They hadn’t killed anybody in three weeks. Roy Barker, for one, was getting bored.

“Let’s go on back to Fort Worth,” he said. He bounced up and down a couple of times in the back seat of the flathead Ford. “I’m tired of hicks and sticks.”

Roy, Dub Dooley, and Jack Scratch had spent a lot of time in west central Texas lately, always on the move, passing through dusty little towns with names like Eden, Rising Star, Mullen, and Zephyr, spending the nights in Brownwood and Ballinger, drifting as far as Abilene and San Angelo, knocking over a hayseed bank now and then but never having any fun, at least not enough for Roy.

“They don’t like us much in Fort Worth,” Dub said, and he grinned.

Dub was the driver. He was thick-waisted and wide-shouldered, with muscles like steel cables. He had a high voice, almost like a woman’s, not that anybody would ever mention that to him, not if they knew him. Roy had seen him break a man’s back over a saloon chair once, just because he didn’t like the way the man looked at him. It didn’t take a lot to set Dub off.

“The cops in Fort Worth would just as soon kill us as put us in jail,” Dub said. “Sooner.”

A month ago, they’d robbed a bank in Fort Worth and killed two a couple of guys, one of them the bank guard. Cops didn’t like that kind of thing, but it didn’t bother Roy any. Didn’t bother Dub, either. Roy didn’t think it bothered Jack, but Jack kept telling them it wasn’t time to go back to Fort Worth, like he had something in mind, but if he did, he never said what it was.

“How about it, Jack,” Roy said. He clasped his pudgy fingers almost as if he were praying. “What say we go back to Fort Worth, have us a little fun?”

Jack Scratch looked as if he needed a shave, but he always looked that way. He sat in the passenger seat, looked out the window at the brown, dry pastures.

“Not yet,” he said without turning around.

Roy sighed.

It didn’t do to get Jack upset. He didn’t have a temper like Dub’s, but if you got him upset, he’d take care of you, all right. Jack was the boss. They’d all agreed to that. There hadn’t been any argument about it. They did what Jack said.

Roy settled back in the seat and shut up. It was hot in the car, and the wind coming in through the open windows didn’t help any. Roy’s shirt was sticking to him under his suit coat. He wished he had a beer, or anything cold to drink, even if it was just water, but he didn’t see any stores around. He didn’t see much of anything but flat brown land and cotton stalks sucked dry and turned brown by the sun.

The Ford wheeled on down the dirt road, dragging a rooster-tail of dust behind.

***

The old man sat with his chair tipped back against the wall of his little one-pump service station and store that was the only building at the crossroads. He wore a blue cotton work shirt and overalls faded almost white. The boards behind him were weathered gray where the paint had peeled off.

The sun had come up behind the building a couple of hours earlier, but the old man was still in the shade. He looked down the road and saw the kid coming.

This was the third day in a row the kid had showed up at just about the same time of morning. The old man had been more or less expecting him.

An armadillo ran out of a field of dead weeds and dried cornstalks where a scarecrow hung on a cross. Its clothes weren’t much more than rags, and it had a rope for a belt. The old man didn’t think it had scared any crows, but the corn crop had been so bad it didn’t matter.

The armadillo stopped at the edge of the dirt road and sat still, looking like a ridged brown rock. It was almost as if it had been waiting for the kid. The previous day when the kid came along, a hawk had appeared out of nowhere. It had swooped down from the sky and landed on the fence, and the day before that a jackrabbit had come loping up from somewhere or other. All of them had given the kid a good long look.

The old man didn’t blame them. This was the kind of kid who bore watching. He’d showed up at the store with a pistol sticking in the waistband of his pants, pulling them way down on his hips. The pistol was an old M1911 that someone, maybe the kid’s daddy, maybe not, had brought home from the war twenty years ago. What the old man could see of it was black and shiny, like it had been taken good care of.

“What you doin’ with that gun,” the old man had asked the first day. “You worried about desperay-does?”

The kid didn’t crack a smile. He wasn’t more than thirteen. The freckles across his face and the cowlick in his red hair made him look even younger, but he was big for his age.

