"OK, then, fuckface, you called it," said C. J., evidently taking Dale's gesture as a refusal to talk. He pulled the hammer back on the single-shot rifle with an audible click and lowered his cheek to the stock.

Dale's breathing simply stopped. His chest was frozen. He wanted to raise his hands in front of his face, but he saw the image of the bullet passing through his palms before smashing into his mouth. Dale realized for the first time what death was: it was not walking any farther on the railroad tracks, not eating dinner tonight or seeing his mom or watching Sea Hunt on TV. It wasn't even being allowed to mow the lawn next Saturday or help his dad rake the leaves come fall.

It was having no choice at all except lying dead here on the cinders beside the railroad track, letting the birds pluck your eyes like berries and the ants stroll across your tongue. It was no choices, no decisions, no future at all. It was like being grounded for all eternity.

"Bye-bye," said Congden.

"You pull it, I'll blow your fuckin' melon to bits," came a voice from behind Dale.

Congden and Archie jumped as if someone had startled them in a dark room. C. J. glanced to his left but didn't lower the rifle.

Still not breathing, Dale found that he could move his head a little bit to the right to see who was there.

Cordie Cooke had come out of the woods and was standing with one foot still in weeds and the other on the cinders of the railbed. The double-barreled shotgun was raised, stock firmly against her small shoulder, and both barrels were aimed at C. J. Congden.

"Cooke, you little cunt ..." began Archie Kreck in his high, broken voice.

"Shut up," said C. J. The bigger boy's voice was calm enough. "What do you think you're doing, Cordie?"

"I'm aimin' my daddy's twelve-gauge at your zitty face, moron." Cordie's voice was as thin and scratchy as ever-skinny chalk on old slate-but it was absolutely steady.

"Put the gun down, stupid," said C.J. "This doesn't have nothing to do with you."

"You put yours down," said Cordie. "Lay it on down and walk away your ownself.''

C. J. glanced at her again as if judging how long it would take to swing the barrel in her direction. At that second, grateful to Cordie as he was for the intervention, Dale fervently hoped C. J. would aim it at her. Anything was better than having that muzzle aimed at your own face.

"What's it to you if I shoot this little fuck?" C. J. asked in a conversational tone. The muzzle was still ten inches in front of Dale.

"Put it on down, Congden." Cordie's voice sounded much as it did in class to Dale, on those rare occasions when she spoke: soft, out of it, vaguely bored. "Lay it on down and back away. You can come get it again when I'm gone. I ain't gonna touch it."

"I'm gonna shoot him and then shoot you, you little cunt," snapped C. J. He was angry now. The pustules and rivulets of acne on his skinny face grew livid, then red again.

"It's a single-shot Remington, Congden," said Cordie.

Dale glanced at her again. Her finger was curled around both triggers of the ancient shotgun. The thing looked huge and heavy, the barrels tinged with what might have been rust, the wood stock splintered with age. But Dale had no doubt but that it was loaded. He wondered idly if the spread pattern of the buckshot would hit him when it took C. J.'s head off.

"Then I'll shoot you first," snarled C. J. But he didn't swing the barrel in her direction.

Dale saw the muscles tensing in the punk's bare upper arms, and he realized that Congden was as frozen with fear as he was.

"Get her, Archie," commanded C. J.

Kreck hesitated, his head swiveling as he used his good eye to take in the situation, and then he nodded, reached into his droopy jeans to pull out a knife, clicked the five-inch blade open, and began to shuffle across the rails toward Cordie.

"He comes across the second rail, you're dog food," she said to Congden.

"StopV shouted C. J. It was a general command, almost a scream, but Archie was the one who stopped. He looked to his leader for further directions.

"Back off, goddamn you to hell you stupid fuck," C. J. said to his best friend.

Archie backed off to the far side of the first rail. Dale realized that he was breathing again. Time was moving again-slower than usual, but definitely moving-and he wondered what he should do. He'd watched about a million cowboy shows where Sugarfoot or Bronco Lane or somebody had a gun on them, sort of like this, and they wrestled it away from the bad guy. It'd be easy enough to do: the barrel was still ten inches from Dale's face and all Congden's attention was on Cordie now. All he had to do was grab it and twist. Dale realized that he could more easily walk on air than make a move at this moment.

"Come on," said Cordie in her tired monotone. "Make up your stupid mind, Congden. My finger's getting tired." The muscles on C. J.'s cheek spasmed. Dale could see sweat dripping from the bully's nose and chin.

"You know I'll get your ass, don't you, Cordie? You know I'll lay for you and do somethin' real bad, don't you? Ain't no getting away with this, you know."

Cordie seemed to shrug, although the barrels didn't waver. "You do anything to me that doesn't kill me, C. J., you know I'll come after you with Daddy's twelve-gauge. I sicced the dogs on Mr. Aleo last year. I ain't gonna mind killing you."

Dale knew about the episode with the music teacher and the dogs. Everyone in town knew about it. Cordie had been suspended for ten weeks. When she came back to school, Mr. Aleo had left for Chicago.

"Fuck you," said C. J. And he laid the rifle down slowly, setting it on the wooden ties with great care. He backed away. "And you, Stewart, Fuckface Stewart, don't think I'll forget you." C. J. backed away from the rifle and nodded toward Archie. Knife still brandished, Archie joined him and the two walked backward down the railbed, turned when they got to the weeds, and moved quickly into the trees.

Dale stood there a second, staring at the rifle at his feet as if it would suddenly float into the air and threaten him again. When it didn't, he felt the earth lurch back into its usual gravity field. He almost fell, found his balance, staggered a few feet, and sat on the rail. His knees were shaking.

Cordie waited until C. J. and Archie had disappeared completely in the small woods, and then she shifted so that the shotgun was pointed toward Dale. Not at him exactly, but in his general direction.

Dale didn't notice. He was too busy staring at Cordie with a perception made acute by great quantities of adrenaline. She was short and pudgy; her dress was the same shapeless, dirty gray thing she'd worn to school so often; she wore filthy sneakers with her right big toe poking through; her nails and elbows were dirty, her hair hung down in limp, oily strands, and her face was flat, doughy, and moon-shaped, with her tiny eyes, thin lips, and blob of a nose pushed together in the center as if designed for a much thinner face.

At that second, she was the most beautiful thing Dale had ever seen.

"What the hell were you doin' followin' me, Stewart?"

Dale found that his voice was still shaky, but he tried to answer. "I wasn't ..."

"Don't give me that cowflop," she said and the shotgun twitched a bit morein his direction. "I seen you with your little spyglasses there, peekin' at my house. Then you come sneakin' along behind me like I couldn't see and hear you plain as day. Answer me."

Dale was too wrung out to try a lie. "I was following you because . . . some of us are trying to find Tubby."

"Whaddya you want with Tubby?" When Cordie squinted, if was as if she had no eyes at all.

Dale realized that his pulse was no longer filling most of his hearing. "We don't want anything with him. We just want to ... find him. See if he's OK."