Otto pointed at Magnus. “What about this fella? Near peed his pants when we give him the rifle to kill that coon.”

Siggy laughed. “Man alive, that coon was all but wearing that barrel.”

“It moved,” Magnus protested. “Cunning creature.”

“You was panting like a hound in heat,” Otto said. “Never seen anyone shake that much.”

Smiling sheepishly, Magnus leaned in a little as if to reveal a secret. “I wanted to tear it apart with my bare hands.” He seemed amazed at himself. “Quite a feeling. I actually imagined biting it.” He glanced hopefully at Siggy. “It’s astonishing what a powerful thirst such vigorous activity provokes.”

Siggy threw Magnus another beer. Magnus, for all his seeming frailty, snatched it out of the air quick as a bat, sucked down the beer with one tip of his head, and dropped the can with a small pile of others at his feet.

Sal put up his hand as if he were a child in school. “I almost kill someone. Beat him.” He raised his fist and then shook it as if it contained dice. “In Atessa, a boy he threw my new shoes on the roof of the church.” The men waited for the rest of the story, but Sal suddenly changed it, his voice becoming theatrically loud. “In Chicago, some bastard he says something to my wife. I beat his brains to shit.”

“Yessir,” Otto murmured, digging between his feet with the knife. “No one’s going to touch Sal’s wife when Sal’s around.”

“Whassat mean, eh?” Sal retorted. “You can’t even keep your wife.”

“My wife’s looking after her sick mom.”

“That’s what she tells you, eh? Cafone.”

“Anyone interested in my wife’s goddamn welcome to her. Anyone’s interested in your wife—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Bennet said.

They all went quiet for a little while until Otto raised his gnarled, grinning face again. “Okay, so a man pulls in this prostitute. It’s a dark night. He don’t see till they get back to her place that she’s eighty years old. She takes off her wig, takes out her teeth, pulls off her false eyelashes, unscrews her wooden leg. He runs out. She shouts from the window. ‘Hey, don’t you want it?’ He shouts back. ‘Throw it down here, I’ll do it myself.’”

Only Magnus reacted, his slender, hunched body convulsing with silent laughter.

Bennet called over to Goldwin, “That English bastard’s still here—six weeks now.”

Mesmerized by the fire, swaying with drunkenness, Goldwin mumbled, “I took her out near four months.”

“Okay,” Otto said. “So this man and his daughter are driving along in a truck with all their possessions in the bed and they’re stopped by robbers. The robbers take the lot, leave the two of them buck naked. The man he says, ‘We’ve lost everything.’ ‘Not everything,’ the daughter says, and pulls a diamond ring out her vagina. ‘Pity your ma wasn’t here,’ the man says. ‘We could have saved the damn truck.’”