Spencerville

vest for visibility, which Keith took but had no intention of using.
    Billy watched him getting dressed and said, “I’ll go with you.”
    “Thanks, but I want to hunt alone.”
    “What’re you huntin’ for?”
    “Varmint.” Keith tied the boots and stood. He thought about Baxter’s three dogs. At the house on Williams Street, there had been a kennel, and Keith had seen no signs of dogs living inside the house. He assumed that if the dogs were outdoor animals on Williams Street, they would be outdoors all night at the lodge. He asked Billy, “You do any longbow or crossbow hunting?”
    “Nope. I like the rifle. How about you?”
    “Same.” Despite all his exotic training, he’d never been introduced to bows and arrows, blowguns, slings, spears, or boomerangs. The only silent way of killing he’d been taught was by knife and garrote, which wouldn’t work on a dog, and he didn’t have a silencer for his M-16, and Billy didn’t have a crossbow. But he’d worry about that later.
    Billy said, “Varmint’s a real hard shot with a longbow. Seen it done with a crossbow.”
    “Right. Okay, thanks. I’ll get the truck back to you tomorrow or the next day.”
    “Hey, Keith, I may be a fucked-up juicehead, but I’m sober now.”
    Keith looked at Billy Marlon, and they made eye contact. Keith said, “The less you know, the better.” Keith moved to the door, but Marlon held his arm.
    Marlon said, “I remember some of that night at John’s Place and in the park and you drivin’ me home.”
    “I have to go, Billy.”
    “He
did
fuck my wife… my second wife. I loved her… and she loved me, and we was doin’ okay, but that bastard got between us, and after what happened, we tried to get it back together again… you know? But I couldn’t deal with what happened and I started to drink, and I got like real mean with her. She left, but… she said she still loved me, but she’d done somethin’ wrong and she could understand why I couldn’t forgive her.” Billy suddenly spun around and kicked the closet door, splintering the plywood panel. “Ah, shit!”
    Keith took a deep breath and said, “It’s okay.” It was amazing, he thought, how much wreckage Cliff Baxter had left behind as he indulged himself in his carnal gratifications and moral corruption. Keith asked Billy, “What was her name?”
    His back still to Keith, Billy replied, “Beth.”
    “Where is Beth now?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know… Columbus, I think.” Billy turned around and looked at Keith. “I know where you’re goin’. I’m goin’ with you. I have to go with you.”
    “No. I don’t need help.”
    “Not for you. For me. Please.”
    “It’s dangerous.”
    “Hey, I’m dead already. I won’t even notice the difference.”
    Keith looked at Billy Marlon and nodded.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Keith went into the cowshed, and, with an ax that Marlon had given him, he sliced a few air vents in the trunk lid of the police car. He said to Ward through the slits, “Be thankful it’s a Fairlane and not an Escort.”
    “Fuck you, Landry.”
    Keith drove the police car out of the shed and headed back on Route 8 the way he’d come. He didn’t want to leave any evidence of an association between himself and Billy Marlon and Marlon’s pickup truck.
    Keith swung off the road onto the shoulder, then cut the car hard right over a drainage culvert and onto a tractor path between two fields of corn. Fifty yards into the corn, hidden from the road, he stopped and shut off the ignition.
    He got out of the car and said to Ward, “I’ll call from Daytona and tell them where you are. It’ll be a while, so relax. Think about early retirement.”
    “Hey! Wait! Where am I?”
    “In the trunk.”
    Keith jogged back to the road and met Billy Marlon, who was waiting for him in the pickup truck.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Billy drove the pickup, a ten-year-old blue Ford Ranger, and Keith sat in the passenger seat, a dirty bush hat pulled low on his head.
    In the storage space behind the seat was the hunting gear, canvas ponchos for the Michigan cold, his M-16 rifle and scope, the Spencerville police shotgun, Officer Ward’s service revolver, and Billy Marlon’s hunting rifle, an Army M-14 with a four-power scope. He’d also taken his briefcase, which held his passport, important papers, some money, and other odds and ends. It occurred to him that this was about all he owned in the world, which was actually not much more or less than