I nodded and stepped into the restaurant. The lights had gone out, and the gray light that spilled in through the open windows gave the whole room a dark, dead look. Fat Ernst leaned back against the bar, staring at the floor. Misty was standing by herself near the tables, looking out at her uncle’s pickup through the shattered window. Ray pushed past me and staggered over to the bar, still slapping at himself. “I got any on me?” he pleaded to Fat Ernst.

“Shut the fuck up, Ray. I gotta think here.”

“But … but … do I got any on me?”

Fat Ernst sucked at his teeth, finally looking up at Ray. “Turn around.”

Ray was more than happy to oblige. He spun around, pivoting on his boot heels, arms straight out as if he had been crucified.

Fat Ernst nodded. “Yep. There’s one by your ear there.”

Ray went nuts, clawing at both ears, crying, “Jesus, oh Jesus …”

I had watched when he turned around and knew there weren’t any worms by his ears. There might have been one somewhere else, but I could see there weren’t any on his head. At least you knew it when these things bit you; it hurt like hell, not like some mosquito or leech you didn’t notice at first. Still, it made me nervous enough that I forced myself to run a shaking hand over my own head and around the back of my neck. My hand came away smeared with bloody mud, but that was all.

I checked Misty, looking her over, but she was okay. She just stood there, face white, unblinking. I led her over to one of the booths and helped her into the seat. She clasped her shaking hands together on the table in front of her like she was praying. I sank into the seat across the table and put my head in my hands. Despite everything, I just hoped Grandma was okay. I hoped the dry creek bed hadn’t flooded and she had been calling about something else.

Ray finally calmed down, realizing that Fat Ernst was only fucking with him, and asked something we were all wondering. “What the fuck are we gonna do now?”

Fat Ernst waddled around the bar and sank onto his stool with a grunt. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly through his nose. “You got any ideas, I’d be glad to hear ’em,” he said, reaching under the bar and grabbing a bottle of tequila. He unscrewed the cap, tilted it to his lips and took one long gulp. “Sit down, Ray. Relax.”

Ray didn’t want to relax; he kept pacing up and down in front of the bar stools but eventually gave up after a few minutes. It was as if all the fight, all the energy, all of the adrenaline, had left him at the same time, like air escaping a balloon. He dropped onto a barstool in front of Fat Ernst and didn’t say anything.

In a rare gesture of generosity, Fat Ernst pushed the bottle of tequila across the bar to Ray. He took it without looking up and gulped from the bottle. I watched from the booth and hoped this was a sign that things might have changed. I should have known better.

Fat Ernst took another drink, sat up straight on his stool, and said, “Ray, go on out to your car and radio for help.”

Ray lifted his head, then slowly swiveled around on the barstool, looking at his squad car through the open window. He slowly shook his head, once, twice. “I … I can’t get there.”

I looked out the window. The squad car was at least thirty feet beyond the trunk of Fat Ernst’s Cadillac. Ray would have to wade through all that floodwater to get to his car. It looked like the water was at least two feet deep now. Too damn deep, too damn far, too many goddamn worms in the water. Ray swiveled back around to Fat Ernst and shook his head again, more decisive this time. “Nope. No fucking way. You go out there.”

Fat Ernst pulled the bottle off the bar and shook his head. “What a goddamn pussy.”

I glanced back out the window. Misty’s pickup, nearly halfway to Slim’s pickup, was too far as well. We were stuck.

Ray jumped off the bar stool, shouting, “I’m a pussy? I’m a pussy?” He gestured wildly toward the front door, his voice a taut, vibrating wire. “You’re so goddamn tough, you go on out there. Go ahead. Be my guest.”

“Settle down, Ray.” Fat Ernst looked over at me. “What about you, boy? You wanna be a man? Go get us some help?”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

Misty suddenly shoved the table toward me, got up, and stalked over to the bar. For a second, I thought she was going to ask Ray for the keys to the squad car. I don’t know what I would have done then. Instead, she snatched the tequila bottle out of Fat Ernst’s surprised hand and came back over to the table.

“You’re gonna pay for that,” Fat Ernst said.

“Put it on my tab.” Misty spit on the floor and slammed the bottle in front of me. “You. Drink.”

“I don’t really drink much.”

“I don’t care. Drink. Now.”

What else could I do? I gingerly grabbed the neck of the bottle, put the rim to my lips, and tilted it up. The tequila tasted like somebody pissed in a kettle full of bathwater, heated it up, and bottled it. If anything, I think I preferred the taste of Junior and Bert’s whiskey. I managed to swallow, fought the expected rising gorge. I didn’t think Misty would be too impressed if I puked all over the table.

“Take another one.”

I forced down another gulp. The second time tasted even worse. Then I noticed the worm, cold and dead at the bottom of the bottle like a carefully preserved little cat turd.

“Now. You’re going to tell me what the hell is going on around here.”

I shrugged, still holding onto the bottle. “I guess the reservoir flooded. I mean, we were just up there yesterday, so you saw how high the water was.”

Misty just looked at me. “You know what I mean. What happened to my uncle?”

I sensed Fat Ernst tensing up behind the bar, but he didn’t seem as important as he used to. “I, uh, I don’t know.”

“Take another drink.”

I didn’t know if I could handle another drink. But I took another sip, a small one. Misty grabbed the bottle, took a few swallows herself. Over at the bar, I could hear Fat Ernst mumble something as he produced another tequila bottle. He unscrewed it, took a long drink, and pushed it over to Ray.

Echoing Fat Ernst, Misty slid the bottle back to me. I took it and drank a solid gulp without being asked. It seared the inside of my throat as it went down, all desert heat and piss, exploding like a soft bomb when it hit my stomach, sending drops of liquid shrapnel into my blood. The room got warm all of a sudden.

“Now,” Misty said in a low voice, so Fat Ernst and Ray couldn’t hear her, “you tell me what happened.”

I started to say, “Well, Slim got these worms in him,” but realized that wouldn’t explain much of anything. I took another drink, and the room got hotter. But I felt okay. In fact, I felt better than okay. Not great, but certainly not as bad as I had been. I thought about it for a moment, then decided the best place to start was at the beginning. I pushed the bottle back to Misty. She drank, then pushed it right back to me. I took another deep swallow and started talking.

“Okay. I don’t know about all of this, but it’s the best I can figure. I think it started with your dad.” I kept going, telling Misty about the worms that ate into her dad when he was in the ocean, and since he hadn’t been embalmed, nobody’d seen the worms, and it would have never mattered, but he ended up in the ditch on the way to the funeral and the worms had gotten into the irrigation system and had swam off to God knows where, including Slim’s property, and I just kept going, drinking and talking, up to when me and the Sawyer brothers had pulled a dead steer out of the body pit.

“Wait a minute,” Misty said. “You guys stole a fucking dead cow out of my uncle’s pile of dead animals?”

“Well, it was a steer. And it wasn’t so much a pile exactly. More like a big hole in a ravine, all filled with water.”

Misty only nodded, eyes sharp.