Of course, this was true. As scared as he’d ever been in his life.
That stuck in his craw. He realized it now, many miles from the seat of that fear. He did not like being made to feel scared. More to the point, he was disgusted to find that flaw still dwelling within him—one he’d fought so hard to dispel. But that fear had returned.
Surely it was natural, considering what he had experienced.
Still. Still.
He could not live with it. Nor with the abandonment of his compatriots, which left an unaccountably large hole in him—Minerva and Shughrue and the woman and the boy were not his obligation, were they? Lord no! Yet he felt now as if they had been a part of something together, however awful, and he… he couldn’t believe he had come around to this way of thinking.
But by God, he owed.
Bigger than that, though, was the fear. He had been chased off by it. He had allowed himself to be cowed by whatever lurked in the woods surrounding Little Heaven.
And that… that simply would not do—
The pie plate clattered next to Ebenezer’s ear, breaking his reverie. A fork clanged down beside it. A mug of coffee touched down next, hot droplets sloshing over the rim and burning his scalp.
He lifted his head. There it was. The shoofly pie. Dark, with a flaky crust. He picked up the fork and meticulously cleaned the tines with a paper napkin from the dispenser. Then he flicked the fork away sharply—it pinged off the steel coffee cistern—picked up the pie with his bare, blood-stained hands, and shoveled it into his mouth. Eb ate the thick wedge in five wolfish bites, barely chewing, just stuffing it in until his cheeks bulged, then swallowing with a sinuous motion like a snake devouring a gerbil.
“Christ on a dirt bike, Flo, that’s some good pie!” he roared with such force that bits of filling sprayed from his mouth. “Shoofly, you don’t bother me!”
He pushed himself up and rocked back on his heels. He took a big swig of coffee, burning the top of his mouth in the process, shouted, “Ye gods, Myrtle, that’s some hot joe!” then pulled the dollar bill from his pocket, smoothed it out over the counter’s edge, and set it down primly on his empty plate.
“I shall tell my friends of this place, Darla!” he informed the startled waitress. “I’ll sing its praises to the high heavens! Come for the pie, I’ll tell them, but stay for the delightful fucking hospitality!”
The woman in the booth covered her daughter’s ears. Her husband—a square-jawed clodhopper in dungarees—appeared as if he might make something of it, but he took a good look at Ebenezer and must have figured his daughter would hear worse in her life.
“Good day to you,” Eb said, booting the door open, “and God bless!”
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Ebenezer pulled into Jimmy’s Gun Rack. It was closed. Either Jimmy had knocked off early or folks around here didn’t purchase elephant guns past four o’clock. Either way, Eb’s task would be much easier with the shop empty.
He knocked on the front door. No answer. He knocked harder, in case Jimmy was asleep in the storeroom. When that got no response, he walked around back. No car. He returned out front and drove the Olds around back. The mesa stretched away behind the shop—nothing but miles of sand studded with scraggly cacti.
The delivery door was locked, but not with a dead bolt. Instead, steel collars were attached to the door and the cinderblock wall, clasped with a heavy padlock.
Eb popped the trunk and peeled back the floor upholstery. The scissor jack sat atop the emergency spare. He grabbed the jack handle—a two-foot steel rod—and approached the door. He threaded the handle through the shackle U and levered his body against it.
“Come on, you old slapper,” he grunted, putting his full weight on the jack handle.
The lock popped. The jack handle swung up and cracked Eb in the forehead. He staggered back, dazed, and fell on his ass in the dirt.
The lock fell to the earth. The door swung open and—
BOOM!
The heavy steel door blew open like a screen door caught in the wind, slammed the shop’s brick wall, the knob chipping the cement, and ricocheted back.
Eb staggered up and peeked around the door frame. The inside of the door was shredded with pock-holes. A Mossberg shotgun was parked five feet within the entryway, strapped to a mount of welded steel. Copper wire was wrapped around the trigger, the trailing end looped through a series of metal eyelets along the ceiling to a hook on the door.
“Jumpin’ Jesus Christ, Jimmy,” Eb whispered, shaken. “Some might call that excessive.”
He eased past the homemade booby trap and into the storeroom. He flicked a light and gazed over the halogen-lit interior. There didn’t appear to be any other nasty surprises—not obvious ones, anyway.
He grabbed a Beretta 12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun and ten boxes of shells. To this he added a pair of Colt M1911s, a hundred rounds of ammo, and six spare clips. He stashed everything in the car trunk, then went back inside. He shed his shirt and pants. His chest and arms were cut, but apart from his ear the damage was superficial. He donned a camouflage hunting outfit he found in the main showroom.
Then he went back for the flamethrower he’d pointed out to Micah when they had first come into the shop. He hefted the canisters. Something sloshed inside the left one—jellied gasoline. The right one would be full of nitrogen propellant.
He found a few other items—a bowie knife, a flare gun, some stout rope, and a Zippo lighter in a desk in Jimmy’s office. The lighter sat next to some cigars. Once he identified them as genuine Cubanos and not the trick exploding kind, he slid two of them into the chest pocket of his spiffy new hunting outfit.
He muscled the flamethrower into the Oldsmobile’s backseat. He considered leaving a note for Jimmy, telling him his store had been looted by the forces of good… but he did not do this, because he was not an especially good person and felt no compulsion to lie about it. He did close the back door. The least he could do.
Ebenezer followed the highway until he found a deserted access road. He drove a mile down it and stopped. He opened the trunk, loaded the guns and the spare clips. A scorpion sunned itself on a flat rock nearby.
He got into the car and drove back to the head of the access road. A big store sat on the side of an otherwise deserted stretch a few hundred yards off. Big Al’s Bargain Village. He swung into its parking lot. The dusty bay window showcased the store’s wares. Blenders and fondue pots and tennis rackets and sterling silver tea sets—Al’s got everything under the sun! the display boasted.
A seventeen-inch Magnavox TV was broadcasting an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Bug-eyed Barney Fife was giving Opie advice. Someone was always giving Opie advice. The carrot-topped, weedy idiot. Eb closed his eyes and rested his head against the glass. Are you really going to do this? he asked himself. Are you that much of a damned fool? He pictured those monstrosities skulking through the woods; he recalled the charnel stink wafting off the one that had swooped down and aggressively relieved him of half his ear.
He didn’t owe any of them a Christly thing. It had been a business arrangement, nothing more. He’d fulfilled his end of the bargain, hadn’t he?
“Can I help you, fella?”
A fat man in a seersucker suit stared at him from the store entrance. Big Al his own self, by the looks of it. He had the flat-hanging, shiny red face of a carnival barker—but he didn’t look all too impressed to see a black man in a camouflage outfit mooning around his display window.