I saw two white things down under the water as the cork came up into the air, and I could see something waving, as if blown by the wind. It was hair.

The body had been dead in the river for eons. No fish or eel or crawfish would touch it, because the dead hands brushed them away each time they come near. That was why it could pull against me. But I’d snagged it. I was bringing it in.

The two white things were eyes. They were dead and knowing and accusative all at the same time.

When the head broke the surface the eyes blinked at me. The mouth opened and gallons of water spilled out.

It was someone I knew.

“ Oh,” my dad said at Driving Miss Daisy speed, “It’s just a hank. Kill him and throw him back in.”

The hank was reaching for me, green and gray fingers dripping river bottom mud, contorted, grasping at the air just a short space from my ankles.

The hank’s other arm stretched up, dislocated from its shoulder and grasped my hip and squeezed.

It was Julie, squeezing my hip. I’d been nightmaring again.

She shook me.

“Awake,” I managed to mumble. “Ahm awake.”

She stopped.

I turned and curled into her, my stubbly cheek pressing against her soft breast.

She hummed me back to sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I was awake instantly at the sound of the gunshot. Someone was shooting outside our door.

Julie’s eyes were open wide and staring into mine in the gloom. Through cracks in the window curtains I could tell it was almost dawn.

Another window-rattling shot rang out.

I didn’t even think to grab my gun. I thrust my legs into my slacks and didn’t even bother with a shirt. I left Julie twisting in her bed covers and thrusting two pillows against her ears.

Outside. The morning was cool and fine.

Hank was there leaning up against the Suburban. He had a deer-rifle that I’d not seen before and he bolted home another shell as I called out his name.

“Hank! Goddammit! What the hell are you doin’?”

He looked at me. There was a sad and somber look on his face.

His left hand moved and the rifle recoiled down against his leg.

BLAM!

He was already reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniels on the Suburban running-board. Where the hell had he gotten that?

“Got eighteen more to go,” he said, slurring his words almost beyond recognition.

“Eighteen what?” I asked.

He didn’t bother to reply. He reached for another shell. There was an open box of them beside the whiskey bottle.

I noticed Dingo slinking back into the partially opened door of Hank’s motel room, her tail between her legs. Apparently she was not beyond fear, if not downright embarrassment.

“That’s enough,” I said. “Come on, give me the gun.”

“No can do, keem-bo-sobby,” he said. “He deserfs a twenty-one gun salute.”

Clang! He shot the bolt home.

“Who?” I said.

“Dock.”

BLAM!

The shot echoed off the walls of the old tourist court motel. Hank nearly dropped the gun. He was likely to have a nasty bruise on his leg later, the way he was taking all the recoil just south of his hip.

“Hey! Hey!” another voice called out. I turned to look. It was the skinny Pakistani motel clerk. “What you idiots doing?” He wore a pair of flannel long johns and burgundy house slippers.

“Uh. Nothin’” I said. “I’ve got this situation under control.”

BLAM!

I jerked.

“Control, shit!” he yelled. “You get the hell off of my business! Take Mr. Rambo wit you!”

“Now hold on!” I held up my finger in his face. He stopped.

I turned toward Hank in time to see him tossing down another shot of whiskey.

“Hank,” I said.

“Here,” he said, holding the gun out to me. I took two steps toward him and took it.

He set the whiskey bottle back down and grabbed another shell.

“Hey,” I said.

He reached and grabbed the gun, inserted the shell into the breech as I tried to pull it out of his grip.

“Hold on,” he said.

Clang!Another round was chambered.

“Oh no you don’t,” I said. I pulled back and away from him, but his right hand shot out and hit the trigger.

BLAM!

The rifle jerked in my hands. I almost lost it. My wrist would be sore for some time from the recoil and my ears had begun to ring.

“What’s that?” he asked. “Sixteen more, I think.”

The Pakistani was yelling behind me: “I already called the cops,” he said. “They come and take you crazy friend away.”

“That done it,” Hank said. He jumped up and grabbed the rifle out of my hands.

The Pakistani’s eyes went round and white. He turned and bolted.

Hank took two steps. I moved, fast. I grabbed him from behind and lifted him off the ground, which was no easy thing as he outweighed me by a good fifty pounds.

The rifle clattered to the pavement.

“What?” he yelled. “Let me down, Goddammit!”

I dropped him. He staggered and almost fell, but I caught him again.

The motel clerk was out in the highway. He stopped running suddenly, waved his arms and began pointing back our way. He became sort of red-tinged for a moment, then blue, and suddenly I knew what was coming.

Two police cars, the second following dangerously close on the heels of the first skewed into the parking lot in a cloud of dust and gravel, brilliant red and blue spears of light from the headache racks rotating and counter-rotating like some nightmares I have had.

There is one hard and fast rule about small Texas towns: the law is always not very far away.

“Shit,” I said.

“Alright, you two, what’s the big idea?”

It was a deputy sheriff. His uniform was a butternut color with dark brown epaulettes and pocket flaps and he wore a Stetson hat. Also, he had a gun in his hands in firing stance.

“Gun’s on the ground, Officer,” I said and put my hands in the air.

Hank looked at the deputy. He looked at me.

“What’d you do this time?” he asked me. “Why’re the cops here?”

I slowly put my hands down. The officer took in the rest of the scene: the rifle on the pavement at our feet, the box of shells twenty feet away on the running board of the Suburban, the almost-empty bottle of Jack Daniels next to it, and Hank’s condition.

“Okay,” he said to me. “Has he been shooting that thing?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Up into the air. A friend of his died recently and this was his version of a sendoff.”

“Twenty-one guns,” Hank said, then grabbed his stomach. “I don’t feel so good.”

The deputy from the second car walked over, picked up the deer rifle and put it inside his cruiser.

“Hey,” Hank said. “Tell ‘im to give dat back.”

“Let’s go,” the first deputy said. He was smiling. “And I thought it was going to be a quick shift-change.”

“Oh my God,” the voice said through the little speaker by the doorway. We were in the driveway tunnel under the courthouse. I’d forgotten what county we were in, but I didn’t want to ask just yet. Also, I was trying to think of which lawyer would be best to call.

I looked up to see a camera panning down toward us.

“Yeah,” Deputy L. Rice said. “Sheriff, this is our one man wake-up call.”

“Well, tell him to come right on in. And welcome.”

The door in front of us buzzed. Deputy Rice pulled the door open and motioned us inside.

I turned to look behind us. Julie and Dingo were in the Suburban parked behind the Sheriff’s patrol cars.

I shrugged at her. She shrugged back.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to wait too long. I hoped.

Hank was in a holding cell inside the jail. I gave the booking officer as much information as I could while I chatted with the County Sheriff. He’d identified himself as Randy Thornton, and had shaken my hand as if he was about to ask for my vote. Small town elected officials can’t usually afford to make people overly upset with them unless it’s unavoidable, and that extends even to prisoners under arrest. We were out-of-towners, however, so I was both surprised and pleased by the Sheriff’s demeanor.