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druther be called Nigger than Dickhead?”
    It was the heat; that’s what made me a fool.
    If I had thought about moving he would have had the time to shoot me. But I didn’t think. I ran right at him, turning over the podium and wresting a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun from his grip. He fell back against a pegboard and down into a variety of hand drills, screwdrivers, and hammers that hung there.
    “What the hell?” Dickhead tried to get up, but I put my foot on his chest and pressed until he gave.
    “Stay down, brother,” I said as if I were talking to somebody from my part of town. “And tell me where I can find Mr. Marlon Eady.”
    “You in trouble, boy,” Dickhead informed me. And for all that I was on top right then I felt a thrill of fear down through my testicles.
    I swung the barrel of the sawed-off toward his head, firing one round at the end of the arc. A hole the size of a shotput appeared in the floor next to Dickhead’s shocked face. He shouted and tried to jump up, clapping his hands over his ears. I flipped the gun around and slammed the heavy butt into his cheekbone. Luckily he had the good sense to fall down and be still, because if he had stayed trying to get up I would have hit him again.
    “Stay down!”
    Dickhead cringed. Saliva and blood came from his mouth, mucus poured out of his nostrils, and baby tears welled in his eyes. But I didn’t enjoy it. One of the problems with so many oppressed people is that they don’t have the stomach to give what they get. I hurt that simple white man because I was scared of him. If he’d called me boy or nigger one more time I might have started gibbering myself.
    “Just tell me where I could find Marlon Eady and I’ll leave you be.” My tongue was reverting back to southern ways. This man had defeated me and didn’t even know it.
    All he could do was shiver and nod on the floor.
    I went over to the refrigerator and got the bottle of gin. I pulled out the cork and handed it to him.
    “Drink it.”
    He poured the stuff at his mouth but most of it just dribbled down his face.
    “Do it again.”
    The second drink was better. He probably thought it was his last. He sobered up a little and sniffed back the snot in his nose.
    “Tell me where I could find Marlon Eady.”
    “The road don’t have a name,” he whined. “But it’s the third one on your left about six miles back the way you come.”
    “Gimme the shells for this thing,” I said. And when the fear came back into his eyes, “I’m just takin’ ’em with me.”
    He led me to a small room behind where the podium lay. It was a closet with a shelf that he used for his kitchen. On it sat a toaster, a two-burner hot plate, and a slice of white bread that had curled into a hard chip in the heat. Behind the toaster was a partly full box of twelve-gauge shells.
    He handed them to me.
    “Why you pull that gun on me, fool?” I was shaking with rage at this man who had come close to making me murder him. I was so mad that I had to take my finger from the live trigger. “You pull a gun on everybody come in your store?”
    “I thought you wanted to rob me.”
    “Rob you? Rob what?” I yelled.
    I swung the barrel over his head in frustration. Dickhead ducked down low.
    I took him outside, pushing and shaking him from behind so that he wouldn’t have the time to note my license plate. I made him get on his knees while I took off the rear plate. Behind his store there was an old Studebaker station wagon, painted yellow like a taxi. The key was right in the ignition. I took the key, the distributor cap head, the battery, and the steering wheel and made Dickhead put them all into my trunk. Back in his house I tore the phone out of the wall and brought it out to my car.
    “You can’t leave me out here with no car and no way to call,” he wailed.
    “I’m gonna go out to where you said Marlon’s place was, and if his house is there I’ll leave your stuff at the turnoff you gave me. Now