"Hank Williams."

"He didn't fire me. Hell, he died."

Reuben stuck a fork in the steak and flipped it and a hard-fried egg - more hard than he liked it - up on a plate and set it before Billy, asking him if he wanted some of those Mexican beans that his mama liked.

"No, sir."

"No, sir? A steak dinner sure can get some respect in this house."

"Whose gun is that?"

"Mine."

"Not one I ever seen."

"I got a lot of guns."

"Thought the Guard took most of them."

"The ones they could find."

"What're you gonna do with that one?"

"Would you just eat your supper and go on?"

They ate, and the damn silence was so intense you could hear every scrape of the fork and grunted chew and labored breath. But then Reuben had to stop, and he walked over to the big farm sink and stuck his head under the pump, dousing his face with the cold water.

He took a good portion of the liquor inside of him and then walked back to his bedroom, his steak left half-eaten. The eggs not touched.

When he came back, he was dressed in blue jeans and red-and-green boots, the ones with a cactus on the shaft. He'd shaved and he'd combed his hair back with some pomade, and, with his sleepy eyes, he looked down at Billy, scooping up the gun and tucking it inside his front pocket.

"You do me a favor?"

His boy looked at him.

"Get out of this place. Get as far as you can from this farm because it will spoil your soul."

"I like it here."

"You ain't too bright. And you stay away from Lamar Murphy. I know what you told him."

Billy pushed the steak dinner away and looked up at his father and shook his head. "You are one sorry, worthless bastard."

Reuben took a breath, wavered on his feet, and walked, every step of those big boots making his boy flinch just a little bit more. He breathed hard, keeping it in like you would a lungful from a Lucky, and he raised the back of his hand, but he shook and held it there, watching the boy duck, placing his hands over his head, waiting for it and, somehow in a strange way, seeming to want it. He wanted Reuben to beat the hell out of him.

Reuben leaned down and kissed the boy on his head, tasting the pomade and smelling the strange odor of the kid, a man's sweat. It was all so damn unfamiliar.

Before he left, he told the boy what to do if he didn't come back by daybreak. Get away from Phenix City and Russell County and the ghosts of dead men who would wake you in your sleep, second-guessing your every move.

REUBEN PARKED BEHIND A USED-CAR LOT ON CRAWFORD, close enough to Slocumb's filling station that he could hear the sound of the air-hose bell every time a new customer drove in. His Buick looked fine among the other cars for sale, sitting there on the main commercial drag of PC, under the streetlights and colored flags that beat in the fall wind. He hadn't noticed how his hands stuck to the wheel, even with the ignition off, till he tried to light a cigarette, his hands unsteady and sloppy, and his eyes dead and straight when he looked back at himself, the sleepy-eyed Mitchum in the mirror.

He left his hat on the backseat and made his way to the little woods behind the filling station, taking a worn trail whose meaning wasn't lost on him, rounding a little powdery curl, hearing the tinkling of some wind chimes from the brick house in the clearing.

He squatted there and waited, trying to steady himself. Calm, or maybe forgive himself for what he was about to do. He kept thinking about Billy, wanting to walk away from this hell-soaked fire of a life after the war with something for him instead of some rotten barns and dead fruit trees.

Lamar's heavy bag rocked back and forth on thick chains.

JOYCE AND I SWITCHED BETWEEN PABST BLUE RIBBON Bouts, watching a replay of a Pete Rademacher fight, and Down You Go, with Phil Rizzuto and Boris Karloff trying to guess a secret word or phrase some housewife had sent in to make five dollars. Of course, if you stumped the panel, you got twenty-five bucks. I was beating Joyce, recognizing damn near every one - of course it wasn't hard to get ahead of Frankenstein himself - and repeating as she would say the wrong word, "Down you go." I was feeling pretty good and cocky as I walked back to check on the children, the night routine going like clockwork, Thomas already in bed pretending he was asleep and Anne taking a bath.

When I knocked on the bathroom door, I heard her splash around and ask to please give her some privacy. "Yes, ma'am," I said.

I went back to the kitchen to make another pot of coffee, looking up at the clock, knowing Jack should be over anytime. I landed back in the easy chair watching the nightly news out of Atlanta, Phenix City finally not being featured every night as a "Sin Den" and just plain "wicked." I caught the weather, colder nights ahead, and leaned back into my chair, dozing a bit, smelling the coffee, Joyce coming in once before I fell asleep, saying "Down he goes" back to me and me hearing it and smiling with closed eyes... never hearing the back door click open.

