Bob stopped and raised his hands, and the gun went back into Russ's neck, just under the ear. Bob was five feet away, close enough to see the whiteness of the taut index finger as it rode the trigger right to the breaking point and the way the square muzzle actually plunged a quarter inch into the soft skin in the gap between the boy's jaw and his skull, just under the ear. Russ's eyes bugged like deviled eggs.

"Ain't this a pretty picture," Bob said.

"Fuck you, Swagger," said Peck. "You are checking out today, partner."

"Shoot him," said Russ through a throatful of gun. "Shoot through me and kill him."

"You shut up now, Russ," said Bob. "Peck, this here's between you and me, isn't it? Let the boy go. Let him run free. Then you take your shot at me and we will see who's the quicker man today."

"I got a better idea," said Peck. "I shoot him and then I shoot you and then I go home a big hero."

"Who you working for?" said Bob.

"You ain't ever going to find out," said Peck.

Now and then he'd lean out from behind Russ, and just a bit, say a two-inch slice of the side of his face, would be clear, but only for a second. Like many stupid men, he was quite cunning. He was not exposing anything for Bob to shoot at, assuming Bob could even get his gun into play fast enough.

"Shoot him," screamed Russ. screamed Russ.

"I got some money," said Bob. "I been financing this thing off a killing I made in a lawsuit years back. Got sixteen thousand left, small, unmarked bills. Buried not far from here. What you say, Peck? That money for the boy. Then you and I have our business. Winner take all. Might as well get paid."

Peck considered. The money was a little tempting. But nothing would keep him from his idea of the good life.

"No way," he said. "Turn around. Turn around or by God I shoot this boy, then take my chances with you."

Here it was. If he turned, Peck would shoot him, shoot the boy. If he drew, he might be able to hit Peck before he fired but the odds were against it. But he had to move. The time had come. He looked at Russ, who had his eyes shut and whose face had gone gray: he'd made his peace, like many a soldier who's about to die will do.

So here it was.

"Keep them hands up," Peck was shouting, more and more insanely, gone now, lost in madness, "and turn around or by God I will-"

A telephone rang.

Incongruously, there in the middle of the clearing, with the sun rising, Russ choking to death, Bob with his hands up, Duane Peck playing his last and grandest hand, the telephone rang.

Peck leaned out in surprise and Bob saw the confusion in his eyes as he tried to figure out what to do, and then in just a split second his eyes involuntarily veered downward to look at the phone on his belt and by the time they came back they were surprised to see not Bob but a blur of Bob, a Bob whose hands already seemed to have a gun in them and were moving so quickly up his chest and leveling toward him that there was no way to make a measurement or take a picture, and Peck tried to get the Glock over on him to catch up but knew he never could.

The bullet hit him in the right eye, crushing through it, bounding through the cerebrum, opening as it went, and plunged to the dense tissues of the cerebellum. The impulse to fire was trapped forever in his nervous system, never reaching his trigger finger. He fell backwards stiff as a bronze statue, his knees so locked that when he hit he bounced. The Glock thumped into the grass.

Russ was stunned by blast, his face peppered by flecks of hot powder, and one eye was blurred and watery. His ears rang thunderously.

He turned and looked at Peck, totally defunct.

One word came to his mind.

"Cool," he croaked.

But Bob was already kneeling at the man and had pried the ringing folder phone off his belt. He looked at it in terror. How did it work?

"The button under the earpiece, push it!" Russ cried.

Bob's quick hand reached it.

"Yeah?" he said gutturally.

"What's happening, Peck?" came a voice that he had never heard, an Arkansas voice, not without its polish and charm, though now undercut with urgency. Bob's mind emptied at the question. Then he said, in a slightly better imitation of Peck, "It's over. Got 'em both."

"Goddammit!" bellowed the voice. "Why didn't you call me?" bellowed the voice. "Why didn't you call me?"

"Ah-" Bob began, but the voice plunged ahead.

"I told you to follow orders exactly: exactly: Don't you get that?" Don't you get that?"

"Yes sir," mumbled Bob, trying to keep himself bland and simple. "Sorry, I-"

But the voice had lost interest and shot ahead to new topics.

"Is the general all right?"

"Yep."

"Bury the bodies, get the general home and disappear for a week. Call me next week. I want a full report."

"Yes sir," said Bob.

The phone clicked to dial tone.

43.

Nicholas Bama, fourteen, was dreading his biology test, because he hadn't really studied for it-or at least to the degree he was expected to. He had small gifts for certain things-math, for example-but not for biology.

And Mr. Bennington, St. Timothy's School for Boys' entire biology department, was known as a mean and nasty sucker, even in the summer semester, which was saved for boys who possibly weren't up to the relentless course as part of their five majors during the regular academic year.

So Nick sat with a combination of self-loathing and anxiety in the school's lab, as Mr. Bennington, a large man who peered at the world through flat pale eyes over the half-crescents of reading glasses, bore down on him like the bad news that couldn't be avoided.

The test was distributed.

A word flashed from the text that terrified him: pith ray. Now, what on earth was a pith ray? It seemed somehow to touch something he knew, someway, somehow, but ... pith ray? He felt his mind purge itself of its few torturously acquired biological concepts, yielding a great empty void.

Yet suddenly there was a commotion and he looked up astounded to see the headmaster, Mr. Wilmot, and his stepmother, the beautiful Beth, Miss Runner-up 1986, as everybody called her behind her back, earnestly conversing with Mr. Bennington.

"Mr. Bama?" spoke Mr. Bennington in his best fake English accent. "Your services are required."

Nick turned the test over and obediently trotted to the front of the room, the immediate envy of all the other non-biology geniuses in the lab.

