He's sort of a living legend. He's in them dime novels and all. I reckon he's deserving of some special privileges."

From what I'd seen, he was deserving of about six feet of dirt on a box with him in it, but I wasn't the one who was going to say anything about it. I didn't reckon I was ready for my six feet of dirt, and if wanted to stay out from under it, I reckoned the best thing for me to do was not run my mouth. Besides, I might not even get the six feet of dirt. They might treat me like they did that Mexican fella. Toss me in the garbage ditch outside of town.

I put a couple of posters and smiled my way out of there, and when I came out I saw the idiot sitting on the boardwalk drinking from the bottle Riley had throwed at him. He looked pretty lonely sitting there. Even his flies had flown off. He glanced up at me and grinned. I grinned back and got four bits out of my pocket. It was a lot of money, but I felt like him getting slapped and kicked was sort of my fault.

"Here," I said, "take this and go buy yourself some peppermints."

He took the money, looked at it in the palm of his hand, then smiled at me. He got up and walked off.

I watched him go down the boardwalk toward the general store, apron flapping, around him, the whiskey bottle dangling from one hand like a big, fat finger. It struck me then what he reminded me of. The crazy Onin fella I had found in the ditch that winter.

I went the other way, put up some more posters, then went back to the Magic Wagon. Billy Bob was still sleeping.

CHAPTER 4

The preacher got there first, which is often the case, and we told him he could make a little talk when the crowd was big enough, but we'd appreciate it if he didn't try to get folks into a round of gospel singing.

We had everything set up. The mules had been pulled off the wagon, fed and watered, and were tied out next to the woods. We had the clearing fixed up for Billy Bob's shooting show, and we had the ring built for Rot Toe to wrestle in.

The ring was six tall poles buried deep in the ground and a wide-hole netting pulled around it and over the top. This way, Rot Toe couldn't get out and scare folks, and the fellas he wrestled with couldn't get away. It kept Rot Toe from doing another thing which wasn't popular with the crowd, and that was throwing his wrestling partners at them. Albert said that back when they first got Rot Toe and come up with the wrestling bit, they used .a common roped-in ring, but Rot Toe threw his partners out pretty regularlike. This kept Albert busy picking up folks and brushing them off, and when men who had planned to wrestle the ape saw two-hundred-pound men, and sometimes bigger, flying through the air and smashing against the ground right smart, it made them look off in other directions and push their two-bits wrestling fee deeper into their pockets.

We had the side of the wagon facing the woods unhinged at the top and pulled down with supports under it to make a stage. Where the wall had been we pulled a blanket curtain across to keep Billy Bob and the stuff in the wagon hid. That way he could make his entrance out from behind the blanket. He just loved that kind of thing, and I have to admit, when he was duded up and ready to give a show, there was something almost magic about him, and even more so since we'd gotten that body in the box. He'd have probably done good in something like Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and I wished from time to time that he'd run off and join it.

Finally enough crowd got there for the preacher to preach to, and by the time he finished others had showed up and it looked as if we were going to have quite a gathering. The thing now was to entertain them good, then come on with the Cure-All and hope to sell a couple cases at the worst.

I looked out at the crowd to see if Texas Jack was out there, but didn't see him, which gave me some relief. I figured if Jack showed and saw Billy Bob's shooting, he'd want to shoot too, and in the end Billy Bob would find out he was the fella out of some of his dime novels, the one who was supposed to have backed down his hero, Wild Bill Hickok, and that could mean a killing. Billy Bob was just looking for an excuse to use those guns of his, and defending the honor of Wild Bill would be just the thing.

When the crowd was good-sized, Albert gave me the high sign and I climbed up on the stage. I had on my city-slicker suit with the derby and I felt about as natural as a pig in boots, but it comforted people to see a boy dressed up.

"Ladies and gentlemen," I said, "tonight, we got a special treat for you. We're going to show you some shooting the likes of which you've never seen. We're going to show you some magic. We're going to let any man who thinks he's man enough wrestle with Rot Toe, the chimpanzee from Africa. And there's even more. But to introduce the events and demonstrate the manly art of six guns and bullets, I give you our star, the one, and the only, Billy Bob Daniels."

Nobody clapped. They were waiting to see if there was anything to clap about. '

A moment later Billy Bob stepped out from behind the curtain and the clapping began.

I'll tell you, he did look good. He had something about him, and it was stronger and richer than ever before. He was wearing a wide-brimmed, tan hat with a band of rattlesnake hide around it, and his shirt and pants were fringed buckskins the color of butternut, and the buttons on his shirt were ivory-colored bone. Around his waist was a blood-red sash and there was a big Bowie knife stuck in the left side of it, and stuffed more to the front were his revolvers, butts out.

His revolvers were just like the ones Hickok's corpse had. Cartridge converted Colt 60's. They were sightless, so as not to 'snag on the draw, and the gunmetal was almost blue. The grips were magnolia white.

On his feet were moccasin-styled boots with heels, which put another two inches on his height. The boots were the same color as his hat and they had fancy bead and quill work that started at the top and ran down to the toe point.

Billy Bob held up his hand and the clapping stopped. He walked out to the edge of the stage, took a moment to look over the crowd and smile. It was the smile he used when he was winning over the gals.

"My name is Billy Bob Daniels," he said. "I am the son of Wild Bill Hickok."

He let that soak in before he went on.

"Yes, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm saying that for effect, that it's part of the act. But the truth is I am James Butler Hickok's illegitimate son. My mother was a fallen woman of Deadwood, and that is where I was conceived, shortly before that coward Jack McCall snuck up behind Wild Bill and shot him through the back of the, head. Even so, my father's hand, out of pure reflex alone, had half drawn his pistol before he fell forward on his cards. Aces and eights, ladies and gentlemen. The cards that from that day forth have been known as the dead man's hand.

"Well, my mother didn't want me. That's the sad truth. I was given up to a family named Daniels and raised by them, and it wasn't until I was a grown man that I knew the truth, knew that I was actually a Hickok."

Billy Bob had a way of getting a little trill in his throat when he talked about Hickok, and I'll tell you, it was darn near enough to make you believe that Hickok was his papa, even if like me, you knew it wasn't so. Or reckoned it wasn't so. Albert told me it wasn't true, and that was enough for me.

"When we were in Deadwood some time ago," Billy Bob said, "I met a kindly old medicine man, and he told me a secret. He told me this because he recognized me as the son of Wild Bill. He said he knew it instantly. He came forward, and you know what he told me? He told me the body of Wild Bill was not in its grave. That's correct, ladies and gentlemen, not in his grave. This old Indian, whose life my father had saved on countless occasions, had stolen it, out of respect, mind you, and with herbs and spices known only to Indians, he had petrified the body and kept it in a cave where he bowed down before it twice a day to give thanks to Wild Bill for having saved his life.

"But you know what he did? He took me to that body, and because I'm Wild Bill's son, he gave it to me. And, ladies and gentlemen, that body is here today for you to see."

Albert had slipped into the back of the wagon, and now he came out from behind the curtain rolling the box on a hand truck, and when he stopped dead center of the stage, Billy Bob stepped over, grabbed the lid, and swung it back.

Hickok's body had been set up so that his arms were lifted and the revolver barrels were resting on what was left of his shoulders, and when the lid came off, the arms fell forward, locked on the hinges Billy Bob had built into the elbows, and two wires attached to the back of the box and the revolver hammers, grew taut and the hammers cocked. That sudden movement of the arms, those hammers cocking loudly, always made the crowd jump back and there was usually at least one woman in the crowd that would squeal. This time darn near everybody jumped and squealed. I just loved that part.

When the crowd settled down, Billy Bob said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Wild Bill Hickok, preserved and holding the very revolvers that sent many a man to hell on his shadow. "

Billy Bob used his finger to point out the hole in Hickok 's head where McCall 's bullet had come out, then backtracked into a story about how Hickok had saved the medicine man's life, and how when the Indian preserved the body he blessed it. Well, it was a good story and all, but it wasn't the truth. I remembered how we came by that box clear as if it were yesterday, and the only thing about Billy Bob's story that was right was that there had been an Indian medicine man, and it happened in Deadwood. Or at least it got started there.

It was a rainy night in Deadwood and things had not gone well. Earlier that day we had given the show, but it was raining then too, and hardly nobody came, and them that did were soon run off by the rain, except for a couple of drunks, and Billy Bob nearly got in a fight with them. From then on Billy Bob's mood went from sour to mean. I think it had something to do with him expecting more from Deadwood, as it was the death place of his hero. But even the graveyard where Wild Bill was buried seemed to disappoint Billy Bob. I reckon he thought standing near the grave would be a spiritual experience or something, but I think all he got out of it was what me and Albert got out of it, and that was wet and cold.

So it was night and we had pulled out to the edge of Deadwood and were about to throw up a windblind for the mules and get bedded down, when this string-bean fellow in a black-and-orange check suit wearing a derby hat showed up. He got off his horse and came smiling up to us, the rain running off his derby like a waterfall.

I recognized him on account of that suit. He had been at the show that day, but like the others, the rain had run him off. I remembered that he had bad teeth, except for the front two. They were so big and thick-looking you could have tied either one of them on a stick and used it for a hoe.

"What's it we can do for you?" Billy Bob asked the fellow, and .l seen his hand dip into his coat pocket, and for once I was glad Billy Bob had a pistol in there and knew how to use it. Something about the fellow in the checkerboard suit made me nervous.

"Mister," he says to Billy Bob, "I heard what you said about being the son of Wild Bill Hickok today, and I come to talk to you."

'That's about all you heard," Billy Bob said. "You left kind of early. "

"Well sir, I wouldn't have, but the rain put a damper on the festivities."

"You didn't mind coming out here in it."

"No sir, I didn't. And that's because I got something to tell you, might be of interest."

"Well tell me, I'm wanting to get out of this rain."

"I know where the body of your father, Wild Bill Hickok, is."

"Well don't bandy it around, you idiot, only everyone in these United States and the territories knows that. He's in Deadwood cemetery, you hollow-headed fool. I was up there today to look at his grave."

"No sir, he ain't there. But let me explain myself now. I'm Bob Chauncey, but folks call me Checkers on account of my suit." And he smiled real big.

"Well now, I'll tell you. A man that wears the same suit enough to be named after it ain't high on my list of would-be partners. I ain't the best for cleanliness myself sometimes, but I don't live in the same suit neither. I have been known tout on a clean shirt once in a while. And I wasn't one to believe old Checkers washed out his coat and pants nightly and dried it. He wasn't the type. I think the fact that he had what my mama used to call an unsavory habit led me to figure him as something of a messy person. He was a nose picker, and about the best I've ever seen at it. He didn't do it like a lady will do, like she ain't really doing it, but just scratching, and her finger will shoot in and scoop out the prize and she'll flick it away before you can say, "Hey, ain't that a booger?"

He didn't even do it like some men do, which is honest, but not unpolite. They'll turn sort of to the side and get in there after it in a businesslike manner, but you didn't actually have to witness the work or what come of it.

No, Checkers Chauncey, who I think of as Nose Picker Chauncey, must have once been a miner or a mule whacker, as they're the nastiest and most mannerless creatures on earth. There ain't a thing they won't do in front of man, child, or lady. They just don't give a damn. Chauncey went about his digging front-on and open, using his finger so hard it rose a mound on his nostrils, like a busy groundhog throwing up dirt. And when he got what he was looking for, he always held it in front of him just to see, I guess, if he'd accidently found something other than what he expected, and when he thumped it away you had to be kind of fast on your feet, because he didn't care who or what it stuck to.

"Well, Checkers, if you think you can tell me where he is," Billy Bob said, "I'm all ears, and watch where you're thumping them things, will you?"

"Well, he ain't in no cemetery. That sign on his grave is just to fool folks. He used to be up there, but he ain't now. Few years ago they moved the cemetery and he got dug up. They were expanding the town, you see, needed the room. Didn't want a bunch of rots and bloaters in the middle of the main street. So when they dug old Bill up, they opened his box and found he was in pretty good shape for a dead man. Had petrified like an old tree. If you could have tore his arm off; it would have been hard enough I reckon to beat a good-sized pig to death."

"How come you know all this, Checkers?" Billy Bob asked.

"I was there when they dug him up. Was just a kid here in Deadwood when he got his brains blowed out. Missed that, which grieves me, since it was history in the making. Had a job emptying out the spittoons, and Mann's number ten was next on my route, but I didn't get there soon enough."

"So you're saying you saw him dug up and the body was taken then?"

"Nope, ain't saying that. Not right then. They reburied Bill, but that night a couple of fellas I knowed came and dug him back up, and they sold him to-an old Sioux medicine man for the whereabouts of a mine up in the hills, as there was considerable gold digging going on then."

"Sold Wild Bill Hickok to an Indian?" Billy Bob said.

"Yep. And he wasn't just any old Indian. Hickok had killed his oldest son in some shindig once, and he had vowed to get Hickok's body someday. Those two miners remembered that and they knew he knew these hills' like a chicken knows an egg, so they made a swap with him."

"My God," Billy Bob said, "that ain't white."

"This old Indian made him a box out of some sacred trees, and he put that body in it. He figured the spirits in the trees would keep Hickok-'s dead spirit from getting out and doing something to him. Hickok was so good with them pistols of his, lot of folks, especially Indians, thought he had some magic in him, or in them guns. That box was the Indian's way of holding that magic back, get me?"

"I get you, but you still ain't told me where the body is."

"This old Indian liked to open the box up a couple times a day, lift up his breechcloth and expose himself to old Bill's corpse."

"That's disgusting," Billy Bob said.

"Showing your privates like that is a kind of Indian joke. An insult."

"All right, enough about the damned savages and their jokes, where is this old Indian that has the body?"

"The old Indian don't have it no more."

Billy Bob was starting to fidget, and I thought any minute he was going to jerk out that pistol and start beating Nose Picker about the head and ears with it, which would have been all right with me. I could see this was leading to no good, and I was cold and wet and getting wetter. Albert was leaning against the wagon, watching and listening. He didn't look any happier than I felt.

"I swear you are the windiest gas bag I ever did see. If he ain't with the old Indian, then where is he?"

"With the old Indian's son. He's a medicine man too. You see, the old man died and the young fella sort of inherited Wild Bill. He's been living back East getting him a white education, but he had to come back on account of he got caught cheating somebody in Yankee land. He has the body now and wants to sell it, get him some seed money. Get out of the cave he's living in. Maybe go back East when things cool down on what he done."

"And what's your cut in all this, Checkers?" Billy Bob asked.

Checkers smiled. I wished he hadn't. I didn't like them teeth. "Finder's fee. Indian said he'd give me a cut of the money, and then there's just the plain, simple fact that I'd like to see a family brought back together again, even if one of them is dead."

"That's right touching of you," Billy Bob said.

"Always did have me a sentimental streak. It's a kind of sweetness that runs through me. You interested or not?"

"I'm interested. And Checkers?"

"Yeah?"

"You wouldn't lie to an ole Southern boy, would you?"

"No. I wouldn't. I'm partial to Southern boys, actually."

"I hope you are. How much this Indian wanting for the body, provided I see it and want it?"

"Twenty dollars."

"Twenty dollars!"

"That's right. And twenty for me taking you to it."

"Hell, man, ain't nobody got no forty dollars to be giving away."

"Well now, I figure since he's your pa, you'll want the body. And another thing, maybe an even more important thing, is you have that body and you're going to make a ton of money. I mean, you can't kid Checkers. You carry that old boy around with you and it's going to sell more of that watered-down liquor you call Cure-All. And that's going to make you lots of money, I know."

"When do I see the body?" Billy Bob asked.

"Has to be tonight."

"That's a mite hasty, ain't it considering the weather?!'

"I'm leaving the Hills tomorrow. Don't know if I'm corning back. Hell, for all I know, that Indian might have already cut loose of it. He was big to sell."

So there we were, it pitch black and raining had enough to strangle a duck, and Billy Bob wanted to go into the Black Hills with a total stranger who couldn't stop picking his nose, and look at a rotting body in a box. A body that might, or might not be, Wild Bill Hickok. Then he'd probably buy that rascal with the wages he owed me and Albert. . Billy Bob put the wagon in storage, put our old mules in the livery, and rented us some horses, including one for Chauncey, and one- mule for carrying the box out should he buy it, which seemed like a foregone conclusion to me. Provided there was a body in a box.

We put Rot Toe over to one of the whorehouses, and I told one of the fat ladies to take good care of him, and if anything happened to us, which was damn likely, he was partial to fruit and would touch, a bite of meat now and then if that's all there was.

By the time we were all squared away it was pretty late and raining worse than ever. I just couldn't see any sense in this thing we were doing, but I reckon I can't complain too loudly, because there wasn't much sense in me either. I went along and I could have deserted right then and there, lit out and never had to look at Billy Bob again. But I didn't, and I like to think it wasn't so much a dose of the stupids as it was the fact that I didn't want to leave Albert. You see, I knew, for whatever reason, he was going to stick with Billy Bob. And Billy Bob was one of them kind that once he got his mind set on a thing, he was going to do it, and there wasn't no swaying him. Way he was acting, you'd think Wild Bill really was his papa.

