“What the hell was that?” Bubba asked with fear in his voice.

“What was what?” Smudge asked as he started jerking the line and the rattle sounded.

“Oh God!” Bubba exclaimed, standing perfectly still and shining his light on a huge rattlesnake wriggling toward him at great speed.

“AHHHHHHHHH!!” Bubba screamed, crashing this way and that, tearing open his coat as the snake jumped and tumbled and rattled after him.

“Run! Run!” Smudge yelled, darting wherever necessary to keep the snake where he wanted it.

Bubba suddenly wheeled around, his .44 Anaconda revolver with its eight-inch barrel and scope gripped in both shaking hands. He fired again and again and again as pieces of the snake flew straight up into the air and Smudge dove over a dead tree and rolled through bushes and over a bank and into the creek.

22

WEED WAS CHILLED and achy as he stared out at the city from the dark, stinking camp he shared with Pigeon, who had fallen asleep after drinking a quart of Colt 45.

Weed wondered what Officer Brazil was doing and if everybody was out looking for him. Weed wondered if the cops had found anything that might cause him a problem. Maybe they could make him doodle on some kind of lie detector and figure out he was the one who painted the statue.

Pigeon had shared two peanut butter crackers with Weed. He had given Weed four sips of water, saying it had to last. Weed decided his hideaway stunk worse than the Pikes’ clubhouse, and he thought of his nice home and good food and clean bed.

Weed would never go back to his mama again. He’d probably never see her again. He’d never spend another weekend with his father, not that he really wanted to, anyway. Weed would have to live like Pigeon because the Pikes would always be looking for him. He could never be free again. He had a slave number to remind him in case he forgot.

Pigeon rolled over and came to about the time his beer wore off. He fluffed the mound of dirty clothes that served as his pillow. His yawn was an open garbage can Weed could smell two yards away.

“You awake?” Weed said.

“Not by choice.”

“How come you live the way you do, Pigeon?” Weed asked. “You always lived this way?”

“I was a little kid like you once,” Pigeon said. “Grew up and fought in Vietnam, came home and didn’t want to be part of nothing.”

“How come?”

“Way I felt. Still do.”

“Me, too,” Weed said. “Maybe I’ll just hang out with you from now on.”

“The hell you will!” Pigeon said in a voice that startled Weed. “You ever been shipped off to war, had your foot shot off, part of your hand, too? Ever been in mental hospitals ’til they can’t keep you no more so they dump your ass out on the street? Ever slept on the sidewalk in the dead of winter, nothing but a newspaper for a blanket? You ever eaten rats?”