"Well, aren't you the lucky boy?" said Mr. Bennington imperiously. "Saved from yet another brush with distinction. Madame, take him, he's yours, is he not?"

Beth didn't know quite what to do in the face of this Continental hauteur, but she managed her best thing, which was a smile of such glacial, aching beauty that its failure to impress Bennington proved for once and all the man was homo, and she nodded to Nick and out they went.

"Beth, is anything wrong?" he asked. "Is Daddy all right?"

"Keep the long face up, hon," she said conspiratorially, "I told them he was in the hospital. He's as right as rain."

Beth ushered Nick through the signing-out-of-school process, down the dank, frosty corridors-"It looks like a morgue, Nicky," Beth whispered, and it would, to a girl who grew up in a town called Frog Junction, Arkansas-and out into the sunlight, where her gleaming black Mercedes S-class awaited. Nick could see that he was the last pickup: Beth's own twins, Timmy and Jason, were in the backseat, looking grumpy for having been pulled out of soccer camp, Nick's older brother, Jake, lounging in the front seat, his hair a thistly un-showered mess, as if he'd just been roused from his bed (he had), and his oldest sibling, Amy, pert and pretty and perfect, looked, as usual, pissed off at being hauled out of her job at the tennis club by a stepmother who was closer to her own age than her father's.

"What's going on?" Nick asked.

"Oh, you know your father. He called me at nine and said 'Get the kids. All of 'em! It's time for a party.'"

"A party?" said Nick.

"Yes," said Beth, "a party. That's what he said. You know your father and his ways."

They drove through town and in twenty minutes Beth had driven them up Cliff Drive to Hardscrabble Country Club, of which their daddy was majority owner. It was a vast, baronial building, red ragged stone and gabled windows, set on the highest point in a lush kingdom of golf course and tennis courts and swimming pools. The doorman ushered them in.

"This way, please," he said mysteriously. "Mrs. Bama, Jeff will park the car."

The whole unruly, unwashed mob straggled in, through the foyer and into the banquet hall, making odd sounds of confusion and alarm. What on earth?

What they saw astonished them.

The long table had a groaning buffet on it, all the styles of eggs in the world, sausages, pancakes, mounds of fluffy grits, fruits, pastries.

"Golly," said Nick.

And next to it: Nick blinked. This was the craziest thing his father had ever done. Next to it, a twelve-foot, fully decorated Christmas tree, heaped underneath with presents.

"Is everybody here?" his dad said, stepping out of the kitchen. "Come on, let's eat. Then we'll open presents."

"Uh, hello?" hello?" said Amy. "Earth to Daddy: It's August. I thought Christmas was in December." said Amy. "Earth to Daddy: It's August. I thought Christmas was in December."

"Oh, we'll have one then," Red said. "But I thought we'd have one today too."

"Red," said Beth, "when did you start planning this?"

"Believe it or not, less than three hours ago. I called the staff of the club to get them going, I called that Christmas All Year Round place out on Rogers and I called Brad Newton." Brad Newton was the owner of Newton's Jewelry, Fort Smith's most exclusive store, sole Fort Smith importers of Rolexes.

"But I-"

"Honey, you have no idea of the power of cash money. Now come on, y'all, let's dig in and then open our presents."

The family, all the kids, the new wife, the old wife, who showed up presently, and all the bodyguards, had themselves a fine old time chowing down, with the exception, of course, of Amy, the Smith freshman, who stood apart and would not participate because she considered such ostentatious displays of wealth and capital ...

"Vulgar," she pronounced.

"I am vulgar," said her father, twitting her. "I admit it. Gauche, even. What about crude, overbearing, ostentatious, self-indulgent, selfish and boorish? But, honey, you have to admit: vulgar vulgar puts the food on the table. Lots of it." puts the food on the table. Lots of it."

"Daddy," she sniffed, "you are so gross."

Then it was time for presents.

"Each one of you," Red said, as he took command of the assembly, "each one of you should should have a Rolex. Life is much better with a Rolex than without one. So the theme of today's Christmas-in-August celebration is: Rolexes for everyone. Even those of you who have a Rolex. Life is much better with a Rolex than without one. So the theme of today's Christmas-in-August celebration is: Rolexes for everyone. Even those of you who have have a Rolex, now you have a Rolex, now you have two two Rolexes." Rolexes."

He walked among his children and wives with an armload of gift boxes.

"Let's see," he said, "I think this one is for Timmy Timmy. Oh, and what do we have here, we have one for Jason Jason. And, I ... think ... this ... one ... is ... for ... Jake Jake."

At last he got to Nicholas.

"Now, Nick, isn't this better than biology?"

"Yes sir, it sure is," said Nick, gazing up at the loony tune who was his father.

"Go ahead," his father said, "open it."

Nick opened the package: yes, it was the Oyster Master Submariner with the day/date and the red and blue bezel.

"You wear that on biology field trips and you'll never get lost," Red said.

"Thanks, Dad."

"I just want everybody everybody to be happy." to be happy."

He gave each wife, Miss Third Runner-up and Miss Runner-up, a diamond necklace. They oooohed and ahhhhhhed appreciatively.

"Red, I don't know what you just survived," said Susie, his first wife, "but it must have been a honey of a fight."

"Sweetie, you don't know the half," half," he said. he said.

Then he turned to Amy.

"I know you've got one. This one is different."

"Oh, Lord," she said.

"Go on, open it."

She opened it. It was different. It was solid gold.

"How's that for vulgar?" vulgar?" said Red. "Let me tell you, they don't said Red. "Let me tell you, they don't git git more vulgar than that!" more vulgar than that!"

"What am I supposed to do with this? I can't possibly wear it."