The old mobile home sat in a small meadow in the hills, with weeds growing as high as the windows around it. The June sun cleared the wooded hills and the metal sheathing of the trailer creaked and pinged in its hot light. In the thickets around the yard, jarflies sang endless dirges.

Benny Hamden closed his cell phone and placed it on the narrow counter dividing the kitchen from the living area. He turned and did not even start when he saw Tommi Sansen standing by the mouth of the narrow hall to the bedrooms and toilet and back door.

The little deputy, five feet tall and a hundred pounds heavy, held a large stainless steel revolver in a tiny but steady hand. Benny could see stray light reflected from the jacket of the bullet in the chamber aligned with the barrel.

"How long have you been there?" Benny asked.

"Since your daddy picked up. You know he'll take care of your old dog. Did you call Janet?"

"Before I called Pop. She wasn't much interested. My gun is in the car in the old pole shed out back. I am through shooting."

"I figured you would come here and shoot yourself."

"Wish I had the guts." Benny said. "You know, the only happy time I remember in my life was the two years after me and Janet got married, when we rented this trailer."

"I know. That's why I came here."

"I'm glad it's you. I keep going over it, trying to figure out where it all went wrong."

Tommi slipped the massive pistol into an open cowboy holster on her hip.

"Two years, good job, great wife, livable trailer, and then it went down the chute. Janet got bored, the job got to be a drag, and the weed saved the day. But like in everything, Janet wanted more. So we got into the mean shit. We couldn't afford that so we started selling so we could keep using."

Tommi shook her huge puff of auburn hair.

"Janet ODed and it saved her life. After she got dried out, momma took her home. I kept on pushing and snorting."

"Are you ready to go? Nate will be wondering why I have not checked in."

"If I jump at you will you shoot me in the head or heart?"

"I'll shoot you in the cods."

"Ouch. How many of them died?"

"Two."

"I hate that. But there I was with four brawny apes beating the shit out of me. I had to do something."

"I found a big paperclip and a dozen pieces of paper the size of US dollar bills in the parking lot at the Alpha Wolf roadhouse. Cut from a Grier's Almanac."

"That Kathy bitch wanted to make a buy. She had one twenty folded over that scrap shit," Benny said. "She grabbed the dope and ran as I was checking the cash. I chased her into the Alpha Wolf. She dropped the packet of dope down between her banana boobs. I caught her in front of the bar, and ripped her blouse off. The plastic busted and the shit went everywhere."

"I know."

"She was squealing like a stuck pig, and those heroes were all over me."

"Literally heroes. All four were soldiers from Fort Benning. Decorated infantrymen."

"I had to do something." Benny said. "The guy I get my shit from-- you do not ever want to stiff him, not even a little."

Benny stood up and walked slowly out of the trailer. He studied the hills.

"Remember 'I never saw a man who looked so wistfully at the sky. at every wandering cloud that trailed its ragged fleeces by?'" Benny said.

"I am sorry, Benny."

"In the cods?"

"Squarely."

Benny walked toward Tommi's prowl car.