"Hi, Dad," Blackburn said.

The old man glanced up, furious, and then looked back at Dog. "Get it out of here," he said. His voice shook. It wasn't as deep as Blackburn remembered. "Get the son of a bitch out of my house."

"Just 'bitch,' " Blackburn said.

Jasmine came past him and grabbed Dog's collar. Dog bolted. Jasmine lost her grip, and Dog collided with the old man's chair. Dad bellowed and tried to stab Dog in the neck, but his hand hit the edge of the table. The knife spun away and clattered on the linoleum. Dog whirled and ran from the kitchen.

Dad sat hunched over, gripping his hand. Jasmine reached toward him, but drew back when he started banging his fist on the table. Plates and glasses jumped. Then Dad swiped his arm across the tabletop, flinging a Pyrex bowl of salad. It would have hit Jasmine in the face, but Blackburn knocked it away. It slammed into the sink and shattered.

"Who let a dog in my house?" Dad yelled.

Blackburn squatted before his father. "She followed me home, Daddy," he said. "Can I keep her?"

Dad's eyes focused on him. Blackburn waited, letting the old man stare. Old man. Only forty-eight. But he looked ancient enough to be God.

The old man raised a hand and smacked his son in the mouth.

It was a harder blow than Blackburn had expected. His head jerked. He probed with his tongue and found that his teeth had cut into his lip.

Then he hit back. He had been saving it. Dad and his chair went over onto the floor.

Jasmine rushed to help him up. "What's the matter with you?" she shouted at Blackburn. "Can't you see he's sick?" She eased the old man into his chair again.

Blackburn stood. "What are you sick with, Dad?"

Dad glowered. His cheek was red. "Not a damn thing. I can still whip your ass any day of the week."

"So you aren't sick?"

"I just said I ain't. Ate some bad meat is all. They pumped my stomach and let me go."

"That's not true, Daddy," Jasmine said.

Dad looked at the table and muttered.

Blackburn sucked on his lip for a moment and then left the kitchen. Dog was waiting at the front door. Together, they went outside. Blackburn took a pair of wirecutters from the Hornet and walked to the telephone junction box on the west side of the house. After severing the cord, he returned to the driveway and let the air out of the tires of the GMC and the Celica.

Jasmine came outside as he was finishing with the Celica. "Jimmy! Just what do you think you're doing?"

Blackburn stood. "Giving the family time to get reacquainted."

He looked toward the house. Dad was staring out through the storm door. Blackburn supposed that he should count the old man as Number Sixteen, but he couldn't help thinking of him as Number One. And it only made sense that Number One would be the hardest.

As Blackburn started across the yard, the old man withdrew from the doorway, fading like a ghost.

Blackburn opened the storm door and gestured for Dog to go inside again. Dog did so, avoiding Jasmine.

"You know he doesn't like dogs," Jasmine said.

Blackburn said nothing. He went into the house and held the door open behind him so Jasmine could catch it. He was trying to be considerate.

Dog scurried back and forth across the living room, sniffing the tattered couch and recliner. Then she stopped in the center of the green carpet and squatted.

Dad emerged from the hallway to the room that had been his and Mom's. He was carrying his Remington pump twelve-gauge. He pumped it once, snapping a shell into the firing chamber.

Blackburn remembered lying in his tiny pantry room, reading a comic book, and hearing that sound outside. He remembered the explosion, and the shriek. He remembered running outside and going into the garage. He remembered finding the terrier hiding behind a pile of Dad's shop rags.

He hadn't understood what was wrong until the little dog had stood up. Then he had seen that its left side had no skin. The dog had come to him, trembling.

Now Dad was aiming at Dog. Again. And now Blackburn was fully ready to kill him. But he had left the Python in the car. Jasmine had distracted him, had made him stupid.

He grabbed the shotgun barrel with both hands, jerking it upward. As he wrenched the weapon from the old man's grasp, it roared with a flash of blue fire. Ceiling plaster exploded. Dog tried to scramble outside and ran into the base of the storm door. Jasmine backed against a wall and covered her ears. Dad collapsed onto the couch.

Blackburn went to the door and let Dog out. Then he pumped the shotgun, ejecting the spent shell, and fired upward again. He continued pumping and firing until the magazine was empty. The air filled with white dust and stank like the Fourth of July. Blackburn's skull rang.

He threw the shotgun at his father. The old man ducked, and the gun hit the wall and fell behind the couch.

"You don't kill a man or a dog with quail shot!" Blackburn yelled. He could hardly hear himself, so he yelled even louder. "You do it with a bullet! One bullet to the head!"

Dad sat up straight. "Damn dog was pissing on my floor!"

Blackburn came close and leaned over him. "Piss doesn't matter. Chickens don't matter. Dogs matter."

Dad looked confused. "You're crazy," he said. "I raised a goddamn crazy man."

Jasmine, her face pale with dust, stepped across the broken plaster. "He's talking about that terrier," she said.

The noise in Blackburn's skull was starting to subside. "Yeah," he said. "That terrier."

Dad lurched up from the couch. "Gonna call the sheriff."

Blackburn caught his arm. "I cut the wire. We never had much quality time when I was little, so I thought we should have some now."

The old man's eyes were as steady as a snake's. "If you'd turned out to be worth a crap, I'd've done it then."

Blackburn tightened his grip. "You never did know much about 'worth.' You thought the chickens were 'worth' something, but all they did was shit and eat. That little dog, on the other hand, killed rats. One bite through the head, and then he went for the next one. And then the next. But one day he happened to kill a couple of chickens. Two stupid chickens. So you took your shotgun and blew a hole in his side. Blew a big hole. Very psychosexual, Daddy. Very Freudian."

"Your mother overprotected you," Dad said. "You always were a sissy."

"I made him lie down on the garage floor," Blackburn said. "And then all I could find to help him was a hammer. Afterward I wrapped him in shop rags and buried him behind the chicken coop. I hoped he would haunt you."

The old man made a snorting noise. "Am I supposed to feel guilty? Is that why you came back?"

Blackburn smiled. "Not exactly. See, I've figured it out: It wasn't just that dog. It was everything. Every time I got to liking something, you'd blow a big hole in it. Kill it. But what you really wanted to kill was me."

Jasmine tried to step between them. "That's not so, Jimmy. You're his son."

She had grown breasts and gone to college, but Jasmine was still as dumb as a dirt clod. "Sure I'm his son," Blackburn said. "That's why he did it." He fixed his eyes on the old man's. "And that's why I've come back."

He released Dad's arm, and the old man ran into the kitchen.

Blackburn started after him. He glanced back at Jasmine. "Very psychosexual," he said. "Very Freudian." He followed Dad into the kitchen and out the back door.

Dad scuttled under the sheets on the clothesline, then ran across the backyard and through the windbreak of evergreens on the north. Blackburn stopped at the windbreak and watched through the trees as Dad crawled under the barbed-wire fence into the hay meadow. The old man's shirt tore.

Blackburn waited until Dad disappeared behind the crest of the hill. Then he turned and walked to the Hornet. Jasmine emerged from the house as he brought out the Python.