Spencerville

"Look, a hundred yards isn't too long a shot, but at night and with the other guy wearing protective armor, it could be a disaster. I don't want him back in the house."

Billy nodded but said, "That's why you or me has to charge across that open space like we got a hundred gooks on our ass. We'll be on top of him before he can get his shit together. Even if he gets in the house, he's gonna be hurt."

"He could kill her."

"Keith, he's gonna be hit, because we both ain't missin' at that distance with scopes, so even if he makes it into the house, he ain't got nothin' on his mind except us and him. He ain't gonna bother her."

"Maybe."

"Hey, you got something else on your mind?"

"Yes, I do. What I don't want to happen is one of us getting him with a lucky head shot." Keith added, "I don't want him to die quickly. That's where I'm coming from. You have to know that."

Billy stayed silent a moment and nodded slowly. "Yeah... I already figured that out. Look, I don't want him to be standin' there one second and the next second he's lights-out with a slug through his brain, no pain, no eye-to-eye. Hell, I want to gut him alive. Alive, Keith, and watch his eyes when I hold his guts up in front of him. But if you're thinkin' we got to low-crawl up to that house and catch him with his thumb up his ass, I ain't buyin' it. I don't have that kind of nerve. Do you?"

"Yes."

"Well, then you go ahead. I'll cover you from the trees. But you got to take those dogs out first."

"Right. That's why I bought the crossbow. Low-tech solution to a low-tech problem."

"I guess so." Billy added, "Hey, what we want to do and what we can do is two different things. I'm givin' you the safe way to take this asshole out, and you're givin' me some commando shit."

"Billy, either way, you do the same thing. Just set up a firing position in the trees."

"Hey, I ain't worried about my useless ass. But I don't want you gettin' wasted out there in the open, or gettin' into that house and findin' out he's waitin' for you. I can't help you there, buddy." He added, "My way, when we get to him, he's either dead or hurt bad. Either way, I gut him."

Keith took a deep breath and informed Billy, "I think I want to take him alive."

"No way."

"Yes, I want to tie him up and throw him in the back of the pickup truck and bring him to the law. I've been thinking about it, and that's the way I want to do it. You think about it."

"I already thought about it, Keith. I know what you mean. He'd rather be dead than face the music for what he done. But I gotta tell you, the fucking law works funny. The law fucks me around, 'cause I'm dog shit, but I never hurt nobody. That motherfucker could walk."

Keith considered that. Aside from all the humiliations that Baxter would face, in a year or two he could be loose on the world again. Cliff Baxter was sick, and the state might agree with Baxter's attorney that he needed therapy and counseling. He'd had a traumatic experience, seeing his wife in bed with another man, a slick seducer from out of town, and he did what any man would do: He beat up the boyfriend, then, instead of kicking his wife out, he took her on a little vacation and tried to work things out. Sure, he overdid it a bit, which is why he needed counseling. Keith thought about that and finally decided that, despite his promise to Annie, Cliff Baxter needed to die. He said, "Okay... we waste him. But I have to do it up close. He's got to know it was me and you."

"Okay... if that's what you need to make it right for you, I'm okay with that. I like it. Hope we can do it."

"We'll do it."

Billy said, "Hey, after we finish this shit, I'm goin' to Columbus to look her up. I couldn't do that while he was alive. You know?"

"I know."

"I couldn't look nobody in the eye, Keith. I hung around that town, and I'd see him on the street, and he'd laugh at me. He'd arrest me sometimes when he saw me drunk and take me in and make me go through a strip search, and the bastard took pictures, and he said he mailed some to Beth with him standin' next to me."

Keith didn't respond.

"And you're probably wonderin' why I hung around. I'll tell you, because I was try in' to get up the nerve to kill him, but I never got the nerve... and I never was going to get it. Until you came along." He added, "Remember, if I don't make it..."

"Okay. Enough." Keith looked at Billy, sitting with his back to the tree, staring off into the dark. Billy Marlon, Keith thought, sober now and with the insight of all lost souls who saw things too clearly, had probably foreseen his own death, and Keith thought he might be right. But Billy had reached one of those rare moments in life, he thought, perhaps the rarest of moments, when it was equally good to live or die.