Nose Picker worried me too. He was too eager to my way of thinking. Even twenty dollars and the cut of another twenty didn't seem worth what he was doing. I figured soon as we were up in the Hills, bunch of his cutthroat partners would come out of the rocks, kill us, steal the rented horses, and take everything we had on us, right down to our underwear, and them too if they were in the right sizes.

In spite of all this, Billy Bob wasn't a total fool. He had put pistols in both his buffalo-coat pockets and he had another little one in his belt. He fixed me up with a. 38 Smith-and-Wesson and gave Albert a big .45. Chauncey didn't see any of this, as he waited outside the wagon while we got a few things, and him not knowing about the guns was at least some sort of comfort.

As we rode I could see from the way Albert was looking all around, one of his hands inside his coat near the 45, that he felt like I did. He was worried.

I kept my hand away from the Smith-and-Wesson because I was afraid of guns, and figured if it came down to me using it, I'd, most likely try to pull it and end up shooting off my kneecap, or some other part of my body I was even more proud of.

Billy Bob, on the other hand; looked like he was on a picnic, or like he had just ridden out of one of them dime novels he liked to read. The rain didn't even bother him. He sat straight in the saddle, face forward. He was wearing a big, wide-brimmed, black hat, that buffalo coat, dark blue pants with a yellow military stripe, and black, fur-lined boots.

Chauncey slouched in the saddle, smiling to himself, singing some ditty or another, picking his nose all the while. I couldn't tell if he was naturally happy, stupid, or thinking on what he was going to do with his share of the clothes and such he was going to help steal from us later.

Whatever, there we were, right smack dab out in the middle of what used to be called Red Cloud's Big Open, and any minute I expected to get my brains blowed out by robbers in cahoots with Nose Picker Chauncey, or maybe by some Indians that didn't know, or didn't care, that we had won the Indian wars.

But none of that ever happened.

After we'd ridden for quite a few hours and I'd begun to feel like my butt had growed to the saddle, we came on a bad section of rocks and the trail narrowed. Lightning flashed, and when it did I seen at the top of the trail that there were a series of small caves, and those caves looked like open mouths begging us to step inside and get chewed.

When the lightning flashed again, Chauncey pointed at one of the caves, and we got the general idea which one it was, and that that was where the Indian lived.

We started along the narrow trail that led up there, and I could hear pebbles tumbling off the edge and down to the depths below. When the lightning flashed again, I looked down and wished I hadn't. If me and my horse went over, there wouldn't never be no way to sort out which of us was which.

Finally we come to a spot about halfway to the caves and stopped. Chauncey got down and had us do the same.

"We got to walk the rest of the way," Chauncey said, and he had to yell for us to understand him because the wind was whipping away his words. "We can leave our mounts here. Get the nigger to hold them."

Though it would have been smarter for Billy Bob to have left me holding the mules, since I didn't know slick mud from fresh honey, he went along with Chauncey, seeing how Albert was colored. He damn sure didn't want no white man to know he'd feel safer with a colored by his side instead of one of his own kind.

"Let's go- then," Billy Bob said.

I handed Albert the rein to my horse.

"You watch yourself, hear?" Albert said.

"I will."

So the three of us, Chauncey, Billy Bob, and me, went up."

It was a rough walk and the higher it got the less there was to walk on. Rocks slid out from under our feet and cut at our legs and the gorge loomed just to our left, and when the lightning flashed it looked deep enough for you to fall all the way down to the pits of hell.

After the jumble of rocks we come to a clear spot and the cave. There was a torch just inside against the wall, lodged in some rocks, and Chauncey lit it, which was quite a chore, as he had to take a finger out of his nose to hold the torch in one hand and the match in the other.

When the torch was lit, we went deeper inside the cave. Bats flapped above us, and their leavings were all over the floor and smelt right smart. I didn't like bats, no kind of way. They always looked to me like rats with wings, and I don't like rats either. Especially ones that can fly.

Finally it got lighter ahead of us, and we crunched through some old bones lying about, and Chauncey showed us that a lot of them were human. He said this cave had once belonged to a grizzly and that now and then some folks had come in and met him, and he hadn't been such a good host. I know I was glad when he lifted that torch and I didn't have to stare at those bones, particularly one skull with its entire right side crushed in, like a big paw had swatted it.

The light around the bend was from a campfire, and it was right cozy in there. There were a few handmade chairs, a bed, and a table, and over on the right-hand side of the wall, leaning up against it, was a rough-cut box with a lid on it.

But the thing that really got my attention was the young Indian. He wasn't all that young, I reckon. Maybe thirty-five. It's hard to tell with Indians. They seem to me to either age real fast or not at all.

He had on a dusty black suit with a yellowish shirt that was once white and he was wearing an Abraham Lincoln hat. He was a friendly looking fellow and he was smiling at us while he held one hand in his coat pocket.

I figured he had his hand on a pistol and was just smiling either out of habit, or to get us off guard. When he seen that Checkers was with us, he relaxed a mite and spoke.

"Checkers, my good comrade. I thought that I might not see you again. It was my suspicion that you had been caught for some nefarious deed, like horse thievery, but I see that this was not the case. And better yet, you have brought friends to cheer my fire."

"Why's he talk like that?" Billy Bob half whispered to Checkers.

"That damned education stuff," Checkers said. "But he's all right."

"Come," said the Indian, "please come and warm yourself by my meager fire. Take a load off your feet and your mind, and I will see to some liquid refreshment."

What he did for liquid refreshment was reach into his other pocket and take out a pint flask which he sat on a rock by the fire.

We got over near the fire and warmed our hands, but nobody sat yet.

The Indian found four cups and brought them over, then he poured us all a little splash from the bottle and we drank it.

"Please, please," he said pouring us some more. "Sit, please do sit. There is no need to stand on parade here. My home is your home. Or to take two lines from the opera Clan, the Maid of Milan: 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; a charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, which sought through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere."

Billy Bob wasn't so quiet this time. "What in hell is he talking about?"

"Just more of that education stuff," Chauncey said. "An opry is where folks yell at each other to music."

"Ah, Checkers," said the Indian, "you have no heart. An opera is the heart, the soul, the very wing tips of a bird. It soars through the breast and mind and fills the soul."

"How about we do less soaring," Billy Bob said, "and talk about this body I come to look at."

"Yes," the Indian said, "the body of the Great White Warrior, the Pistoleer Prince of the Plains, the one and only, the indescribable Wild Bill Hickok."

"That's him," Billy Bob said.

"Now you remember that deal you made me about bringing a buyer here?" Checkers said to the Indian.

"It has been a month, my good friend. But I remember." The Indian smiled. "What if you had brought them here and I had sold the body?"

"Chance I took," Checkers said. "Besides, I didn't figure you'd sold it. You don't like going down into town so much."

The Indian opened his arms wide. "Isn't that polite? That is Mr. Checkers' way of saying that I am a wanted man in Deadwood."

"What for?" Billy Bob said. "I thought it was back East where you was wanted."

The Indian sighed. "There too. But I can hide better here. As for Deadwood, well, I'm wanted for a slight altercation with a young gentleman who had some rather foul comments about my ancestry. I was forced in a moment of passion, perhaps a moment fired by devil rum, to place the full length of a Bowie knife between his top two ribs, and therefore, let the soul fly out of him."

"What?" Billy Bob said, glancing at Checkers.

"He stabbed the sonofabitch to death," Checkers said.

"And I hope, dear friend," said the Indian, "that you have been better able to quiet your tongue on that matter below than you have here this night."

"You told them, you silly bastard," Checkers said. "I was just explaining."

"So you were, so you were," the Indian said.

The Indian and Checkers grinned at each other. The way they were doing it, I figured it was hurting their lips.

"Can we just get on with what I come here for?" Billy Bob said.

"Of course," said the Indian, "but first let me introduce myself. I'm Elijah Bigshield, Oglala medicine man, retired." He held out his hand.

Billy Bob's face worked to the left, then to the right. "I don't shake hands with niggers or Indians," he said.

"You don't say?" the Indian said.

"I do say. Now let's get on with it."

Checkers cleared his throat. "This here boy has got a special interest in the body. Hickok was his daddy. Some whore in Deadwood was his mother."

"You don't say?" Elijah Big shield said, but the honey in his voice had gone considerably sour. "Isn't that nice. Why you even look like him, now that it is mentioned. 'As a little childe riding behind his father, said simply unto him, Father when you are dead, I shall ride in the Saddle.' Stefan Guazzo, Civile Conversation. And now that saddle has been passed to you, and you may ride in the tracks of Hickok the killer."

I was beginning to feel a mite uncomfortable, but Billy Bob didn't show a sign of it. "I don't want to hear no more of your education," he said. "An Indian or a nigger with an education ain't nothing more than a bird that can talk. It sounds like it knows something, but any fool knows it don't. It just mocks."

"I find you most unpleasant, sir," Elijah said.

"You're going to find me leaning over your ugly face, beating you upside the head with my fist, if you don't show me this body Checkers has been carping about. And there better be a body in that damn box, that's what I'm trying to tell you."

"Anything to please the young gentleman," Elijah said snidely. He walked over to the box and rubbed a hand against it. "I'm asking twenty dollars for it, sir."

We followed him over, with Checkers standing back a bit, and Elijah opened the lid. That was the first time I seen the body, and I knew in my heart that it was none other than who they said it was, Wild Bill Hickok.

"The body possesses magical properties, sir," Elijah said stepping to the side to let Billy Bob see. "Hickok's ability with his guns was most phenomenal; and he himself said on more than one occasion that his hands were guided by spirits."

"How come you know so much about it, you being an Indian?" Billy Bob asked.

"Even the mouse must learn the ways of the hawk if he wishes to survive. That body, sir, is so full of magic, that it is said that if you put it at the foot of your bed at night, Hickok's skill with the pistols will enter into you and allow you to shoot as fast and straight and true as this man-killer ever did."

"Is that a fact?" Billy Bob said. "Who's done it to know?"

"No one. My father told me this, and he was one to know. He tried to steal the magic from the corpse and put it in a pot, but the magic was too strong to be stolen. When he died, my father's soul joined those in the wood that surround the white man-killer."

"The spirits in the wood, huh?"

Elijah nodded. The firelight flickered across his copper face, and even in that silly suit and hat, he looked very, very Indian. The smile lines around his eyes and mouth had fallen off like dead leaves.

"That is correct. The spirits in the wood are old as the world, and they collect to them new spirits when they die, providing those spirits are worthy to become the protectors of the Oglala."

"You don't say?" Billy Bob sneered.

"Oh, I do say. It is the spirits in the wood that keep the black magic of Hickok inside him, lest it be passed onto the whites. The whites have enough magic, without the gun magic of Hickok. "

"And why don't you, or why didn't your father, let Wild Bill's magic pass onto you Indians?"

"White man's magic. It cannot be used by Indians, and Indians don't want it. We have our own magic."

"Lot of good it's done you," Billy Bob said.

"That is quite correct, sir," Elijah said, "quite correct." But his voice had an edge to it, and I was beginning to get spooked. I looked at the body in the box and it seemed strangely alive. It wasn't that I expected it to get out of that box and walk or nothing. It was more like what that medicine man was saying about spirits and all, and there was something about that body, maybe the way the firelight glinted off the bone in those empty eye sockets, that made you think there was a powerful and ugly thing inside it. I somehow felt whatever spirits might have been in Hickok were bad. Maybe Hickok wasn't all bad his ownself but those spirits were, and now they were all that was left of him. I felt better knowing he was between them boards full of Indian magic.

"You tell a good story, Indian," Billy Bob said, smiling one of his nasty smiles, "but it ain't nothing to me but spook talk."

Elijah smiled slowly, so slowly you could almost count his teeth one at a time as his lips folded back. "Yes, you white men certainly have it over us ignorant savages."

Billy Bob nodded to that. "How do I know this here is Wild Bill Hickok, and not just some drunk you've pickled?"

Elijah stepped forward, put a finger on the body's head. "Bend close and look at that hole. Is that not an exit wound from a bullet? Was not Wild Bill shot from behind and the bullet came Out the front of his head?"

"That's so," Billy Bob said, leaning forward for a look. In spite of myself, I leaned too, but I couldn't look into those empty sockets. Billy Bob was what I was looking at, and his eyes seemed to have fallen out of his head and down those sockets like two marbles tumbling down mine shafts. His face tightened for a moment, and then suddenly he turned.

Elijah, after pointing out that bullet hole, had stepped back and pulled what was in his coat pocket out. A Bowie knife. And even as Billy Bob turned, and I turned with him, that knife came flying through the air. To this day I don't know how it missed Billy Bob. I couldn't believe he could move that fast. His left hand came out of his coat pocket, and it was full of Colt's 60. The Colt jumped and roared and Elijah's lips were parted by the bullet. The gun roared again, and this time the slug hit Elijah square between the eyes. The shots were so close together, they almost sounded like one.

Before Elijah hit the ground, Billy Bob flicked his wrist to the left and had Checkers covered. Checkers had one hand to his nose and the other inside his coat.

"Don't shoot me, fella," Checkers said. "I was trying to go for the Indian. I seen what he was about to do and I tried to go for him. I swear, it was the Indian I was after. It's just you're so blooming fast . . . Grief, but you just might be the son of old Wild Bill. That was the fastest damned draw I ever did see."

Slowly Checkers went ahead and brought his gun hand out. There was a little pistol in it. He lowered his arm down by his side and let it dangle.

"I swear," Checkers said, wouldn't throw in with no Indian against a white man."

"Put the gun up," Billy Bob said, "and see if he's dead." Checkers did as he was told. While he did I smelt something burning, and glancing at the fire I seen it was Elijah's stovepipe hat. The first shot had knocked it off his head and it had rolled into the fire. It was just a black wisp now.

Checkers bent over the body, then stood. "He's dead. Course he's dead. He's got two holes in his head. I could have told you that from over there."

Billy Bob turned to look at where the Bowie had gone. It was stuck just to the right of Hickok's head. Billy Bob reached and pulled it out of the wood, and the knife 'squeaked free of it like a mouse that had had its back stepped on. Billy Bob stuck it in the belt around his coat.

"Too bad he wasn't white," Billy Bob said. "Would have been my first kill. Hickok didn't count no Indians or niggers, and I don't aim to neither."

"Didn't count spicks neither," Checkers said.

"That's right," Billy Bob said, "no spicks neither."

Billy Bob reloaded his pistol and dipped it back into his left coat pocket.

"Checkers," he said, "you look that body over for money. He got anything you give it to me. I ain't so sure you didn't lead us up here to cheat and kill us, so you don't get nothing out of the deal, not even the twenty for the trip."

Checkers' face went red and he forgot to put his finger in his nose. "That ain't fair."

"Didn't say it was," Billy Bob said. "Don't feel like being fair right now."

"I brought you up here in the rain, it storming—"

"Shut up and do as I say," Billy Bob said. He opened and closed his hands above his coat pockets where the butts of his pistols showed.

Checkers moved his jaw back and forth a few times, then he bent to searching Elijah.

"Don't palm nothing," Billy Bob said. "I would find that disagreeable."

Checkers brought over a pocket watch, a derringer, and a little bag full of bones, dirt, and beads.

Billy Bob put the watch in his inside shirt pocket. "Indians are hell for trinkets," he said, "but what they need to know time for?" He poured what was in the bag into his hand then back into the bag. "What's this?"

"His medicine bag," Checkers said. "Has his powers in it."

"Did him a lot of good, didn't it?" Billy Bob said, and tossed it into the fire. He flung the derringer as far as he could to the back of the cave. "Whore's gun," he said. "That and tin horns."

Billy Bob put the lid on the box, and we went out of there, back down to where Albert waited, me and Checkers carrying the box with Wild Bill in it. It was pretty heavy.

I didn't tell Albert right then all that happened. I figured he knew a lot of the story from the way I looked at him, and I thought maybe he'd heard the shots, though later he said he hadn't. With the storm like it was, and us being deep inside the cave, he hadn't heard a thing.

We strapped the box on the side of the mule, and Billy Bob took to leading it behind his mount. Me and Checkers rode behind him, almost side by side, and behind us was Albert.

We'd gone a mile or so when the storm got so bad every little bit of the sky lit up with forks of blue-white lightning and the thunder roared like there was a cannon war going on.

About the time all this storm business got built up, Checkers made his play. Maybe he and the Indian had planned such a thing all along and it hadn't gone good. I don't know. Maybe Checkers planned to rob us after we had the body and the Indian's money, that way he could make double. And maybe he hadn't planned nothing at all and was just mad because he hadn't made his share like he thought he should.

