"Exactly."

Fannie's white skin had grown reddish, her face flushed. She was a curvy woman, with ample hips and just the slightest hint of a belly. She turned to drink a cocktail from the straw, and Reuben noticed her backside was big but nicely shaped. When she finished with the drink, she looked over her shoulder and caught him staring.

"We heard you threw in with Lamar Murphy."

Reuben laughed. "You lost your mind."

"Aren't you two big buddies?"

"Not anymore."

She nodded and turned back over. "Don't you hate it when the summer is over and you know everything is going to get all brown and ugly? I try to keep it going for as long as I can. I can tan in this little hotbox all through January. I saw the advertisement in the back of Vogue magazine. It's all the rage in France."

"You don't say."

"You know Johnnie will kill you if you don't bring him the money."

He nodded.

"I heard Clyde Yarborough's in with you, too."

"Johnnie sure likes to run his mouth."

"He talks in his sleep."

Reuben pulled up a plastic chair and watched as Fannie flipped through the pages of Vogue and then tossed it away and then shielded her face with a copy of Look. Cover story on Deborah Kerr, another crazy redhead.

Reuben just waited.

"What's it gonna take?"

"Jesus H. Christ. Would you two let things cool off? I just got out of jail."

"For what?"

"I slept in my court date."

"Murphy arrest you?"

He nodded.

"He sure has a hard-on for you. What the hell did you ever do to him?"

"Not a damn thing. He just thinks he's a big man 'cause of the badge. He came out to arrest me at my farm, right in front of my boy. And he kept me there longer than the law said."

"Why'd he do that."

"To play with my head. I 'bout knocked him out cold, too."

"You hit him?"

"Sure did. That's when he asked me how long it took to rob Hoyt. But I could tell he didn't know a thing. He just threw it out at me, waiting to see how I'd react, but I didn't say nothin'."

Fannie turned back over, sitting on her butt and pulling her knees up to her titties. She tucked her sunglasses up on her head and squinted at Reuben. "Did boxing really mess your brain up that bad, sweetie?"

"What?"

"Murphy has someone who tipped him off, and if you don't tell the sonofabitch what you saw in that alley he's gonna let you deal with Hoyt."

"He didn't mean it. He'd never do that. He was fishing."

"How'd you like to make a friendly wager?"

THE COFFEE WAS ON AND THE KIDS IN BED JUST AS I SAW the big headlights flash into my driveway and cross over the television and shine on the knotty-pine wall. It was election night, and I'd just returned from the sheriff's office, taking phone calls and later meeting with Hugh Britton and some folks from the RBA. I met Jack out back on my porch as Joyce finished up putting up the leftovers. I'd taken off the suit and wore a gray sweatshirt and workout pants from hitting the heavy bag in four rounds counted off by Thomas on my Bulova after supper. He liked to keep the time on me.

Just as he stepped inside, I handed Jack the mug of coffee and could tell by his whiskey breath he needed it. He sat on a folding chair at the edge of the deck.

He shook my hand, "Congratulations, Sheriff."

"I was the only one running."

"But now it's official."

You could smell the smoldering of burning leaves from my neighbor.

"I let out those two drunks from the other night," Black said. "That car was a real mess. I don't think they're even gonna have it towed."

I drank the coffee. I lit a cigarette.

There was a harvest moon tonight, and, in the black sky, it looked absolutely huge. One of those times that the moon felt as large as the earth and you could reach out and touch it.

"I need to tell you something, Lamar."

"You're not leaving, are you?"

He shook his head. Jack had let his hair grow back like a civilian, and his sideburns had gotten long and dark. He still wore his gray suit and jacket, black tie and shoes, a badge clipped to his belt.

"You know by the time I jumped at Normandy, I wasn't scared. We'd been in Italy, and those combat nerves were gone. It's kind of like getting sex - the first time you do it, you worry about not making a mess."

"I bet it's a little different."

"But there was one night in France when the Germans were trapped on each side by some hedgerows. They had to either run through them and get shot down in a big open field or go right for these two big Sherman tanks. Some ran right for the tanks, and, as we followed, we had to step over their bodies. Can you imagine running for a tank? Some of them were dead, flattened like pancakes by the tracks, some of them half dead, crying out in German for their mamas or Hitler or their souls."

I drank some coffee.

"I spent my twentieth birthday at the Bulge," he said, not touching his coffee yet. The steam rose off the top, the cup still in his hands. His eyes unfocused and clouded. "I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not the sensitive type."

"Never figured that, Jack."

"Did you know my real name is Rudolph?"

"I think I saw that somewhere."

He kept staring down past Joyce's little beauty shop toward the creek.

"My buddies call me Jack 'cause of Black Jack whiskey. As you can tell, I like to drink."

"No."