“Not worried about a thing,” he said. “Brought it with me in case a bear got after me.”

There hadn’t been a bear in that country in the old man’s lifetime, and he doubted if there had ever been one. But the kid didn’t appear to be funning him.

“I got me a nickel for a co’ cola,” the kid said. “You got one for sale?”

They had gone inside, where the old man’s wife stood behind the counter near the cash register. That was her job, standing there and taking the money for cash purchases. She had a wooden chair that she sat in sometimes, but mostly she stood up so she could watch and make sure the infrequent customers didn’t try to make off with a can of beans. She didn’t say anything as the old man got the kid a coke from the red and white cooler. “Ice Cold” it said on the side, which was right because the bottles were kept on ice, mostly melted since the delivery the day before. The old man popped the cap off the coke in the opener on the side of the cooler and the cap pinged into the catcher.

“You gonna show Ma that nickel, or you gonna stick me up?” he said.

The kid reached in his pocket and brought out the nickel. The old man nodded at his wife, and the kid took her the coin. She looked at and rang up the sale. The cash register dinged, and the drawer slid open. The old woman dropped the coin into a space in the wooden drawer, then shut it.

The kid walked back to the old man and took the coke. The old man went back outside and sat in his chair.

“He say anything to you?” the old man asked his wife that night. They lived in a couple of small rooms in back of the store.

“Never a word,” she said. “Just drank down the coke and looked around at the stock.”

There wasn’t much stock to speak of. Nobody around those parts had enough money to buy much more than a candy bar every now and then, or a few groceries when they had to have something they couldn’t grow for themselves. Wasn’t much growing, though, what with the dry weather. Some people went hungry. More than a few.

“What you reckon he’s doing here?” the old man said.

His wife shook her head. “I wouldn’t know. I think he’s the Martins’ boy.”

The old man knew about the Martins. So poor, they’d make church mice look richer than Ben Gump. They’d moved onto the old Fallon place a month or two ago. They never came to the store because they didn’t have the money, and they must have known they couldn’t get anything on the credit.

“Long as he’s polite and don’t bother us, I don’t mind him coming by,” the old woman said. “His money’s good as anybody’s, even if he does have a gun stuck down his pants.”

“I guess so,” the old man said, but he worried about it.

That was the way it had gone for two days now. The old man wondered where the kid got the nickels. Surely not from his folks, not if they were the Martins.

And then there was the pistol, but the old man didn’t ask how the kid had come by it, and the kid didn’t say. He just showed up with his pistol and his nickel, hung around like he was waiting for something while he drank his coke, and then left.

He was right on time this morning. He stopped and looked at the armadillo. The ‘dillo looked back at him, then took off at a scoot. People didn’t think ‘dillos could run, but they could. Fast, too, and this one disappeared into the cornstalks as if he hadn’t ever been there. The kid plodded on toward the store.

The old man shook his head and tilted the chair forward until its front legs hit the ground. Then he got up and went inside to get the kid his co’ cola.

***

Dub swerved the car, trying to hit the armadillo that appeared out of the field and ran in front of the car. Dub didn’t like animals that interfered with his driving. He missed the armadillo, but the swaying of the car tossed Jack and Roy around in their seats.

“Dammit,” Roy said. “Be careful, Dub. You’re liable to throw me out of this thing.”

Dub half-turned his head so he could see Roy. “You trying to tell me how to drive?”

Roy was sorry he’d said anything. Dub was hot and touchy.

“I didn’t mean to criticize,” Roy said.

“You better not mean to.”

Roy thought about how he’d like to punch Dub, break a few of his teeth or his nose.

“There’s a store at the crossroads up ahead,” Jack Scratch said, breaking up Roy’s train of thought. “You can get yourself a cold drink there, Roy.”

Roy knew the store would be there, just the way Jack said it would. Sometimes Jack knew things that he shouldn’t have any way of knowing. Roy thought it was creepy, but he didn’t say so. It didn’t seem to bother anybody else.

“You want something, Dub?” Jack said.

“Wouldn’t mind a co’ cola.”

“That’d be good,” Roy said. His fingers twitched. “We gonna pay for ‘em?”

