It was nearly dark when I got home. I had three miserable fish, and all the ice I’d had on them had melted. Still, I was determined to cook fish for my family. My wife was just walking into the carport with a basketful of clothes. The kids were playing ball in the yard. Me, I was pretty drunk.

My wife came up to me and tried to kiss me and we messed around some right there in the carport and she got hot, and before I knew it we were back in the bedroom with our clothes partway off, bumping together like two minks. That was when one of my kids shot his head around the side of the window where we’d been in too big a hurry to close the blinds and said, “Hey, Dad! Want to pitch a few balls?”

He slunk away, with many looks back. I got my clothes on and got the hell away from there.

Some more nights later I was in the bar again and I saw her come in again but I didn’t look at her and she did her jukebox routine again without my quarters, but with glances over her shoulder at me several times. I was nursing a beer.

I’d been sitting there thinking about things for a while. I wasn’t too keen on going back to work the next morning, and was pretty sure the boys could handle it for a few days without me. I knew she was going to sidle over, and pretty soon she did.

“What you got the blues about?”

“Nothing. Sit down.”

“We gonna do it again tonight?”

“I don’t know if we will or not.”

“I wish we would. It was good the other night till them people drove up.”

“I don’t know if I want to or not.”

“I wish we would.”

“I don’t know.”

“Please.”

“Since you put it like that.”

We wound up back in the same place. I knew that lightning didn’t strike twice, that I couldn’t be unlucky two nights in a row. We shucked down, were moving and grooving and saying baby baby baby when the lights came around the curve. I sat up in the seat and reached under it for my pistol, told her I was getting a little tired of this shit. I had just my pants on when I stepped out of the car. I had that little hogleg down beside my leg. Somebody threw a spotlight in my face and told me to freeze, and I heard a couple of shotgun safeties snick off real soft.

“Just hold it, boy. Now turn around. Now drop that gun. Now spread out on the fender there.”