"Quit kiddin' around, boss. You know I was here at Benning? That's something I never told you. Before the war and when we processed out."

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

I waited. Joyce walked out the back door and asked us if we wanted some more coffee, and we both thanked her as she walked back inside, drying her hands on a dish towel.

"Me and this boy from Erie, Pennsylvania, named Wurst, were good buddies. Been through battle and blood and all that bullshit. About the same age. Too stupid to know what we'd gotten ourselves into but now wanting to live it up. Every day feeling like a goddamn gift."

He stood up, his feet unsteady.

"We were horny as goats and took our pay on a Friday night over to Phenix City."

He lit a cigar, one that had already been smoked halfway, and told me the story. They'd come over the river in '46 and met some girl at Clyde Yarborough's Cafe, before he'd opened the Atomic Bomb.

"But this girl, they called her Barbara LeMay, wasn't a girl at all. Turned out her name was really Ed, and he had a pecker bigger than a horse. My buddy started to raise some hell with Yarborough and Yarborough threatened him. When I stepped up, that mush-mouthed freak about split my skull with the butt of a 12-gauge. It all ended up in a slugfest with Yarborough and this other hood. This boy had a hell of a punch, but we just about had 'em when Yarborough shot Wurst in the head and me in the chest."

Black loosened his tie and pulled down the collar of his dress shirt, showing a patchwork of skin grafts and scars across his upper chest.

"What about Wurst?"

Black shook his head. "They tossed us both into the river." He paused a moment. "I made it out."

"And Ferrell never prosecuted, of course."

"He called it abnormal behavior to solicit a man. You know the Army came over and did an investigation? They never did find Wurst's body. I was in the hospital for about six months."

I could see only the glowing red tip of the cigar, smelling the tobacco mix with the fall leaves smoldering up into the white of the moon.

"You know the other man with Yarborough?"

He nodded.

"It was your friend Reuben."

"You sure?"

"You don't forget a night like that, boss. You watch out for him. He's the same as the rest of 'em."

REUBEN SAT AT THE BEATEN KITCHEN TABLE CLEANING A gun with a dirty red rag, the potbellied stove giving off a dull, warm heat. And it felt good, as he sat in his union suit, unshaven, cleaning and working the cylinders in a little .22 pistol that he hadn't owned but two hours. He had some of Moon's fresh 'shine in a jelly jar, and he'd already smoked the last of the cigarettes he'd gotten in jail. He felt hollow, and his hands shook as he loaded in the little skinny bullets, and he took another drink just as Billy walked in and saw two T-bone steaks thawing on the counter, a couple of baked potatoes already in the stove.

"You all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine."

"I'm goin' out."

"Ain't you got school?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"What you seein'?"

"Hmm?"

"What you seein'? I figured you goin' to see a movie."

"I'm goin' to shoot some pool."

"You need to stay out of those pool halls. Ain't nothin' in them but trouble. They'll pick your pocket dry."

Reuben stood and wavered for a moment, and he thought about the stories he'd heard about Moon's special 'shine and how he'd used formaldehyde and embalming fluid to give that corn liquor a special kick. A few years ago, a damn raccoon had been tempted by that sweet mash and crawled in the still, only to become part of the 'shine himself.

"You can't even stand up."

"Hell you say. I'm just hungry. Go ahead and put them steaks on the skillet. I got some sauce, too. Some of that A.1. you like from over at Mr. Hoyt's place."

Billy just stood there staring at him, his skinny arms crossed over his body. And there was something different about him, a little shadow above his lip, some grease in his hair.

"You look like a damn punk," Reuben said.

"I learn from the best."

"I didn't have a thing to do with that whore. Don't you go blaming me on that."

"Those are your people, aren't they? Johnnie and Bert Fuller. That fat-ass moonshiner. They're all your buddies."

"They didn't have anything to do with it either."

Reuben breathed, tried to catch an air of dignity, righting his shoulders, and then crossing over to set the black iron skillet he got from his mama on the stove, putting those T-bones on in with a hiss. He didn't say anything, just tried to keep his eyes open, that 'shine filling his veins and making him feel hot. When the steaks got nice and pink, not frozen but good and bloody, he cracked some eggs next to them and the whole thing smelled so good he almost forgot about Billy.

But Billy was still there, the little Emerson radio in the kitchen catching "Louisiana Hayride" with Hank Snow, and Reuben's mind coming back to having that pride of driving ole Hank Williams around and how, even though he wasn't a hero, just being a part of the show made him feel alive and important.

Before he knew it, old Snow was playing that "Long Gone Lonesome Blues." And Reuben sang along with it, his mind back on Shreveport on a hot summer night where girls in white cotton dresses and suntans smelled like flowers just picked off a thorny bush.

"Why'd he fire you?"

"Who?"