Doesn't matter now. With Billy Bob in front of him, he had the perfect chance to do to him what Jack McCall had done to Hickok.

I seen him go for his gun, and I tried to yell, but with the thunder and lightning like it was, I didn't know if Billy Bob could hear me. But he did, or maybe he'd just been waiting for Checkers to make his play all along. Billy Bob swiveled on his critter, and as he did, I seen there was a smile on his face, like he was about to get a present he'd been waiting a long time for.

The way Billy Bob's hand moved was too fast to be real. I figured it was a trick of the lightning or something. One second his hand was on his knee and the next it was full of pistol and the pistol was cocked.

Only he didn't get to kill Checkers. The lightning did it. It was faster even than Billy Bob, and it reached down out of the sky and hit Checkers' little pistol and there was the sound like a giant whip cracking, then Checkers and his horse exploded and I was wearing some of him and some of his suit and some of his horse.

Billy Bob, with a wail, threw himself off his horse onto the ground and started pounding his hand against the ground, screaming. "I had him beat. My first white man. I had him beat," then he began to cry.

I just sort of sat there, dumbfounded, wearing Checkers, his suit, and his horse. Finally I got down off my horse, led him over a piece, got down on my knees, and threw up.

When I was able to get up, I looked over and seen Albert was helping Billy Bob to his feet. Billy Bob was saying over and over, "I had him beat. My first white man."

Albert helped Billy Bob over to his horse and put him in the saddle. He patted him on the knee. "There's just a whole bunch of white men, Mister Billy Bob. Don't you fret. There'll be others."

"I had him, Albert. I had him whipped fair and square, didn't I?"

"Couldn't have been no fairer or squarer," Albert said, like he was talking to a little kid.

"It ain't right. I had him beat."

"Plumb beat," Albert said.

"By the time Wild Bill was my age he'd done a lot of his killing already," Billy Bob said.

"Things were different then," Albert said. "Folks was more for killing in them times. Got up with it on their minds. They had more niggers to do their work, and there was lots of free time for shooting folks."

"I had him," Billy Bob said, shaking his head. "I had him."

Actually, I had a lot of him. I got a handkerchief and cleaned off what I could and got sick some more.

When I was feeling some better, I went over and stood with Albert and he put his arm around my shoulder. We looked at what was left of Nose Picker Chauncey and his horse. It wasn't much. Just a heap of bones, smoking meat, some saddle leather, and a hunk of checkered suit.

Maybe I should have felt-some worse about old Checkers, but to tell it true, I couldn't work up a lot of enthusiasm for feeling bad. I figured after he killed Billy Bob he planned to finish off me and Albert, not knowing we had guns on us and seeing us as easy pickings, which I reckon I would have been. And besides, I just couldn't warm myself to a man that spent the largest part of his life with a finger up his nose, even if he did end up sadlike, being cooked with a horse and a checkered suit.

It seemed like it took forever to get out of the hills, what with the storm being like it was and Billy Bob sort of pouting along, stopping now and then to shake his fists at the heavens and to cuss God and the lightning, calling them some of the meanest, foulest names I've ever heard a mouth utter. The way that thunder rumbled and that lightning sizzled blue-white around Billy Bob, framing him now and then like a bright-colored picture, I half felt it was cussing and threatening him back.

By the middle of next morning we got down out of the hills and back to Deadwood. The sun still hadn't come out.

We collected the wagon, the mules, and Rot Toe, who smelled mighty sweet from all them women petting on him, and we got out of town lickety-split, started heading southwest, which was a direction that suited me fine.

We hadn't gone a day out of that storm when Billy Bob decided to fix up some cracked sideboards in the wagon. He'd been putting it off for a month and there didn't seem any sense in it right then, but I think he did it to make light of what that medicine man had told him about them boards in Wild Bill's box being made out of sacred trees. He knew I'd told Albert the story, and he knew that Albert believed it, and I about half believed it, so he wanted to show us what fools we were.

Like I said, we'd gotten ahead of the rain for a while, and had all been sitting on top of the wagon, trying to get us some sun, and suddenly Billy Bob had us pull over.

Usually, any work to be done, me and Albert did it, but this time Billy Bob took it on himself He dragged the box with Wild Bill outside the wagon, propped the body against it, knocked out those old sideboards he wanted to replace, and put in some boards from Wild Bill's box.

It took about half a day for him to get that done, as Billy Bob wasn't no joiner to speak of, and by the time he was finished and we were on our way, thunder was right behind us, rumbling loud, and when I turned to look back I got the willies, 'cause them dark storm clouds that were following us looked to have come together in the shape of Elijah's stovepipe hat.

That was the day that storm started pushing for us, and it stayed after us from then on.

A week or so later, we stopped in a little town to do our act, and Billy Bob had a joiner make a new box for Wild Bill. When that was done, he took the guns that were in Wild Bill's rotting sash out, cleaned them up, and put them in the corpse's bony hands, rigged up those hinges in the elbows and those wires that cocked the guns.

And that's the true story of how we came by that body in the box, not the one Billy Bob was telling the crowd about a noble red man giving it to him because he was Hickok's son. I mean, his tale was a good story, all right, but it was nothing more than a damned lie.

To get back-to this time in Mud Creek. Billy Bob told his story, then he went out to the clearing with everyone tagging along behind, and he did some shooting.

And I mean shooting. I want to witness that I hadn't never seen him as good as he was that day. He split playing cards edgewise, like always, but now he was doing it from farther away. The same for when he held the mirror with one hand and shot over his shoulder with the other. And he hit nickels tossed in the air with either hand. Before he'd only done that kind of shooting with his right hand.

To put it simply, the man could not miss.

He even went as far as to strike a match with a shot, and I'd heard that was just an old wives' tale and couldn't be done. But he done it, and neatly.

When next I looked out at the crowd, I seen Skinny had joined us. He still had on his apron. He was eating from a bag of peppermints, drooling it down his chin. His eyes looked like a couple of dark holes. It was kind of good to see the old boy.

Then I seen something that made me considerably less happy.

Blue Hat and Texas Jack.

CHAPTER 5

The way those two were smiling, I knew there was going to be trouble. They might as well have been waving flags. Texas Jack was grinning like what Billy Bob was doing was the silliest and easiest thing in the world, and wasn't it a damned shame that all those people were oohing and aahing over him so much.

Blue Hat would look over at Texas Jack like it was all a big joke, then back at Billy Bob the same way. But I thought I could see a little something else in his face that he was trying not to give away. Surprise and pleasure.

Next thing Billy Bob told the crowd he was going to do was a thing I'd never seen him do before, and I felt certain that he was about to go from star attraction to jackass. It was a shot I'd heard him talk about, one Wild Bill used to make, but it was something he'd never tried, not even in practice.

He leaned over to Albert and said something, and Albert looked at him like he was crazy, then Billy Bob said, "Go on," loud enough that I could hear him, and Albert went back to the wagon.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Billy Bob said, "my father used to take a bottle with a cork in it, place it at thirty paces, and with a pistol shot, drive the cork into it and knock out the bottom of the bottle without breaking the neck. Never heard of no one else doing it, and I'd like to show you the spirits that guided my father now guide my hand."

Albert came back with the bottle, walked off thirty paces and set it up, then he legged it back behind the line Billy Bob had drawn in the dirt with the toe of his boot.

Billy Bob, without so much as blinking an eye, drew his pistol—the left one, mind you—and without so much as aiming, fired.

The shot drove the cork into the bottle and knocked out the bottom without breaking the neck.

The crowd cheered, and I'll tell you, so did I.

I reckon Texas Jack and Blue Hat didn't cheer, but they had their mouths open, and even when Jack got his cranked up, Blue Hat's stayed that way. Skinny dropped his bag of peppermints. It was a shot even an idiot could appreciate.

"Well, that's some damn good trick shooting," Texas Jack called out.

Billy Bob turned and looked in the direction of the voice. Texas Jack was elbowing his way through the crowd, and the crowd was stepping aside, fast.

"Thank you, fella," Billy Bob said when Jack was up close. "Yeah," Jack said rubbing his chin, "that's about the best trick shooting I ever seen, except for Wild Bill himself."

"You seen Wild Bill shoot?"

"Yep, I did. Wasn't nobody could out-trick-shoot Wild Bill."

Billy Bob smiled. "Reckon not."

"But trick shooting isn't the same as facing' a man with a loaded gun. That's a whole nuther thing."

The smile went off Billy Bob's face. "He proved he could do that too."

"With drunks and yellow bellies. He wasn't so big when John Wesley Hardin backed him down."

"That's just one of them stories," Billy Bob said.

"And when I backed him down."

"You?"

"Yeah. Name's Texas Jack."

For a long moment Billy Bob stared at Jack, looking for that Greek god he'd read about in them dime novels.

Jack stared back, opened his coat, and showed Billy Bob the butt of that fancy pistol. I don't think Billy Bob even noticed the pistol. He was still trying to fit that face with the one described in the books, and he wasn't having any luck at it.

Jack let his coat fall back over his gun, then he turned and shouldered his way back through the crowd. When he reached Blue Hat he said, "Just like his pa," then the two of them snickered their way toward the saloon.

Billy Bob didn't even know he'd been called out; he was so amazed to see a dime-novel hero out walking around on two legs. But the truth of what happened slowly dawned on him. He turned to Albert and said, "Did that fella call me a coward?"

"No," Albert said quickly, "he was just funning."

"No, I think he called me a coward."

"He did that all right," one of the men in the crowd said, helpful-like.

Billy Bob turned to the man. "You think so?"

"Certain," this big-mouthed fella answered.

"It don't amount to nothing," Albert said, "just some old man shooting off wind. He most likely don't know Wild Bill from a pine knot."

"No," the big mouth said, "that there is the real Texas Jack, and he once backed down Wild Bill."

"The hell he did," Billy Bob said. "That's a lie. He didn't never back down no Wild Bill Hickok." He put his hands on his gun butts.

"Well," Big Mouth said, sort of fading back in the crowd a bit, "that's still Texas Jack."

Billy Bob looked at Albert, then he looked at me, then he looked at the crowd, which had started to shuffle.

Albert cleared his throat. "Ladies and gents, we going to bring on ole Rot Toe, the wrestling ape now. He's from the same place my folks come from, Africa."

"And he looks like your grandpa." It was Big Mouth again. Some of the crowd laughed.

Albert smiled like that was the kindest thing ever said about him. "Well now, that just might be for true, just might be. We colored boys ain't always sure who our folks are."

That got a big laugh. It sort of made me sick to see Albert do that even if he was trying to turn the crowd's attention from Billy Bob and onto something new.

Albert led the crowd over to the ring, and Billy Bob, still standing like a cow that had gotten a lick from the butcher hammer, looked over to me and said, "Did that Texas Jack call me a coward? Was he making 'a showdown?"

"I didn't get it that way," I said.

"Yeah," he said, like he wasn't really asking my thoughts, just thinking out loud, "I reckon he did. Do you think that was the real honest-to-God Texas Jack?"

"He don't look a thing like he was described in them dime novels, so I don't reckon it is."

"No. No he doesn't," Billy Bob said, and he walked back to the wagon kind of hangdog-looking.

I let out a sigh, figuring things were going to be all right, you know, and I went on over to the wrestling ring. When I got there, Albert had gotten Big Mouth to cough up some money and get in with Rot Toe.

Rot Toe was on a leash inside the pen, the leash was attached to one of the ring poles. He was also wearing a muzzle and gloves so he couldn't bite or tear an arm or leg off a fella. Big Mouth, who was pretty good-sized, had his shirt off and was holding his hands wide and waving them around like he was about to do some serious damage on that Jungle ape.

"Now you give my grandpa a real hard time, hear me, Mister?" Albert said.

Big Mouth grinned at Albert through the netting. "I'm gonna choke him plumb to death."

"You do that," Albert said. "We can always make plenty more nigger grandpas, can't we?"

Big Mouth laughed. The crowd moved up close to the ring. Albert turned and saw me. He wasn't smiling like he had been. "Let Rot Toe go, Little Buster."

I went around to the other side and took the leash and 'collar off of him. "Go get him," I said.

And he did.

Big Mouth grinned when Rot Toe turned and started across for him, and I guess it was them red silk shorts we made Rot Toe wear for decency that made Big Mouth in a good humor. They were funny. But when Rot Toe dropped down to running on his knuckles, or rather them big, padded gloves, and Big Mouth seen the spit coming out between the muzzle straps, the color faded out of his eyes. It was too late for him to back down, and he'd already made a horse's ass out of himself in front of all them people, saying how he'd strangle Rot Toe and all.

Rot Toe grabbed Big Mouth by the head and leg tossed him on the floor of the ring and jumped on him a bit. Big Mouth crawled off toward the netting, trying to find the place where Albert had parted it to let him in. But Rot Toe was used to that trick and he grabbed up Big Mouth again, this time by the feet, and slung him around in a circle, whipping him up in the air now and then like a bull whacker trying to crack a whip. Finally he let go and Big Mouth hit the netting and flopped back on the floor, his face and bare upper body marked with red net marks.

"You about to tire him," Albert chanted at Big Mouth. "Stay with it, he looks real weak."

Big Mouth screwed his face up, rolled to his feet, and yelled to Rot Toe. "Come get me, you ugly nigger."

Rot Toe grunted and waddled toward Big Mouth. Big Mouth ducked and rushed in on Rot Toe, grabbed him around the middle, tried to pick him up for a body slam. Rot Toe wasn't going for it though. He locked his gloved fingers into the edges of Big Mouth's pants and pulled them down with a jerk, which was another thing he did kind of regular which I forgot to mention.

Big Mouths big, white butt was poking out at the crowd and ladies screamed at the sight of it, which seemed reasonable to me. I sort of felt like screaming. A few of the ladies, sticking to the fashion of the day, fainted, and there was one or two that just stared like maybe they was in shock. The men were laughing so hard it darn near drowned out Big Mouth's cussing and the sound of his feet as he beat a hasty circle around and around the ring.

You see, Rot Toe had run him the rest of the way out of his pants and was lazily following him on all fours, paying about half a mind to what was in front of him, and the rest of it to the crowd, which was cheering him on. Way Rot Toe bared his teeth looked a whole lot like a happy kid smiling.

Rot Toe finally got tired of the game, caught up with Big Mouth, snatched his feet out from under him and flung him up against the netting a few times, then dusted the floor with him six or seven strikes, and wandered off in a corner to pick at fleas on his chest.

Big Mouth inched his head around to sight Rot Toe, then started crawling for the spot where Albert had let him in "Let me out," he was whispering, "let me out."

Albert was laughing so hard, looked as if he was going to go to his knees. Me and the crowd weren't doing bad neither.

Albert unhitched the place where the net lapped over, and Big Mouth, looking a lot less full of himself, crawled between it and flopped his naked butt to the ground.

A tall, gangly fella with a nose like a sun-dried cucumber smiled at Big Mouth and said, "Think you got him strangled yet, Harmon?"

Harmon didn't say a word. He stood up, and stiff as a soldier on parade, he walked off, his white rear end spotted with dirt, the sound of laughter rumbling like little, sharp thunders behind him.

When it turned dark, Albert hit the stage lanterns and got ready for Billy Bob to make his Cure-All talk. But two things happened right off to upset the apple cart. When I slipped behind the curtain to get Billy Bob to tell him it was time, he was gone. Wild Bill was still on the hand truck, and he was at the end of Billy Bob's stoop, his guns still cocked and pointing to where Billy Bob slept.

I went over to the head of the stoop and seen there was a dime novel lying there, parted, facedown. I picked it up. It was Texas Jack, Deadwood Pistol Demon, or The Shot That Never Missed. 'It was one of the few dime books ever written entirely about Jack, though he come up mentioned in a few others.

I seen that the place it was open to was about the time Texas Jack was supposed to have backed down Wild Bill. The story said Jack opened his coat, showed his pistol, said "Name's Texas Jack," and stared at Hickok in a menacing manner, which I reckon was what he was doing to Billy Bob.

According to the book, Wild Bill said, "Jack, I have heard how fast and accurate you are with your revolver, and I. confess that I want no quarrel with you," then Hickok turned and walked off, shaking a little.

Albert stuck his head through the curtain. "what's going on?" Then he seen there wasn't no Billy Bob.

"He's gone," I said. "After Texas Jack, I reckon."

"'Damn." Albert stepped inside and rubbed his hand over his mouth. "We got a problem here, Little Buster."

"Well, Billy Bob does, as that's the real Texas Jack."

"Look, I can't go in no saloon, Little Buster, and I bet that's where he is."

Albert eyed me a moment. I sighed.

"You got to go talk him back to the wagon before there's some trouble."

"He don't listen to me."

Someone outside yelled, "There going to be a show or not?"Albert stuck his head out from behind the blanket and said sweetly, "We just getting some things ready, any minute now"

When he pulled back inside he said, "It can't be helped, Little Buster. You got to talk him back."

