“I don’t give one damn,” Beaghler said. He rolled over on his back and cupped his hand around the cigarette and inhaled for a long time, with a hissing sound as he let air into his mouth around the edges of the cigarette. Then he held his breath and closed his eyes.
Parker took the rifle, worked the bolt, and it ejected a cartridge. He picked it out of the dirt and studied it, and saw the small scratches around the casing. Inside, there would be no gunpowder.
Parker held the cartridge in the palm of his hand. “You do this yourself?”
Beaghler opened his eyes and glanced over at him. He took the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled; very little smoke came out. “Friend of mine,” he said. “A good job.”
“Glad to hear it.” Beaghler shut his eyes, rolled his head back, and inhaled again, the same way as before.
Parker put the rifle on the ground so that he was between it and Beaghler, and glanced down again at the house. No one was in sight, nothing had changed.
For a few minutes nothing happened. Beaghler lay on his back, smoking his cigarette, sometimes with his eyes closed and sometimes with them open to stare at the clouds going by overhead. Parker lay on his side, facing Beaghler, propped up on one elbow so he could keep an eye on the house down below. There was no sound anywhere, except the occasional hiss of Beaghler inhaling on the cigarette. The sky was very large up here, and the ground in most directions very empty. Parker turned a couple of times to look back down the slope they’d come up, but there was no movement back there either. Far below, sun glinted on the chrome and glass of Beaghler’s ATV.
Beaghler smoked his cigarette down to a small stub; reluctantly, he rubbed it out in the ground beside him. Then he lay for a while with his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest as though he were dead. Still lying like that, he started to talk. He said, “You were right with what you said about Sharon. I don’t know why she got her hooks in me like that. She didn’t even try, I won’t blame her for it, I was the one chased after her. Practically forced her to marry me. I don’t know, I just kept pushing it, like it was the one thing in this world I had to have. I kept trying to knock her up, but I never did. Not till after we were married, and I could
He kept on talking. He talked about his three children, and his cars, and the different places he had lived. Some of it rambled, with him talking about his parents and his childhood as though Parker already knew a lot about him and would understand all the references to people and places. The general trend of it was that he seemed to be trying to describe to Parker, or maybe to himself, his need to be tough, to be more masculine than anybody else. He never said so straight out, but all of the explanations and reminiscences seemed to be on that same theme.
Down below, there was still no sign of life from the house. Parker waited, letting Beaghler talk on, a quiet drone that disappeared toward the sky and couldn’t possibly be heard even halfway to the house. The sun was warm on his back, but not too hot, and still alternated with cooling periods of cloudiness. Except for the nose of the Ford around the edge of the house, and in the other direction the sun glinting from Beaghler’s ATV, there were no suggestions of the twentieth century anywhere in sight.
Beaghler began to pause between thoughts, and the pauses got longer, and then he stopped talking entirely. Parker looked over at him to see if he’d put himself to sleep, but his eyes were open, staring up at the sky. Parker said, “What’s the program?”
A small furrow showed in Beaghler’s forehead. He turned his head so he could look at Parker, and said, “What did it, anyway? What told you?”
“Does it matter?”
The furrow slowly smoothed out; Beaghler smiled. He seemed relieved of all care. “No, it doesn’t,” he said, and kept on smiling.
Parker gestured toward the house. “What happens now?”
“He’ll show himself after a while.”
“To prove he’s there?”
“Uh-huh. Then we’d head over to the left, where there’s a gully down the hill, where we could go down without being seen.”
“When do you make your move?”
“Whenever I can. The idea is, you won’t really trust me till you see him. But once he shows, he’s all you’ll think about.”
“But if you get a chance before that, you’ll take it.”
“Sure.”
Parker looked down toward the house again, frowning. Then he turned back to Beaghler: “You got any other weapons on you?”
“Knife in my hip pocket.”
“Take it out slow, and put it on the ground between us.”
The furrow came back to Beaghler’s brow again, but he did as he was told, depositing a closed switchblade on the dirt. Parker put it away in his own pocket, and said, “The keys to the car.”
They were in the denim jacket, the other pocket from the cigarettes. Beaghler took them out and put them on the ground where the knife had been, and Parker put them away. Then he said, “Take it easy now,” and aimed the revolver down the hill they’d come up. He fired twice, with a space in between. Beaghler twitched at both sounds, but otherwise didn’t move.
Parker watched the house; nothing happened. “Stand up and show yourself,” he said. “Beaghler? You hear me?”
“Oh,” Beaghler said, and suddenly scrambled to his feet. He stood on the hilltop looking down at Parker. “I get you,” he said.
Parker was still watching the house. “Wave to him,” he said. “Look at the house, not at me.”
Beaghler obediently turned and waved both arms over his head, and George Uhl came out through the doorless
