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the car and waited for her to come out.
    He heard a noise. The screen door flapped faintly and she was a pale form moving rapidly across the black grass toward him. She bent down to the window and her voice had turned cold.
    â€œAre you not going to stay with us? After all this time? I want you to see him. You get back out of that car.”
    He didn’t turn to her, just looked out across the hood.
    â€œI ain’t ready for that. I was still at Parchman last night if you know what I mean.”
    She put her hand on his arm and he felt the strength in her fingers when she tightened her grip.
    â€œI told you I need to talk to you. Does all this time I’ve waited not mean nothin to you? Trying to raise this baby by myself?”
    â€œI got to go.”
    â€œDon’t you leave me like this, Glen. You come back in here and you sit down and talk to me.”
    He leaned back in the seat and looked at her. Her hair was loose and wild and the gown she’d slipped on was open at the top so that he could see her full breasts and her big nipples. All the nights he had dreamt of her and gone to sleep thinking about her, all the days in the cotton patches when only the thought of this night got him through, commanded him to get out of the car and take her hand and fall back into her bed and sleep with her and smell her hair and skin.
    He reached forward and cranked the car, pulled the headlights on.
    â€œI’ll see you later, Jewel,” he said, and let out on the clutch. She stepped back from the car and said some things, but by then he was going down the driveway and he didn’t bother to listen to whatever they were.

Virgil was asleep. He was naked in his bed and turned on his side. The Redbone puppy whined through the screen door and a lamp with a few moths batting around it showed the cigarette butts knocked from the ashtray and empty beer cans on the floor, a chewed paper. The news played on the TV screen unheard and the light flickered on his mangled body, the scars that ran up his back and the hole in the side of his leg where they had twisted the bayonet and probed his living flesh with wide grins to his howls for mercy. The marred hands composed now, at rest.
    Glen crossed the room without looking at him much and turned on the hall light and went back to his old room. The Winchester was still there, leaning in the corner. He went to it and picked it up. The receiver and the barrel had some rust showing, but he pushed the release and shucked the slide halfway back easily. A green Remington showed itself at the ejection port, the brass softly shining in the breech. He rechambered it and turned the gun toward the bed and pumped it, the shells tossing and flipping onto the quilt with little muted thumps. He sat down and looked at them. Birdshot mostly, but the first one that had come out was 00 buckshot.
    â€œShit,” he said quietly. He stuck the buckshot back in and chamberedit and uncocked the hammer and laid it on the bed. He got up and walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. Dirty plates and ruined scraps. Bugs crawling away. He started opening drawers. The first one had a broken glass in it, some bent spoons, a box of matches. He shut it and opened another one. What looked to be an ancient rubber and some big red shells. One was a 10-gauge. Two were three-inch magnums, 12-gauge. His gun was a 12 but it was an old 12 and he didn’t want to blow it up in his own face. He figured that’d be worse than getting shot.
    â€œWhat do you want with these damn things?” he said to the room. He slammed the drawer and opened another one. Some old green bread was in there and a plate somebody had eaten off several years ago, looked like.
    â€œGoddamn,” he said, and slammed that one too.
    He moved to the other side of the sink where some of his mother’s dish towels were hanging on a little wooden rack. He took one and stuck it in his pocket and opened the last drawer.