It was not unusual to see people walking the streets of Tiger Island carrying shotguns, because the town was locked in by woods on two sides. Men would sometimes walk from their porches right into the trees, going after a fat stew rabbit. But to see an attractive young woman carrying a rifle into town was exceptional. A porch full of old women looked her over carefully, wondering aloud where she was bound, sure that for such a nice girl to do such a thing, there must be an explanation. For every head she turned, Colette flushed, feeling trashy and desperate. She walked to the hardware and got the oldest clerk, Buster Lirette, to wait on her.

“Hello there, girl. You going shoot pigeons out a window fan with that thing?”

She held the gun out to him. “What kind of bullets will shoot best in this?”

Buster took the gun from her and turned it over in his hands two or three times. “This is a pretty old one, but it’s in good shape, you know? Don’t shoot no souped-up twenty-two trash they sell nowadays. All that high-velocity stuff does is foul up the barrel with lead. Not accurate worth a damn.”

She looked around the old sporting-goods section at the corks, rusty fish hooks bleeding into cardboard racks, dusty Remington automatics, and the beveled glass case where ammunition was kept. “What do I use, then?”

“Standard-velocity long rifles. The bullets this gun was made for.”

“How much do they cost?”

“One dollar sixty-nine cents for a box of fifty.”

She dug change out of her slacks for a full minute. “I guess I can spring for one.”

Lester looked back and forth between her hand and her face several times. “You want me to charge it to your daddy? They ain’t much on the old account we been carrying on him. A couple dollars.”