"I don't even like him."

"I know"

"Oh, all right. I'll do my best."

"That's all I'm asking," Albert said. He picked up four juggling balls, a bottle of Cure-All from the rack, put his smile on, and went out to face the crowd.

I took off the derby I had on and put on my cap. I figured if I got killed I wanted to be wearing my cap and not no damn derby. I slipped out the back of the wagon, moved around to the edge of the stage.

Albert was juggling the balls and the bottle. "What we ' got in this here bottle," he was saying as he juggled, "is a miracle. That's right, folks, I ain't shy to say it, a miracle. ) You got piles? Don't answer that. They's women folk in the crowd. You got a belly bothers you when you eat spicy foods? Things just ain't right for you couple times a day, if you know what I mean? Your sight failing you some? We gots what you need right here, the little miracle, our Cure-All.

"Now, I know what you're saying to yourself You're saying ain't no way I can afford a thing like this, a thing that is such a miracle, such a gift of medicine and the angels.

"Well now, it ain't free. I admit it. It does cost you something, but consider this. It fortifies the belly, makes the heart strong, and the list of folks that we have sold this Cure-All to and have come to us satisfied—no, not just satisfied, grateful, that's the word, plumb grateful to the point of crying—is endless. Never an unsatisfied customer.

"Now, I know what you're saying. Why don't he get on with telling us the price? Well, I'm coming to that, ladies and gents, I am. But I got to tell you that there ain't no medicine like this medicine. This will help you keep your youthful vigor and keep all your steps straight and your sight keen. It ain't even bad on taking out stains and using for a wash in your mouth to kill them smells you get from eating.

"And I tell you, ladies and gents, it ain't nothing but two bits a bottle. That's right. Two bits. I know it's hard to believe that something like this, a miracle in a bottle, comes this cheap. But it do. You see, we ain't here just to get your dollar, we're here to see you cured of your ills and made happy, and this here e-lixer is the thing to do it. Two bits, ladies and gents, two bits. Who's first?"

I looked at the crowd, seen he had their attention, went on around behind the wagon, and started up the street.

Thunder rumbled behind me. I turned to look. The sky back there looked dark even for nighttime.

Skinny had seen me, and he had left the crowd and was coming up the street toward me. I waited until he caught up. When he did, he turned and looked back toward the brewing storm, then back at me. He leaned forward, and with the peppermints on his breath overpowering his other smells, he said into my face, "Things is going to get bad."

I got a little chill. I thought of that other skinny fella that wasn't right in the head, and I thought of him grabbing Papa by the coat and saying about how the wind was going to blow us away. ,

I didn't say anything to Skinny, I just nodded, went on over to the saloon, him following like a pet duck.

When we got to the boardwalk Skinny stopped and sat down, his back against the wall, his bag of peppermints between his legs.

I smiled at him.

He took a peppermint out of the sack and began sucking on it.

I took a deep breath and went inside.

Outside you could feel the storm coming, inside you could feel the same thing.

Billy Bob was over to the bar, leaning on it. Riley was putting a beer in front of him and looking -around nervouslike.

At the back I seen that Blue Hat and Jack were at their same table. Blue Hat was looking at Billy Bob with a sort of slow burn. Texas Jack was trying to look bored and was sipping a glass of beer.

It was noisy in there, people chattering like squirrels, but it was an edgy kind of noise. I figured them chatterers could feel the tension between Jack and Billy Bob and were gleefully waiting for the first signs of bullets and bloodshed, not considering that a stray load could splatter what little smarts they had against the saloon wall.

While I was standing there, some of the crowd from our show drifted in, and after a quick look around, they joined the rest of the folks at the far left of the saloon and started to talk, never taking their peepers off Jack or Billy Bob.

To make matters worse, Billy Bob had his head turned toward Jack's table, and I'll bet you a chicken to an egg that Jack could feel those eyes on him as if they were two stones sitting on his head.

I made my feet move, went over to Billy Bob, and stood slightly behind him. "Billy Bob," I said softly, so he wouldn't think I was some fool sneaking up on him, "you need to come on back to the wagon. We're up to the Cure-All talk."

"You and the nigger do it," he said.

"But you're better at it," I said.

"I know that," Billy Bob said, "but I've come over here because I don't like being insulted, especially when it was a cowardly insult, kind you don't know's happening to you."

He said that part loud, and when he finished, the saloon went quiet as a church and all eyes turned to Texas Jack.

Jack looked over at Billy Bob, pursed his lips and said, "Is that a fact?"

"Since it come from a washed-up old geezer like yourself," Billy Bob said sweetly, "I couldn't take it for real at first."

"It was real," Jack said, and he stood up.

Blue Hat had gone cold on his stare, and when Jack stood, he got up and quietly faded away. Riley, over behind the bar, scratched the back of his neck casuallike and stepped briskly to the back, opened the door, and stepped out of sight.

"Billy Bob," I said, "forget it."

"Go back to your nigger," Billy Bob snapped, "and get out from behind me."

Sounded like good advice. I moved over to the left with the rest of the crowd.

"Maybe you ought to go back to the nigger too," Jack said, and he started easing around the tables toward Billy Bob. He got his foot hooked in a chair as he went, and tried to shake it off, and he got plumb crazy about it, started hopping around trying to get that chair rung off the top of his foot. We all held our hearts in our throats while he bounced about, because his face was getting red and puffy, and there ain't nothing like embarrassment to make a man come out shooting.

Eventually he got the chair shook off and made the end of the bar and stood there. He and Billy Bob were about fifteen or twenty paces apart. Jack had his left hand on the bar, his right was high at his side, pointing slightly inward toward the pistol at his middle. I seen that the hand on the bar was fluttering slightly, about as much as Billy Bob's legs were shaking.

"You handled that chair real well," Billy Bob said, and he let his lips pull up into a little smile.

"You should have been like your pa," Jack said, his voice cracking a little, "taken your insult and gone on. Live a lot longer that way."

"Ha!" Billy Bob said. "What's for me to back from? You didn't never back down Wild Bill Hickok, and you know it, and you won't back me neither."

"You sure?" Jack asked, almost politely.

Billy Bob nodded.

Somebody in the saloon chickened out. I heard him go through the bat wings, and when I turned to look they were swinging shut, and Skinny had walked over to take hold of them and look in. Maybe he didn't know exactly what was going on, but he knew it was exciting.

I looked back at Billy Bob and Jack. Silence was so heavy, had someone coughed about then, there'd have been shooting. I wanted to say something to Billy Bob, something that would make this whole thing stop, but nothing came to mind. And I sure as hell didn't want to draw attention to myself, lest he and Jack decide to start in on me first.

It was Jack that finally spoke, and he'd gotten the iron back in his voice. "Can I have your nigger when you're dead?"

"You can have that damn boy too," Billy Bob said. "But you got to get me dead first."

Jack took his hand off the bar and shrugged his shoulders. He said evenly, "You want to do this, kid?"

"You started it," Billy Bob said.

"What if you say you're sorry."

"Nope. You say you are."

"Nope. You know how many men I've killed, kid?"

"Ain't none of them me."

"That's the way you feel about it then?"

'Yep."

Jack stretched his neck, like his collar had gotten too tight. "Guess this is it, huh, boy?"

"Reckon so," Billy Bob said rolling his shoulders. And Jack went for his gun.

He wasn't fast at all. I could have beaten him. Anyone could have. He was washed up, plain and simple.

But Billy Bob . . . well, try and picture this. One moment Billy Bob had his hands by his sides, the next they were full of pistols and the pistols fired and the left side of Jack's face jumped off in a spray of blood and bone and went all over the bar. Billy Bob cocked and fired both pistols again, and before Jack could so much as wobble, he caught two more bullets in his chest, and when they hit a spray of blood squirted out of his back and covered the wall behind him. I tell you, it was enough to make a billy goat lose his chow.

It couldn't have been long, but it seemed like Jack stood there for a week, this surprised look on the side of his face that wasn't blowed off, and finally he folded up like a cheap pocketknife and flopped backwards to the floor, hitting his head so hard it sounded like thunder.

The saloon froze and the smoke from the pistols froze and no one breathed, until from the background someone said softly, "I'll be a sonofabitch," and that was what let the mortar loose. The world started to move again, the gun smoke twined upwards to the ceiling and Billy Bob put the pistols in his sash and let out a heavy sigh that was a cross somewhere between happiness and relief.

The chatter started again, louder and edgier than before, churning out fast and snappy like the loads from a Hotchkiss gun, and the crowd moved toward Billy Bob , and was like little toads moving toward the king frog so he could croak loud and long for us, show us how it was done.

Riley, who had been peeping around the edge of the back door, came on out, tiptoeing and smiling. He leaned over the bar and looked at Jack, then he went around and bent over him.

"Dead," Riley said.

"You don't say?" Billy Bob said. "You mean splashing some beer on him won't bring him around."

Blue Hat came forward then, and things got quiet. We'd sort of forgotten him in all the excitement. He turned and looked at Billy Bob, then he walked over and looked at Jack. He bent down like Riley had done, and when he stood, he had Jack's pistol in his hand, which, by the way, Jack hadn't even managed to clear from his holster.

Blue Hat turned, holding the pistol loosely by the grip with a thumb and forefinger. He looked at Billy Bob. "I don't want no trouble," he said.

"That's good," Billy Bob said, but he sounded disappointed.

Blue Hat dropped the gun on the bar.

Riley, quick as a snake, sidled up to it, smiled at Billy Bob and said, "I'd like that as a souvenir."

"I was going to ask that," Blue Hat said to Billy Bob. "Jack said you was just a trick shooter, not a gunman."

Billy Bob glanced down at Jack's body. A messy, dark puddle was forming under it. "He ain't saying much of anything now, is he?"

"I ain't never seen shooting like that," Blue Hat said.

"And you won't again, unless it's me you see. You want that pistol, boy, take it. But unload it first. It would make me a mite more comfortable."

Blue Hat unloaded the pistol.

Riley watched him doing it, looking like a dog that had been kicked.

"You take them bullets," Billy Bob said to Riley.

"Yes sir," Riley said, just like it was the happiest thing he'd ever done. He scooped up the bullets, put them under the counter about where the Mexican's pistol was.

"And throw that ugly old liar out of here," Billy Bob said. "And mop up that blood, it's stinking up the place."

"Yes sir," Riley said. He ducked his hand behind the bar and got that same old rag he'd had the other day, went about mopping the counter off. The rag filled up quick, and I felt my stomach going. I tried to go for the door, but I couldn't make it. I put a hand on the bar and threw up on top of one of the stools.

When I lifted my eyes I seen Skinny looking at me over the bat wings. Next thing I knew Riley was putting a boot in my butt. "Get out," he screamed, "get out."

"Hold there," Billy Bob yelled. "Mind who you're kicking. He works for me."

I turned slightly and seen Billy Bob looking at me and Riley, and he was smiling. He looked ready to draw them pistols again. It didn't take much to know he was liking all this power. Wasn't no other reason he'd have stopped Riley from kicking me out. Any other time he'd have kicked me out his ownself.

"I'm sorry Mr. . . ." Riley stuttered.

"Daniels," Billy Bob said. "Wild Bill Daniels. And you go back to doing what you was doing. Get that trash out of here. Then clean up Buster's mess. He's been sick. Buster, come on over here."

I went. I didn't know what else to do. I hadn't managed to stop the fight, and I didn't know if I was glad Billy Bob was the one who won or not.

Billy Bob put his arm around me. "What'd you think of that, boy?" he said nodding at the spot where Jack still lay. Riley was getting hold-of the body under the arms and was fixing to drag it out the back way.

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Billy Bob didn't seem to notice. He slapped me on the back. "Barkeep. A whiskey for my friend here. Whiskey on the house."

That got a cheer from folks, and they started gathering around me and Billy Bob, and suddenly it was hot, real hot, and when I looked around me, it struck me how nobody looked like a person anymore. Their faces had changed. They had the same looks, you see, but there was something about the way they were smiling and the way their eyes looked that made me think that the souls had gone out of them.

Riley dropped Jack and started pouring glasses of whiskey and beer, and suddenly I had a whiskey in my hand, and I felt like I needed it, so I drank it, and the next thing I know I had another, and I drank it too.

"Ain't you got that stinker out of here yet?" Billy Bob yelled at Riley, and nodded at Jack's feet, which were now the only part of him you could see at the edge of the bar.

"But you said. . . " Riley started, then changed his mind. "Right," he said. He went back and got Jack and dragged him out the back door, and as he did, I got one last look at Texas Jack, Deadwood Pistol Demon, and he didn't look so special. He was just a fat, old, dead man with half his face blowed away. And there probably hadn't never been nothing special about him. He was just a sorry old loafer who lived off storybook rep more than fact, and it had caught up with him. I figured that story Riley had told me about the Mexican was only half-truth. Jack most likely shot that sucker in the back and Riley's mouth took over from there.

Well, Riley got the mess cleaned up, and he came back and poured more drinks, and Billy Bob called for more, and I kept finding a whiskey in my hand, and I kept drinking it.

Each time I looked up from finishing one, the place had changed some. People looked odder and odder, even when I wasn't seeing them through the bottom of a whiskey glass.

Blue Hat was up by Billy Bob now, and it was like Texas Jack hadn't never been. The tick had dropped off the dead dog and was hooked onto another. The bony saloon girl was sitting on a stool next to Billy Bob and was entwined around him now, instead of the farmer, who had probably stayed home to do a bit of Bible study with his wife.

Riley was leaning over the bar and I couldn't get my eyes centered on nothing but his teeth, which seemed big and strong and ready to chew me or anything else up. His mouth was opening and closing, and it took a while before what he was saying to Billy Bob sunk into me. He was telling him about Homer, and saying what a bad hombre Homer was, and how he was even tougher than Jack, and he went on and on about the gunmen Homer had faced, and he told that story he told me about him tracking down Wild Bill Longley by himself

I was dizzy, real dizzy. Too many Wild Bills. Wild Bill Hickok, Wild Bill Longley, Wild Bill Daniels.

"He ain't nothing but an old man," I blurted out.

"What's that?" Riley said.

"I said he ain't nothing but an old man. You said he was an old man, seventy year old."

"Well now, boy, I ain't saying different now. I'm just telling Wild Bill here that Homer ain't gonna shine brightly on finding out there's been a shooting in town."

I seen what Riley was doing, but couldn't put the thought into words. I was too drunk. I had just come to that understanding. I'd never drank more than one whiskey in my life, and now here I was with a belly full of that hot, worthless rot, and I was so drunk I couldn't make my mouth work. I wanted to tell Riley to go to hell. I wanted to say to Billy Bob that it was just Riley talking, trying to match him up with the sheriff, trying to turn real life into a dime novel, but the only thing that would come out when I finally got my mouth open was what I said before. "Homer's an old man. You said he was seventy year old."

"You said that already, hoss," Riley said, and I hated those teeth of his. He didn't look like nothing but teeth with a set of eyes over the top of them.

"He's drunk," Blue Hat said.

Billy Bob laughed shortly, put his arm around my shoulders, and started walking me toward the door. I tried to push against it, but I didn't have no iron in my legs. I think if Billy Bob hadn't had his arms around my shoulders I'd have fallen down.

"Seventy year old," I said. "He ain't no gunfighter. You ain't neither."

Billy Bob pushed a little harder until we went through the bat wings, then when we was out on the boardwalk out of eyeshot of the drunks, he pulled me up close to him and pressed his forehead against mine and whispered. "You're embarrassing me, you dumb fool."

"He ain't no gunfighter, just an old man," I said, but it sounded more like a mumble.

Billy Bob turned me around and kicked me in the butt. I went tumbling into the street.

"Go on back to the wagon and sober up, kid. Stay out of my sight tonight."

I didn't see Billy Bob go away. I wasn't seeing much of anything. I rolled over on my back and looked at the sky for a bit, then I closed my eyes. When I opened them everything was fuzzy, but someone was leaning over me, and he was thin and had his hands stuck out and there were guns in them, and for a moment I thought Wild Bill Hickok had gotten out of that box and come to pay me a visit.

"Bang! Bang!" It was Skinny's voice.

"Help me, Skinny, I'm sick."

Skinny leaned close enough that his face came out of the fuzz.

"Things is going to get bad." He stuck his fingers at me. "Bang!"

"I ain't for playing. I'm sick."

I closed my eyes again, and a moment later I felt hands on me. When I opened my eyes, Skinny was working with all his might to get me up. I gave it everything I had to help, but there just wasn't anything there.

Then Albert stepped out of the dark, pulled me to my feet, and slung me between him and Skinny. They hauled me away, the toes of my boots plowing trenches.

"I tried to stop him," I said to Albert. "I tried."

"I know, Little Buster."

"He killed Jack," I said. "That old man didn't have a chance. He wasn't nothing, Albert. I could have beat him. Anybody could."

"Hush up, Little Buster"

"I didn't know what to do, Albert. I tried but wasn't nobody listening to me."

