Spencerville

You know?”
    “I do.”
    “Hey, I wish I had a smoke.”
    “Do you need a drink?”
    “Well… you got somethin’?”
    “No. I’m asking you if you
need
a drink.
”
    “I… do. But… it’ll wait.”
    “You know, maybe you
can
get your life together after this, if you lay off the juice.”
    “Maybe.”
    “I’ll help you.”
    “Forget it. We’re even.” Billy asked, “Did you ever think we got fucked big-time?”
    “Yeah. So what? Every veteran since the first war got fucked big-time. Maybe you should stop feeling sorry for yourself. There’s no war long enough or bad enough to mess up your head as bad as you messed it up yourself.”
    Billy thought about that awhile, then replied, “Maybe not
your
head. You was always together. My head couldn’t take too much.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Tell you somethin’ else, Keith—if you don’t think you’re a little fucked-up, too, you ain’t listenin’ to the bells and whistles in your skull.”
    Keith didn’t reply.
    They waited another hour, mostly in silence. Finally, Billy said, “Hey, remember that Findlay game in our senior year?”
    “No.”
    “I was playin’ that day, halfback, and we was down seven to twelve, and I take the handoff and shoot off left tackle. They nailed my ass at the scrimmage line, but I didn’t go down—I spun off and flipped the ball back to you. You was playin’ fullback that day, remember? The Findlay bastards were all over you, but you chuck the long bomb out to some end—what the hell was his name? Davis. Right? And he didn’t even know he was in the play, but he turns around, and the ball lands in his hands, and he gets hit and falls in the end zone. Touchdown. You remember that?”
    “Yes.”
    “Hell of a game. Goes to show you. Even when things are goin’ wrong, if you hang in there, you can catch a break. I wonder if they still got a film of that?”
    “Probably.”
    “Yeah, I’d like to see that. Hey, do you remember Baxter from high school?”
    “No… actually, I do.”
    “Yeah, he was always a prick. You ever get into it with him?”
    “No, but I should have.”
    “Never too late to settle a score.”
    “That’s just what he’s thinking, and that’s why we’re all here.”
    “Yeah… but we never done nothing to him in school.
I
never done nothing to him. He just gets off on fucking with people. I can’t understand why somebody didn’t take him down long ago.”
    Keith said, “He picks on weak people.”
    Billy Marlon didn’t respond to that but said, “Hey, he’s really pissed at
you.
” He laughed, then added, “You know something, after I saw you in the bar, like the next day when my head was straight, I remembered about you and Annie Prentis. And I got this wild thought in my head that you and her was gonna meet and get it back together. How’s that for smart thinkin’?”
    Keith didn’t reply.
    Billy went on, “I guess he figured that out, too. You know, I used to see her sometimes on the street—I mean, I never knew her too good in school, but bein’ we was old classmates, she’d always smile at me and say hello. Sometimes, she’d stop and talk a minute, you know, askin’ me how I was doin’. I’d stand there, like not knowing what to say, thinkin’ to myself, ‘Your husband fucked my wife, and I should tell you that,’ but of course, I never did. And I didn’t want to talk too long, because I was afraid that if he saw me talkin’ to his wife, he’d do somethin’ nasty to me, or to her.”
    Keith said, “Maybe I
should
let you gut him alive.”
    Billy looked at him and said, “I don’t need your permission to do that.”
    This sort of surprised Keith, but it was a good sign for Billy. Keith said, “We agreed that I give the orders.”
    Billy didn’t reply.
    Another hour passed, and it got cold. Keith looked at his watch. It was ten P.M. He was anxious to get moving, but it was too early. Baxter would be awake and alert, and so would the dogs.
    Keith saw that the moon was in the southwestern sky now, and he figured he still had about two or three hours of moonlight.
    Keith said, “Okay, here’s the way we’re going to do this. We take out the dogs in the moonlight, we wait until moonset, I charge across that clearing, you cover, I get onto the deck and put my back to the wall near the sliding glass doors. Okay?”
    “So far.”
    “Now you have to draw him out. Can you bark like a dog?”
    “Sure can.”
    “Okay, you bark, he comes out, just like