Mrs. Jones had finally collapsed to the floor and was pulling her hair. "Pete. Pete. Pete," she said, as if he might answer. "Goddamn you, Sunset," Jones said. "A man's got urges."

"Where's Karen?" Sunset asked.

Mrs. Jones wailed and Mr. Jones sat in his chair. Neither responded. Sunset got up, put on her shoe, sat back down.

After a while, Mr. Jones said, "You know for sure he's dead?"

"He's dead, all right."

"Might still be alive."

"Not unless he's been resurrected."

Mrs. Jones let out another screech. This one shook the glass in the windows. She had begun to roll around on the floor.

"Where is he?" Mr. Jones asked.

"At what's left of our house with his pants down and his ass in the air."

Jones sat for a while, trying to swallow a lump in his throat. When he managed, he said, "Reckon I got to go over there and get him. You, missy, you're gonna pay for this. There's the law, and they're gonna make you pay."

"He was the law," Sunset said, "and he made me pay every day, and I hadn't even done nothing."

Jones got up and went out the door. Sunset sat and held the pistol in her lap. She looked at Mrs. Jones, who was lying on the floor heaving.

Slowly her mother-in-law put her feet under her and got up and walked over to Sunset. Sunset knew what was coming, but unlike with Mr. Jones, she didn't move. She figured she ought to take just a little for what she had done, and if she was going to take it, she'd take it from her mother-in-law, Marilyn Jones. The woman had always treated her good. She could take a slap.

But just one.

Mrs. Jones slapped Sunset with all her strength. So hard it knocked Sunset onto the floor and overturned the chair.

Sunset thought: Maybe I could have skipped that one after all. The slap struck her where Pete had hit her, and it burned like hell.

"You killed my boy," Marilyn said.

"I didn't mean for it to happen," Sunset said, then started to cry.

Slowly, she got up and righted the chair, pushed the shirt down over herself best she could, sat down again. She still had the revolver in her hand. She held on to it like a drowning man to a straw.

Marilyn stood over her and looked down, her hair loose now and hanging. She drew her hand back as if she might hit Sunset again.

"No," Sunset said.

Marilyn's face became less clouded. She studied Sunset for a long moment, opened her arms wide, said, "Come here, darling."

"Say what?" Sunset said.

"Come here."

Sunset studied her mother-in-law for a time, stood cautiously.

"It's all right," said Marilyn. "I ain't crazy as I was."

"About half that crazy could be too much."

"It's all right," Marilyn said, and took a step toward Sunset. They embraced. Sunset continued to hold the gun, just in case. She was hoping she wouldn't end up shooting the whole damn family. Maybe the chickens too.

"I lost a son," Marilyn said. "I ain't gonna lose no daughter, too."

"I didn't want to do it."

"I know."

"No. No, you don't," Sunset said.

"You might be surprised what I know, girlie."

3.

The cyclone that tore up Sunset's house swirled on through the trees, carrying away her roof and goods, headed east, and was still kicking by early nightfall, tossing fish, frogs, and debris. It even threw a calf against a house and killed it.

The westbound train into Tyler caught the tail end of the storm, and the wind tossed fish against it and shook the boxcars and made them rattle like a toy train shaken by a mean child.

For a moment, it seemed as if the train might be sucked off the track, but shaking was the worst of it. The locomotive and its little boxes chugged on and so did the storm, which finally played out near the Louisiana border. The last of it was just a cool, damp wind for some hot people night-fishing on the banks of the Sabine River.

In one of the boxcars, Hillbilly sat with his guitar and his little tote bag and eyed the two fellas squatting across from him. They had climbed on when the train slowed in Tyler, and now as it clunked through the countryside and the storm was over, they began to eye him.

They pretended to ignore him at first, but he caught them sneaking glances. He hadn't liked them from the start. He had greeted them as they climbed into the car, and they hadn't said so much as eat shit or howdy.

They kicked a couple of sun perch out of the open doorway, shook the rain off themselves dog style, hunkered down like gargoyles opposite the open sliding door, and said nothing, just sneaked peeks.

Although Hillbilly looked younger than his thirty years, he had lived a full thirty. He had been around and seen much. He had played his guitar and sung in every dive in East Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. He had ridden trains all over the place, supped in hobo camps, boxed and wrestled for money at county fairs, where his wiry thinness and soft good looks had fooled many a local tough into thinking he was a pushover.

From experience, Hillbilly knew these fellas were studying him a little too intently. Like hungry dogs looking at a pork chop. One of them was short and stout and wore a wool cap. The other was taller, leaner, and hatless, with a thick growth of beard.

"You got the makings?" Hillbilly asked, even though he didn't smoke as a matter of course. But sometimes, you broke the ice, it could save you trouble. A cigarette could do that, break the ice.

The man with the cap shook his head, said, "You're a young'n, ain't you?"

"Not that young," Hillbilly said.

"You look young."

"Have any food?" Hillbilly asked.

"Just them fish in the doorway," said the bearded man. "You want that, have at it."