SINCE HE'D BEEN BACK FROM PANAMA CITY, REUBEN HAD gotten to know Lamar's routine, watching it and studying on it. Lamar hadn't changed a damn bit, always getting to the gym at the same time, always folding his trunks the same way, and the same religious wrapping of his knuckles through the center of his hands. Reuben looked down at his watch, knowing that big gorilla deputy wouldn't be over for another twenty minutes and that the children would be in bed. He couldn't and wouldn't harm a child or a woman - that was a line he would never cross - and he waited there, watching Joyce turn out the light in the bedroom and the gray-white flicker of the television box in their family room. And he took a breath and moved forward, his gait strong and controlled, moving across the backyard and by Joyce's beauty shop, trying to think of Lamar as an opponent or the way he felt about a Jap - nothing at all - and he knew it would be over in minutes and Phenix would be gone and in his rearview.

Billy could have something. Reuben wouldn't need forgiveness. His goddamn scorecard was already so punched full of holes that even Jesus Christ himself wouldn't cut a loser like him a break. Lamar had taken the first shot and it had been a sucker punch, and when you sucker punched a man the comeback would be tenfold. Reuben told himself things like that, trying to think about the killing as a strategy. He lifted up the lock on the screen door with a pocketknife and turned the knob in the kitchen, smelling coffee, hearing the slurp of it perking, and as he turned he saw Lamar sprawled out and repeated the word palooka in his mind. Lamar being a big, bald, laid-out palooka, looking like he'd just hit the canvas and gone to bed.

It would be easier like this. He'd never even have to look him in the eye.

Reuben moved for him, the moonshine making his skin glow, his face sweat, smelling the way you only did when you were fearful, like a skunk. His own odor making him catch some bile in his throat. Some reason, thinking about that crazy old Kid Weisz and what he would think about this final bout between his two boys, but telling himself the Kid would understand. He'd understand what it meant to be neutered by someone, to be cheated, to be lied to. Lamar Murphy was a coward, and if it wasn't Reuben it would be Johnnie Benefield. And Johnnie didn't have the goddamn right.

He had the right to take the lights of the big palooka, snoring it up in the chair. So comfortable in the chair, with the knitted armrests and the little silver picture frames and the china settings hung on a wall. He moved into the family room and nearly tripped over his feet, Lamar grumbling and shuffling. The television talking about the Auburn University Tigers taking on Georgia Tech this weekend and hearing Coach Jordan's voice sounding like that of God, saying that "the boys needed to take apart the offensive machine" and that "they'd shown some real spunk in drills and to expect a real contest in Atlanta."

Reuben froze. He staggered again and moved backward, no longer thinking but moving backward, feeling his stomach lock up and feeling that steak and eggs and ole Moon's formaldehyde whiskey. It was the thought of the formaldehyde and stiff dead people and blood that made him rush for the closest door and bust on in through it and stick his head right in the commode and puke his ever-living guts out.

He heard a girl scream and scream and he looked over at Anne - a girl he'd first seen at no more than knee-high when he got back from the Pacific, about a million years ago - and she screamed and kicked herself back into the corner of the tub, Reuben ignoring her until the big shadow appeared in the doorway, looking down on him - without fear or pity - but Lamar with that curious look on his face as he pointed an Army-issue .45 down at the man in the toilet.

Reuben fell back to his ass and wiped his lips with his shirt. He didn't know if he was crying or not, just saying the first thing that came to his mind: "You think that coffee is ready yet?"

20.

"SO WHAT DID YOU DO?" Hugh Britton asked, sitting across from me in a booth at Kemp's Drive-In.

"I poured him a cup of coffee."

"When did you know he had a gun?"

"He told me," I said. "We sat down and didn't talk for a long time. He left the gun in the kitchen, and we watched the Tonight Show. Steve Allen can really play the piano. He played that song before Gene Rayburn did the news, 'This Could Be the Start of Something,' and that kind of made Reuben loosen up."

"The man came to your home to kill you," Britton said.

"No, he didn't," I said. "He wanted an excuse. He was drunk, wasn't thinking straight."

"You sure are making a hell of an excuse for him."

"Do you know what he asked me?"

Britton shook his head. It was morning, a couple days after finding Reuben in my bathroom, and the light was still gray, a cold mist outside, what the Irish call a soft day.

"He wanted to know why Joyce and I never invited him to dinner."

"What did you say?"

"I told him that I didn't think he'd come. I said our life was pretty boring. About the only excitement came on Wednesday night, when we have pot roast and mashed potatoes. I told him we don't drink, just watch television, sometimes the kids get to eat off these TV trays. Funny how someone can be offended by the smallest thing."

"I don't think it was not having him over that ticked him off."

I took a sip of coffee and looked out at the soft day, the brown leaves fluttering and spinning down from the trees. A couple of guardsmen laughing and coming into the diner, taking their hats off and putting them on a rack by the door.

