“You-”

“Me, I wasn’t here. You don’t know jack about anyone else. You saw masked men heavily armed, and you shot. These two may turn out to be wanted or to have paper on ’em. Any reward is yours, and anything you can get off this deal, you go ahead. You deserve it. You stood and fought. I’d pick up that can of whatever you threw, wipe it off, and put it back on the shelf. Don’t need to tell nobody about that. They shot, you shot, you won. End of story. Are we clear?”

“Yes sir.”

“You did good, young man. You’re a hero, okay?”

“Well, I-it’s, um, I-”

“Okay, I am out of here. You can get through this. You just tell ’em the same thing over and over and nobody can doubt you. Just stick to the simple story. I know you can do this thing.”

“Yes sir.”

“So long, now. I will call you in a few days to check up.”

“Who are you?”

“It don’t matter. I’m the guy in the movie who leaves without explanation, okay.”

“You’re Clint Eastwood?”

“If that’s his name, then I guess I’m him. So long, son.”

It took a while for the news to get there. Of course, since Lester’s Grocery was only four miles as the crow flies from the Piney Ridge Baptist Prayer Camp, the boys all heard the sirens wailing in the night as various police arrived at the scene. No one said a thing. It could be, it could not be. Who knew, who could tell?

But time passed and there was no news from Carmody and B.J. You’d have thought they’d call in right after, but maybe the boys went to town instead of beelining back toward the camp, and were even now carousing in some low crib they’d found out about, drinking and wailing and whoring because they knew that they’d done the Grumley work well.

But after two hours, the Reverend sent Vern and Ernie in Vern’s red Caddy down 167 to see what the ruckus was, whether or not it had anything to do with Carmody and B.J. The call came a few minutes later. The Reverend took it.

“Reverend, we are here at Lester’s.”

“Yes?”

“Whole mess of folks, all the cops in three counties, state boys, the works. Crime lab, that detective Thelma Fielding and Sheriff Reed Wells, maybe even FBI up from Knoxville, TV stations, newspaper and radio reporters from all three states, the whole shebang. Even civilians are pulling in, drawn by the light and the ruckus. They can smell the blood in the air. We can’t get close, they’ve cordoned it off, but quite a crowd has gathered.”

“What’s the word?”

There was silence, as if neither Vern nor Ernie wanted to bust the news. Finally it was Ernie, who said, “Rumor here in the crowd is that some punk kid shot it out with two armed, masked desperados. Killed ’em both deader n’ shit.”

The Reverend looked for other possibilities.

“Don’t mean a thing. No sir, first off, no punk kid is besting Carmody and B.J. Grumley, no sir, not now, not ever. It has to be coincidence, you know, that brought some Joe Blows into the kid’s gun sights, even if Carmody and B.J.’s off roaming around to make a job on someone so as to make it look robbery-like. I know the good Lord wouldn’t take two Grumleys from me, no sir, not with this big thing coming up two days off, and me needing every damn man. So you just-”

And then he sort of ran out of words.

“Sir,” Ernie finally said, “thing is, I think that’s Carmody’s car in the lot, I can make it out. And it’s impounded and they’re dusting it for prints even now and a tow truck is here.”

“Oh, damn. Damnation, hellish damnation, flame and spark, damnation. It just can’t be.”

“Sir, I am only telling you what I see.”

“Was there anything about another fellow? There’s a shootout, our two boys, they gone, but they got another fellow, right, tell me that’s what it’s about.”

“Sir, ain’t heard nothing about no other fellow. Only about this clerk, what a sad-sack shmo he was, only this time he came up aces, a mankiller of the first rank, chest to chest and muzzle to muzzle, he shot it out, and they’re down and gone and he’s a hero of the highest damned order.”

The Reverend let out an animal howl of rage and pain, deep soul ache, the blues, whatever you may call it. A Grumley-no, two Grumleys-had passed. His scream so rent the air that from the rec room, where they’d been lounging, playing cards, watching TV on fuzzy black and whites, drinking, just palavering, his progeny and kin came to see him and take the message of despair and vengeance he was putting out.

“You learn what you can, boys, then you head on home,” he told Vern and Ernie.

“Yes sir.”

The Reverend looked up at his flock.

“We lost ’em, boys. Both ’em gone to the maker. It ain’t right.”

“What happened, sir?”

He told the story as he’d heard it.

“No way, uh-uh, no Grumley going down in a fight with that pudding-ass kid,” seemed to be the consensus.

“Pap,” a voice came, “this boy, he couldna gotten the goods on Carmody and B.J. Carmody’s a good shot. He had a knack. He’d shoot the ankles off a fly.”

“B.J. ain’t no slouch either,” said another. “Remember in 0 and 6, he shot it out with two big black dudes in an alley in St. Louis, and though he got punctured himself, he made sure he’s standing and they’s bagged by the time that fight’s done.”

Several of the wilder Grumleys wanted to lock and load and head out for hot-blooded vengeance that very second.

“We got the machine guns, we can blast the holy Jesus out of that town in a minute and a half. With that big gun we can blow down all their church steeples, we can take that fat sad clown and hang him upside down in burning tar in the town center.”

It was at this time that Vern Pye and Ernie Grumley returned from their melancholy mission, and they got there in time to hear all the talk of rage and vengeance, of burning the flesh of the Grumley killer, of razing the municipality that spawned him, or wreaking biblical vengeance on the transgressors. Through it all handsome Vern kept himself calm. Finally and calmly he spoke.

“Now you listen up, boys. Listen to Vern. I am the oldest and the most experienced. I am maybe the most accomplished. I have three homes, three wives, gals, money in the bank, and know some country-western stars. So let me share some wisdom. May I speak, sir?”

The Reverend considered, then said, “Son Vern, you may speak your piece in the Grumley fashion.”

“Thank you, Reverend. You boys, you’s all a-rage and full of the fires of hatred and vengeance. You want to go in and flatten that place, and teach every last man and woman in it the fear of Grumley justice, and I don’t blame you a bit. But we are men of a certain creed who live by a certain code and have certain responsibilities. That is at our center and is as fierce to us as our Baptist faith and our willingness to shed and spill blood. So I say hold it in, cousins and brothers. Hold it in cold and tight and squeeze it down.

“Now we have a job we’ve contracted to do. We’ve worked hard on it. We’ve prepared and sacrificed. We’ve taken a stranger into our midst-” he indicated Brother Richard, who was slouched beneath his Richard Petty cowboy hat and fake sideburns at the rear of the room-“and let that stranger use his waspish words against us, as if he’s some kind of high and mighty. We do that because it’s part of our contract. We are professionals of a creed, brothers and cousins, and we will be true to that creed. So for now, it is my conclusion there should be no blood spilling, and that clerk should be left alone to enjoy his few minutes of glory.

“But I swear to you, and you know that Grumley to Grumley, Grumley word is holy, I swear to you that when this done finished, then we will get to the bottom of this. We will have a nice long chat with that lucky boy and we will find out what transpired and we will ascertain blame and we will pay out justice, eyeball for eyeball, earhole for earhole, heart for heart. We will inform the world that Grumley blood is too precious to be spilled, and when it is, hell visits in due turn.”