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collector for half a dozen stores. The stores were on the Kansas side of town, and, as I recall, my only comment was silly. “We should rob on the Missouri side, Smoke. That way if we get jumped up and sent down, why, we’ll go to Jeff City, where Uncle Bill is. Uncle Bill could make it good for us there.”
    “That,” Smoke said, “is a piss-poor way to think goin’ in on a job. Banish it.”
    Anyway, it was coming up to Christmas when we grabbed the cash man over on Quivira Road. We worked naked, not wearing masks that passersby might spot and stare at. The cash man had a pistol but never got it out, as I believe he’dhad a few Yuletide beverages. We’d approached him jollily, as if the spirit of the season was running full-throttle through us. The sky was gunmetal gray and ominous, but we got the man in the trunk, and it was all a lot easier than it should have been. Then the weather started, a twilight Kansas spit storm of sleet and snow. We were in a stolen car, naturally, and the streets were thick with Christmas shoppers, and before long the traction was slippy and slidy. We made our getaway on residential streets to Olathe, fleeing at about fourteen miles an hour, sailing on ice patches, the man in the trunk kicking at the lid.
    I sweated horribly, I remember that, but Smoke was cool, maybe elated, as at ease in the middle of a crime as a brown trout in the White River.
    We left the car in a strip mall parking lot and that was it. Fortunately the man in the trunk was heard and released before he froze, and he couldn’t seem to describe us, neither. In fact, the Star wrote the deal up and gave our estimated heights and ages, but somehow we were translated as black dudes, black dudes who had gotten three times what we truly had, no matter how many times we counted it.
    Smoke had seen I was getting too thick with that Westport bunch and pulled me out of it, so I could seek the education I desired. I declared residency at Mom and General Jo’s for the in-state tuition. Then I took my cut, bought a white pickup truck, and headed west three hundred miles to Fort Hays Kansas State College for the winter semester. I had a GED from the Marines and a lifelong thirst for book learning, and now I had the tuition money, thanks to Smoke.Fort Hays was far from the city life and its myriad temptations, and they had varsity rodeo out there, and a fondness for red beer and books galore.
    I dove right in to college life, and for quite a few years I stayed there, though at a variety of institutions, wallowing with relish in the sea of ideas and ideals and English Lit. and art history and studied poses, trying on different personalities, looking for a clean fit. Eventually I became who I am, a somewhat educated hillbilly who keeps his diction stunted down out of crippling allegiance to his roots.
    All my scattershot erudition, so haphazard and difficult to find a use for—such as Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) suffered night sweats from childhood, or pointillism is just painted dots that require distance for viewing—and my several onionskins of graduation, are owed to Smoke and his simple plan.
    At the close of this revery of larceny and higher learning, I rose up from my wicker chair, Stag beer in hand, and said, “I need to find Smoke.”
    Niagra put her red boots to the deck and sort of poured herself into them until standing.
    “Let’s drive,” she said. She set her can of beer next to the pistol that was still on the rail. The sun was emanating its meanest degrees of torture on all earthly items. “If you ain’t got some bugaboo about it, I’d rather ride down in your car, though Smoke ain’t far. A few big bumps and there you are.”

5
    NAMED FOR TRAUMA
    THE FEW BIG bumps Niagra guided me over beat my wife’s not-nearly-paid-for Volvo down in value a good deal more, as I oversteered some, clipped a stump, grazed a boulder, bottomed out in a gully once. It was not far in distance but a punishing drive, from the