Niceville

him where the cosmic Frisbee actually was.
    Deitz had one of those faces where it was easy to picture it going all veiny and bulgy and knotting up purple while he was reading that the fucking thing had been in the back of his Hummer all afternoon.
    He tippy-toed halfway down the drive, sat down on Coker’s garden wall to slip his boots on—his super-lucky blue boots—got slowly to his feet—damn, he was tired—getting too old for sucking chest wounds and all that shit—walked stiffly the rest of the way down to his truck, favoring his ribs, the bullet wound really throbbing now.
    He started up the truck, slipped in a Caro Emerald CD, rolled down the window and lit up a cigarette, unscrewed the cap on the bottle of white wine and washed down two OxyContins and one of Donny’s bootleg Heparins. He swallowed hard, sucked in some smoke, dialed the AC up, put her in gear, and rumbled off into the dark.
    When Danziger’s truck reached the corner and braked at the Stop sign, the red glow of the truck’s brake lights was reflected in Coker’s pale brown eyes, two tiny red points of light flickering in his irises, as he stood there at the picture window, smoking a Camel, watching Danziger make the left turn and disappear.

Merle Zane Finishes It
    Glynis woke Merle up at midnight. He came up out of a nightmare with a snap that almost broke his neck. He was in his attic room, lying on top of the sheets, sweating with the heat. Outside his window the moon was gliding through a field of stars. Cicadas were humming in the pines and the generator was muttering away beyond the barn. Glynis was naked, poised at the foot of his bed. “It’s time,” she said.
    Merle reached for her, and she came softly into his arms. Afterwards, in the peace and stillness of that moment, she turned to him and asked him if he would do what he was going to do at dawn under another name. He looked at her, stroked her cheek.
    “Yes. If you want it. What name?”
    “When you reach him, if you reach him, will you say your name is John?”
    “John? Your husband?”
    “Yes. His name was John. Can you do that?”
    “Of course,” he said, drawing her in again.
    In the early morning they dressed in silence, and shared cigarettes and a cup of her cowboy coffee in the kitchen, and she walked him to the Belfair Pike gate, where they watched Jupiter for a while, out in the field of dewy grass, cantering, his hoofbeats shaking the earth under their feet.
    The Blue Bird bus was already there, idling by the gate, the old black man leaning on the door and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.
    Glynis handed Merle the canvas bag, heavy with the Colt and the spare magazines, kissed him, this time with heat, broke away and buried her face in his neck. And then she turned and walked back down the lane to the farmhouse.
    Jupiter trumpeted from the far end of the fields, tossing his huge head. Halfway along the path Glynis turned to wave, but he was already climbing up the Blue Bird steps and he didn’t see her. By the time he was seated, she was gone into the shadow of the live oaks.
    “Niceville?” said the old man, putting the bus in gear.
    “No. Not that way. You go by Sallytown?”
    The old man nodded towards the house.
    “Mrs. Ruelle hired us for the whole day, me and the Blue Bird. Take you all the way down to New Orleans, you want. How about that? Have us a real Houlihan and we can come back in a Black Maria.”
    Merle smiled.
    “Wish I could. Maybe next week. Right now I’m going to Sallytown.”
    “Any particular place in Sallytown?”
    “Gates of Gilead Palliative Care Center. You know it?”
    “Oh yes. I know it,” said the old man, more to himself than to Merle, and he didn’t speak again for several miles. After a while the Belfair Pike broke out of the old forest and uncurled into the rolling grasslands that spread out to the north of the Belfair Range.
    The rising sun was a sliver of bright red fire above the eastern hills when the old man spoke again.
    “I don’t believe I know your name, sir?”
    “My name is John Ruelle.”
    “The lady’s husband?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s good you came back, Mr. Ruelle. Mrs. Ruelle, back there, she is a very fine lady. That plantation is cruel hard work, and her running it all alone since Mr. Ethan got shot by the Haggard man … well, folks have all admired her for her courage. She’s like that Penelope lady whose husband had to go off and lay siege to Troy. Been alone for a long time.