"He stayed for breakfast," I said. "Joyce cooked up some bacon and eggs with grits, and then he rode on with me right to the jail."

"And he's been there ever since."

"He'll stay there until he goes before the grand jury."

"Who knows about him?"

"Only John Patterson and Sykes. We're keeping it under wraps even from Sykes's team right now. We don't want any of those newspapermen to get hold of it. The only thing they're good at is turning the world into a circus."

"So what exactly did he see?"

I lit a cigarette, keeping it burning in one hand, and rubbed my bald head with the other, getting comfortable in the booth.

"He was going to the Elite to have dinner, and when he passed by the alley to park he saw Arch Ferrell and Bert Fuller talking to Mr. Patterson. He said he parked on the other side of the street and was listening to the end of a radio show out of Montgomery, some kind of gospel hour, and because it was June he had the windows down."

"He heard the shots?"

"One, two, three. He said he knew right off, didn't think there were damn firecrackers or any of that mess. Reuben knows the sound of a gun."

"I bet."

"He see any other witnesses?"

"He mentioned that big ole black car Ross Gibson saw. He thinks it was a Lincoln. Said a man and a woman were in the front seat, parked right at the mouth of the alley."

The waitress came over and set down our plates and heated up our coffee. I smiled and thanked her. Britton craned his neck over the table and waited for me to finish, not even noticing her or the food.

"Did he see them run away?"

"He said he saw Fuller. Ferrell must've ducked back through the alley."

"Where Quinnie saw him."

"It fits."

"Did he see them arguing?"

"He said it looked like they were just talking and didn't think nothing of it until he heard the shots."

"And so what does this mean?"

"John says it will be enough for Sykes. He knows he's gonna have a battle with Reuben's record. He said the defense will shred his character on the stand. But I'm just glad he wasn't caught for half the things he's done. Can you pass the ketchup?"

I lifted my hand out.

"But he was there."

"Yes, sir."

He handed me the bottle.

"When does he go before the grand jury?"

"Today."

"And that's when all hell will break loose."

"He won't remain out of my sight. He's moved in the jail permanent. I got his boy to bring over some fresh clothes. I got him some cigarettes and magazines. He's already got to be real friendly with some of the women down there."

"The prostitutes?"

I nodded.

"He's always had a way with them."

SINCE BERT FULLER'S BOND HAD BEEN REVOKED, HE'D spent the weeks at the Russell County Jail reading Zane Grey, True West magazine, Amazing Stories, and the Bible. Sometimes, when he read them all together, he'd forget if he'd read about the word of God with David and Goliath or about Wyatt Earp against the Clantons. He read one story in True West that seemed right out of the Bible, about a man named Moses Jones who'd led a wagon train through the paths of hell out to Utah or somewhere, a place they called the Holy Land. Fuller was pretty sure that the story was cribbed from the Bible, and he thought maybe that was some kind of sin, later realizing the whole Bible was nothing but a western.

The Jews were nothing but homesteaders with redmen all around them, trying to take what was promised to them by the Lord Almighty. Today, he read a book Georgia had brought him called Code of the West. It was a modern western, set out in a place called Tonto Basin in Arizona with this woman Mary Stockwell, a frontier schoolteacher. Fuller had just gotten to the part about Mary's sister, Georgiana, coming west to cure her tuberculosis, and the woman thought, If Georgiana could stand the rugged, virile, wild Tonto Basin, she would not only regain her health, but she would grow away from the falseness and over-sophistication that followed the war.

All Fuller wanted to know is if Georgiana had big tits like his Georgia. Zane was really letting him down with this one. He introduced two women, and Fuller still didn't know what they looked like. He thumbed through the pages, waiting for the gunslinger or bounty hunter or sheriff to enter the picture and give those two Yankee spinsters what they'd been needin'.

He put the book down and walked to the corner of his brick cell to take a leak and then went back and lay down on his bunk. The light was hard coming through the cell window, and he laid a forearm across his eyes. Some men were talking down the way, and he recognized one of their voices, wasn't unusual for some bootlegger or clip joint operator to finally get picked up on warrant, and Fuller would call down to them and ask them how was business, as some kind of joke.

Frog Jones had just spent last week two cells down, and they'd shared some good stories about the days during the Border Wars and some of the women they'd known out at Cliff's and where everybody had all been scattered about.

About two hours later, he saw an old nigger card dealer he knew push a mop bucket down the hall. He'd been there since Fuller had first been arrested on that vote-fraud joke charge, and sometimes the boy would smuggle him in some fresh biscuits and candy bars.

"What you got for me today, boy?" he asked.

"What you want?"