"I don't think so," Hillbilly said. "Ever seen that kind of thing before? Raining fish? I read about it. It was that cyclone. It sucked out a pond somewhere, throwed them fish all along here."

The men had no interest in the cyclone or the fish. The bearded man grinned at Hillbilly. Hillbilly had seen friendlier grins on alligators.

"You been on the road a while?" said the bearded man.

"A while."

"Gets lonely, don't it?" said the man with the cap.

"I'm not that lonely, really."

"We get lonely," said the bearded man. "Me and him just being together. We get all kinds of lonely. Man don't need to be lonely. Don't have to be."

"I'm not lonely at all," Hillbilly said.

The man with the cap said, "We can show you that you been lonely and didn't even know it."

"I'm fine. Really."

The man with the cap laughed. "It ain't really you we're worried about. It's us that are lonely."

"You got each other," Hillbilly said.

"Having each other all the time gets old," the bearded man said. "We want someone else to not be lonely with."

"God don't like that kind of talk. You boys ever hear about Sodom and Gomorrah?"

The bearded man hooted. "Who gives a damn about some Bible story? We get you bent over, you'll be happier than you think."

"Fellas, leave me alone."

That's when the one with the cap came up from his squatting position and sprang.

Hillbilly brought his guitar around hard, breaking it soundly over the capped man's head, knocking him back. Then the bearded one was on him. Hillbilly pushed him back with the palm of his hand, stuck the other hand in his pocket, pulled out his knife, flicked it open.

The one with the cap came in again, and Hillbilly stuck him under the short ribs. The knife went in as easy as poking a hole through a sheet of wet paper. The man dropped immediately. Went to his knees, tumbled on his side.

"Goddamn," said the bearded one, whacking Hillbilly in the eye. "You hurt Winston."

The bearded man grabbed Hillbilly in a bear hug and squeezed Hillbilly's hands to his sides. Hillbilly butted him in the nose and he let go. Hillbilly stabbed him in the groin and he stumbled back. Hillbilly's knife flashed again, high and wide.

The man held his throat, tried to say something, but couldn't. He sat down as if a chair had been pulled out from under him. He sat upright for a moment, then lay on his back slowly and tried to tuck his chin, as if this might seal the wound.

Hillbilly put his boot on the man's face and pushed with all his weight so the wound would bleed out. The man wiggled like a snake, but the wiggling didn't last.

"I told you to leave me the hell alone," Hillbilly said.

Hillbilly wiped his knife on the dead man's jacket, put it away, went over and looked at the one who had worn the cap. The cap had fallen off and lay on the boxcar floor.

Hillbilly picked up the cap and put it on, then he bent over the man. He was alive, but in the partial moonlight his dark eyes looked like creek pebbles under raging water.

"You done stabbed me," the man said. His voice sounded as if it were coming through a squeeze organ.

"You wasn't gonna give me a picnic lunch," Hillbilly said.

"That's my hat."

"Not anymore."

"We was just gonna get some loving. There ain't no fault in that."

"Unless you don't want it."

"I ain't gonna make it," the man said.

"You took it under the rib. I think I got your lung. You're right. You ain't gonna make it."

"You're a sonofabitch," the man said, and blood poured out of his mouth.

"You're right about that," Hillbilly said.

"Just a goddamned horse's ass."

"Right again. And I figure you ain't got but a few seconds to get used to the idea."

The man jerked and made a noise, then joined his pal in the long fall to wherever.

Hillbilly got up and looked at his guitar. It was junk now. And so was his way of making a living. Hillbilly tossed the busted guitar out the doorway, squatted and thought about things.

He could throw these bo's out, go into the next town, get off there. Then again, it might be best he got off when the train slowed in Lindale near the cannery. It was a pretty good jump because it didn't slow all the way, but he had done it before. You tucked and rolled and took your jump where the grass was thick, it was something you could do and not break your neck.

He did that, by the time they found these two, he'd be long gone.

Hillbilly glanced outside. It was black in the distance because of the woods, but the moonlight lay bright on the gravel along the tracks and made the stuff look like diamonds.

Hillbilly rummaged through their goods and found a potato, some salt and pepper in little boxes. He put these in his little bag and fastened it to his belt. He stood in the doorway for a long time, using one trembling hand to support himself on the frame of the boxcar, watched until he could see the Lindale lights.

Out there was Tin Can Alley. He had worked canning peas there, and he had worked picking the peas they canned. He had worked all along this railroad line, picking fruit, cotton, tomatoes, all kinds of jobs, and the only one he had liked was singing and playing that guitar. Now his guitar was broken, smashed over some amorous thug's head.

He looked back at the two. The one whose throat he had cut had a dark pool under his head. It looked like a flat black pillow there in the darkness. The other lay on his side with his hands pressed against his wound, eyes open, as if thinking about something important.

Hillbilly's mouth tasted sour with bile. He spat out of the boxcar, and when the train slowed coming into the Lindale yard, he took a deep breath, and jumped before it got there.

Wandering through the darkness, Hillbilly came to a wooded place. There was a little stream there, and in time he saw a flicker of light through the trees. He could smell smoke and he could smell food cooking.