The Collection

'Then what should we do?' Full Moon asked him.

'You are the one who saw the men. You go there—'

'They killed my father, too.'

Black Hawk glared at Lone Cloud. 'You did not see them.'

'What do I do when I get there?' Full Moon asked.

'I do not know. Perhaps it will be revealed to you.'

'What do you think?' Full Moon asked his friend as they left the meeting a few minutes later.

'We bring the guns,' Lone Cloud told him.

He dreamed that night of a saloon. The type of saloon that could be found in old westerns.

Or on Death Row.

There was no liquor behind the bar of the saloon, only jars filled with organs floating in watered-down blood. Skeletons, posed as stereotypical gamblers, sat around the round oak tables.

Full Moon stood alone in the middle of the saloon. From outside, he heard the sounds of a gunfight: shouting, then shooting, then silence. A moment later, he heard boots on the wooden sidewalk outside. A tall man was silhouetted from behind by the sunlight. He walked through the swinging doors into the saloon, and as he came into the room, Full Moon saw that the man was his father.

His father tipped his hat, and the top of his head came off. Blood poured down his face in even rivulets. 'You killed me, son,' he said. 'You killed me.'

They set off in the morning, leaving just after dawn in Lone Cloud's pickup.

Full Moon brought a .22.

Lone Cloud brought a .45 and a shotgun.

They did not speak as they drove through the desert. Lone Cloud was at the wheel, and Full Moon stared through the passenger window at the empty, overgrown parking lots and the abandoned, broken-windowed buildings that period­ically fronted the highway.

He thought about the men he'd seen in the casino. What if they weren't ghosts? he wondered. What if they were reg­ular men, men who just happened to have aged well?

They weren't.

But did that make any difference? He didn't know. The men had killed his father, and Lone Cloud's father, and he supposed they deserved what they were going to get, but it was still a dirty business and the whole situation made him extremely uncomfortable.

Full Moon cleared his throat, turned away from the win­dow. 'I've never killed anyone before.'

Lone Cloud did not take his eyes off the highway. 'Nei­ther have I. But they have.'

'What will that make us if we do kill them?'

'They're not alive,' Lone Cloud said. 'Or, if they are, they're not human.'

'Then how are we going to kill them?'

'What do you mean, how? We brought guns.'

'What if guns don't work on them?'

'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'

They drove for a moment in silence.

It is only you. You are the one.

'Why did they come to the casino?' Full Moon won­dered aloud. 'And how come I was the only one who saw them?'

'Doesn't matter.'

'Maybe it does.'

'Black Hawk doesn't know any more about this than we do.'

Full Moon didn't believe it, but he nodded. 'I hope you're right,' he said.

Death Row.

Full Moon got out of the pickup and stood on the hill above Rojo Cuello, looking down. The street looked exactly as he remembered it. Around the street, the city had been transformed, the empty ground between buildings paved over with parking lots, built up into condominiums, the buildings themselves torn down or made over.

But Death Row remained unchanged.

He had known that would be the case, and it frightened him. He glanced over at Lone Cloud, and the blanched look on his friend's face mirrored his own emotions perfectly.

For all of his bravado, Lone Cloud was just as scared as he was.

He scanned the street below for the spot where his father had been killed, found it almost instantly.

The past returned in a rush.

He 'd been awakened by his father in the middle of the night, shaken awake, and he opened his eyes to see his fa­ther sitting on the edge of the bed. 'Get dressed,' his father said. 'It's time to go.'

'Go where?'

'Rojo Cuello. Death Row.'

He cried almost all the way there, begging his father to turn back, but his father drove on through the darkness, re­peating grimly that he had no choice.

Full Moon was supposed to drive the pickup back home.

His father would give his life to Death Row but not his truck.

Truth be told, Full Moon had been frightened more for himself than for his father, filled with dread and terror and the horrifying certainty that he too would be killed, but when his father parked the pickup on the hill above town, gave him the keys, told him to take off, and started walking down the path that led through the weeds and brush on the side of the hill, Full Moon drove down the Rojo Cuello highway instead, his heart thumping so hard it felt as though it would burst through his rib cage as he sped down the winding road to Death Row.

He and his father reached the street at the same time. And he saw the men take his father down. He 'd driven to the street with no plan, with only the vague notion that he would rescue his father and save his life, but his mind had been a terrified blank as he 'd sped down the curving road, and though he often thought later that if he had floored the pedal and barreled down the street he might have run over the murderers, he braked to a stop at the head of Death Row.

His father emerged from between two buildings, walking slow and straight, head held high as though unafraid, and the man with the mustache came out from the lingering sun­rise shadows and shoved a knife deep into his stomach.

Full Moon screamed, and the man looked down the street at him and grinned.

His father fell, clutching his midsection and rolling on the ground, and the other two appeared out of nowhere, the man with the patch laughing as he yanked down his father's pants and cut off his penis, the man with the beard scream­ing as he used a hatchet to hack off the top of his head.

For a brief second, Full Moon considered speeding down the street and running over all three of them, but he knew he'd hit his father's body as well, and then the three men were bending over his father and there were even more knives in their hands, the multiple blades glinting orange in the dawn sun, and he understood that if he did not get out of there then, the men would come after him, too.

He threw the truck into reverse and took off, barely able to see through his tears, looking more at the rearview mir­ror than through the windshield, seeing the men gleefully carving up what was left of his father, and then he smashed into a bush, nearly going off the road, before he quickly righted the vehicle and sped back up the hill, this time keep­ing his eyes on the pavement.

He stopped at the top of the hill and looked down, but Death Row was empty, and he quickly put the truck into gear and took off.

'I don't see anyone down there.'

He glanced over at Lone Cloud, wondering how his friend's father had been killed. They had never discussed the details.

Full Moon walked toward the pickup. 'It's getting late,' he said. 'Let's go.'

They parked in the middle of the street, in front of an old livery stable at the east end of the Row. The