He got out, grinning, picked up on the vibe and the grin drained away: “What?”

“The cops shot Bony. He’s dead,” Laine said. “Chet saw it on the TV.”

“What!”

“Dude, they shot him. It’s on TV,” Chet said. “The cops got that chick back, and she’s gonna tell them everything.”

“He was my main man,” Pilate wailed, spittle flying around the semicircle of disciples. “They gunned him down?”

•   •   •

PILATE, RALEIGH, AND RICHIE piled into Chet’s car, and they went back to the gas station, where the story never did show up again. They waited so long that the guy behind the counter finally asked them what they were watching for, and Pilate told him that they thought they might have known the girl rescued by the cops, who was a Juggalo. The counter man pulled an iPad out from behind the cigarette rack, called up the TV station’s website, and let them look at the cached news story.

The reporter had heard from a sheriff’s deputy that the kidnapping victim had managed to conceal and turn on a cell phone, which the authorities had then tracked to the ambush point. The victim had told them that her kidnappers had been responsible for murdering a Chippewa Falls man who’d been found dead in a burning RV.

“You know what this fuckin’ means?” Pilate asked, back in the car again. “That bitch is gonna tell them what we look like. They’re gonna make those drawings of us, and plaster them all over the fuckin’ state.”

“We gotta get out of here,” said Richie. “Like way gone.”

“We gotta do something,” Pilate said, toying with one of his beard braids. “But they don’t know we’re at the Gathering. We put on some clown makeup, nobody’ll recognize us and we’ll be good for a while. Move the rest of that cocaine and we’ll have the bucks to get on up to the Michigan Gathering, that’s a long way from here. Put on the clown faces again, and by the time that’s over, nobody’ll remember us.”

“I don’t know—I think they’ll remember, at least around here,” Chet said.

“If I could get my hands on that bitch Skye, I’d skin her alive,” Pilate said. And, “Who’s got the Cheetos? Pass them up here.”

“What are we going to do about Bony?” Raleigh asked.

“Nothin’. He’s dead,” Pilate said. “He’s outa here. No point in doing anything.”

“It seems like—”

“Nothin’,” Pilate said. “Dead gotta take care of themselves.”

“I was thinking some kind of . . . words,” Raleigh said.

“Leave the thinking to me, dickwad,” Pilate said. Then he nodded. “But yeah. That’s a good idea. Words is good. I’ll talk tonight.”

That night they did almost half of the remaining cocaine, getting high with Bony, and Pilate said his Words.

“Bony was our friend. He was an outlaw. Y’all remember the time he got that .22 and went up Malibu Road shooting cats out the window of his car, and about fifty cops came and how he didn’t give a shit, he just turned right around and did it again? Remember how he rolled that guy’s antique Porsche down that boat ramp into the ocean? We were sitting up there laughing our asses off and the guy was down there crying tears about his fuckin’ Porsche?”

And so on.

They were up late that night and got up late the next morning, and the first thing Pilate saw when he climbed out of the new RV was an enormous fat man riding past in the back of a John Deere Gator.

He was shirtless, with black rings painted around his tiny pink nipples, and was wearing a black, white, and red clown face, and was throwing bottles of Faygo to bystanders. Another clown was driving the cart.

The Juggalos were coming in.

•   •   •

THE JUGGALO GATHERING was on a run-down farm east of Hayward, off Highway 77. Roughly the size of a football field, the site had until recently been used to grow alfalfa. At one end, Juggalos were unloading cardboard boxes full of firewood from a flatbed trailer, to be used to construct a huge bonfire. At the other end, more Juggalos were setting up a stage, for music groups. Between them, but closer to the fire, a carny crew was setting up a low-rent Ferris wheel beside the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Designated parking areas were set up on both sides of the field, marked with red plastic tape stretched between poles; and rows of blue fiberglass porta-potties were set up on the far sides of both parking lots.

Pilate and his disciples had set themselves apart, in a circle at the far end of one of the parking areas—the end zone of the field, to the left and slightly behind the stage.

Skye got to the campground at ten o’clock. She’d ridden up with her friend Carl and two guys, named Siggy and Ivan, both Russians. The Russians had been cool guys, and had face paint that they were happy to pass around. Carl helped make up Skye’s face as a sad clown and she did his as a happy face, but when they got out of the car and collected their packs, Carl said, “We don’t look like Juggalos. We look like travelers with clown faces.”

Skye nodded. “Let’s see if we can find some guys and ditch the bags.”

“Get something to eat,” Carl said. “You got money?”

“Yeah. We’re good.”

There were already a couple of hundred people at the Gathering, with more coming in. A white TV truck rolled past them, toward the stage, and a fat guy in a John Deere Gator went by and tossed them bottles of Faygo.

Skye had never heard of it and gave hers to Carl as they made a quick loop around the field. As they walked, they passed through invisible clouds of marijuana smoke, like old autumn leaves being burned. Halfway around, they found a cluster of travelers, sitting under a tree. Skye knew two of the women, and trusted one of them, who was named Lucy, and who agreed to watch her pack while Skye scouted the field.

“Gotta need for weed,” Lucy said.

“Got ya covered,” Skye said. “We’ll spark up when I get back.”

“Then hurry back,” Lucy said.

•   •   •

FIFTY OR SIXTY CARS dotted the two parking areas, along with a few campers and RVs, but a cluster of vehicles that seemed to be parked together caught her eye, and she went that way. Not much was moving around the cluster; freshly burned log remnants were still sputtering in a fire ring. She moved closer, trying to shelter behind groups of Juggalos and the random cars in the parking lot.

She was thirty or forty yards away, standing behind an aging Volkswagen van, when a woman staggered out of the RV. She was wearing cut-off jean shorts and nothing else, though she was carrying what looked like a T-shirt, and one of the nearby Juggalos yelled, “Yay, tits,” and the woman laughed and gave him the finger, and a minute later, wiggled the shirt over her head.

Skye didn’t know her, but she looked like a disciple. Skye edged closer as the woman went to one of the cars in the cluster, opened the door and emerged with a pair of sunglasses, a pack of Marlboros, and a Zippo lighter.

Skye called over, “Hey: tell Pilate that Carly said hi!”

The woman finished lighting a cigarette, blew smoke, and called back, “I think he’s still asleep.”

“I’ll talk to him later,” Skye called. She waved and walked away. Back with the travelers, she recovered her pack, took out the Gerber survival knife, and slipped it into the leg pocket on her cargo pants. Across the field, another carnival ride was pulling in. She’d lie around with her friends, Skye thought, until dark.

Then she’d spot Pilate and she’d stick him.

She had no qualms about it: thought about Letty, and her feelings about killing. Ridding the world of Pilate was a public service, Skye thought, and would probably save a lot of lives. Still: the cops would call it murder, and if she went to prison, there’d be no more traveling. She could feel the tension growing in her gut, and let it build, not trying to deny it. She was talking to Lucy, passing a joint back and forth, watching more and more Juggalos pulling in, when she spotted Letty: “Gotta go,” she said, getting to her feet. “Gotta run.”