“Don’t reckon I’m him, though,” the old man said, and showed his scattered teeth again, but the smile waved a bit, like the lips might fall off.
“No,” Ralph said. “You ain’t him, that’s for sure. He’s good and dead.”
“Well, I’m almost dead,” the old man said. “Here until God calls me.”
“He don’t call some,” Ralph said. “Some he yanks.”
The old man didn’t know what to say to that. Ralph noticed that there were pops of sweat on the old man’s forehead.
“You look hot,” Ralph said.
“I ain’t so hot,” the old man said.
“You sweatin’ good,” Billy said.
“Ain’t nobody talkin’ to you,” Ralph said. “Go on over there and sit on that stool and shut up.”
Billy didn’t pick up and sit on the stool, but he went quiet.
“I guess maybe I am a little hot,” the old man said, straightening the items on the counter. “We got the gas, and we got these goods. Canned peaches, some candies, and Co-colas. That’s be about a dollar fifty for all that, and then the gas.”
“That dollar tank of gas,” Ralph said.
“Yes, sir. That’ll be two-fifty.”
“You got all manner of stuff, didn’t you, Emory?” Ralph said. “I told you not to get all that stuff.”
“I got carried away,” Emory said, and turned to the old man. “You give any stamps or any kind of shit like that with a purchase?”
The men had gathered together near the counter, except for Billy, who was standing off to the side with hurt feelings and some of his hair in his eyes.
The old man shook his head. “No. Nothing like that.”
“That don’t seem right,” Emory said. “Some stores do that.”
“Do they?” the old man said.
“Some give dishes,” Emory said.
“Shut up,” Ralph said. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a dish you had it. You’d shit in a bowl and sling the plates. Just get things together and let’s go.”
The old man was sacking up the groceries, but he left the Co-colas on the counter. “You gonna carry those separate?” he asked.
“That’ll be all right,” Ralph said. “You even got hands like my old man. That’s somethin’.”
“Yes, sir,” the old man said, “I s’pose it is.”
Ralph looked around and saw that the others were staring at him. When he looked at them they looked away. Ralph turned back to the old man.
“You got a phone here?”
“No. No phone.”
Ralph nodded. “Total it. I’m goin’ on out to the car. Emory, you or John take care of it.”
—————
Ralph walked around to the front of the car and got out his cigarettes and pulled one loose of the pack with his lips, put the pack away and lit up with a wooden kitchen match he struck on the bottom of his shoe. As he smoked, he looked through the front window of the car. He walked around to the side of the car and looked in. The tommy gun he had told Billy to put up lay on the backseat in plain view.
He walked around to the other side of the car where the gas pump was and looked in through the side window. You could see it real good from that angle, about where the old man stood to put the gas in.
He walked back around to the front of the car and started to lean against it but saw it was covered in dust, so didn’t. He just stood there smoking and thinking.
After a bit, there was a sharp snapping sound from inside the store. Ralph tossed the cigarette and went inside. Emory was putting away his gun.
“What you done?” Ralph said, and he walked to the edge of the counter and took a look. The old man lay on the floor. His eyes were open and his head was turned toward Ralph. The old man had one arm propped on his elbow, and his hand stuck up in the air and his fingers were spread like he was waving hello. On his forehead was what looked like a cherry blossom and it grew darker and the petals fell off and splashed down the old man’s face and dripped on the floor in red explosions and then a pool of the same spread out at the back of his head and coated the floor thick as spilled paint.
Ralph turned and looked at Emory. “Why’d you do that?”
“You told me to,” Emory said.
Ralph came out from behind the counter and hit Emory hard enough with the flat of his hand to knock Emory’s hat off. “I meant pay the man, not shoot him.” Emory put a hand to the side of his face.
“We all thought that it’s what you wanted,” Billy said, and Ralph turned and kicked Billy in the balls. Billy went to his knees.
“I didn’t say kill nobody.”
