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up on the foot of her mattress and stands over her. She draws her knees up under her but can’t quite fold herself into a crouch. Then he unzips his pants and pulls out his flaccid genitals. It looks like a bouquet of deflated birthday balloons.
    Put it in your mouth, he says. Make it big.
    You best stow that. I ain’t kiddin with you, Abraham. Put it away now.
    Come on, Sarah Mary. Everyone around here’s the family type. All the girls want to nest. Sometimes a man’s just gotta get his nut and go back to killing creepers. What do you want and I’ll give it to you. Pills? Liquor? Just do me this one favor. Just put it in your mouth for a little while.
    I said stow that business. I don’t go in for silliness with the likes of you. I ain’t playin now.
    The fog around her head begins to lift, and she can see him take two steps toward her, his crotch getting so close to her that she can smell the thick mustiness of it.
    But you’re so pretty, he says. I just want to cum on you a little bit.
    That’s it, she says.
    She curls her hand into a fist and drives it forward hard into his crotch. It feels like punching a sack of warm giblets. It makesa smacking sound and sends him collapsing backward, his pants falling down around his knees while he writhes on the floor at the foot of the mattress.
    But his groans evolve into something like growls, and he picks himself back up, his face tomato red, his eyes wet, and his teeth clenched.
    I didn’t wanna have to do it, she says. Come on, Abraham, I’m just tryin to get along round here. Don’t muck it up for me.
    He doesn’t listen. With one hand he cups his genitals and with the other he reaches and grabs her gurkha knife.
    You little cunt. I’m gonna split you in half.
    He lunges forward and she ducks and puts her hand out to divert the blow and the blade goes over her head, but she feels a quick iciness on her left hand and when she looks down she sees that the knife has taken off half of her pinky finger. The blood spills down her wrist and makes her hand feel slippery.
    There’s no pain yet, just cold—but she knows to expect it later, so whatever she’s going to do, it better get done now.
    She’s got her back to the window and he’s coming at her again, but when he raises the knife over his head to strike, her hands dart up and grab the wrist and twist it backward so his whole body falls forward facedown and then, still holding the arm up at an angle, she brings her foot down on it at the elbow and hears it splinter-snap like a wet tree branch.
    Except now he’s wailing loud and guttural, all the blood driven up into his face and the tendons of his neck standing out hard and long.
    Shush up, she says, trying to quiet him. Shush up now, people are gonna hear you.
    But he keeps screeching, and she turns him over and slaps his face like you do with hysterics, but she supposes it’s not so much hysteria as it is excruciating pain that’s his current problem. So she looks for something to stuff in his mouth and finds the bra that Ruby got for her, which is padded and has some bulk to it, and she jams it between his teeth with her fingers.
    Hush that noise, she says. Come on, hush it.
    She puts her left hand over his mouth to hold the bra in place, and the blood from her finger streams over his cheek and into his eye and down into his ear. She kneels on his chest to keep him quiet and presses down on his mouth trying to leave his nose free—but something is wrong because in a minute he begins turning purple and convulsing and then he stops moving altogether.
    She takes her hand away from his mouth and looks into his heavy-lidded eyes, which are already beginning to cloud over.
    Doggone it, she says. Why do livin and dyin always have to be just half an inch apart?
    She goes to the desk and takes a ballpoint pen from the drawer and puts the tip of it in his nostril and drives it upward sharp and hard with the heel of her hand to keep him from coming back.
    Then she