Gareth jumped in the back of the truck holding his rifle.

“He don’t smell like he’s dead, and he looks just about the same as when we knew him . . . Only he smells of something sure enough . . .”

“I can tell you,” Sidney said, “I don’t know if I am dreamin’ or dead myself or what . . . I seem to be drivin’ this truck, that’s about all I know for sure. If he ain’t there nailed to the door I will know I have dreamed it all and am back in jail probably. I won’t care by then. In fact jail will be a good rest after what I been through. Old Vance should have let me rot in jail, always told him that anyhow. I sort of belong in jail. . . . But when he begun to talk to me, Roy, you know, and persuaded me to nail him to the barn door, I sort of thought, ‘Well, if I can’t be in jail maybe the next best thing would be to give myself up, and to live locked up with the scissors-­grinder and be done pretending I ever was out free . . .’ ”

“See here now, Sid,” Gareth began and just as he spoke he caught a whiff of the dead boy in the front seat that made him stop and then choke.

“Go on, have your say, Gareth.”

Choking and gagging into his pocket handkerchief now, the Vaisey boy struggled to get the words out. At last he shouted: “You wouldn’t leave me for the renderer would you? Was that what you were sayin’ back in the house?”

“Well, what if he commands me again. I ain’t never been commanded so firm before, Garey, like he done for instance when he said I should nail him. Do you think I would nail anybody like that on my own? What do you think I am anyhow, huh? No way. I wouldn’t do that ever on account of I don’t see how I did it even now. If I did it. If he’s there, that is, when we go back and we ain’t both locked up in some lunatic asylum dreaming this whole thing.”

“You was stoned, that’s all.”

“Not really. No, sir, I was not.”

“You’re always stoned anyhow, and you know it . . . So you nailed him stoned . . . But I know something, and if what I know proves accurate, you watch out, De Lakes, God damn you watch out.”

“Meaning what?”

“Just this. If I see you have gone over to this renderer son of a bitch, you better take cover, do you hear?”

“You got to explain yourself better than that if you want me to understand you.”

“You just missed the detour to Roy’s, you dumb crud. Now turn back and head south . . .”