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 Theramenius, were standing underneath the marquee of the Bijou in the shade.'

Mr Keene looked at me, through me. His eyes were not sharp now; they were hazy with memory, soft as the eyes of a man only become when he is remembering one of the best times of his life — the first home run he ever hit, maybe, or the first trout he ever landed that was big enough to keep, or the first time he ever lay with a willing woman.

'I remember I heard the wind, sonny,' he said dreamily. 'I remember hearing the wind hearing the courthouse clock toll two. Bob Tanner came up behind me and I was so tight-wired I almost blew his head off.

'He only nodded at me and crossed over to Vannock's Dry Goods, trailing his shadow out behind him.

'You would have thought that when it got to be two-ten and nothing happened, then two-fifteen, then two-twenty, folks would have just up and left, wouldn't you? But it didn't happen that way at all. People just kept their place. Because — '

'Because you knew they were going to come, didn't you?' I asked. There was never any question at all.'

He beamed at me like a teacher pleased with a student's recital. That's right!' he said. 'We knew. No one had to talk about it, no one had to say, "Wellnow, let's wait until twenty past and if they don't show I've got to get back to work." Things just stayed quiet, and around two-twenty-five that afternoon these two cars, on e red and one dark blue, started down Up-Mile Hill and came into the intersection. One of them was a Chevrolet and the other was a La Salle. The Conklin brothers, Patrick Caudy, and Marie Hauser were in the Chevrolet. The Bradleys, Malloy, and Kitty Donahue were in the La Salle.

They started through the intersection okay, and then Al Bradley slammed on the brakes of that La Salle so sudden that Caudy damn near ran into him. The street was too quiet and Bradley knew it. He wasn't nothing but an animal, but it doesn't take much to put up an animal's wind when it's been chased like a weasel in the corn for four years.

'He opened the door of the La Salle and stood up on the running board for a moment. He looked around, then he made a "go-back" gesture to Caudy with his hand. Caudy said "What, boss?" I heard that plain as day, the only thing I heard any of them say that day. There was a wink of sun, too, I remember that. It came off a compact mirror. The Hauser woman was powdering her nose.

That was when Lal Machen and his helper, Biff Marlow, came running out of Machen's store. "Put em up, Bradley, you're surrounded!" Lal shouts, and before Bradley could do more than turn his head, Lal started blasting. He was wild at first, but then he put one into Bradley's shoulder. The claret started to pour out of that hole right away. Bradley caught hold of the La Salle's doorpost and swung himself back into the car. He threw it into gear, and that's when everyone started to shoot.

'It was all over in four, maybe five minutes, but it seemed a whole hell of a lot longer while it was happening. Petie and Al and Jimmy Gordon just sat there on the courthouse steps and poured bullets into the back end of the Chevrolet. I saw Bob Tanner down on one knee, firing and working the bolt on that old rifle of his like a madman. Jagermeyer and Theramenius were shooting into the right side of the La Salle from under the theater marquee and Greg Cole stood in the gutter, holding that .45 automatic out in both hands, pulling the trigger just as fast as he could work it.

'There must have been fifty, sixty men firing all at once. After it was all over Lal Machen dug thirty-six slugs out of the brick sides of his store. And that was three days later, after just about every-damn-body in town who wanted one for a souvenir had come down and dug one out with his penknife. When it was at its worst, it sounded like the Battle of the Marne. Windows were blown in by rifle –fire all around Machen's.

'Bradley got the La Salle around in a half-circle and he wasn't slow but by the time he'd done he was running on four flats. Both the headlights were blowed out, and the windscreen was gone. Creeping Jesus Malloy and George Bradley were each at a backseat window, firing pistols. I seen one bullet take Malloy high up in the neck and tear it wide open. He shot twice more and then collapsed out the window with his arms hanging down.