“You know he seen that gun in the car,” Emory said, backing up. “We all knowed it. We was twenty feet down the road, he was gonna go somewhere and find a phone.”
Ralph looked at John. John held both hands up. “Hey, I didn’t say to do nothing. It was over before I knew it was happening.”
Emory picked up his hat. Billy lay on the floor with his hands between his legs. John didn’t move. Ralph took a deep breath, said, “You think nobody noticed a gun shot? You think that little nigger ain’t gonna remember you, ’cause I know you run him out. Grab that shit and let’s go. And help that retard Billy up.”
—————
John drove and Ralph set up front on the passenger side. Billy was behind him, and across from Billy was Emory, his hands still tucked between his legs, holding what made him a gentleman.
“I thought you meant kill him, Ralph,” Emory said. “I figured on account of what you said, him like your father and all, and considering what you—”
“Shut up! Shut the hell up!”
Emory shut up.
Ralph said to John: “You better find some back roads. I know some out this way, but it’s been awhile. There’s one that a car can travel on down by the river.”
They took the road when Ralph pointed it out. It wound down amongst some ragged cottonwood trees. The trees had few leaves and what leaves it had were brown with sand stripping and the limbs were covered in sand the color of cigarette ash. The car dipped over a rise and there were some rare green trees below that hadn’t been stripped. The trees stood by the river where it was low down and the wind was cut by the hills. The river was thin on water and there were drifts of sand all around it. They drove down there and turned along the edge of the river and went that way awhile till Ralph told John to stop.
They got out and Ralph went over by the bank and looked at the remains of the river. Emory came over. He said, “I didn’t mean to make you mad.” “I thought you wanted me to do what I did.”
Ralph didn’t say anything. Emory unbuttoned his fly and started peeing in the water. “I just thought it was one way and it was another,” he said while he peed. “I didn’t understand.”
Ralph reached inside his coat. He didn’t do it fast, just with certainty. He turned and had a .45 in his hand. He shot Emory in the mouth when he turned his head toward him, while he was trying to explain something. Emory’s head went back so hard it seemed as if it would fly off his neck and parts of it went down the bank and a piece slid into the chalky-colored water and the water turned rusty. Emory lay on his side, still holding his pecker with his right hand. He was still peeing, but in a dribble, and he had clenched himself so hard between thumb and forefinger it looked like he was trying to pinch it off.
“Goddamn!” Billy said. “Goddamn.”
He came over and went down the bank and bent over Emory and looked at what was left of his head and saw pieces of Emory’s skull on the ground and in the dark water. “Goddamn. You killed him.”
“I should think so,” Ralph said.
Billy stood up straight and looked at Ralph, who had the gun down by his side. “Wasn’t no cause for that. He did what he thought you wanted on account of you saying he looked like your old man. God-damn it, Ralph.”
Ralph lifted the .45 a little and John came over and put his hand on Ralph’s arm, said, “It’s all right,
Ralph. You done done it. Billy ain’t thinking. He and Emory were cousins. He don’t know how things are. He’s grieving. You understand that. We all been there.”
“Double cousins,” Billy said. “Goddamn it.”
“Shut up, Billy,” John said, and he kept his hand on Ralph’s arm.
Billy looked at Ralph’s face, and some of his spirit drained away. Billy said, “All right. All right.”
“Why don’t you put the gun up?” John asked Ralph.
Ralph slowly put the gun in the shoulder holster under his coat. “That fellow looked so much like my old man.”
“I know,” John said.
“He had the same hands.”
“I know.”
“Emory shouldn’t have done that. Now the town will turn out. They’ll have the law all over us. That little nigger will remember Emory’s face.”
“That won’t be a problem. He ain’t got a face no more. I don’t think he seen the rest of us that good.”
“It don’t matter,” Ralph said, taking off his hat. “They’ll know who we are.”
“They got to catch us first,” John said.
