"I could barbecue an ole dog and make her taste good."

Fuller looked down at the mangy hound trotting alongside him and its skin-and-bones coat, some mange around the face and ears.

He soon came out of the path and into the clearing and saw the Clanton boys waiting up by a loading dock to the barn where Fuller had spent many a night watching the best roosters in Alabama tear each other a new asshole.

Both of the boys were short and so painfully white that they seemed to glow. One chewed tobacco and offered him his pouch. The other smoked a cigarette and leaned on a rifle. The whites of their eyes were yellow and the lids almost pink.

Fuller knew they never left the woods during the day, keeping the fire around those stills stoked and ready for the runners to move that 'shine all over the state and into Georgia.

Fuller pushed onto the door. It held.

He pushed again.

And then the two boys joined him, heaving and pushing, with fat and sinew and muscle, until they heard a pop and the great doors opened, flooding the dark, hot barn with a light that almost seemed biblical to Bert.

He pointed the gun into the arena, seeing nothing but the girls, and moved slowly under the loft rafters, where he heard a short click, almost sounding like a cricket. As he turned the corner, he felt a pop to his jaw so hard and quick he blacked out before losing his feet, his mouth bleeding, and realizing he'd just been smacked in the jaw by the stock of a gun, the big guardsman boot on his chest.

Those hillbilly Clanton boys now opened up to shoot with rebel yells.

I WAITED IN ONE OF THE STALLS, RIGHT BEHIND THE COOP door, and listened as two sets of feet bounded up the landing, the men speaking together in some kind of garbled countryspeak, seeming to divide and take each side, squaring the arena. The footsteps moved in closer to me on the slatted-wood floor. The sound was unmistakable, each step telegraphed before the next. Holding the gun, I found it tough to breathe but tried to keep my breath silent in the hot air.

There was the sound of opening and closing doors. They were checking each hutch, looking for me.

I relaxed my muscles and took in a breath. They were getting close.

FULLER GOT TO HIS FEET AND FELT HIS MOUTH, FEELING the swelling, and tasting the blood as he spit out two teeth. He wavered on his feet and moved through a group of girls, who screamed and seemed horrified by his presence and his looks, but he had no time for them as he walked to the center of the ring, circling the mass of silver slots, and called out for Murphy. "You goddamn coward, come out. Quit hiding. You gonna sneak up on me now?"

Behind him, the women retreated back into a dark corner, and Fuller smiled at that. He didn't know who they were, but even in pajamas they sure as shit knew him and, for a moment, he felt good.

He spit on the red-dirt ground, covered in chicken shit and cigarette butts, and called out for Murphy again.

But he heard no answer from the coward.

ANOTHER HUTCH BANGED OPEN AND THEN SLAMMED SHUT, and I waited until he came into mine, my breath slow and even and controlled. A skinny boy, just a teen with glowing skin and recessed eyes, moved into the dark coop and turned to me.

I simply yanked the gun from his hand and knocked him on his ass with the back of my hand. The youth scrambled back onto a piss-stained mattress and screamed out, his mouth open with rotten teeth, and I grabbed the kid's dirty white T-shirt and hauled him out of the coop, holding on to his neck.

I pulled the boy along, the .45 loose in my hand, my finger not even on the trigger.

As I turned the corner, there was the same boy - a mirror - this one in overalls and a slight bit older, with a rifle up to his shoulder and his eye, smiling a dirty, rotten smile, no shoes and no shirt.

He spit and leveled the gun before half his head misted with a loud boom.

As he slumped to the ground, Black was there behind him.

The boy I held caterwauled and fell to his knees, crawling to his brother, the old twin, yelling, "Paw-paw. Paw-paw. He's gone. He's gone, Paw-paw."

The boy screamed and held the dead boy's head against his chest, covering his dirt-stained shirt in fresh blood.

Black looked down at them and shrugged, reaching down for the dead boy's rifle and holding it just as the old man scrambled up the landing, a gun in his left hand but not raised. Caught by the sight of his two boys, he didn't even try.

"Drop it, old man," Black said. "Or I'll drop your hillbilly ass where you stand."

Bert Fuller screamed nonsense from the floor of the cockfighting arena. Girls screamed and yelled from down below, the doors full open now, and the mass of them yelling for the outside and the light.

