I felt kind of sorry for him.

Grandma hollered from the phone, “Arch? Arch?” She sounded out of breath.

“Dirty motherfucker,” Fat Ernst said as he scrambled back inside, followed closely by Ray. They hit the floor next to Junior, and Ray kicked the front door shut.

Grandma kept shouting, coughing to get the words out. I caught something that sounded like, “Watch yourself—the damn—,” but Slim fired again, and the receiver was yanked out of my hand. The phone popped off the bar above my head and bounced into the bottles behind the bar as the echoes of Slim’s shot slammed into the restaurant.

For a second, I thought Slim had hit the phone on purpose, to stop anybody from calling for help, but as I scuttled across the floor toward Misty and peered over the window ledge, I realized that Slim didn’t have much control over the rifle. He wasn’t aiming at all, just swaying back and forth on his feet, hanging onto the door frame for support. Blood ran freely out of his nose and mouth. He coughed, sending a fresh wave of blood down the front of his chest.

“Sonofabitch!” I heard him yell weakly. “Come on out … here …”

Misty curled up tight next to me, hanging onto my arm, and suddenly things didn’t seem quite so bad. Slim fired again, and as the window crashed down around us like a deadly waterfall, I changed my mind quick. Things were bad.

“Where’d you get it?” Slim hollered. He fired another round, and the mirror above the bar shattered. I brushed the broken glass from Misty’s back as best I could.

Fat Ernst grabbed Ray’s collar, shouting into his ear, “Shoot back!”

“But—I don’t know—,” Ray croaked, swallowing furiously. It was obvious he’d never fired a gun at anyone in his career as a deputy and had no idea what to do.

Fat Ernst slapped him. “Shoot him, you fucking moron! Shoot! Back!”

Junior raised himself to his knees, peering groggily at his bleeding brother.

Fat Ernst spoke slowly. “Ray. You pansy-assed fuck. Get that fucking pistol out and shoot that cocksucker or I’m gonna jam it so far up your ass you’ll blow your head off every time you brush your fucking teeth.”

Slim fired again.

Ray scooted over to the open window by the Sawyer brothers, yanked the revolver out of his holster, stuck it blindly out the shattered window frame, kept his head down, and pulled the trigger.

The report from the Redhawk sounded like a goddamn cannon had been fired inside the restaurant. Ray’s hand popped up from the recoil like he’d waved suddenly to a friend, then fired again. His eyes were shut tight. I knew he hadn’t hit anything and had just wasted four bucks on those two rounds, but I cautiously raised my head and looked anyway. Sure enough, Slim was still standing, loading more shells into his rifle.

Since Slim was busy reloading, I stuck my head up a little more, searching the highway. It was empty. No help there. I took another quick glance around the parking lot and found that Ray had, in fact, managed to hit something. A splintered hole about the size of an apple was now in the middle of the windshield of Fat Ernst’s Cadillac. I got pissed. “Nice shooting, Ray.”

Fat Ernst crawled over to Ray’s window. He stuck his head up and said, “You’re gonna pay for that, you stupid fuck.” He grabbed Ray’s pistol and lifted himself heavily to his feet, facing the window. Squeezing the pistol tightly in both fists, he raised it with straight arms and yelled at Slim, “Stand still, dammit!”

He fired and put a fist-sized hole in the pickup’s front fender, almost three feet from Slim, who was bringing his rifle back up and didn’t seem to know or care where Fat Ernst’s bullet had gone.

Before Slim got the rifle barrel back through the pickup’s door, Fat Ernst fired again. The bullet punched through the driver’s door and hit Slim in the stomach, slamming him back against the cab as if a horse had just kicked him in the balls. The rifle landed in the mud next to him.

Ray stuck his head up, saw Slim go down, and whispered, “Shit-fire. Damn!”

“That’s how it’s fucking done.” Fat Ernst dropped the pistol in Ray’s lap, yanked the door open, and stomped down the stairs.

Ray twisted the pistol around his lap until the barrel pointed at his chest and fiddled with the cylinder. He finally popped it out, dumped all of the shells, both empty casings and loaded cartridges, and started reloading from scratch. I thought about mentioning that he was loading a gun aimed at his head but said to hell with it. The dumbshit would have to figure it out for himself.

“Oh, shit,” Misty whispered. Her face looked drained, eyes wide and unblinking. She pushed herself away from me, found her feet, and was out the door before I could stop her. I followed her out into the rain.

Fat Ernst waddled furiously through the mud over to his fallen sign and Slim’s pickup. Misty was right behind him, splashing straight through the puddles. Behind me, Ray came slowly down the wooden steps. “Is he dead?” he called out to Fat Ernst.

Fat Ernst stopped at Slim’s feet and put his hands on his hips. “Close enough,” he called back over his shoulder. Misty and I stopped behind Fat Ernst, neither of us saying anything. Ray stood nervously off to our right. He kept checking to make sure his pistol was back in the holster.

Slim, sitting with his back to the pickup, coughed weakly and blood splattered into the mud. There was a small hole in his stomach, a few inches above the waistband of his jeans. Blood had bloomed across his white shirt, encircled the pearl buttons, seeped down across his leather belt, and run down his jeans. It hurt just looking at him. He stared at his lap, apparently unable to lift his head. “I should …” Slim mumbled under his John Deere cap. “You sonofabitch …”

“Me? Fuck you. You’re the stupid sonofabitch who tried to shoot me. You can’t just go around shooting at people.”

“… Gonna put a bullet … right in your goddamn head …” Slim’s right arm fumbled for the rifle at his side, but he couldn’t move very well and his hand just slapped at the muddy stock.

“Don’t move, you fucking moron. You’ve been gut shot.”

“Please don’t move,” Misty begged. “Please. Just hold on. I’ll go get help.”

“No.” Slim coughed. “No. Don’t. There ain’t no point …”

A jackrabbit shot across the muddy expanse of the parking lot as if its tail were on fire and disappeared into the cornfield along the parking lot, the same one Slim had driven his own Cadillac into the day of the funeral.

Slim tried to push himself up using his rifle as a crutch, but his hands kept slipping in the mud. He coughed again. “Where’d … where’d you get that meat?”

Oh, shit, I thought.

“I went … went up to the pit and counted …” Slim spat.

I heard something out in the east cornfield, a vast, rushing sound, almost like a wave. I turned to the field and saw another jackrabbit come bounding out from the tall green stalks and race past the restaurant.

Misty said, “Don’t try to talk, okay? Save your strength. We’ll get you some help.” She looked at Fat Ernst and said, “We have to get him to a hospital.”

Fat Ernst ignored her. He stared back at Slim. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he declared.

The rushing sound got closer and as I looked out across the field, toward the northeastern foothills; it looked like wind or something was tearing into the corn, making the stalks shudder and shake.

The front door slammed and Junior and Bert worked their way down the steps. Junior looked a little more awake now. He shouted over to us in a thick voice, “You fucked up! You fucked up real bad this time! We’re gonna go home and tell Ma! Then you just wait and see what happens.”

Ordinarily, the idea of a grown man threatening to go home and tell his mommy that someone had hurt him would have been funny, but since this was Junior, and he was talking about his mother, Pearl, it didn’t seem funny at all.