I knew she would do it, so I did my best to keep my mouth shut. I tried to nod though, anything to get that cane out of my skull. I guess that satisfied her, because the cane suddenly withdrew, leaving me gasping on the floor. Hot tears stung the inside of my eyes. It was all my fault. Everything was my fault. And I couldn’t change that.

But if I could get out of this handcuff, I could try and make things right. And if that meant killing anyone, everyone, all of them, any sonofabitch between me and Misty, then so be it. In fact, I’d happily kill all of them.

I kept my head on the floor as Ma shuffled back to Fat Ernst. Misty finally lifted her head. Tears had left clean tracks through the drops of Slim’s blood on her face, but she wasn’t crying anymore. Shehad some kind of dog’s choke chain wrapped tight around her neck. A large padlock kept it snug enough that she couldn’t pull it off. The end of the chain was attached to the leather strip, a leash. Junior untied the leash from the table column, then stood and stared down at Misty.

She stared right back at him and said, in a slow, strong voice, “Well, Slick, I don’t dance unless I get some drinking done. Drinking always gets me dancing. Drinking gets me all fired up.” She gave him a quick grin and blinked a couple of times. “So … you wanna get me a drink?”

Junior nodded back, hard. “My kind of girl.” He blew her a kiss, ran across the floor, jumped over me, and landed on the bar. As he grabbed Fat Ernst’s bottle of tequila, I twisted my head over and studied the handcuff. It had been ratcheted tight around my right wrist and was secured snugly around the bar. I figured I could slide it back and forth about three feet between the thick fittings that anchored the brass bar to the wood. I yanked my arm, hard, but the effort wasn’t worth it; the handcuffs were Ray’s, genuine police issue hardened steel.

Junior ambled back across the floor, holding the bottle up triumphantly.

“Bert!” Pearl snapped, still staring into Fat Ernst’s face with her wide, unblinking eye. “Make yourself useful.”

“Okay, Ma,” Bert said, pushing himself away from the front door, swaying as he found his feet. He rubbed his shoulder, saying, “What do you need?”

Pearl thrust her knifelike chin at Ray’s body. “Drag him outside. But don’t push him all the ways in the water. Not yet, anyway. Dangle his head out there for a while. Use him for bait. See if we can’t catch anything. Only damn thing he’s good for.” She looked for me and I realized that she knew about the worms too, as if she were reading my mind again. “Case somebody don’t feel like cooperating.”

She glared down at Fat Ernst. He wasn’t moving or saying anything, just staring at the floor through half-open eyes. Bert bent over Ray, grabbed the deputy’s leg with his left hand, and dragged him over to the front door. Bert’s broken right arm dangled from his shoulder as if it wereattached with just a piece of rope. It swayed back and forth, bouncing off his hip once in a while. He let Ray’s leg drop back to the floor and Ray whimpered once. He wasn’t dead yet, but I figured it wouldn’t be long. Bert opened the front door and pulled Ray out to the steps.

Junior had dropped into the seat opposite Misty and was taking a long swallow of tequila. He jerked the bottle away from his lips and held it out to Misty. She grabbed hold of it with her bound hands, tilted the bottle back. A sudden flash of hot jealousy washed over me and I almost said something, but I didn’t want to piss off Pearl again. Misty had been drinking tequila with me just a half hour ago, dammit. Junior whispered something at her and then Misty had to go and wink at him, taking another swallow of tequila.

That bitch! I thought.

Slow down, slow down. I realized that she was just playing Junior, trying to fake him out. Buying us some time. At least that’s what I hoped, that’s what I assured myself, but as hard as I tried to believe that, a small sliver of doubt got stuck between the prayers.

Pearl let her cane fall sideways across her body, where she caught it deftly in the crook of her ravaged left arm. Her right hand trailed up Fat Ernst’s body, blackened fingernails sliding up his rayon shirt in a flurry of ragged whispers. She extended her index finger, knuckles standing out like knots in a twig, and caressed Fat Ernst’s bulging chins. Her fingernail scraped against Fat Ernst’s thick gray stubble and it sounded like the tip of a knife being drawn through sandpaper. She slid her finger up his cheek, through the nest of blackheads along the side of his wide nose, pausing at the corner of his right eye. He shut both eyes, squeezing them tight.

“You know,” Pearl said, “it don’t have to be this way. It ain’t nothing to make you wish you was dead.” Slowly, damn near gently, she increased the pressure of her index finger, forcing it slowly into the tender gap between Fat Ernst’s eye and the bridge of his nose. It made me squirm just to watch, but I couldn’t look away. He tried to pull his headback, but there was nowhere to go. Pearl just kept pushing, pushing. Fat Ernst’s boot heels lifted off the floor, driving the pointed toes into the wood. But he never made a sound.

Pearl sighed. “You’re one tough nut to crack, I’ll give you that.” She withdrew her finger and I could clearly see the moisture clinging to the fingernail. One single gossamer strand stretched from the tip of the blackened nail to the corner of Fat Ernst’s eye, snapping as the finger drifted down his face, stopping long enough to massage his thick bottom lip. “I really don’t want to hurt you.”

I glanced over at Junior and Misty. They were staring at each other, giggling and whispering. Junior had his right hand under the table, on Misty’s knee. The bottle was almost empty.

Pearl started swaying her hips, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, index finger still lingering on Fat Ernst’s lip. Then her shoulders got into the act, dipping and rising and rolling with the rhythm of her hips, knees rocking back and forth. It took me a second, but I finally realized that Pearl was dancing. Not just dancing, but lap dancing, like some long dead, rotting stripper that couldn’t give up the job.

I almost wished she’d stop and shove her finger back in Fat Ernst’s eye.

Fat Ernst didn’t seem to like it much either. His boot heels had settled back on the floor, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the twitching scarecrow between his knees. His right eye had gotten all puffy and red, and a glistening track of tears rolled down his cheek, collecting at the base of his nose. I think he was testing the strength of the barbed wire around his wrists, because I could see welts of blood gathering under the thin metal cords.

Pearl kept dancing. I could hear her humming something softly under her breath but couldn’t place the song. Her knees kept getting farther and farther apart, until the outsides of her sticklike legs were pressed firmly against the insides of Fat Ernst’s knees. Then she started thrusting her pelvis around at odd angles like she was trying to imitate some moves she had seen long ago, but her hips just weren’t letting therest of her body perform properly, so it kind of looked like she was having an attack or something.

Between the humming, she started whispering to Fat Ernst. “See?” More humming. “It doesn’t have to be bad. I don’t want to hurt you.” She spread her legs and her pelvis swayed and dropped, like she was doing the limbo. “You’ve been good to the boys, treated ’em fair. So I don’t want this little”—she made some sort of big band, trumpet, wah-wah sounds softly with her mouth—“misunderstanding to end our relationship.” Her knees hit the floor and her right hand clutched at Fat Ernst’s chest, squeezing his nipple.

Bert stuck his head in the front door. He looked even worse, worried too, like he might throw up at any minute. “Hey, Ma? There’s these things, these … worms, they been eating at Ray’s head.”