I looked down from the loft at Bert, defenseless in his pajamas and bedroom slippers. Him calling out my manhood.

"Bert, you are a true surprise."

"Come on, Murphy. Let's go, you sonofabitch."

"I'm tired," I said and threw down a pair of handcuffs I kept in my pocket. "You want me to come down there and do it myself?"

"I do, Murphy. I got you now."

"Yep, Bert," I said. "You got me right where you want me."

I looked over at Black. He'd cuffed the old man and the son behind their backs and tossed them into the same coop as the dead girl.

"You really hate these guys," I said.

"Got a good reason."

"Wanna tell me about it?"

"In time."

It didn't take much to restrain Fuller, and as I pushed him through the barn door and into daylight I saw the girls all standing by a hand pump and drinking with their hands as the water overflowed from buckets.

I asked the little girl in the man's shirt her age and she told me she was twelve.

"We have help coming."

I touched her shoulder and she jumped, running for the woods, moving so fast she lost the shoes on her bare feet.

WHEN LORELEI FINALLY CALLED, IT DIDN'T TAKE TWO SECONDS for Billy to steal his father's car and drive over the river to find her. She said she'd been staying with a friend, and Billy soon found the friend was a six-foot-tall she-male named Chesty LaRue. They sat in the front yard of Chesty's little bungalow in a run-down section of old Victorians and beaten houses not far from the river in the old district and watched the children Chesty babysat on her off days. According to Chesty, the off days had been plenty. Billy would never have guessed that Chesty was a man unless Lorelei had whispered it to him, but the more Chesty talked, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking cigarettes in a Japanese robe, Billy could tell he had a mighty strong chin and a heavier brow that most ladies.

"Did I tell you about this one fella who liked me to sit in the corner with a lampshade on my head and say goo-goo?"

"Why he do that?" Billy asked.

"You never really want to know," Chesty said. "Take this one fella, he liked to be treated like a baby."

"Maybe he was just feelin' low," Billy said. And he looked over to Lorelei and smiled.

"You don't get it," Chesty said, adjusting the scarf he wore over his wigless head. "He liked to wear diapers and suck on a pacifier."

"Good God Almighty."

"I got some more stories."

"That's okay, Chesty," Lorelei said. "Thanks."

"You kids want some Coca-Cola?" she asked, just like any other mother on a hot summer day looking out for the neighborhood kids.

They said no thanks. Chesty clutched her robe tight against her chest as she walked, like she had something that would pop out.

"Do her fellas know she's a boy?" Billy asked.

"Some."

"Don't they go crazy?"

"Some like it."

"Get out of here."

"I think they don't feel as bad about bein' with a man if that man is dressed as a woman. You see what I mean?"

"Not really. I think I'd about fall out if I was with some girl and a big old wiener hopped out of her pants."

Lorelei laughed and put her finger to her lips, trying to quiet him down. "Chesty has been good to me. Lets me sleep on her couch. She's fed me and that means a lot, because I know she hasn't worked in weeks. She's thinking about moving to Cuba. Apparently, they like boys to be strippers down there, because they're more reliable than women, and they do all kind of freak shows, too."

Billy sat back on the steps and watched the dirty children playing in the yard. One big husky boy, maybe four, led three others in some kind of military drill, and when he stopped marching they all tumbled to a stop, about running into each other, and he turned and gave a salute, pulling out a plastic gun and making bang-bang noises.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Lorelei said. "Chesty's husband is coming back from Korea next week and that doesn't leave me with much time. You said something about California and that's fine by me. I think I can get enough up for gas money, and, if you already got your daddy's car, we can hit the road. Come on, say you will. I can be packed in a New York minute."

"How long is that?"

"Sure as hell faster than one in Alabama."

Billy gave her a weak smile. He leaned up from where he sat and watched the kids who had broken up into two different teams and were hiding behind scraggly little trees and pointing plastic guns, some of them in Indian feathers and cowboy hats, and the husky boy in a real military helmet. They made those bang-bang noises for a long time, and Billy was glad for them because they sure as hell filled in those long silences.

Lorelei pulled the black hair from her clear eyes and smiled.

17.

BY THE END OF AUGUST, the blue-ribbon grand jury had handed down more than five hundred indictments against more than fifty crooks in Phenix City. The latest being Clanton, his common-law wife, and their surviving son, who looked at a stretch at Kilby for the rest of their lives or maybe the chair. Jack Black said they wouldn't know what to do in jail on account of it being so clean.

