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looked over at Eugene, who was staring down at the Colt in his lap.
    “How long?” he asked. It was the inevitable question.
    “Six months,” Eugene replied. “Maybe less. Doc Miller says he can’t be sure. It started in my pancreas, but now it’s all over.” He spoke matter-of-factly, like he was talking about an outbreak of crab-grass. He looked at A.J. “Of all the things in the world that could have killed me, I never thought it would be my fucking pancreas.”
    “You’re not taking Doc’s word for all of this, are you?” A.J. asked. He felt the need to find a solution for Eugene’s problem. “You need to let someone else take a look.”
    Doc Miller was the local physician. He was pushing eighty and still a pretty fair hand at setting a broken arm or sewing up a cut leg. He had relocated from somewhere in New York about thirty years ago, and the people of the town had been so overjoyed to have a doctor they chose to overlook the fact that Doc was a Yankee. Over the ensuing years, vile rumors worked their way south, tales of bitter lawsuits and large malpractice settlements. The townspeople’s view was that nobody was perfect, and Doc had always taken pretty good care of all of
them.
Still, medical science had made great strides in fifty years, and it was A.J.’s hope that Eugene might receive a different diagnosis and a less-final prognosis from someone who had attended medical school
since
the Roosevelt years.
    “No, Doc sent me down to Emory for tests.” Eugene swallowed before continuing. “It’s official. I’m dead. I just haven’t fallen over yet.”
    There was no panacea for his malignancy, and he had come back to his mountain to die on his own terms. A.J. watched as Eugene drew a right-handed bead on the hackberry tree and fired. Ambidexterity with firearms was not one of his strengths, and a hole appeared in the windshield of his Jeep.
    “Shit,” he said. He switched hands and put the other five rounds into the tree.
    “You never told me why you’re shooting the tree,” A.J. said, changing subjects to allow himself time to assimilate.
    “It was Doc’s idea. He told me that I should have a hobby to take my mind off my troubles.”
    “I bet he had something like stamp collecting in mind,” A.J. said, eyeing yet another cigarette that had slipped in close to the gunpowder. He picked up the can and placed it once again out of harm’s way. He thought it was a mercy that Eugene had not decided upon doctor shooting as an alternative pastime. He envisioned the scene. Eugene would walk into the lobby down at Emory with the big Colt stuck in his belt, right up in front like Billy the Kid used to wear his. He would saunter up to the Pink Lady at the information counter. “Oncology, please,” he would say, and then all hell would break loose.
    “Stamp collecting?” Eugene said, sounding slightly appalled. He shook his head. “No, I’ve got a good hobby.” He dumped his spent cartridges and began looking around for the gunpowder.
    “Your hobby is going to get you blown up,” A.J. said.
    “I can think of worse ways to go,” Eugene replied with certainty, as if he had given the matter considerable thought. A.J. wondered if Eugene was entertaining the notion of getting it over with, just a boom and a flash, quick and clean.
    Eugene arose and left the porch. He moved unsteadily across the clearing toward his violated Jeep. A.J. followed. Eugene stood by the Jeep and looked at the hole in the windshield.
    “I can’t believe I shot my own damn Jeep,” he said softly. He looked at A.J. with a slight smile. “If anyone asks, we’ll tell them that Slim did it.”
    “Well, they’d believe that,” A.J. said as his own smile appeared.
    They were referring to the time Slim Neal had shot the front and back windshields out of John Robert’s pickup truck. Eugene and A.J. had been boys of sixteen, and they were riding around one summer night drinking hot beer because they didn’t have any