“Sure we are,” Jack said.

Roy frowned and started to say something, but Jack didn’t let him. “I mean it. Mind your manners. We’re just three law-abiding gentleman, enjoying a day in the country.”

“Right,” Dub said in his woman’s voice.

Roy figured Dub didn’t like the idea of having to pay for anything any more than Roy did, even if it was just a coke. They had guns, and they liked to use them. Out in this godforsaken country, there wasn’t anybody to stop them. Except for Jack Scratch.

“There it is,” Dub said.

Sure enough the store was just down the road a way. Roy saw it though a shimmering haze of heat. It looked like a half-strong wind would blow it over on its side.

“We’re about out of gas,” Dub said.

Jack told him to pull up by the pump, and Dub did. An old man came out of the store. He started toward the car, then stopped when Jack got out. Roy pushed the seat over and got out of the back, and Dub got out on the driver’s side. They all wore black suits with the coats on so the pistols in their shoulder holsters wouldn’t show.

“Fill ‘er up,” Dub said.

The old man blinked and swallowed a couple of times.

“Move it, old man,” Dub said.

The old man swallowed again. Dub took a step forward.

The old man moved it. He walked over to the pump, removed the nozzle, and turned the crank to run the counter back to where the zeros showed.

The three men ignored him then and went into the store. It was lit by one small bulb that hung from the ceiling on a short frayed cord. The kid stood by the candy case, looking at the Baby Ruths and drinking his coke. The old man’s wife was behind the cash register.

“Can I help you?” she said.

The kid looked up at her, then turned around as if he hadn’t heard the men come inside. Maybe he hadn’t, but his eyes widened when he saw them. Nobody said anything about the pistol stuck in his waistband.

“Can I help you?” the woman said again.

The men paid her no attention. Dub and Roy went to the cooler and opened it.

“You want a co’ cola?” Dub said.

“They got a Dr. Pepper?”

“No, they don’t have a Dr. Pepper. They got co’ colas. You want one or not?”

“I want one.”

Dub took two cokes from the box and closed the lid. He tossed one bottle to Roy and popped open his own.

Roy looked at the bottle, then at Dub. “You shouldn’t have thrown it. It’s gonna fizz all over me.”

Dub didn’t say anything. He drank half his coke in one swallow.

Roy walked over to the cooler and popped the cap off his coke. It fizzed out of the bottle and over his hand.

“Dammit,” Roy said.

“You shouldn’t talk like that in front of a lady,” Dub said.

“Don’t tell me how to talk,” Roy said.

He was tired of Dub pushing him, tired of being afraid of Dub, tired of not getting to use his pistol.

“You going to do something about it?” Dub said.

“Yeah,” Roy said, and he dropped the coke bottle.

***

The old man knew who was inside the store with his wife and the kid. The Jack Scratch gang. Couldn’t be anybody else. He’d heard about them on the radio, how they were on the loose in West Texas. He didn’t have a telephone, didn’t know what to do.

He thought about the kid’s pistol. He ran back to the store and jerked open the door.

Two of the men were facing each other with their own pistols out, their faces ruddy and twisted with anger. The screen door hit the wooden wall like a shot, and the men turned. Both of them fired at the same time. The old man flopped back outside. He looked surprised. The front of his shirt was crimson.

The woman screamed. Roy turned and shot her in the head. She fell down behind the counter. Blood spattered the tin cans on the shelf behind where she’d stood.

Roy laughed. His ears rang from the gunshots, but he was having fun and feeling good. Things had been about to get ugly, but they’d turned out all right, thanks to the old man, who’d taken Dub’s attention away from Roy.

Trouble was, they’d probably gone and gotten Jack upset. He’d told them to mind their manners, and they’d killed two people. Jack wasn’t going to like that.

Roy turned just in time to see Dub shoot Jack. Jack’s .38 spun backward and broke a bottle of bleach. The strong odor of the bleach blended with the smell of gunsmoke.

Dub sprinted out the door. He jumped over the body on the ground and made a dash for the Ford.

Roy had two choices. He could run into the room where the old couple lived and see if there was a back way out of the place, or he could finish off Jack.

