When I got to where he lived, the truck was behind the house and there wasn’t a light on. I coasted by twice with the headlights off. Then I killed it by the side of the road and listened for a while. It was quiet. Some light wires were humming. That was it. Dorothea and her boss had taken some awful long lunches. I got out with the shotgun and a beer and closed the door. The law wasn’t there, and I was the law. Vigilante Justice. Patrick Swayze and somebody else. Dirty Dancing. But he never flashed his trash.

The yard was mud, the house almost dark. I could just see that one little light inside that was Johnny Carson saying goodnight. I knew he might have a gun, and might be scared enough to use it. In my state I thought I could holler self-defense in his front yard.

I hope I didn’t ruin their lives.

The door was open, and the knob turned under my hand. The barrel of the gun slanted down from under my arm, and I tracked their mud on their floor. He didn’t have his cap on, and his hair wasn’t like what I’d imagined. It was gray, but neatly combed, and his mother was sobbing silently on the couch and feeding a pillow into her mouth.

He said one thing, quietly: “Are you fixing to kill us?”

Their eyes got me.

I sat down, asking first if I could. That’s when I started telling both of them what my life then was like.

Old Soldiers
for Lisa

I used to spend a lot of time with Mr. Aaron. He had a bench you could pass out on behind the stove and that’s where I was one day. We’d been after some antlerless deer that morning, or just whatever happened to run across the road in front of the dogs, but it was so cold their noses couldn’t smell anything. We’d resorted to whiskey. It was only one o’clock but I was messed up, I won’t deny it. My truck was parked at the store, and they dropped me off there at my request. I told them I’d be okay. They didn’t want to leave me, they were my friends, I’d made an impossible shot at 340 yards the day before on a running eight-point buck. We’d already eaten him. I told them to leave me, that I was in good hands.