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sorry.”
    â€œYou probly glad the son of a bitch is dead. Ain’t you, Rufus?”
    â€œThat’s right, I am.”
    â€œWell I ain’t,” Barlow said, and threw back about half the drink. “You sure it’s him?”
    â€œI know it’s him.”
    Rufus watched the people in the bar and leaned his elbows next to the whiskey. He leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. “I’ll go eat me some supper. I’ll come back later but I need to get paid fore I go home.”
    The whores and the fisherman were still arguing. Barlow looked at the monkey for a while and then opened the register. He went into the tens and pulled out five of them and folded the money and passed it to Rufus, who stuck it in his pocket and then slipped out the side door with one high backward wave of his hand.
    â€œWell, well,” Barlow said in a quiet voice. There was a little shelf right beneath the register that had been specially built. He eased out the gun and opened the cylinder and checked that all six chambers were loaded. He did these things unseen, below the level of the bar. It had been a slow day anyway. The Corps of Engineers had opened the gates of the dam at Sardis and people were yanking the catfish out around the clock. He spun the cylinder and closed it, then cocked the weapon and held it on the fat whore, who looked at it and saw it like a snake coiled at her elbow.
    â€œGet the hell out of here,” he said. “Git.”
    They cleared out fast. Their cars cranked outside and gravel crunchedunder the tires. He heard them leave and then there was nothing but silence. He lifted his drink and held the pistol. He listened hard. A few minutes passed. He thought he saw movement on the porch and he raised the pistol and pointed it. There was only silence. The lights were on all around him. He jumped up to knock them out with the barrel of the pistol and the window exploded in upon him.

Glen waited in the weeds for the longest time. He saw Rufus come down the drive with the garbage in the truck and he stepped back out of the headlights’ glare but maybe not far enough. Rufus got out of the truck, dumped the garbage, came back. Glen thought about shooting him then, even drew down on him for a moment, then realized he couldn’t do it and pulled the shotgun down. He watched Rufus drive back, saw him walk in, saw him talking, saw him leave. Straight across the cotton patch walking. Then the other cars left. He lay flat while they drove past.
    The dogs said nothing as he came up, just moved out of the way, tails down. He stepped soundlessly up on the porch and moved toward the window as Barlow raised the pistol. He stepped back and Barlow reached up with the barrel as if to shoot out the lights a few feet above him. He stepped back in front of the window and cocked the hammer and let off the first shot, which pulverized the window and blew Barlow back against the ranked bottles behind the bar and shattered the mirror. Barlow hung there for a second, then his gun hand came down and a bullet blew by Glen’s ear. Glen pumped his and fired and pumped it and fired and Barlow fired a shot into the floor and sagged down out of sight. A shard of glass swung, tinkled, fell.

Rufus had a small shack across the bottom and up the hill and he had a regular trail that he used to go back and forth from his house to the beer joint. The trail wound beside a big cotton patch and through part of a pasture and there was a footlog he used to cross a shallow creek where bullfrogs sat and sang and he was jogging like a dog now in a slow lope, his feet raising dust in the black air. There was a ridge off to the southwest that was covered with pines and as he ran he could see the porch light from his house shining between the trees. He slowed to cross the footlog and hushed the singing frogs and turned up the hill, his tennis shoes dropping softly in the needles and on the little stones that littered