Ralph took off his hat and ran his hand through his oily hair. There was dust on his fingers and some of it came off in his hair. He put the hat back on. “Goddamn, Emory. Goddamn him.” He looked over at Billy.
Billy was sitting on the bank looking at Emory’s body. Flies had already collected on it.
Ralph started over that way. John touched his arm, but Ralph gently pulled it away. Ralph stood over Billy. “You get to thinking what you ought not, it could go bad for you.”
Billy turned his head and looked up at Ralph. “Only thing I’m thinking is my cousin’s dead.”
“And he ain’t comin’ back. No matter how much you look at him or shake him, he ain’t gonna come around and his head ain’t gonna go back together. And I want you to know, I don’t feel bad for doin’ it. I tell you to do somethin’, you don’t figure what I mean, you got to know what I mean, not guess. I run this outfit.”
Billy ran his hands over his knees, lifting his fingers so that they stood up like white tarantulas. “Yeah. Yeah.”
“Give me your gun,” Ralph said.
Billy looked at him so hard his eyes teared up. “I’m over it,” he said.
“Give me your gun.”
Billy reached inside his coat and took hold of a .38 revolver and pulled it out and when he did, Ralph pulled out his .45. “I’ll just hold it for you,” Ralph said. “While you grieve.”
Billy gave Ralph the .38. It was small enough Ralph put it in his coat pocket. “Sometimes, we’re upset, we do things we shouldn’t.”
“That’s what you did,” Billy said.
“It wasn’t something I shouldn’t have done. I don’t feel bad at all. Ain’t no one kills no one unless I say so.”
Billy seemed about to say something, but didn’t.
Ralph said, “Build up a fire. I don’t think anyone will see the smoke much down here, and we’ll just have it for a while.”
“Why?” Billy said.
“We’ll get right on it,” John said, came over and took hold of Billy’s arm and pulled him up and pushed him toward the woods. He called back to Ralph. “We’ll get some wood right away.”
—————
While they were gathering wood, Billy said, “He killed him for nothing. He killed him while he was holding his dick in his hand. He didn’t have to do that, didn’t have to kill him that way.”
“He killed him because the old man reminded him of his old man. He’d be just as dead if he hadn’t been holding his dick.”
“His old man . . . That can’t be it. You know what he done.”
“I know, but there ain’t no way to figure it straight, because what he did wasn’t straight. It’s just his way.”
“Just his way? Jesus. That was my cousin.”
“Yeah, and he ain’t gonna get no deader, and he ain’t gonna get alive not even a little bit, so you got to let it go. I’ve had to let a lot of things go. Drop it.”
“I don’t know I want to keep doing this.”
“We split up the money, then we can go the ways we want. But you don’t want to make Ralph nervous. You make him nervous, only so much I’m gonna do. Me, I plan to make Thanksgiving at home this year. I don’t want to end up on the creek bank with part of me in the water and flies all over me. So I’m doin’ the last of what I’m doin’ for you, you savvy, because I’m more worried about me and I want my share of money. Look at it this way, more money split three ways than four. That’s a thing to think about. You savvy?”
“More split two ways than three,” Billy said.
“I wouldn’t think that. You think that, you’ll think yourself into the dirt with your head blown off.”
—————
They stacked up the wood like Ralph said and then they sat on a hill above the bank for a while and then Ralph said, “John, you go look in the turtle hull and get out the hose and the jug there, siphon out a bit of gas. Maybe about half a jug full. And bring me back a can of them peaches.”
“Sure,” John said, and got up to go do it.
Billy made to get up too, but Ralph said, “You stay here and keep me company.”
Billy sat back down. Ralph said: “Listen here, now, boy. Your cousin talked too much and didn’t listen to me good. John should have stopped him. He should have known better. You’re just a dumb kid. But you ain’t gonna get to be any older or any smarter you don’t start payin’ attention. You get me?”
“Yeah,” Billy said.
“I don’t think you get me.”
“I do.”
