“Where d’you get that?”

“Diner.”

A face then appeared at the window, the arm on the edge of the door, said arm scattered with jailhouse tats, the man’s hair closely shorn, a tooth missing on the left side of his crooked smile. But to Kenny it seemed like a good smile, an honest smile, and there was something about the man that seemed of decent humor.

“Back there?”

“Sure, back there. Half a mile, no more.”

“And it’s good chicken, you say?”

“Good enough,” Kenny said.

“You don’t get no supper at home?”

“Some.”

“But not today.”

“No, sir, not today.”

“Sir? What you done call me sir for?”

Kenny frowned. “Politeness, sir.”

“Well, shee-it, kid. I don’t recall that there’s ever been a time someone called me sir.”

“Well, maybe you ain’t knowed a great deal of polite folks.”

“I’m thinkin’ that may be the case. I think maybe you just hit the nail damn square on the head right there, son.”

“Maybe so,” Kenny said, and thought about his chicken getting cold.

“So that chicken is good, then, you say.”

“You wanna try some?” Kenny asked, and he took a step toward the pickup and held up the greasy paper bag.

“You’d let me have some of that there chicken you got in the bag?”

“Sure. Not all of it, mind, but you could maybe have a wing and see if it was good, and if you wanted more, you could drive right on down there and get yourself some.”

The man paused, tilted his head to one side, and looked at Kenny Sawyer like this was something altogether different.

“You’re a good kid, you know that?”

Kenny looked back at Leon like this was something altogether different for him, too.

“So, you want some?”

“Sure, kid. Let me have a wing there and we’ll see how it is.”

They agreed the chicken was good, not the best either of them had ever had, but fit for purpose.

“Where do you live, son?” Leon asked.

“Back a ways there, over beyond the clear-cut.”

“With your ma and pa?”

“Just my ma.”

“Your pa done run off?”

“Nope, he died.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yup.”

“You got brothers and sisters?”

“Two stepbrothers, Dale and Stephen, but they lit out when our pa died.”

“So they wasn’t your ma’s boys?”

“No, sir. They come with the package.”

Leon laughed. “Yes, indeedy, you’re a good kid, and you’re smart, too. Bet you there ain’t a great deal of people who can get past you.”

“I’d like to think not.”

“So, I’m gonna go down to that diner there and get myself some of that chicken. You wanna come?”

“Why for?”

“No reason. Just for company.”

“Ain’t s’posed to go no place with strangers.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“Kenny.”

“Well, Kenny, my name is Leon, and I’m pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir.”

“Well, seein’ as how we’s on first-name terms, and seein’ as how we already shared some dinner there, looks like we ain’t strangers no more, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess.”

“Well, hop on up here and show me where this diner is, and then once we’ve eaten, I can give you a ride back home.”

Kenny hesitated for no more than a second, and then he went on up in the passenger seat and gave directions. Not that there were a great many directions to give, but he gave them anyway.

Seemed that there may have been some odious and disreputable reason for Leon Devereaux’s initial exchange with Kenny Sawyer, but then again, maybe there wasn’t. Maybe he was just looking for company, and Kenny Sawyer was there to provide it. Whatever the deal had been, the deal was now something different. Leon Devereaux went on into the diner and bought more chicken. He got French fries and a cup of ketchup and cookies that were still warm from the oven. The cookies were for Kenny. They ate together, right there in the cab of that pickup, and they didn’t talk a great deal. When they were done, Leon was good to his word and he drove Kenny home.

“You know the trailers parked up over yonder?”

“The ones where that crazy dog is at?” Kenny asked.

“That’s the ones.”

“Yes, I do, sir.”

“Well, that’s where I live. You ever want some company, you come on by there. And don’t mind the dog. That’s General Patton. He’s always chained up secure, and he ain’t half as mad as he sounds. He just does it to show off.”

“You want me to bring chicken?”

“Sure, son. You bring some chicken if you like.”

“Okay,” Kenny said.

“Well, okay,” Leon replied.

And so it had become a friendship of sorts, Kenny Sawyer taking the long way back from school to see if Leon’s pickup was out at the trailers, and—if so—heading for the diner, getting chicken for them both, and then walking back.

Most often Leon was not there, and so their meetings were few and far between. But when they did meet, they picked up the conversations where they’d left off—baseball, comic books, church, what was best to eat, girlfriends, the benefits of cats versus dogs or vice versa, other such things. Leon showed Kenny lumberjack fighting, taught him a few slick moves— how to throw a punch and make it matter—and Kenny never asked where Leon had been for the past week or so, and Leon never ventured an explanation for his absences.

And so it was, late afternoon of Monday, August 5th, that Kenny Sawyer came back from school and checked to see if Leon’s pickup was home. It was not, hadn’t been for near on two weeks, but this time there was something strange. General Patton was there, unchained, running back and forth between the trailers and barking like a crazy son of a bitch. Kenny called him, and General Patton came running, near bowled him over with enthusiasm to see a familiar face.

“What’s up, boy?” Kenny asked him. “Where’s your pa, eh? Where’s Leon at? What you doin’ here by yourself?”

Each day Kenny had been down this way, he had seen the trailers but no pickup and no dog. This didn’t make sense. No sense at all. Couldn’t understand how Leon was absent but the General was here, untethered, running loose.

Kenny went on up to the big trailer, the one where he and Leon would sit and talk and eat chicken. He knocked, waited, figured that maybe Leon was in there with a girl again like he’d been a couple of times before. But Leon was not here. Of course he wasn’t. How the hell had he got here without the truck? Maybe he’d broken down someplace and had taken to walking back, had let the General run on ahead. A handful of minutes and he’d be turning the corner and asking where the chicken was at.

Kenny headed for the smaller trailer, the one where Leon slept.

He knocked again, knew he wouldn’t get an answer, and reached up to open the door.

Five minutes later, stopping once again to heave violently at the side of the road, Kenny Sawyer could still smell Leon Devereaux’s decaying corpse, still see just the one eye staring back at him. The other eye had been shot right through, left a hole the size of a quarter and then some, and whatever meatballs and tomato sauce had been inside that skull of his was decorating the wall above his head.

He’d been shot right there in his bed, had perhaps leaned up to see who was coming through the door, and taken a bullet right through the eye.

By the time he reached home, Kenny could hardly breathe, let alone speak. It was a while before Janette Sawyer appreciated the full import of what had happened, a while after that before she reached the Sheriff’s Office. Gradney himself went out to those trailers and saw what Kenny Sawyer had seen, and once he had the scene under control, once photographs had been taken, once the coroner had been called, Gradney took it upon himself to try to understand why an eleven-year-old kid would have a friend like Leon Devereaux. Gradney also knew that what you deserved and what you got were not the same thing, and that applied to friends as well. Kenny explained what he could, and then Gradney sat with Janette Sawyer and tried to get her to see that keeping an eye on who her son was spending time with might be a wise investment of her attention. After the Sawyers had left, Gradney called the dog pound, told them he had a mutt that needed collecting. Once the dog was gone, only then did he think to check the other trailer. He saw what Gaines had seen in the bathtub, and he was disturbed beyond measure. He did not know what Leon Devereaux had been doing, but he wondered whether Kenny Sawyer might have been the next intended recipient of whatever it was. Lastly, Gradney made a call to the Breed County Sheriff’s Office. He didn’t reach Gaines, but Hagen. He explained what had happened, that Leon Devereaux had been found dead in his trailer by a child.