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wondered if they had been compensated at anything like the rate Eric Sutherland had been for the use to which he put their land. Since Scully seemed uncomfortable with the subject, Howell changed it. “You look like you might have played some football, Bo.”
    “Oh, yeah,” Scully replied, smiling again. “I played in high school, and I played two years down at Georgia for old Wally Butts. Made all-conference my sophomore year.”
    “What happened? Get hurt?”
    “Flunked out.” He grinned ruefully. “Not even Wally Butts could save me. That was in ’50. Korea was happening. They were about to draft me anyway, so I joined the Marines.”
    “Action?”
    “Oh, sure. There was plenty of that to go around.”
    “You seem to have come out in one piece.”
    “Well, I got my Purple Heart. Didn’t pay too dearly for it, though. I’ll tell you the truth, it was worth it to get out of there. Police action, my ass. They should’ve sent cops.” Scully glanced at his watch and made to get up.
    Howell suddenly didn’t want him to go. He needed the company, the conversation; he didn’t want to go back to that cabin and be alone. “What do you do with yourself, Bo?” he asked, willing the man to stay a little longer.
    “Oh, I’m the sheriff,” Bo Scully said, laughing and getting to his feet. “Better keep your nose clean, boy, or I’ll put you under the jail.” He punched Howell playfully on the shoulder. “Well, I’ve got half the county to cover. I’ll seeyou around, I ’spect. Bubba, put John’s lunch on my tab.” Then he was gone.
    Howell sat there, trying to raise enough energy to move. He wondered if Eric Sutherland ran the sheriff like he ran everything else. Sutherland seemed like the sort of man who, if you got in his way, would put you not just under the jail, but, as Benny Pope would have put it, under the lake.
    Howell went back to collect his car. As he paid for the gas, he asked Benny Pope about the firewood.
    “Sure,” Benny said. “I’ll run out there on Sunday, if that’s soon enough. I don’t get off here until seven on weekdays, and I ain’t about to get caught out at the cove after dark.”
    Howell was about to ask why not, when Benny almost snapped to attention. “Afternoon to you, Father,” he said over Howell’s shoulder. Howell turned to see a peculiar sight in a small Georgia town: a Catholic priest, and a very old one at that.
    “God bless you, my son,” the priest said to Benny, making the sign of the cross, then continued walking down the street—a little unsteadily, Howell thought. Surely there couldn’t be enough Catholics in Sutherland to warrant a full-time priest, or enough for him to worry about to get him looped this early in the day, he thought as he got back into the car.
    It had been clouding up all afternoon, and before he could get back to the cabin it began to rain heavily. He got soaked trying to unload the groceries during a lull in the thunderstorm. That night he ate a can of spaghetti, staring disconsolately into a fire of his only three logs, and washed his dinner down with a bottle of California burgundy. Hesat listening to the rain on the roof. He felt not just cold, but as if he would never be warm again. He had relentlessly painted himself into this corner, leaving first his work, then his wife and home. He had used up what life had given him, spent his good fortune in a profligate way. He had not been able to preserve anything that was important to him, not even his self-respect; he had sold that cheap to Lurton Pitts. Now he had imprisoned himself here in this shabby place, and he knew no one was coming to get him out. He got well into a bottle of Jack Daniel’s before passing out on the sofa, alone with his terrible self-pity.
    In the middle of the night Howell jerked awake, ran to the bathroom, and retched until he was too weak to rise from his knees. He sprawled on the linoleum floor, his cheek pressed against the cold porcelain of the