"You did what you could. Wasn't no stopping them."

I got sick again. They stopped while I chucked up the whiskey in my gut, but it didn't help me feel no better. They carried me to the wagon and laid me out on my old stoop. "Not in here, Albert," I said. "Not here."

"Shush up, Little Buster. You just going to lay here while I fix you a bedroll outside. I'll come get you in just a shake."

"No Albert," I said, but Albert was gone.

Everything was spinning. I turned my head toward Wild Bill and his box. It looked like that damned near skull face was grinning at me, and I swear to God there was a glint coming out of them bony sockets. The same glint I seen in Billy Bob's eyes after he'd killed Texas Jack. The glint he had when all them folks were gathered around him, trying to suck off the killing he'd done.

My eyes closed. I felt like I was whirling around and around. I could hear voices, though wasn't none of them American. It was them spirits in the wood. I knew it. They was talking to me. And though I couldn't make out a thing they were saying, I knew what it amounted to was the same thing Skinny had said: "Things is going to get bad."

CHAPTER 6

I don't remember falling asleep, or when the voices went away—if there ever were any voices besides them inside my head—but when I woke up I was out of the wagon.

Albert had built a tent out of tarp and had me under it. He and Skinny were inside with me. It was raining. I could hear it drumming on the tarp. I could hear the wind picking up too. It was still nighttime.

My mouth tasted dry and awful, like some rats had nested there. "The storm here?" I asked.

"Getting here," Albert said.

"We got to move on, with or without Billy Bob," I said. "He ain't going to go, Albert. He's living a dime novel and he loves it."

I told Albert about the sheriff, about how Riley was setting the old man up for a shoot-out. I told him how I thought it was what Billy Bob wanted. That he'd force the play, even if the sheriff wanted no part of it.

"I'm going to try and talk to him, Little Buster. See if I can put some sense in his head."

"He ain't the same as he used to be, Albert. He's gone a whole lot worse. I think he's got Wild Bill's gun spirit in him. You ain't never seen anything move as fast as he drawed on Jack. It was spooky, I tell you. With Wild Bill's shooting-iron spirit in him, and his own nasty disposition . . . Well, I think he's pushed too far, Albert, he'll kill most anybody."

"He won't kill me."

"He ain't the same, I'm trying to tell you."

"Bang," Skinny said loudly, drawing up both hands quick-like and pointing his fingers at me.

"Quit that now," Albert said. "Just quit it. It's making me shaky."

"He seen what Billy Bob done," I said. "He's mocking him." I propped up on one elbow. "I think we ought to go on without Billy Bob. Leave the wagon. Just get Rot Toe, sell some of our stuff and buy a couple mules, ride out of here."

"Can't," Albert said.

"You said yourself this was a bad town, Albert. You know that storm is coming and it ain't no regular storm. It's full of vengeance and it's Billy Bob it wants But if we're here with that Hickok's body . . . We got to leave, Albert, you know that."

"I can't."

"What in Heaven's name has Billy Bob got hanging over you? It ain't slave days. You can go as you please. You don't owe him a thing. It don't make sense you letting him run your life like that."

"I got my reasons. Just shut up now, Little Buster. You're starting to make me mad."

I shut up. Skinny stretched out on the ground by me and fell fast asleep. I turned over and slept. Next thing I knew it was morning.

Skinny was still asleep, but Albert wasn't around. I got up and went outside It was raining a steady drizzle and the sky was growling and lightning was flashing.

I went over to the wagon and found Albert inside looking at Wild Bill.

"He ain't nothing but bad luck," I said climbing inside. "Ain't nothing been good since we took him on."

"Wasn't all that good before we got him, was it?" Albert said, turning to look at me. "And before I picked you up, wasn't nothing for me to do but worry about Billy Bob. Now I got you too."

"Don't you worry none about me," I said. "I can take care of myself"

"You can, can you?"

"That's right. I'm seventeen now."

"So you are. Ain't nobody can take care of himself completely, Little Buster. We all needs someone sometime for something."

We were kind of smiling at each other then. I changed the subject before we got so chummy I felt like crying. "You ain't seen Billy Bob yet?"

"Stayed up last night waiting on him. He never showed."

"Still feel like you got to talk to him?"

"Yeah."

"When?"

"When he shows, I reckon."

He didn't show all that day. The storm got worse as time went on. The wind had gotten so high the trees were swaying on either side of the street and you could hear them groaning and you could hear the lumber in the buildings in town creaking.

We did some things to kill the time. We put Wild Bill in his box. We made sure Rot Toe was high and dry inside his tarp-covered cage. We fed and watered him. We took the mules over to the livery where they'd be more comfortable from the storm. We played some cards and cheated each other. Somewhere during the day Skinny came awake and wandered off, maybe going back to the saloon or bumming money for peppermints.

Finally it was dark, and still no Billy Bob.

We went out and took down the tent Albert had made, as the rain had run up under it and it wasn't a good place to lie anymore. We were folding it up, putting it in a corner of the wagon when Albert said, "I got no choice. I'm going over to the saloon. See if I can talk to Billy Bob."

"They'll kill you."

"If they don't, I reckon this storm will."

"All right, listen Albert. You got a mind to talk to Billy Bob, you let me go with you. I'll go in there and get him to come out. Try anyway. That way, no harm's done. Okay?"

"All right, Little Buster, we'll do it your way."

By the time we got to the saloon we were drenched from head to foot. The street was nothing but mud and water and the sound of the rain on the buildings was as loud as Indian drums. Or loud as I figured they'd be. I'd never heard any.

Skinny was standing outside the bat wings, his hands in his pockets, shaking a bit. The wind and the rain had brought some coolness with it. He smiled at us. We got up under the walkway porch with him and we all stood there for a while, shivering, looking out at the street.

"All right," I said finally, and I went inside.

Billy Bob was where I'd seen him last, and so was the bony saloon girl—wrapped around Billy Bob like a snake twisting on a limb. Riley was leaning over the bar, laughing at whatever Billy Bob wanted him to laugh at. Blue Hat was dangling on Billy Bob's every word, as if they were hooks. I went over to Billy Bob. He didn't exactly look glad to see me, but he managed to be civil. "Buster. How you doing this fine day?"

"It's raining," I said.

"Not in 'here," he said, and everyone in the saloon laughed.

"It's the storm, you know?"

"Oh hell, don't start with the storm again," Billy Bob said, then he turned and told everyone about me and Albert believing the storm was haunted. That got him another good laugh.

When he was through, I said, "Albert's outside. He wants to talk to you."

"Anything a nigger's got to say can wait," Billy Bob said.

"This is important."

"I said it could wait, kid."

"Billy Bob!" It was Albert's voice, sharp and cleat Billy Bob shook that saloon gal off like a bulldog shaking off water. He stood, turned, and one hand came to rest on a pistol butt. Albert had his hands on top of the bat wings and he was looking at Billy Bob. He looked pretty stern.

"Don't you come in here," Riley bellowed.

"What do you mean calling to a white man like that, nigger?" Billy Bob said.

Albert let a strange smile work across his face. When he spoke it was the voice he'd used that day in Louisiana to keep Billy Bob from shooting that wife-beat fella. "I got to talk to you. Now"

"I don't want to hear nothing about no storm, dammit."

"It don't matter about the storm. We got to push on anyhow. We don't, you going to end up killing the sheriff."

"I ain't going to kill nobody unless they mess with me. Get on out of here and leave me alone, or I'm going to blow a hole in your black face. Hear?"

Albert held Billy Bob's gaze for a moment. "Have it your way, nephew," he said, and went away.

A look came over Billy Bob's face like I'd never seen before. It was sort of anger and sort of confusion. He went after Albert, and I followed on his heels, and the crowd followed out onto the boardwalk.

Billy Bob rushed out in the street, took hold of Albert's shoulder, and tried to spin him, but it was like trying to spin a tree. Billy Bob had to step around in front of Albert to stop him.

I was off the boardwalk now, out in the rain, easing toward them, Skinny tagging at my heels, and I was close enough to hear Billy Bob say, in an almost whining voice, "You're embarrassing me, Albert."

"I'm tired of this game," Albert said. "I could do worse."

Billy Bob shook, and I don't think it was from the cold. He stepped out of Albert's way and said loudly, "And remember that, nigger. Go on back to the wagon. I'll be there dreck'ly to give you a beating."

Albert wasn't paying him any mind. He'd started walking again.

Billy Bob straightened his shoulders and walked back to the saloon, pushing me with his shoulder as he passed. I heard him say something to the crowd on the boardwalk about uppity burr heads, then I was running after Albert, Skinny running after me.

I caught up with Albert and grabbed his arm. "What in hell was that nephew stuff about? He could have killed you. He's crazy, Albert. Can't you get it through your head. Crazy!"

"Don't start on me too. Take your hand off.

I let go and followed after him. "Albert, listen—"

"Don't never call me nephew again," I heard Billy Bob say.

Albert stopped walking.

I turned to look, fearing to see Billy Bob standing there with his hands hanging over his gun butts. But the street was empty. The crowd had gone back inside the saloon. There was just Skinny standing there pointing his fingers at us.

"Damn mockingbird," I said, snatching my cap off my head and slapping at Skinny with it. "You scared me half to death."

Skinny fell down on his knees in the mud, started crying, and covered his head with his hands against my cap beating.

"He didn't mean no harm," Albert said, grabbing my arm. "Leave him be." Albert took Skinny's elbow and helped him up.

"I'm sorry, Skinny," I said. "I didn't mean nothing." I put my cap on his head and patted him on the shoulder. He seemed comforted, like an old dog you say some easy words to after you've lost your temper and yelled at it.

Albert put his arms around both of us. "Come on, boys, let's go back to the wagon. Leave the town to those fools."

CHAPTER 7

We hadn't been back at the wagon for more than an hour, I reckon, just in some dry clothes, when there came a hammering on the door and I took my hands from over the top of the lantern-where I was warming them, and opened it.

It was Billy Bob. His hat had washed down over his face, and there in the glow of the lantern he looked like a crazy man. He smelled like a drunk. Which is what he was. He shot out a hand, grabbed me by the shirtfront, and tugged me out of the wagon into the mud and rain.

"And you nigger," Billy Bob yelled, "come out of there. And what's that idiot doing in here? Ain't them my clothes?"

"Only dry ones that would fit him," Albert said. "Mine are too big, Buster's too small."

I got up out of the mud, raked some of it off.

Billy Bob hadn't bothered to turn and look at me, and I'll tell you, the back of his head looked real inviting. I wanted to pick something up and brain him with it. But I didn't. I was scared.

"I don't care whose clothes are too big, and whose are too small," Billy Bob said. "You got no call to put my clothes on him. "

Skinny was wearing one of Billy Bob's old, fringed outfits and some thick, wool socks. He was a hell of a sight. A sort of fool's version of Billy Bob, provided you could actually get more foolish than Billy Bob.

"Come out," Billy Bob raved. "And bring that simple head with you. I'm going to give him a thrashing."

Skinny's eyes darted ever which way. He was used to being in trouble for things he didn't understand, and he was used to looking for a way out. With the wagon wall back up in place there wasn't but one way to go, and that was out that door, right into Billy Bob's arms.

"Tell you what," Albert said easing toward the door. "You give me that thrashing, nephew."

"Don't call me that," Billy Bob said.

"That's what you come here for, ain't it? Ain't that what you told them? That you was going to come back here and give your nigger a thrashing?"

Albert stepped out into the rain, closed the door behind him.

Billy Bob stepped back. He said something, but I didn't catch it because thunder rumbled real loud. Whatever it was, you can bet it was a mouthful of sin.

"Thrash me," Albert said, and he took a step forward. "Get your nigger in line. Thrash me."

Billy Bob stepped back. "You forgot whose wagon this is?" Billy Bob said.

"I ain't never forgot whose wagon this is," Albert said.

"You got no call to come over to the saloon like that, talk that way in front of my friends."

"Friends? You call that mess friends? You just a circus passing through to them, nephew."

"Don't call me that no more, don't never call me that no more, never, never, hear? It ain't right for a nigger to … Don't do it, you hear?"

Albert stepped right up to him. "I hear, nephew."

Billy Bob went for his pistols, and even drunk he was fast. But it didn't do him no good. When Albert had stepped close, he put his hands just above Billy Bob's pistol butts, and Billy Bob's hands pushed Albert's down on the guns.

Albert drew the pistols out of Billy Bob's sash, stepped back and held them loosely. "Darky trick," he said. Albert put one of the pistols under his arm and began unloading the other, letting the shells drop in the mud. "Now don't do that, Albert," Billy Bob said. "That ain't right."

Albert began unloading the other pistol. He stepped over to Rot Toe's cage, threw back the tarp, and tossed both pistols between the bars. Rot Toe waddled over, picked one of them up, and smelled of it.

"You . . . you tell your grandpa to hand those out," Billy Bob said.

Albert stepped toward Billy Bob quickly, and Billy Bob swung.

Albert didn't even try to block or duck. Billy Bob's fist caught him on the side of the head, but Albert's head barely moved. Albert grabbed Billy Bob by the shirt collar with one huge hand, used the other to slap Billy Bob. He did that three or four times, real quick, then he shoved Billy Bob into the mud.

Before Billy Bob could scramble up, Albert had him by the back of the collar and the seat of the pants, and he lifted and drove Billy Bob's head into the mud a few times, sucking the hat off his head, filling his mouth and eyes with muck.

Rot Toe was hopping up and down in his cage, chattering wildly, banging one of the pistols against the bar. He was like a drunk at a girlie show.

Now Albert had Billy Bob upright again, and had gone back to slapping. Every time he'd slap, mud would fly out of Billy Bob's hair and his knees would droop. When Albert got tired, he just let Billy Bob fall back on his butt in the mud.

About that time, Skinny opened the door of the Magic Wagon and looked out. He saw Billy Bob sitting in the mud, the rain washing streams of the same out of his hair and down onto his face. Skinny let out with a strange laugh. It sounded a lot like a cow bawling. He jerked both fingers at Billy Bob, said, "Bang."

Shivering more from anger than the cold rain, Billy Bob stood up. He looked first at Albert, then Skinny, then me, and when he did I felt weak. There was pure murder in his eyes.

He picked up his muddy hat and shook the mud off of it and put it on. He pointed a finger at Albert. When he spoke he sounded almost winded, but it was just plain mad, is what it was. "You make that monkey hand over my pistols now. You hear?"

"You make him," Albert said.

Billy Bob took a deep breath, cut Albert to pieces with a look, and went over to the cage. "You give me those," he said to Rot Toe, and he shot a hand out and grabbed at the one Rot Toe was holding.

Rot Toe grabbed Billy Bob's wrist, jerked him forward until Billy Bob slammed against the bars. Using the pistol in his other hand, Rot Toe reached through the bars and slammed the butt against Billy Bob's noggin. It was such a hard lick it creased Billy Bob's hat to his skull and sent him dropping to his knees. Had Rot Toe not been holding him by the wrist he'd have fallen over. Rot Toe reached through the bars and whacked Billy Bob a couple more times with the pistol, and was just really starting to enjoy himself when Albert said, "Let him go, old man."

Rot Toe looked at Albert. For a moment, I didn't think he was going to do it, but he let go. He waddled back to the center of the cage and sat down, huffed up like a kid that's had a toy taken from him.

Albert went over and pulled the tarp down on the cage. He pulled Billy Bob up and pushed him back against it. He slapped Billy Bob on the face lightly a few times. One of Billy Bob's eyes opened, then the other. Albert let go and stepped back. Billy Bob managed not to fall down. He shook his head, took some long breaths, and staggered away from the cage toward the street. "You'll pay. All of you," he said. "You can't do this to the son of Wild Bill Hickok."

He stepped into the street and squished across the mud and over into the woods. We heard him crashing around out there for a while, then Albert said, "Let's go inside," and we did.

If my suit wasn't ruined, it was darn close. Except for Skinny, who was still high and dry, we were soaked to the bone. Albert and I took off our clothes and strung them on a line across the wagon, then we wrapped ourselves in blankets and sat on the stoop. I didn't feel so good. I had a slight fever and sniffles.

When we were as warm as we could get, Albert said, "Little Buster, I think it's time I told you some things so you'll understand. I'd like you to just sit quiet until I'm finished."

"When I was a boy, Little Buster, I was the son of an ex-slave during the worst time you can imagine, next to slave days themselves. It was called Reconstruction, and I know you've heard of it. We coloreds was supposed to be freemen that could work for our living, just like whites, but wasn't too many folks would hire us, not for any kind of work. Most of them had gotten used to getting it from us for free, and wasn't in the mood to start paying for it. Part of it was the Yankee government. They was telling folks they was supposed to hire us 'cause the Yankee president said so, and people didn't cotton to that much.

