the open barn doors and the wind blew across me and Beau as though we were standing in a tunnel. For no apparent reason his head pitched away from the molasses ball in my palm, one walleye staring at me, and then he backed toward the far side of the lot, his nostrils flaring.

I turned and just had time to raise one arm before a booted man in shapeless clothes swung a sawed-off pool cue at the side of my head. I heard the wood knock into bone, then the earth came up in my face, the breath burst from my chest, and I heard a snapping, disconnected sound in the inner ear, like things coming apart, like the sound of seawater at an intolerable depth.

I was on my elbows and knees when he kicked me, hard, the round steel-toe of the boot biting upward into the stomach.

'You like roping people in bars? How's it feel, motherfucker?' he said.

Then a second man kicked me from the other side, stomped me once in the neck, lost his balance, and kicked me again.

My Stetson lay in the dirt by my head, the crown pushed sideways like a broken nose. I could hear Beau spooking against the rails, his hooves thudding on the mat of desiccated manure.

But a third man was in the lot too. He wore khakis and snakeskin boots, and hanging loosely from the fingers of his right hand was a curved knife, hooked at the end, the kind used to slice banana stalks. He dropped it in the dirt by the booted man's foot.

The booted man gathered it into his right hand and laced the fingers of his left into my hair and jerked my head erect.

'Just so you'll know what's going on, we're cutting off your ears,' he said.

For just a second, through the water and blood and dirt in my eyes, I saw a flash of gold in the mouth of the man who had dropped the knife to the ground.

I brought my fist straight up between the thighs of the man who held me by the hair, sinking it into his scrotum. I saw his body buckle, the knees come together, the shoulders pitch forward as though his lower bowels had been touched with a hot iron.

Then headlights shone in my driveway, bounced across the chicken run, and filled the barn and horse lot with shadows.

The three men were motionless, like stick figures caught under a pistol flare. I rolled sideways, stumbled and ran into the barn, my arms cupped over my head as one of them aimed and fired a pistol, a. 22 perhaps, pop, pop, pop, in the darkness and I heard the rounds snap into wood like fat nails.

I thought I saw L.Q. Navarro, his tall silhouette and cocked ash-gray Stetson and gunbelt and holstered. 45 double-action revolver superimposed against an eye-watering white brilliance.

Moments later Mary Beth Sweeney squatted next to me in Beau's stall, her nine-millimeter pushed down in the back of her blue jeans. My nose was filled with blood and I had to breathe through my mouth. She ran her hand through my hair and wiped the straw and dirt out of my eyes. My face jerked when she touched me.

'Oh Billy Bob,' she said.

'Where are they?'

'They took off in a four-wheel-drive through the back of your property… Let's go inside. I'll call the dispatcher.'

'No, call Marvin Pomroy.'

I got to my feet, my hands inserted between the slats of the stall. The high beams of her car were still on, and the inside of the barn was sliced with electric light. She put her arm around my waist, and we walked together toward my back door as the wind twisted and bent the branches of the chinaberry tree over our heads. chapter seventeen

I stood shirtless in my bedroom on the third floor, the cordless phone held to one side of my head, a towel filled with ice held against the other. My shirt was on the floor, the collar flecked with blood. I could feel a burning in my lower back that I couldn't relieve, no matter which way I moved.

'You never saw them before?' Marvin said through the phone.

'No… I don't think.'

'You're unsure?'

'The guy who watched, the one who dropped the knife on the ground… Maybe I'm imagining things.'

'Where'd you see him?'

'It's like you remember people from dreams. I'm not feeling too well now, Marvin. Let me get back to you.'

'I'll put a deputy on your house.'

'No, you won't.'

'No faith,' he said.

'You're a good guy, Marvin. I don't care what people say.'

I heard him laugh before he hung up.

I clicked off the phone and set it down on the table by the window where Mary Beth sat, her violet eyes close set with thought.

'You think you saw one of those guys before?' she said.

'L.Q. Navarro and I went up against this same mule down in Coahuila three or four times. I always saw him in the dark. Sometimes I see people at night who remind me of him, like you see people inside dreams. A therapist told me-'

'What?'

'That it was unexpiated guilt. It's the kind of thing therapists like to talk about.'

'I worry about you.'

'I'd better take a shower,' I said.

'You should go to the hospital.'

'I've wasted enough of the night on these guys. Why don't you get yourself something to eat in the kitchen?'

'Eat?'

'Yeah.'

'Too much,' she said.

After she went downstairs, I got into the shower stall and turned the hot water into my face and hair and propped my palms against the tile and let the blood and dirt and dried sweat boil out of my skin and sluice into the drain.

But when I closed my eyes I felt the bottom of the stall tilt under my feet and I saw streamers of colored light, like tracers in a night sky, behind my eyelids. I dried off and dressed in my underwear, one hand gripped on the bathroom door for balance. I saw the horizon dip outside the window and I heard a voice say Just so you'll know what's going on, we're cutting of your ears, and I toppled sideways across a chair onto the floor.

Then Mary Beth was beside me, her hands gripped under my arms, pulling me erect, helping me to the bed. I fell back on the pillow and dragged the sheet across my loins. She sat on the edge of the mattress, her eyes staring down into mine. Outside the window the sky was sealed with a flat layer of black clouds that pulsed with lightning.

'I'm all right,' I said.

'You want me to go?'

I started to speak, but she saw the answer in my eyes and she leaned over me and brushed my forehead with her fingers and kissed me lightly on the mouth. The tips of her curls touched my cheeks, and I could smell her shampoo and the heat in her skin. I held her and kissed her again. She slipped off her shoes and lay beside me, her face inches from mine.

'I've seen your jacket. Your kind always gets hurt, Billy Bob,' she said.

'You are a fed.'

She didn't reply. Instead, she gathered her arms around me and pulled me against her, releasing her breath against my cheek, molding me against her, her ankle tucked inside mine.

I waited to sit up, to change my position, but I felt two bright tentacles of pain slip along my spine and wrap around the front of my thighs.

'Wait,' she said. She stood up, unbuttoned her shirt and let it drop to the floor, then unsnapped her blue jeans

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