It wasn’t much of a choice. Dub would be at the car by now, and Roy wanted a ride. Too bad for Jack.

Jack sat on the floor in a puddle of bleach. That wouldn’t be good for his suit. His right hand was mangled, and blood dripped off his fingers into the liquid on the floor.

“Sorry, Jack,” Roy said. “You know how it is.”

Jack didn’t answer. He looked at the kid.

The kid nodded, as if this was something he’d been waiting for. He pulled the .45 from his pants and tossed it to Jack as if it didn’t weigh more than a bath sponge.

Roy watched as if it were all happening in slow motion, the slow arc and turn of the pistol, Jack’s left hand reaching to snatch it out of the air.

The next thing Roy knew, Jack had shot him three times. After that Roy knew nothing.

***

The old man hadn’t stopped the pump, but Dub didn’t notice the gasoline overflowing onto the ground. He was too worried about Jack. He knew Jack would be coming after him, even if he’d been hit. Dub had shot to kill, but somehow he’d missed. He couldn’t figure out why, and he didn’t have time to wonder about it.

Dub turned the trunk handle and jerked the trunk open to get the Tommy Gun. It was bundled in an old quilt tied up with twine. Dub pulled at the bow knot in the string and flipped the edges of the quilt out of his way.

Instead of waiting for Jack to come for him, he whirled around and began firing. The heavy .45 caliber slugs tore into the building. They smashed straight through the weathered boards and sent splinters flying.

Inside the store cans and bottles exploded. Their contents splattered the walls and the floor and glittered in the rays of sunlight that slanted in through the holes in the wall.

Jack and the kid lay flat, keeping their faces out of the bleach and trying not to breathe too deeply.

When there was a pause in the firing, Jack stood up. He went to the door. Dub sat in the Ford. He ground the starter as he tried to fire up the motor.

“Dub!” Jack said.

Dub looked through the passenger window. His face blanched. The starter caught, and Dub jerked the car into gear. His foot slipped off the clutch, and the motor died before the car had gone a yard. The pump nozzle came out of the tank and spewed gasoline across the ground.

Dub made a dive for the passenger seat where he’d tossed the Tommy Gun.

Jack fired three more shots, all into the Ford’s back fender. The shots set off sparks that ignited the gasoline fumes. In seconds the car was burning, and flames raced over the ground where the gasoline had spilled.

Dub raised up and stuck the Tommy Gun out the window just before the car exploded. Hot metal rained down as Jack went back into the store.

The kid heard the car parts hitting the roof and saw Jack coming. The flames were right behind him, as if he were walking along a trail of fire. The old man’s shirt was afire.

Jack tossed the pistol to the kid, who caught it easily and gripped it as if he’d been born with it in his hands.

“It’s yours now,” Jack said. 

“Was mine before,” the kid told him.

“Not like it is now.”

The flames had reached the walls of the store, and they started to burn.

“There’s an old hoopie out back,” the kid said. “I don’t know if it’ll run.”

“It’ll run,” Jack said. “Can you drive?”

“Never learned how.”

“I’ll teach you.”

Jack held up his right hand. There didn’t seem to be much wrong with it now. He bent over and picked up his pistol from the floor. He opened his coat and holstered the gun.

“You ready to leave?” he asked the kid.

The kid nodded, and they went through the store. The kid looked down at the old woman when they passed her. There wasn’t much left of her face.

“Bother you?” Jack asked.

“Nope,” the kid said.

The car was in the back of the store, just like the kid had said. It was an old Model A coupe, dark green and covered with dust. Jack got in the driver’s seat, and the kid got in opposite him.

Jack fiddled with the gas valve and the timing lever. He pulled the throttle, worked the choke, and pressed the starter with his foot. The car cranked right up.

“Where we goin’?” the kid said.

“Everywhere,” Jack Scratch told him, and the kid smiled.

Jack pulled the car away from the now flaming store just before the gas pump exploded. A ball of fire rose in the air, and the store burned like paper.

An armadillo sat and watched the car until it was swallowed up in a swirl of dust. Then he was gone.

The End