Mad River

looking down at her. She could see the roof of a house, but nothing else, set behind a woodlot of winter-gray trees. A dirt track went up the hill from a mailbox on the road.
    She turned past the mailbox and started up the hill. A line of barren apple trees edged the driveway on the left, and a patch of dirt with the remnants of last year’s vegetable garden trailed away on the right, at a flat spot halfway up the hill. The track was rutted in places, and Becky steered around the ruts, and when they came to the crest of the hill they saw an old man in overalls standing next to an older red Ford pickup, about to get into it.
    “Pull up there next to him, like we want to ask a question. Run my window down and put your fingers in your ears,” Jimmy said. He had the pistol in his hand, between his legs.
    Becky did what he said, pushed the button to roll the window down, and stopped next to the mean-faced old man, who asked, “Who are you?”
    “Just us,” Jimmy said, and he stuck the gun out the window and shot the old man in the chest. The man reeled backward, then fell on his hands and knees, and then, improbably, got to his feet and staggered toward the house.
    Jimmy got out of the truck, but his leg gave way and he fell down. He used the running board and then the fender to pull himself back up, and then hobbled after the old man, feeling not much pain but weak and unsteady, limping so hard that he could barely lift his hand up.
    He chased the old man that way, the two of them barely making headway, the old man looking fearfully over his shoulder while holding his hand over the hole in his chest. Jimmy fired another shot and missed, and then another one, and missed again, but hit the house. Then Becky was there and said, “Give me the gun.”
    The old man was almost to the side door of the house, and she ran after him and she aimed the gun at the old man’s back and pulled the trigger and the old man went down again, but was still alive, groaning, and Becky saw that she’d shot him in the shoulder.
    “Go ahead and kill me, bitch, you got me,” the old man said, rolling over and trying to stand again. He had blood on his mouth. Becky pointed the gun at his face and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened, and she saw it was locked open: out of ammo.
    “Fuck this,” Jimmy said. He limped back to the truck and the old man tried again to get into the house, and Becky kicked his legs out from under him, and he went down, flat, and she saw the big growing patch of blood below the straps on the overalls. She stepped to the door and pulled it open, and saw what he was going after. An old pump .22 was standing in the corner of the mudroom. She picked it up and stepped back outside.
    Jimmy was digging in the truck for another gun, but Becky was figuring out the safety on the .22, clicked it off, pointed the gun at the old man, who moaned, “I give up.”
    She shot him in the head, and he shook, and tried to push himself up again, so she pumped the gun and shot him again, and he shuddered, and this time got to his hands and knees, and she pumped again, and the third time shot him behind the ear and he went down hard.
    Jimmy called, “He dead?”
    “I think so,” she said. She prodded the old man’s face with the muzzle of the gun, and he didn’t flinch or move or tremble.
    Jimmy came limping back with a pistol and pointed it at the old man’s temple and fired. The old man’s head bumped up, and this time, there wasn’t any doubt.
    “Okay. Let’s get him out of sight,” Jimmy said.
    Becky dragged the body away from the house, toward a tumbledown wooden shed that stowed a couple of rusty pieces of farm equipment, a grain drill, and an ancient disk. The old man was amazingly light, and she had no trouble at all: she hid the body behind the shed door.
    When she turned around, she saw the tank. No question about what it was, a real tank, but the front end had sunk deep into the turf, and its barrel seemed to slump with age, like it needed some kind of military Viagra to get it going again.
    She shook her head, puzzled by it, then turned back to the house. There were two scuff lines in the dirt of the driveway that looked exactly like the heels of somebody who’d been dragged to the shed. She thought about kicking some dirt over the scuff marks, and over a couple patches of blood, but then thought, if the cops get that close, they were done anyway. She followed Jimmy inside.
    •   •   •
    ABOUT