"Do you think they bathed?"

"I think if they'd seen a bar of soap," he said, "they would've eaten it."

We made daily trips out to the county dump where the Guard troops would haul roulette wheels and card tables and one-armed bandits and horse-racing machines. They'd back up heavy-duty flatbed trucks and dump the shiny chrome equipment into massive heaps before pouring on diesel and setting fire to them all.

I was always curious about why Black took so much enjoyment in this. It became almost some kind of ceremony for him as he'd light a cigar - usually from a box taken from some hood - and he'd smoke for a moment while the sun went down, before dropping it on the fuel, the whole thing going up in a blue woosh.

He'd stay long after I left home for supper, sitting at a good distance and watching the smoke trail high into the clouds and burn away, a big smile on his face and the ever-present bottle of Jack Daniel's waiting within easy reach.

WE LOADED DOWN THE EMPTY WOODEN GUN RACK OF THE sheriff's office a few weeks later. All the guns were new and oiled, their barrels and stocks gleaming in the early-morning light. We had a dozen shotguns, already cut down to eighteen inches for close work, and two Thompson machine guns that I'd bought from the Army surplus store across the river. I'd outfitted the men, for the most part, with long-barrel .38s, but Jack Black preferred having a .44 in hand just in case he had to shoot through an engine block to stop a getaway car. And although the big, hard violence had stopped for the meantime, we were pretty damn aware the fire could kick back up at any moment.

I moved over to the main desk, and deputies Jack Black and little Quinnie Kelley - in his Coke-bottle glasses and awkward new suit - checked out a couple of 12-gauges and then loaded their pistols. I refilled the cup of coffee I'd started at five a.m., right after my jog and some heavy-bag work. The police radio clicked and chattered at the front of the office.

"Drinking a pot of coffee ain't gonna make this much easier," Jack Black said.

"Thanks, Jack," I said. "I was kind of hoping it would."

Quinnie looked down at the ground and hoisted the pistol up on his right hip. I smiled, biting my lip. He still reminded me of a kid at Christmastime trying out a new toy.

Books on detective work and Alabama state law cluttered my desk, with empty coffee mugs, two full ashtrays, and a stack of green 45 records marked MR. X that I'd been logging into evidence. A Chamber of Commerce calendar for September 1954 hung on the wall, along with a certificate for me being the regional owner of the year for the Texaco Oil Corporation. Beside the certificate hung an autographed photo of Joe Louis.

I was much more proud of the Joe Louis picture.

"Well, hell," I said, "let's go."

I unhinged a long wooden bar and felt for a Winchester 12, feeling more ceremonial than useful, and closed the latch and slipped the padlock back on with a click.

I'd worn a new gray suit that morning - tailored at Chancellor's Men's Shop on Broadway - a pressed white shirt and striped tie. I'd even shined my Florsheim wingtips, and they clacked on the concrete floors with a steady confidence that I didn't feel as we made our way out back to an unmarked Chevy sedan and all climbed inside.

Quinnie and Jack were dressed in a similar way. We'd burned the old sheriff's office uniforms, dropping them right on top of the slots and card tables.

I closed the doors and waited till everyone climbed inside. I looked down at the wide, shiny console and the dangling car keys. Jack Black reached for them and said: "Why don't I drive, Sheriff?"

WE FOUND REUBEN AT HIS FARMHOUSE, ASLEEP IN THE driver's seat of his old Buick with the radio and headlights on. He didn't notice us until I tapped on the side window and he smiled, his eyes still closed, and smacked his lips, turning his head. I tapped again, and he opened his eyes and looked back and just stared at me, before yawning and mouthing, "'Mornin'."

I tapped on the glass, and he made a big show of stretching and dialing down the radio and rolling down the window. "Was I speedin', Officer?"

"You missed your court date."

"I was held up by unforeseeable circumstances."

"You were drunk."

He shook his head. "Last night? That ain't drunk."

"You have charges against you for running a gambling establishment with no liquor license."

Quinnie and Jack waited by the patrol car, Jack smoking a cigar and Quinnie standing with feet wide apart, his eyes narrowed, watching me and the car.

"How 'bout you come with us?"