I nodded. At which point the urine actually did run out. I coughed again and got my breath. I couldn’t even see because my eyes had teared up so bad when I couldn’t breathe. I blinked and sat back. My whole shirt was hot and wet. Piss was running down my chest and the inside of my left sleeve. I rubbed my knuckles across my eyes.

Jimmy’s chin was there. And something that might have been an ear, or might have been something just torn off his jaw. Then there was a mess with some hair one side of it. I didn’t see any teeth at all, bottom or top. Blood had spurted around five and six feet.

“Christ, Hogg!” Denny said. “I mean, goddamn …!” Denny’s cock was still out his fly. But only half hard. His shoulders were scrunched up, and he kept moving his hands around on his leg a little jerkily. “I mean, the way you just … I mean, like that with the bastard … What did you …?”

“Huh?” Hogg turned, sort of surprised.

“I mean,” Denny said, “why did you …?”

“That fucker was crazy, man!” Hogg said; he dragged the gun butt back across the gravel, toward his shoe. His fingers worked on the barrel, which must still have been pretty warm. “You heard the way he was goin’ on, about his reasons? The motherfucker was crazy as a fuckin’ jaybird!”

“Yeah,” Denny said. “Yeah, but … well, you didn’t have to—”

“Aw, man!” Hogg lifted up his shotgun—I saw Denny jump a little. “The fucker was crazy, didn’t you hear him—hey, you guys! Get him off the goddamn road, huh?”

The nigger hoisted up Jimmy’s ankles. The wop grabbed one of his arms. Gravel fell from the loose fingers.

They dragged him toward the bushes beside the road.

He was awful loud going in.

“You gotta shoot a crazy motherfucker like that,” Hogg explained. “Or he’s just gonna get guilty and go to the police and the next you know, they got your description and the whole thing. I mean, I seen it happen. It happened to me more’n once.”

“Well, suppose she went to the police,” Denny said. One hand, moving on his hip, had snagged two fingers in his pocket. The other pulled at his baggy crotch. “I mean you didn’t kill her.…”