"Lot of whites blamed us coloreds for-their misery, 'cause of the way the Yankees was pushing on them. And to tell it true, Little Buster, them Yankees hurt us all in the long run 'cause they turned their winning into such a mean thing.

"Well now, I heard tell that the Army was hiring coloreds, and I heard too that they paid and you got to wear a pretty uniform. I heard they treated you near good as whites, and that some coloreds had even made sergeant, which was as far as they'd let a dark man go. Sounded like the life to me. I went out West and joined the Cavalry, was out there for years.

"I'll tell you, Little Buster, the Army wasn't no paradise, fighting Indians and all. And we coloreds fought more Indians than damn near anybody, but you don't hear tell of that. Or if you do, you just hear it was the Army done it, and they don't mention it was a colored troop what was the ones doing all the shindigging.

"Still, being a man in the Army was a whole sight better than being a nigger out of it, and sometimes I figure I should have stayed there. But I didn't. I quit and joined up with a fellow named Doc Madonna, and Madonna was a fine man. Didn't see no colors at all. He just saw a man. He made me a partner after a time, and we traveled the country selling medicine, not claiming it could do more than it could do, and we did some juggling and such. Wasn't bad at all.

"But Doc died and the wagon was left to me. For a while I done what we'd been doing, but it just wasn't the same without him. I got tired of it and went back to East Texas, looked up my family.

"When I got there I found that my daddy had died some time back, and wasn't long after my mama had taken up with a white man on account of she needed the money he paid her, and this white man gave her a child, and that child was thirteen when I come home. Her name was Jasmine. She was what you call a. high yeller. Pretty thing.

"Well, I figure Mama done the best she could and all, having all them mouths to feed, so I didn't judge her none. And besides, that white man was long gone and all the kids except Jasmine had grown enough to go off on their own, get a little farm work and such, start their own poor families.

"I got me some work fixing things here and there, working some in the blacksmith shop. Little farm work from time to time. Anything to turn a dollar.

"Well now, to make a long story short, Little Buster, Mama died three years later, and Jasmine, she got in with this white boy and she got with child. That white boy got tired of her real quick-like, and he didn't come around no more. She didn't never tell me who he was, and it was a good thing, or maybe I'd have had to turn his head around on his shoulders some, and that wouldn't have done me or nobody no good.

"This baby was born, and him being the son of a white man and a high yeller, he come out looking white as you. Only thing he had that was like the family was the little red star birthmark low on his back. Jasmine had it. I have it, though you can't see it as good on me 'cause of me being a colored. But on her and on this boy it showed up good.

"Now there didn't seem a thing for her to do but to put this child on a white's doorstep. For Jasmine to have a white baby would have meant she and that child would have been treated worse than slaves, but she figured she could pass him for white and get him in with a good family and all, and he'd grow up having a chance. She picked this family, the Daniels, 'cause they had money and seemed like pretty good folks. She left the baby on the doorstep, and sure enough they took him in and they raised him white, as they didn't know that he wasn't.

'This boy they named Billy Bob and he grew up not wanting a thing. He had coloreds at his feet cleaning the floors, dusting the house, and he never knowed he was one of them.

"Jasmine got her a job working for the Daniels as a maid, and that way she got so she could keep an eye on him. And it didn't make her happy. He treated her and all the coloreds like dirt, 'cause the Daniels may have been good in their way, but they figured a nigger was just some kind of animal that you could teach to clean furniture, and wasn't good for much else, and Billy Bob, he was just like them.

"There was this buggy accident, and the Daniels, the ones that had become Billy Bob's mama and daddy, was killed in it, and when that happened, the children started scrambling to get the inheritance. Billy Bob being just a took in child, and there not being no will, didn't end up with nothing but his name. They put him out of the house and on his own.

"Jasmine should have just let it end there, let him go on and live as a white man, but I figure it was eating her inside, being his mama but not getting to tell him. And maybe she thought if he knowed he'd come from black folks well as white, he'd straighten some, not be so hateful toward coloreds, grow up to be a better man.

"Well, she told him. Proved it with that red star on her back, and he went darn-near crazy, knocked her down and run off. Jasmine come and got me and I went to get him, had about half a mind to beat him to death, but I found him drunk in a ditch and took him home to Jasmine.

"He wasn't no count even sober, and took to cussing his mama, saying it wasn't so, that he wasn't no nigger, and I don't have to tell you how bad it distressed her, Little Buster. But he was still her boy and she loved him. I reckon I felt for him too. He was my nephew and he didn't ask to be part white and part colored, but I couldn't help but think that boy just had him a bad streak, and knowing what he knew now was just making it wider, "He didn't go into town no more, he was so ashamed, though there wasn't nobody knowed the truth but him and us. Still, it gnawed at him. He'd eat at the house, cut a little firewood, but most of the time he just stayed wandered off in the woods.

"Wasn't long before Jasmine took the chest cold bad, and I think some of the reason she was so sick was worry over that boy. Well, she up and died. But before she did, she made me promise I'd take care of that boy, see to it that he got some kind of trade and such. He could already read, write, and cipher, so she thought if I could just get him on the right road, he'd grow up and be a good boy. Mama talk, you know?

"I buried her the same day I made the promise, 'cause she didn't last long after I'd give her my word, and Billy Bob, he didn't even come watch the burying. He couldn't get out of his head that she was the same woman who'd cleaned his messes in the. Daniels house, and a part of him—the biggest part—seen her as nothing more than a nigger.

"Like I said, he was my nephew and I made a promise to Jasmine, and I guess I figured there had to be some good in him, being partly of her blood, so I took to caring for him.

"That old wagon I'd gotten from Doe Madonna was parked out back of my shack, which was a thing I'd throwed up next to Jasmine's place, and it come to me I could teach Billy Bob the medicine show business, as it was the only thing I really knowed about. Sort of let him run the show, you see. Him looking full white could make it a whole sight easier than me doing it by myself and being a colored.

"That must have been where I messed up. Or maybe it just added to things. But him becoming boss and playing like he was full white just made him more that way in his head. Wasn't long before I'd have to come down on him hard when he got to playing it all too well.

"Still, it wasn't bad for a time. Then he took to reading them dime novels, thinking about them gunfighters and how they was all so handsome-looking and brave—and white—and he was just looking for some reason not to accept being of colored blood, so he'd go off in these dream worlds, and wasn't long before he was pretty much believing them.

"He took up the gun too. Started learning to trick shoot.

And it was like he was born to it. The better he got with that gun, worse things between us got. Then you came along and the secret had to be hidden all the harder. Then we got that body in the box, and that stuff he'd been saying about being the son of Wild Bill Hickok really went to his head. Well, you know that part. And there's that curse, and this town . . . and I'll tell you, Little Buster, I haven't done so good by the promise I made Jasmine. So you can see why I can't just go off and leave him. He's family. He's blood."

I sat there when Albert was finished, kind of dazed. Like someone had bent 'a fire iron over my turnip.

"But . . . what can you do, Albert? You've done all there is to do. He ain't worth it. "

"I still got to try, Little Buster. You see now why I got to. A deathbed promise is a sacred thing."

We didn't say much else. Just found places to lie down. And though I wasn't in the mood for sleep, I was tuckered, and that fever of mine had gotten worse.

The fever sent me down in a deep well of sleep, and down there were the waters of a dream. It was the one I'd had before, the one about Mama in the house, flying away to Oz, her red hair flapping like flames. I hadn't had it in some time. The fever I guess. That and the storm blowing, building outside the wagon until it shook and the roof rattled with rain like a dozen men with hammers beating it with all their might, fast as they could go.

So I was deep into this dream when there came a sound that wasn't part of it. Not thunder or lightning. Just a sharp crack, and it took me a long, deep moment before I realized it was a gunshot.

I got up. I was dizzy and as hot as if had been bedded in coals. I turned the lantern up, seen that Albert was gone, and Skinny was stirring.

Pulling on my wet pants, I went outside. Albert, wearing nothing but a blanket, was standing by Rot Toe's cage. The tarp was off the cage and the door was open. It looked to have been pried with a bar. Rot Toe was gone and so were the pistols. When I got over close, I seen there was a puddle of blood on the bottom of the cage, mixing with the wooden floor and the rain.

"Billy Bob?" I asked.

"Had to be," Albert said. "I should never have left them pistols in there. Should have known Billy Bob would come for them. Come on, Little Buster, Rot Toe's hurt. We got to find him."

We got dressed in our wet clothes, and Skinny came with us. We looked high and low for sign, but the rain had washed most of it away. We did find a few cracked limbs across the way, a tuft of Rot Toe's hair on a limb, but when we got in the woods and started looking, we didn't see another sign of him.

Those woods were giving me the shakes, and I don't mind telling you. It was like this whole little section of the world, the woods, this damned town, had been given over to the devil as some kind of playground.

Finally we had to give it up, go on back to the wagon. When we got there, we found the back door open and flapping in the wind. And Wild Bill Hickok and his box were gone.

"We was suckered," Albert said. "Suckered to the bone."

About that time, our thoughts were taken from what had happened by cussing. This wasn't your plain old cussing, this was the stuff of a real professional. A fella that had had some practice at it and knew it wasn't just a matter of words but a way of life.

It had just gone light, so we got a good look at what was coming, and it was a sight. Down that muddy street there came a team of six mules. They were pulling a long, flat sled, which looked to have been thrown together in a hurry, and standing at the front of it was a tall, skinny fella with a washed-down hat and a face so thickly overgrown with hair, it looked like a badger's butt. He was cussing now and then to keep rhythm, but the real cussing, the good stuff, was coming from another man.

There was a horseless carriage on the sled, and sitting on the seat, the rain beating down on him, was an old fella with white hair sticking out from under his hat, and a white mustache that darn near covered his whole mouth. He had his arms crossed, was looking straight ahead, and he was cussing every breath, letting it roll out like a poem. Though, unlike a poem, it wasn't embarrassing and didn't make you want to look the other way.

The horseless carriage's wheels and underbottom were all caked with mud, and I figured it had gotten stuck bad and he'd had to get this fella with the mules and the sled to haul him out, and he wasn't happy about it.

Far as I was concerned, he got what was coming to him there. Those fangled noisemakers weren't never going to catch on. They couldn't travel the country the way a horse could, and you couldn't grow feed for them. They were ugly too.

They cussed on down the street, and we watched after them. When they got past the saloon, I lost interest and turned away. But Albert didn't.

"Uh oh," he said.

I turned to look again. A crowd was coming out of the saloon, Billy Bob in the lead. They were walking toward the sled. The sled had stopped and the man sitting in the horseless carriage got down and stepped into the street. He turned toward the crowd, to figure what was going on, and when he did, the sun winked off of his badge and I knew who he was.

We started running.

When we got close I heard Billy Bob yell, "You won't take me alive, sheriff"

And the sheriff said, "What's that?"

"Draw if you got the guts," Billy Bob said.

"What's that?" the sheriff said again.

And Billy Bob pulled both of his revolvers and shot him.

When he did, the fella who owned the mules, thinking that it might be open season, jumped off the sled on the other side and went facedown in the mud.

The sheriff took a careful step forward, and sat down, his butt coming to rest on the edge of the sled.

Billy Bob turned and watched Albert and me come up. He smiled.

I went over to the sheriff and bent down beside him. His face was as white as a china plate. He looked at me.

"I'm sorry," I said. "We wanted to stop him."

"What's that?" he said.

"I'm sorry."

"Can't hear so good," the sheriff said. He looked back at Billy Bob, who was still smiling, pushing his pistols into their sash.

"Who in tarnation was that?" the sheriff said. "And what in hell have I done to him?"

"It don't take a thing," I said.

The sheriff's head rolled, his hat fell off, and he sagged against me. I put his hat back on, pulled him onto the sled.

When I had him laid out, I seen that he'd been hit twice in the chest, about a hand's span apart. It looked as if his shirt were decorated with two big, wet buttons, and they were still growing.

I turned to Billy Bob. "He didn't hear a word you said. He was darn near deaf."

"That ain't so," Riley offered, helpfullike, pushing up to the front of the crowd. "Homer, he had a built-in instink for them things. He knew Billy Bob was going to draw, he just wasn't fast enough to match him. "

"He didn't even know what it was all about," I said.

"Just saved me having to explain about Jack before I shot him," Billy Bob said, and he got his laugh from the crowd. And some crowd it was. Those folks were right flexible. If Homer had drawn on and beat Billy Bob, they'd have been standing next to him, patting him on the back, telling him what a great sheriff and gunfighter he was. They were nothing more than a kind of vulture, feeding themselves off the pride of whoever was riding high at the time.

Billy Bob's head floated to his left and his eyes narrowed. When I looked, I seen he was staring at Skinny. I'd forgotten about him. He'd followed along behind Albert and me like a puppy, anxious to see what was going on Way he was smiling, you figured he thought this whole mess had been put together for his amusement.

"Hey, dummy," Billy Bob said, "you're still wearing my duds."

Skinny smiled big and nodded.

"I don't like that none," Billy Bob said.

Blue Hat, who had been standing next to Billy Bob, said, "Make him take them off.

Billy Bob smiled. "That's an idea. Take off them clothes, idiot."

Skinny looked confused. He looked to me, then to Albert.

"Leave him alone," Albert said to Billy Bob.

"You ain't got no say-so at all in this matter, nigger," Billy Bob said.

Albert walked slowly over to Billy Bob. "I said, leave him alone."

Maybe Billy Bob would have shot Albert, I don't know. What happened was Blue Hat, who was standing a little to the side, jerked Jack's old pistol, and hit Albert a lick upside the head.

Albert wheeled, grabbed Blue Hat, and jerked him into the muddy street. Before Blue Hat hit the mud, Billy Bob had drawn his pistols, and, whipping the barrels from left to right, he hit Albert about six times. He was real quick.

Still, Albert didn't go down right then. It was when the crowd joined in, hitting and kicking, that he went down.

I tried to get over there, but as I went I ran past where Blue Hat was getting up, and about the same time I stepped on his hat, he grabbed my ankle and pulled it out from under me. I went down in the mud and my head hit the edge of the boardwalk and I went on a short, dark trip.

When I came out of it, I could hear Billy Bob saying to Skinny, "Take off them clothes, idiot, or I'm going to start shooting them off of you."

I raised up some, looked to my left and seen Albert lying in the mud. Blue Hat had gotten up now, had his hat in one hand, and was kicking Albert in the head as hard as he could and as many times as he could.

I tried to say, "Stop it," but a hunk of mud fell out of my mouth, and by then he'd quit kicking.

I heard a pistol shot, and I rolled on my side and seen Skinny standing there, startled, holding his hand out to his side. He turned slowly and looked at it. His left little finger was gone. Billy Bob had shot it off.

"Take off the clothes, dummy," Billy Bob said. "Or the next one's in your head."

"Go ahead and shoot him," I heard Blue Hat say. "He ain't good for nothing. Ain't got nobody but this nigger and that fool."

"Take the clothes oft" I croaked at Skinny.

Blue Hat kicked me in the back of the head and I rolled forward some, got to a knee and said it again, "Take them off, for Heaven's sake, Skinny, take them off."

Blue Hat must have come up behind me and clubbed me with his pistol then. I don't know, but I went down in the mud again.

"Take off the clothes, dummy. Take off the clothes, dummy. Take off the clothes, dummy," echoed again and again, and when I looked up, I knew why. It was Skinny, mocking Billy Bob perfect.

"You stop that," Billy Bob said.

But Skinny was smiling again. He was still holding his hand out to his side, and it was dripping blood, but he wasn't paying it any mind. He had a new game to play. "Take off the clothes, dummy," he said, and started to wave his right hand around like he had a pistol in it.

"You hear me?" Billy Bob yelled. "You stop that."

"You hear me?" Skinny said. "You stop that."

"Damn you," Billy Bob said, and he shot Skinny right through the heart.

I don't remember seeing Skinny fall. I must have passed out again about then. It was the fever, the beating, and the gal-darned sorriness of it all did me in, I reckon.

Next thing I knew my head was floating up from the mud and there was light in my eye.

When the light got so it wasn't hurting, and everything around me quit spinning, a voice said, "You dead, boy?"

It was the fella that had been driving the sled, and my head wasn't floating. He was holding my head out of the mud by the hair.

"I'm peachy," I said.

"You don't look peachy." He got his arms under mine and got me to my feet. When I was standing, I wobbled over to Albert, fell down on my knees beside him. "Albert," I said. "Albert, you with us?"

His hand fluttered and I took hold of it. "God, Albert. Say you're okay. "

"Most of them licks he got was in the head," Sled Driver said. "Nigger has a hard head. That idiot fella's dead as a rock."

"Albert," I said again.

"Here . . . Little Buster. Here."

"Help me," I said, looking up at the fella.

Sled Driver got an arm, I got the other, and we pulled Albert over to the boardwalk and propped his back against the general store wall.

"I'm going to be okay," Albert said. "Things has quit spinning around. I don't think I'm busted inside."

