So I got back up and went up the beer aisle. I figured I might as well go on and face it. Maybe we’d have a goodbye roll. I got her a sixpack of Schlitz malt liquor and got myself a sixer of Stroh’s in bottles. The old bag was eyeing me with distaste. I still had my trunks on, and flip-flops, and my FireBusters T-shirt. I was red from passing out under the sun.

I could see Miss Sheila out there. I set the beer on the counter just as a black guy pulled up beside her car and got out. I started pulling my money out and another car pulled up beside the first one. It had a black guy in it, too, only this one had a shotgun. The first black guy was up against the door, just coming in, and the second black guy suddenly blew the top of the first black guy’s head off. The first black guy flopped inside.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!” he said. “HHHHHHWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!” Blood and meat and black hair had flown inside everywhere with him, glass. It stuck to the walls, to the cigarettes in the rack over the counter, to the warming oven where they had the fried chicken. I’d eaten a lot of that fried chicken. The guy flopped down the detergent aisle. “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” he said.

I just stood there holding my money. I’d been wrong. The top of his head hadn’t been blown off after all. He just didn’t have any hair up there.

“HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” he said. He was flopping around like a fish. He flopped down to the end of the aisle, then flopped over a couple of tables where people ate their barbecue at lunchtime, (where I’d been sitting just a few minutes before) and then he flopped over in the floor. I looked outside. The second black guy had gotten back into his car with his shotgun and was backing out of the parking lot. I couldn’t see Miss Sheila.

“Let me pay for my beer and get out of here,” I said, to the woman who had ducked down behind the counter. “The cops’ll be here in a minute.”

The black guy got off the floor back there and flopped over the meat market. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” he said. He flopped up against the coolers, leaving big bloody handprints all over the glass. He started flopping up the beer aisle, coming back toward us.

“Come on, lady,” I said. “Shitfire.”

He flopped over a bunch of Vienna sausage and Moon Pies, and then he flopped over the crackers and cookies. Blood was pouring out of his head. I looked down at one of the coolers and saw a big piece of black wool sliding down the glass in some blood. He was tracking it all over the store, getting it everywhere.