“Yeah,” he said. “I was sound asleep in the early evening. It had been a hot day and it’s a seven-mile hike from the place where I park my mother’s car. I went to sleep early. But then I woke up all of a sudden at moonrise. There was this full moon staring me right in the face. And when I sat up I saw that there was a campfire goin’ at the cabin.”

“A quarter mile away,” I said, just to prove that I was listening.

“Yeah. I looked at that moon and then at the glow of the campfire and it was like I was drawn to it; like some kinda moth or somethin’. And then I heard a woman screaming, ‘Alonzo! Alonzo!’ It was faint because of the distance and the trees, but I heard it. She’d probably been yelling and that’s what woke me up.

“Before I knew it I was on my feet in just my long johns and T-shirt running for the cabin. The closer I got, the louder her screams. She sounded scared outta her mind.”

Craig stopped to hold his right hand over his mouth and nose. I thought I’d have to urge him on again, but then he said, “They were outside the cabin. The woman’s clothes was all ripped. A big black man with long straight hair had tied her to a tree. He had a knife. The next thing I knew I was runnin’ at him.”

Craig stopped talking because he was remembering the events in the orange grove. He was mesmerized, panting too.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“I grabbed him. Tried to get the knife away. We fell to the ground and the woman, girl really, was shoutin’, ‘No, don’t! Don’t get in it!’ ”

“Don’t get in what?”

“I don’t know,” he said, almost pleading. “I don’t know.”

That was a little break in the story. I was happy to have sent Niska away.

After a while I said, “Why don’t you finish tellin’ the story, Craig? Finish the story and we can get another drink.”

“We were rollin’ around on the ground, fighting for the knife, and the girl was shouting . . . and then I flipped him.”

“Like a judo throw?”

“Nuh-uh. He was tryin’ to get on top’a me but before he could get set I heaved up and fell on him. That’s when I felt the knife sinkin’ into his chest. His eyes got real big like a man when he knows he’s got a bad wound.”

Craig Kilian stood up and backed away, knocking the chair over. He got all the way to the wall, five feet behind. I believe he would have gone a mile if there was nothing there to stop him.

“I stood up over him and he was holding on to the haft of that bayonet, I mean that knife. The girl shouted, ‘Alonzo!’ ”