"'Cause you got most of it in the head," Sled Driver said kindly. "You people can take a lick to the head."

Albert turned his swollen face slowly upwards, looked at the man with the badger's butt for a face. I thought maybe he was going to try and get up and smash the man's head, but he didn't. He said, "You take a message to the saloon for me?"

"Hell no," the sled driver said. "That crazy fella and his circus is over to the saloon."

"We'll pay you,"' Albert said.

"What message?" I said.

"How much?" Sled Driver said.

Albert pushed a hand in his pants and fumbled out six bits.

Sled Driver looked at the six bits in Albert's palm. "No way. Not chancing getting myself made into a lead sandwich for no six bit slip.

Albert turned his head to me.

"I got some," I said. I dug out all I had. Together it was about four dollars.

"That enough?" Albert asked.

"Well now," Sled Driver said. "Four dollars is four dollars."

"Just asking you to take a little message. You let me and Buster here get back down to that wagon at the end of the street, then you tell him this. His uncle, Private Albert C. Moses, United States Cavalry, is coming to see him. And I ain't bringing presents. Tell him I ain't coming for no fast draw. I'm coming to do a bit of business."

"That don't make no sense" Sled Driver said.

"It will to him," Albert said. "Little Buster. Get me on my feet."

I did.

"Is he going to shoot me?" Sled Driver asked.

"Not if you tell him that dumb, crazy nigger he beat up sent the message. Then you can cuss me some. He likes that."

"Well," Sled Driver said looking at the money in his hand, "four dollars is four dollars."

We carried Skinny back to the wagon and put him on Billy Bob's stoop. Albert pulled the rack of Cure-All aside, and underneath it was a trap door.

"Madonna and I built this in here," Albert said. "Billy Bob didn't never know about it."

He opened the trap. Inside was a crate. He took the crate out and opened it. There was an old Army uniform, a cap, a .45, an old .44, and a Springfield rifle, some shells for all of them.

"Now," Albert said, "I got this thing to do. You ain't no part of it. You go over to the livery, get the mules, hitch them up, and get out of here."

"What about you and Rot Toe?"

"I'll come on to the next town later. Hang around a day or so here and see if I can find Rot Toe. I don't come, you just keep on without me. "

"I can't do that."

"You're a good boy, Little Buster, but you don't know a thing about fighting men. I used to make a living at it."

"You can't go after him alone. He'll have Blue Hat with him. Maybe someone else. This ain't no dime novel, Albert. "

"I don't plan to have no straight draw with him, Little Buster. I'm just going to kill him. I owe that much to jasmine. I said I'd watch after-her boy, and I done all I could. This is the last thing I got to do for her. Get him out of the way. He can't carry on her blood and be the way he is. Ain't right."

"Can't let you go alone, Albert."

"You got no choice. You look plumb sick anyway, Little Buster. You ain't up to

"I'm up to it. I'll just follow you if you don't let me go." Albert sighed. "All right," he said.

He put on the soldier suit. It was a little tight, but still fit him. He stuck the .44 in his belt, put the extra shells for it and the Springfield in a pocket. He gave me the .45. "That kicks," he said. "Use two hands. And remember. You're just the backup, so stay out of it best you can."

I nodded.

We went out of there down the street, and the woods, the buildings, even the sky, seemed to be pushing down on me. It was the fever made it seem that way, I guess. Even the .45 in my hand seemed unreal. The barrel two yards long, the hammer as big as a cucumber. I kept blinking until I brought things into focus, but it didn't stop the throbbing and rushing in my head.

The storm had turned something fierce, and my cap brim had gone soggy and was slapping in my face like the flap on a union suit.

When we got to the saloon, Albert sent me around back. I hoped the door wasn't locked. I wondered if Albert had sent me back there just to get me out of the way.

Jack was still out back. They hadn't gotten around to burying him yet. Even in the wind and rain he had him an aroma. He was all swollen up too. So big, in fact, his shirt had rolled up under his arms and his pale belly looked like a polished, white boulder. Ants and such had been at him. Maybe a stray dog.

I stepped over Jack, put a hand to the door and eased it open. There wasn't a sound in there. No one took a shot at me.

I pushed it open some more and stepped inside, and then I seen why it was so quiet.

Albert had already come in, big as a brass band, the rifle over his left shoulder, the .44 in his right hand.

Everyone was just staring, not quite believing it. "Nice day, ain't it?" Albert said.

"You got a lot of sand, nigger," Riley said, easing to the middle of the bar.

I stepped in where everyone could see me and said, "You stay away from under there, Mr. Riley," I said. "That Mex's pistol will just get you killed. In fact, you just take it by the barrel and put it up easy on the bar, slide it down to the far end out of the way."

He did.

Albert had the rifle level now, waving it toward Riley and the pistol toward the crowd at the tables. They were all looking very friendly, and every hand was in plain sight, lest there be a mistake.

"Where's Billy Bob?" Albert asked.

"Gone to church," Riley said. "He didn't trust no nigger to come here and fight fair. He said to meet him there."

"Anybody with him?"

"Just the kid, Noel. Billy Bob figured you'd bring your boy here. He wanted to even things up."

"Guess that means you had to give Noel back them bullets, huh?" I said.

Riley didn't look at me.

Albert grinned at Riley. "We'll have a whiskey, Riley. Set us up a bottle."

"I don't serve niggers. Ain't never. Ain't going to."

Albert whipped the Springfield around and fired. The shot hit the sign that said: WE DON'T SERVE NIGGERS, FREED OR OTHERWISE, and knocked it off the wall.

The crowd found places under tables and Riley turned several shades of white, including one that matched Texas Jack's belly.

Riley swallowed, turned, got a bottle and two glasses, put them on the bar, and stepped back.

"No, you pour, Riley," Albert said. "In fact, get you a glass and have one with us."

Riley's face did all manner of tricks, but he got another glass and put it on the bar. Albert went over to the bar and motioned to me. Riley poured us all a drink:

I needed that shot of whiskey like I needed a railroad spike in the head, but I drank it. Albert lifted his with Riley, making sure it went down about the same time as the barkeep's.

"Now wasn't that good?" Albert said. "Me and my old friend, Riley, taking a drink together. We'll do it again, won't we?"

Riley's lip jumped a little.

"Well, it's been fun, but we got to go shoot us some boys," Albert said. He went down the bar, got the Mex's gun, put it in his belt.

We backed out of the bar and through the bat wings, stood out on the boardwalk looking at the storm and the street. Across the way I could see Sled Driver. He'd given the message and got out of there. He was leaning against a building looking at us. I reckon he wanted to see how it all came out and still be a distance from it. When he seen I was looking at him, he gave me a little wave from the hip, like maybe I ought to be glad to see him.

Why not? He did help me out of the mud. I waved back.

"Well," said Albert, "it's going to take the edge off things if we have to go back in there and ask where the church is."

"I know where it is," I said.

We didn't talk as we walked down the boardwalk. In fact, it was about all I could do to stand. I felt like someone was building a brush fire inside me.

Across the way, pacing us step for step, was Sled Driver. Once I looked back and seen that the crowd from the saloon was following us.

Albert pulled the Mexican's pistol out of his belt and shot at the boardwalk in front of them a few times, and they disappeared down it, and into the saloon like rabbits being chased by a hound.

"They just like to watch," Albert said. "They ain't so much for getting shot at."

"Me neither," I said.

We passed the sled with the horseless carriage on it. The mules had been taken away, but the sheriff was still there, though someone had gone to the effort to set him in the seat of his rig. His head was slumped, and he just looked like he was resting in the rain.

By the time we come to the end of the boardwalk and the overhang, there wasn't nothing but rain and wind and darkness, and that big yellow lightning cutting now and then, and once when it flashed bright we saw the church.

We were almost on top of it. It was small with a cross on the steeple, shutter doors at the top, and a white picket fence around it. At the gate, holding two pistols, was a man.

Albert pushed me away with his elbow, out of the line of them pistols, and the Springfield fell off his shoulder and into his hands, neat as you please, and he fired.

The shot hit the man in the head, and the head went to pieces, like a sack full of straw. It caught on the wind and was whirled away.

The headless man did not fall.

We eased over there, and seen what we should have known. It was Wild Bill Hickok. Billy Bob had tricked us. We had announced ourselves and come into pistol range.

The shutters at the top of the church flung open, and there was Blue Hat. I seen him good in the lightning flash, just before everything went dark, and in that instant he fired, and I jerked my pistol up and fired at where I thought he was.

Blue Hat's shot was a good one. It hit Albert in the shoulder and he dropped the Springfield and went to his knees with a groan.

When lightning flashed again, I seen that I had missed Blue Hat. I probably hadn't even hit the church.

I tried to fire again, but before I could, Albert had pulled that Mex's pistol and took a shot.

Blue Hat's head popped back, his hat tossed off, then he rocked forward out the window, his pants legs catching on the sill, keeping him hanging until they ripped and he dropped on his head with a sound like a washer-woman slapping out wet laundry on a rock.

The wide, double doors were kicked open then, and there was Billy Bob, looking just like one of them jaspers in a dime novel. He had a pistol in either hand and he was blazing.

Albert had just got back on his feet, and now he was hit a bunch of times. He went backwards, dancing on one foot before he fell in the mud. As he fell, the pistol flew out of his hand and hit me in the side of the head.

I did a little crawfish shuffle, and it was like that lick woke me up, made me crazy.

When lightning flashed again and I seen Billy Bob, I yelled, "Wild Bill," and jerked a shot at him.

Then things went dark again. I stood there with my pistol pointing it where he had been, waiting, and when there was another flash, I seen him. He was lying on the ground. Somehow, I'd hit him.

He got up on his knees and started screaming at me, something about the head of his father and death to all niggers.

Then, before it could go dark again, there came a cut of lightning so thick and long, it was darn near bright as high noon.

I shot at him again.

And missed.

But he didn't.

He fired twice, and had he not been hurt, I don't figure they'd have been wounds but kill hits. One shot tore my right shoulder and the other hit me low and in the left side. I sort of melted to the ground.

That long chain of lightning finally played out, and while it was dark, I wallowed around in the mud, trying to get turned back toward the church, and trying to find my pistol or the one Albert had tossed.

Then there was lightning again.

Billy Bob wobbled to his feet, staggered for the gate. He was coming to finish me at close range. It seemed just as well to me right then. I hurt something awful.

The storm turned wilder and the lightning did like before, only really noisy this time, sizzling like bacon in a hot pan, and it was so bright it hurt my eyes.

And then there was someone beside Billy Bob. I didn't see where he came from, probably out of the woods and leaped the gate, but I thought at first it was a man in a buffalo coat. But it was Rot Toe.

Rot Toe hooted and slapped his chest with both hands, stretching tall as he could. Billy Bob stepped back, shot the ape in the chest.

Rot Toe didn't even slow down. He ran at Billy Bob and grabbed him in a hug, pinning Billy Bob's arms and pistols to his sides.

Finally the light went away, and it was dark for some time before it flashed again, and now it came in short bursts, one right after the other.

Rot Toe had Billy Bob by the back of the collar now, and was dragging him. He reached the vine-covered latticework beside the door and started up it, dragging Billy Bob with him.

Wild Bill Daniels still had his pistols, and he was trying to turn and get a shot at Rot To but the way the ape was holding him, he couldn't get twisted for it.

When the ape had him halfway up the church, Billy Bob finally managed to get turned enough to shoot Rot Toe in the foot.

Rot Toe went wild, scuttled on up the latticework, some of it cracking beneath him, then he jumped for the open loft doors, hit with one foot on the sill, and caught the roof with his other hand. He never let go of Billy Bob with the other, and Billy Bob never let go of them damn pistols.

Rot Toe swung hard and up onto the roof, cranking Billy Bob up after him. When Billy Bob's boots touched the roof, he tried to get them under him, but he couldn't. Rot Toe, using one arm and his feet, started climbing the steeple.

They reached the top, and hanging by one hand to the cross, Rot Toe began to flap Billy Bob against the steeple with all his might, screeching all the while. The wind was so high, I reckoned it would blow them off, but Rot Toe held.

The sky got full of lightning again, that long-lasting, sizzling kind, and the wind howled louder than Rot Toe could screech.

Billy Bob's head slipped down inside his shirt, and it looked like he was going to drop out of it. I could just see the top of his head and his eyes.

Trying for a shot, Billy Bob arched his back against the steeple, pressed the soles of his boots against it, and pointed his pistols over his shoulders.

They clicked empty.

Billy Bob cussed.

And a long, ugly streak of lightning reached out of the sky and hit those pistols, turned them silver, lit up Rot Toe and Billy Bob bright as a harvest moon.

Then it was over. The smoking meat that had been Rot Toe and Billy Bob fell to the churchyard.

That was all for Wild Bill Daniels and Rot Toe the wrestling chimpanzee, and when I closed my feverish eyelids and heard the sound of thunder in my head, smelled the sulfur of lightning, I reckoned that it was all for me too.

CHAPTER 8

I reckoned wrong.

I wasn't dead, just wished I was.

"You still alive?" It was Sled Driver.

"I think so," I said. "What about Albert?"

"I don't know," Sled Driver said. "He didn't get hit in the head this time."

He dropped me back in the mud. A moment later he was back.

"Sucker's still alive," he said. "Toughest damn nigger I ever seen. And you ain't so bad yourself, boy."

Things got sort of hazy after that, but what pretty much happened was Sled Driver got us out of the rain and someone did some doctoring on us, and neither of us went belly up.

And the crowd didn't hold no grudge. Them vultures had them a new hero to suck after.

Me.

Didn't make no never mind that I hadn't killed Billy Bob or Blue Hat, it was enough I'd outdrawn them—or that's the way Sled Driver told it. He'd been lying on his belly across the way and said he'd seen it all. I reckon he had his face down in the mud most of the time hiding from hot lead, but what the hell, he wanted to tell it that way, that was okay with me. Mud Creek liked its heroes, and right then I was just glad to be in out of the rain and patched up.

Riley was even friendly. He came over next day and had me carried outside in a wicker chair and put up against the wall. They took my picture with that Mex's pistol, which I'd never used, then they took pictures of what was left of Billy Bob and Rot Toe, and the best looking of the group 'cause he wasn't burned up, Blue Hat. They even dragged old Jack over for a picture, then they took him out of there quick, as he wasn't smelling any better than before. Worse maybe.

You see, that storm had gone on its way about the time Billy Bob died, and it had turned off sunny and hot. And the next day, the day they-took the pictures, it was even sunnier and hotter. It was darn near turning the mud to powder, and it was heating up Jack something awful. Well, you know what I mean.

Some might say that it turning off clear that quick wasn't nothing more than East Texas weather, but I'd say that curse played its self out after it got what it came for. Billy Bob.

Wasn't a whole lot of praise given Albert, as you might figure. They didn't even let him stay where I was staying, as it was for white folks. But they treated him good, and Albert said later that where he was didn't have near as many rats as you'd expect.

Riley even went over and seen how he was doing and told him to get well soon. He didn't go as far as to ask him to have a drink with him or invite him to hang around the saloon when he was well, though. Riley had to cling to some standards, even if I was the hero of the hour and Albert, as Riley said, "belonged" to me.

Isn't much more to tell. I just lived out the lie for about a week until I was over the pneumonia—which was why I'd had such a fever—and my wounds had healed a mite. When I could get around on a cane, I talked some townsfolk into going out to the garbage dump and bringing back the bodies of Rot Toe and Skinny. When Skinny started stinking the Magic Wagon up, and finally the town, they had had all they wanted of him and hauled him off to join the garbage.

Billy Bob and Hickok—minus his head—they bothered to bury in the clearing where we'd had our show that day.

I don't know what they done with Homer, Blue Hat, and Texas Jack, but I sort of figure on the garbage dump.

I paid a grave digger some bottles of Cure-All to put Skinny and Rot Toe down next to Billy Bob, and I gave him some more to dig Billy Bob up so I could put all his dime novels in there with him. I also put in a couple of Billy Bob's spare pistols, and I made sure the books about Hickok were set on what was left of his chest.

When Albert was healed up enough to travel, we got out of there, least another gunfighter come to town or Riley set me up against some fool with a pistol.

Me and Albert never did go back to Mud Creek, but once we were back in East Texas doing our show—doing it without a wrestling chimpanzee and a shooting act—we heard that one night the town caught fire and burned slap to the ground. That seemed fair.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. On the day Albert and me left Mud Creek, we stopped off at the graves as we went out. I made a cross out of those sideboards that had the Indian spirits in them, and I put it at the head of the mounds, dead center. On it I scratched deep with my pocketknife all their names, though I didn't know Skinny's real one, and wrote:

HERE LIES A BUNCH OF FOLKS AND ONE CRITTER THAT LIVED OUT A DIME NOVEL.

I don't know about you, but that seems about right to me.