“Not really.”
“No. I do.”
“We’ll see. You go down there and get your cousin, don’t have to bring up his brains and stuff, just drag his body up here and you put him face down on that pile of sticks you got together, and then you fold his hands up so that they’re under his face.”
“Why would I do that?”
“See there, boy, you don’t get me. You don’t understand a thing I tell you and you always got a question. Now, I told you to go down there and get him.”
Billy got up and went down the bank. Ralph didn’t move. He lipped out a cigarette and lit it with one of his kitchen matches. After a while, Billy come up the hill tugging at Emory by the heels. He got the body over by the sticks about the time John come back with the clear jug half full of gasoline and the can of peaches. He gave Ralph the peaches.
“Take that gasoline,” Ralph said, “and put about half on that pile of sticks, sprinkle it around, and pour the rest on Emory’s hands and face. That way, ain’t nobody gonna recognize him and he ain’t gonna have no fingerprints. Take off his clothes first.”
Billy had quit pulling on Emory. He said, “They’ll know who we are anyway. You said yourself that little nigger seen us. And Emory hasn’t got much of a face left.”
“We’re just making it harder for them,” Ralph said.
“I think you’re just making it meaner,” Billy said. “I think you’re teaching me a lesson.”
Ralph turned his head to one side curiously. “That what you think? You think you ain’t already got a hole God’s gonna put you in? A slot.”
“That ain’t your call?” Billy said.
“It sure was with Emory. I helped God fit him to his slot. I sent him where he was goin’ and I didn’t choose his place, just his time, and that there, it was preordained, my old man taught me that. And the place Emory went, I don’t figure him nor any of us is going to a place we’d like to go, do you?”
“Ain’t mine to think about.”
“Oh, Billy, sure it is.”
“Not if it’s done planned.”
“Billy,” John said. “I’ll help you.”
“I ain’t gonna put him on that fire.”
“You don’t, it’ll still get done,” Ralph said, “and maybe I get John to siphon out some more gas, get some more sticks. Yo
u get where the wind is ablowin’ on that?”
Billy was breathing heavy. John said, “Billy, let’s just do it. Okay?”
Billy looked at John. John’s face was pleading. “All right,” Billy said.
Billy and John got hold of Emory and rolled him over. They took off his clothes except for his shorts, which were full of shit. Billy got a stick and worked Emory’s dick back into the slit in his underwear. John started to pour gasoline on Emory’s open-eyed face. The top of Emory’s head looked like it had been worked open with a dull can opener.
“No,” Ralph said. “Have Billy do that.” John handed Billy the jug. Billy looked at John, but there was no help there. He took the jug and poured gas on Emory’s head.
“Now put him face down on the sticks and put his hands under his head,” Ralph said. He had used his pocketknife to open the can of peaches and he was poking them with the knife and gobbling them down, some of the peach juice running down his chin.
Billy and John did as they were asked and then Ralph gave John a kitchen match. John set the sticks on fire. The stench of Emory’s burning body filled the air.
“Let’s go,” Billy said. “I don’t want to see this, smell it neither.”
“No,” Ralph said, eating more peaches, “you just find you a seat. We’ll kinder pretend we’re at the movies.”
The three of them sat on the hill but Billy sat with his face away from the fire. The fire licked at Emory and pretty soon the head and hands were burned up and so were the feet and parts of the rest of his body.
“Close enough,” Ralph said. He had long finished the peaches and had tossed the can down the bank toward the water, but it didn’t go that far. “Spread them sticks out and kill the fire so we don’t burn half the county down. What’s left of him won’t matter. Dogs and such will have them a cooked meal tonight.”
When they went out to the car, Ralph fell back and said to John, “Any kind of noise goes off, you just hold steady, you hear?”
“Yeah,” John said, and then he walked briskly away from Ralph toward the driver’s side. Billy was about to get in the backseat when Ralph said, “You sit up front, Billy.”