It

thing and get flattened . . . but that won’t stop it, either.
‘Maybe you would have and maybe you wouldn’t,’ Mr Keene repeated. ‘But I can tell yo u what Lal Machen did. The rest of that day and all of the next, when someone he knew came in — some man — why, he would tell them that he knew who had been out in the woods around the Newport-Derry line shooting at deer and grouse and God knows what else with Kansas City typewriters. It was the Bradley Gang. He knew for a fact because he had recognized em. He’d tell em that Bradley and his men were coming back the next day around two to pick up the rest of their order. He’d tell them he’d promised Bradley all the ammunition he could want, and that was a promise he intended to keep.’
‘How many?’ I asked. I felt hypnotized by his glittering eye. Suddenly the dry smell of this back room — the smell of prescription drugs and powders, of Musterole and Vicks VapoRub and Robitussin cough syrup — suddenly all those smells seemed suffocating . . . but I could no more have left than I could kill myself by holding my breath.
‘How many men did Lal pass the word to?’ Mr Keene asked.
I nodded.
‘Don’t know for sure,’ Mr Keene said. ‘Didn’t stand right there and take up sentry duty. All those he felt he could trust, I suppose.’
Those he could trust,’ I mused. My voice was a little hoarse.
‘Ayuh,’ Mr Keene said. ‘Derrymen, you know. Not that many of em raised cows.’ He laughed at this old joke before going on. ‘I came in around ten the day after the Bradleys first dropped in on Lal. He told me the story, then asked how he could help me. I’d only come in to see if my last roll of pictures had been developed — in those days Machen’s handled all the Kodak films and cameras — but after I got my photos I also said I could use some ammo for my Winchester.
‘»You gonna shoot some game, Norb?» Lal asks me, passing over the shells.
‘»Might plug some varmints,» I said, and we had us a chuckle over that.’ Mr Keene laughed and slapped his skinny leg as if this was still the best joke he had ever heard. He leaned forward and tapped my knee. ‘All I mean, son, is that the story got around all it needed to. Small towns, you know. If you tell the right people, what you need to pass along will get along . . . see what I mean? Like another licorice whip?’
I took one with numb fingers.
‘Make you fat,’ Mr Keene said, and cackled. He looked old then . . . infinitely old, with his bifocals slipping down the gaunt blade of his nose and the skin stretched too tight and thin across his cheeks to wrinkle.
The next day I brought my rifle into the store with me and Bob Tanner, who worked harder than any assistant I ever had after him, brought in his pop’s shotgun. Around eleven that day Gregory Cole came in for a bicarb of soda and damned if he didn’t have a Colt.45 jammed right in his belt.
‘»Don’t blow your balls off with that, Greg,» I said.
‘»I come out of the woods all the way from Milford for this and I got one fuck of a hangover,» Greg says. «I guess I’ll blow someone’s balls off before the sun goes down.»
‘Around one –thirty, I put the little sign I had, BE BACK SOON, PLEASE BE PATIENT, in the door and took my rifle and walked out the back into Richard’s Alley. I asked Bob Tanner if he wanted to come along and he said he’d better finish filling Mrs Emerson’s prescription and
he’d see me later. «Leave me a live one, Mr Keene,» he said, but I allowed as how I couldn’t promise nothing.
‘There was hardly any traffic on Canal Street at all, either on foot or by car. Every now and then a delivery truck would pass, but that was about all. I saw Jake Pinnette cross over and he had a rifle in each hand. He met Andy Criss, and they walked over to one of the benches that used to stand where the War Memorial was — you know, where the Canal goes underground.
‘Petie Vanness and Al Nell and Jimmy Gordon were all sitting on the courthouse steps, eating sandwic hes and fruit out of their dinnerbuckets, trading with each other for stuff that looked better to them, the way kids do on the schoolyard. They was all armed. Jimmy Gordon had himself a World War I Springfield that looked bigger than he did.
‘I see a ki d go walking toward Up-Mile Hill — I think maybe it was Zack Denbrough, the father of your old buddy, the one who turned out to be a writer — and Kenny Borton says from the window of the Christian Science Reading Room, «You want to get out of here, kid; there’s going to be shooting.» Zack took one look at his face and ran like hell.
There were men everywhere, men with guns, standing in doorways and sitting on steps and looking out of windows. Greg Cole was sitting in a doorway down the street with his .45 in his lap and about two dozen shells lined up beside him like toy sojers. Bruce Jagermeyer and that Swede, Olaf