PREVIEW

The Drive-In: A “B” Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas

Acknowledgments are hereby given to all the drive-ins that have influenced this book. Among them The Lumber Jack, The River Road and The Apache, as well as a little sleaze drive-in that showed bad porno movies (perhaps a redundancy in terms, but these were really bad) across from the Baptist church in Turnertown, Texas.

Also, all the movies I’ve seen at drive-ins, good or bad: horror movies, motorcycle flicks, women in chains, the whole nine yards. And though many of the incidents in this book are influenced by things that happened at these drive-ins, the influence only goes so far, and it should go without saying that nothing here is meant to represent any individual or specific drive-in theater. The Orbit is a creature of this writing creature’s imagination.

THE DRIVE-IN

(A B-Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas)

Fade-in/Prologue

I’m writing now about the time before things got weird and there was high school to kiss off, college to plan, girls, parties and the All-Night Horror Show come Friday night at The Orbit Drive-in off I-45, the largest drive-in in Texas. The world, for that matter, though I doubt there are that many of them in, say, Yugoslavia.

Think about it for a moment. Set your mind clear and see if you can imagine a drive-in so big it can hold four thousand automobiles. I mean, really think about it.

Four thousand.

On the way to The Orbit we often passed through little towns with fewer people listed on the population sign than that.

And consider that each of those cars generally contained at least two people, often more—not counting the ones hiding in the trunks—and you’re talking a lot of cars and people.

And once inside, can you imagine six monstrous drive-in screens, six stories high, with six different movies running simultaneously?

Even if you can imagine all that, there’s no way, unless you’ve been there, that you can imagine what goes on inside come Friday night and the tickets are two bucks each and the cars file in for The All-Night Horror Show to witness six screens leaking buckets of blood and decibels of screams from dusk to dawn.

Picture this, brethren:

A cool, crisp summer night, the Texas stars shining down like rattlesnake eyes showing in a deep, dark wood. A line of cars like a tacky necklace trailing from the paybooth to the highway, stretching alongside it for a mile or better.

Horns are honking.

Children are shouting.

Mosquitoes are buzzing.

Willie Nelson is singing about blue eyes crying in the rain from a tape deck, competing with Hank Williams, Jr., Johnny Cash, ZZ Top, The Big Boys, The Cars and Country Bob and The Blood Farmers, groups and singers you can’t identify. And it all rolls together into a metal-velvet haze until it’s its own kind of music; the drive-in anthem, a chorus of cultural confusion.

And say your car is about midway in line, and clear as your first good wet dream, standing tall, you can see The Orbit’s symbol—a big silver globe with a Saturn ring around it, spinning on a gradually tapering concrete pole jutting up to over a hundred feet above the concession stand; little blue and white fairy lights flittering out of it, alternating colors across your windshield. Blue. White. Blue. White.

God Almighty, it’s a sight. Like being in the presence of The Lord of Razzle-Dazzle, The Dark Crown Prince of Blood and Mayhem and Cheap, Bad Popcorn. The All-Night Horror Show God, his own sweet self.

You drive on into this Friday-night extravaganza, this Texas institution of higher partying, sex education and madness, and you see people dressed out in costume like it’s Halloween night (and it is Halloween night every Friday night at The Orbit), yelling, talking, cussing and generally raising hell.

You park your car, go to the concession stand. Inside it’s decorated with old horror-movie posters, plastic skulls, rubber bats and false cobwebs. And there’s this thing called bloody corn that you can buy for a quarter more than the regular stuff, and it’s just popcorn with a little red food coloring poured over it. You buy some and a king-size Coke to go with it, maybe some peanuts and enough candy to send a hypoglycemic to the stars.

Now you’re ready. The movies begin. B-string and basement-budget pictures. A lot of them made with little more than a Kodak, some spit and a prayer. And if you’ve watched enough of this stuff, you develop a taste for it, sort of like learning to like sauerkraut.

Drooping mikes, bad acting and the rutting of rubber-suited monsters who want women, not for food, but to mate with, become a genuine pleasure. You can simultaneously hoot and cringe when a monster attacks a screaming female on the beach or in the woods and you see the zipper on the back of the monster’s suit winking at you like the quick, drunk smile of a Cheshire cat.

So there you have it. A sort of rundown of The All Night Horror Show at The Orbit. It drew me and the gang in there every Friday night like martyrs to the sacrifice; providing popcorn and Coke instead of wine and wafer.

Yes, sir, brethren, there was something special about The Orbit all right. It was romantic. It was outlaw. It was crazy.

And in the end, it was deadly.

Part One

THE ALL-NIGHT HORROR SHOW

(With Popcorn and Comet)

Chapter 1

I suppose, ultimately, this will read like a diseased version of those stupid essays you’re asked to write in school each fall after summer break. You know, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

Guess that can’t be helped.

This is where I think it begins.

It was Saturday morning, the morning after a night at The Orbit. We drove back to Mud Creek smelling of beer, popcorn and chocolate bars.

Our eyes were cloudy, our minds more so. But we were too wired, or maybe just too stupid, to go home. So we did what we usually did. We drove over to the pool hall.

The pool hall, or Dan’s Place, as it’s called, is an ugly joint in an ugly section of an overall pretty nice-looking town. It’s the area where you hear about knifings and the lowlife congregating, twenty-dollar women, bootleg whisky and Mud Creek’s drug deals.

Dan’s was a beer drinker’s pool hall, had a bar along with the tables. Theoretically the place didn’t serve beer until after noon, but Dan and the guys who came there were real short on theory.

There were a few men in there when we went in that morning. Most of them were in their forties or older, and they were sipping long necks, their hats on their heads or on the bar or the stools beside them. Those without cowboy hats and boots wore blue and gray work clothes with worn work boots, and it seemed that no matter how quietly you came in, they always heard you and turned to look with disapproval.

The place was supposed to be off limits to minors, but who were we to tell, and Dan wasn’t telling either. Not that he liked us, but he did like our money for the pool games, and once in a small while, when he felt brave and we did too, he’d let us buy a beer, just like he didn’t know we were under age.

But there was this: he always had a look about him that let us know he’d take our money, but for little or no reason wouldn’t mind killing us for the fun of it. And he looked quite capable of killing us without breaking a sweat. He was kind of fat, but it was hard-looking fat, like there was a great iron wash pot under his too-tight T-shirt. And his arms were big and meaty. Not bodybuilder arms, but workingman’s arms; arms that had done real work: bounced drunks, and, from what I’d heard, slapped wives. He also had funny-looking knuckles; knuckles that had remolded facial flesh as if it were silly putty, and, in turn, had been remolded themselves.

Still, we’d go in there like men born for a suicide mission. There were things we wanted out of the place. Attractions. It was forbidden, for one, and that was appealing. Gave us a sense of manhood. Danger hung in the air like a sword on a hair, and as long as the hair didn’t snap and the blade didn’t fall, it was stimulating.

Dan’s was where we met Willard. Saw him there the first time we went inside, which was about the time we started going to the drive-in. I guess we felt if we had permission to stay out all night, we could go over to the tough section of town and shoot pool. Maybe talk some about the twenty-dollar women we didn’t dare actually speak to (we weren’t even sure we’d seen any) for fear we’d have to shell out money and perform. Something none of us was sure we wanted. We had heard vague stories about viruses and carnivorous insects that grew like sourdough starter in the pubic thatches of twenty-dollar women, and we felt that they would know so many tricks, and we’d know so few, that the cheap little hotel rooms where we planned to consummate our financial arrangements would ring of feminine laughter instead of the satisfying squeaks of bed-springs.

But the poolroom and the possibility of violent death didn’t worry us as much as sexual embarrassment, so we went there Saturdays to play pool and to watch Willard do the same.

First look at Willard, and he seemed downright skinny. But closer examination proved him long, lean and muscular. When he bunched over the table for a shot, let the cue glide over the top of his thumb, you could see the muscles roll beneath his hide, and the tattoos on his biceps popped forward and back so fast they were like billboards viewed on the highway at top speed. The left tattoo read KICK ASS and the right read EAT PUSSY. It was understood that he could do either, and probably quite well.

But Willard was a nice guy in an odd sort of way. Smart, too, if, shall we say, not classically educated. He was three years older than us physically, and about ten years older in experience.

That was one of the reasons we liked to be around him. He gave us a glimpse of a world we didn’t normally see. Not one we wanted to live in, but one we wanted to investigate.

And I think Willard liked us for the reverse reason. We could talk about something besides beer, women and the plant where he worked all week and Saturday afternoons making aluminum lawn furniture.

None of us had to work. Our parents provided, and we were all college material. Had dreams and a good chance of seeing them come true, and I guess Willard wanted some of that hope to rub off on him.

We didn’t really know much about him. Story was his father didn’t think the kid looked like him at all, and had been told by some Louisiana Mojo man that the boy had a curse on him, and since Willard’s mother, Marjory, was into weird business, like believing in old gods and voodoo-type stuff, this made him even more suspicious. Bottom line was the father left before the baby could crawl. Baptists around town called Willard and his mother sorry as part of their entertainment, and truth was, his mother was no prize. She later took up with a man who had a bad back and a regular check of some sort, and when he went away she took up with another with ailing posture and a steady government income.

This initiated a pattern. Men with bad backs and checks, and it kept Marjory in cigarettes and Willard in throwaway diapers. But when Willard turned sixteen, his birthday present was good-bye and the street—a place he spent a lot of time anyway. Marjory went away to who knows where—probably a fresh town full of bad backs and welfare checks—and Willard did the best he could. Dropped out of school when he was old enough and got some odd jobs here and there, the best of them being a projectionist at one of the movie houses. When he turned eighteen, he went to work at the aluminum chair factory.

It seemed obvious to me, in the short time that I had known him, that he was hungry for something beyond that, something more substantial, something that would give him respect in the eyes of the Uptown folks, though I doubt he would have admitted that—even to himself. But to get back to it, we came into the pool hall this Saturday I’m telling you about, and there was Willard in his familiar pose, pool cue in hand, leaning over the table, eyeing a ball.

Shooting against him was a guy we’d seen a couple of times before but avoided talking to. His name was Bear, and you didn’t ponder why he was called that. He was six-five, ugly as disease, had roux-brown hair and a beard that mercifully consumed most of his face. All that was clearly visible were some nasty blue eyes and a snout that was garage to some troublesome nose hairs thick enough to use for piano wire. The same gruesome down as in his nose also covered his arms and curled out of the neck of his T-shirt to confuse itself with his beard. What could be seen of his lips reminded me of those rubber worms fishermen use, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see shiny silver hooks poking out of them, or to discover that the whole of Bear had been made from decaying meat, wire and the contents of a tackle box and a Crisco can.

There was something rock ‘n’ roll playing on the jukebox—a rarity for Dan’s, which mostly catered to country and western—and Randy went over to lean on it. Wasn’t just because he liked what was playing, it put him closer to the door.

Being black, Randy was a bit uncomfortable about bopping around a redneck pool hall. Even if he was with Bob, who wore a toothpick-laden cowboy hat, dipped snuff and wore snakeskin boots. And me, Mr. Average and All-Around Natural Blender.

Wasn’t that Randy was the only black that came into the place (though just about), but he was the only one that was skinny, five-five, with headlamp glasses and an inferiority complex. And, most importantly, he was the only black in there this morning I’m telling you about.

I guess if Bob and I had really thought about what we were putting him through as a member of our “gang,” we probably wouldn’t have gone in there in the first place.

This is not to say Bob and I weren’t nervous. We were. We felt like weenies compared to these guys. But there were those attractions I told you about, and there was also our onrushing manhood we were trying to deal with, attempting to define.

When Willard raised up from his shot he nodded at us, and we nodded back, found places to lean and watch.

Bear wasn’t playing well. He had a mild temper on, and you could tell it even though he hadn’t said a word. He didn’t have a poker face.

Bending over the table, Bear took a shot and missed.

“Damn,” he said.

Willard winked at us, shot again, talked as he did. He wasn’t a temperamental player. He liked to joke and ask us about the movies we’d seen, as he knew our schedule.

He was also interested in special effects, or professed to be, and he liked to talk to Randy about that. Randy was the resident expert; he wanted to do movie makeup and special effects when he got out of college. And there was something between those two from the start. A sort of bond. I think Willard saw in Randy the intellectual side he wanted, and Randy saw in Willard street savvy and strength. When they were together, I had the feeling they considered themselves whole, and there was a yearning to know more about one another.

Willard shot for a long time before missing.

Bear missed.

“Damn.”

Willard continued to talk to Randy, shot three more times before missing, and that one was close. He went around and got his beer off the edge of the pool table and took a long pull on it.

“Do your worst, Bear,” he said.

Bear showed a few ugly teeth at one corner of his mouth, took his shot.

He missed.

“Damn.”

Willard put the beer down, went around and took his shot, chattering all the while to Randy about some blood-squirting technique he’d seen in some cheap low budget film on television, and Randy explained how it was done. And when those two were talking, no one else existed. You would have thought the yin and yang had come together, that two destined lovers had at long last met and fulfilled the will of the gods.

Willard made one ball, missed another.

Bear grunted, took his shot.

And missed.

“Damn.” He turned his head slowly toward Willard as he straightened up. “Hey, Willard. Take your pet nigger somewhere else. I’m trying to shoot a game here and he’s talking through it.”

There was a long pause in which it seemed the seasons changed, and Willard stood where we was, expressionless, staring at Bear.

Bear wasn’t looking at Willard. He was glaring at Randy. Randy’s right foot kept turning out and in, like he was considering running for it, but he was too scared to make the break. He was pinned there, melting like soft chocolate under Bear’s gaze.

“Maybe I’ll rub your head for luck,” Bear said. “You know, with my knuckles. Or maybe that ain’t enough. Maybe I’ll pull it off and wear it on a chain around my neck for luck. How’s that sound, nigger? You like that?”

Randy didn’t say a word. His lips trembled like he wanted to say something, but nothing would come out. His right foot was flopping back and forth, not quite able to lead him away.

“Kid didn’t do anything,” Willard said.

“Talked while I was shooting.”

“So did I.”

“I ain’t forgot that. You want me to, best be quiet.”

He and Willard looked at each other awhile, then Bear turned back to Randy. “This won’t hurt long,” he said, and he stepped in Randy’s direction.

“Let him be,” Willard said, and he was almost polite about it.

“Warning you, Willard. Don’t make this your business. Step aside.”

The seasons were changing again as they stared at one another, and it was the right time for us to run, but we didn’t. Couldn’t. We were frozen.

I glanced about for help. Dan was in the back. And though I doubted he would take our side he was damn sure one to protect his property if he thought it was about to get smashed. I’d heard he broke a guy’s jaw once for accidentally shattering an ashtray.

But Dan didn’t come out of the back and the other guys at the bar and at the pool tables looked mildly curious, not helpful. They were hoping for a little blood, and weren’t willing to let any of it be theirs. Some of them got out cigarettes and lit them, just in case what Bear was going to do might take a while.

Bear doubled up his fist and snarled at Willard. “Well, what’s it going to be?”

We held our breath.

Willard smiled. “All right. Bear. He’s all yours.”

Purchase The Drive-In: A B-Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM CROSSROAD PRESS

The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels

Just when they thought it was safe to leave the drive-in, the survivors of the Orbit's weekly All Night Horror Show  discover that their old world has been reduced to a single cracked highway surrounded on all sides by a prehistoric jungle filled with man-eating dinosaurs.  For a while, Jack and his friends are content to make the best of life in the Stone Age—until they meet a sexy martial arts expert from Nacogdoches, Texas, named Grace who wants to find out what's at the end of the road.

Now things really get weird as they encounter a town where public suicide is encouraged, a forest of old movie posters, movie mags, and carnivorous film, and Popalong Cassidy—a man-monster cowboy with a television head  and a taste for human munchies—whose church of film and pain is presided over by the alien drive-in gods: the  Producer and the Great Director.

Even more outrageous than the horrifying original, The Drive-In 2 is a delightfully down-and-dirty romp through the dark backcountry of our own imagination, the kind of stuff that nightmares—and B movies—are made of it  truly is not just another one of them sequels.

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The Drive-In 3: The Bus Tour

The wild and weird wonders of the Drive-In world continue in this third volume, The Drive-In: The Bus Tour. If you thought the first two books in the series were wacky, this one moves into a whole new realm of whacked and confused. Floods of Biblical proportions. A catfish that would swallow Jonah's whale. Horrid creatures almost as evil as man, and a look at the very machinery of the Drive-In Cosmos, and beyond. This is Joe R. Lansdale at his ironic best, dissecting humanity with a scalpel and a chainsaw. And then it all gets the hammer. The Drive-in, a B Movie with Blood and Popcorn, first published in the eighties, was a milestone for horror fiction as satire, and influenced writers in many genres, from horror to science fiction to fantasy to humor to the literary novel of the strange. Here's your chance to leap back into Lansdale's classic universe and take a whirl on the amusement rides of one of this generation's most unusual novelistic minds.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8