“Grace,” Smith whispered. I looked his way. One of his hands raised up off the floor and held still for a minute, like he was giving me a real casual wave hello. It confused me, that wave, like maybe he wasn't as hurt as he seemed, but when I got closer I could tell he was. His gun was still in his hand. He wasn't pointing it at me on purpose, but the angle made me nervous, so I gently reached over and took it from him.

“Smith?” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Smith managed a weak smile. “Dying, I think.”

“No.”

“Maybe. I brought you a rose, Grace.”

The rose was now fully immersed in a puddle of blood. When Smith picked it up and handed it to me, blood dripped off the tips and ran in warm, viscous rivulets down his hand and under the cuff of his fancy blazer.

“That's real nice of you, Smith.”

“You want to have dinner sometime?”

“Sure, Smith, but first I'm going to get you and Jerry over to Fran's. She can help you.”

“Fran was my piano teacher when I was a boy.”

“Yes.”

“I killed all her chickens. I didn't want to, Gracie. I know what you mean, that thing you said about sheds and people and fear. But I did it anyway. It was my job, and I did it.”

“You sure did.”

“Fran hates me now.”

“Maybe.” I hesitated for a minute. Smith wasn't wrong to worry that Fran might be holding a grudge, and I wondered if I should take him to the hospital instead. Jerry, too. Smith seemed sweet, repentant. He sounded like he was on my side, at least about the chickens. But what if he was just trying to soften me up so I'd show my hand? What if the rose was Smith's way of making sure I didn't best him on this chicken thing, a way to get me in bed before he took me to prison? Being caught with chickens was bad enough, but what would keep the police and Extension and God and everybody from thinking I was the one who shot them both? I'd just touched every gun in that barn. My fingerprints were everywhere.

I thought of all the questions, the police investigation, the ramped-up Extension enforcement, and I looked at my own girls, who had swarmed around Hitchcock and were working together to make a meal of him. Montana had torn open his back vent, and the girls were working on a full disembowelment, pulling on his intestines like gray-blue membrane-shiny maypole ribbons.

I was very fond of Smith, but I was not going to take any chances with the authorities. I took off my sweater, all the fabric I had, and piled it onto the bullet wound.

“Come on,” I said. “Fran will know what to do.”

“Fran was my piano teacher.”

“Yes.”

“Fran hates me.”

“Probably.”