“He knows what it’s about!” Spanning said.

“I don’t-” Travis said, but there was another blow. I wasn’t sure I could stand by, just listening, if Spanning kept at it.

“You know, this is getting us nowhere,” Rachel said. “If I knew what the hell it was you wanted, maybe I could help you out.”

He paced. “Where’s Deeny?!” he shouted.

I could hear him moving, heard him open the front door, heard the squeal of the spring on the screen door as he opened it. In a soft voice, he called, “Deeny! Deeny!”

“She’s gone off on one of her pouts,” he said, coming back in, the screen slamming shut. There was the sound of the front door being shut. “Shouldna hit her, I guess.”

“What is it you’re looking for?” Rachel said.

“That whore’s the one that had them,” Gerald said. “His mother. Arthur gave them to her. He told me so. Arthur told me he gave them to this little asshole’s mother! You trust a man, you do everything in the world for him and what does he say? He needs protection from me. From me! When I was the one protecting him! They’re proof, you see? I helped Arthur. He was going to divorce her, you know.”

“My mother?” Travis asked.

“No! She wasn’t even married! Not really! She was just a whore.”

“Who then?” Rachel asked.

“Gwenie. He told me he was going to divorce Gwenie, just to marry that whore and give this brat his name. Gwenie would have taken everything and given it all to her uncle Horace.” I heard him pace to the front door again.

The door opened, then the screen door. This time, I heard him step outside. I stepped into the doorway of the living room. Travis’s eyes widened, but Rachel shook her head and mouthed the word “no.” She jerked her head toward another doorway-one closer to her chair.

I moved back into the kitchen just as I heard Spanning open the door again. He was silent. Someone started making stomping noises, and I used that to cover my progress across the kitchen and into the hallway. I was halfway down the hall when I heard Spanning shout, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“My feet fell asleep,” Travis said.

“You’re going to be asleep permanently if you don’t cut it out!”

“Did I ever tell you what happened on the night Gwendolyn DeMont died?” Travis said.

Spanning was silent.

“It was a hot July night,” Travis said, his voice taking on a slightly different quality. “So hot. Much hotter than tonight. All the windows were open, but there was no breeze. It was very late. Everything was still and quiet. But in the middle of this still and quiet night, I was awakened by a noise. It wasn’t a big noise, just a soft little noise, but I heard it. I was just a boy, already in bed, in my pajamas. But the noise woke me.

“I went downstairs, very slowly, and I saw a light on in the study. My father’s study. I was scared until I saw him. He was sitting at his desk.

“At first, I was so happy to see him, so pleased to think that he had come home. He hadn’t been there in so many days. Every night, I had waited up for him. Every night, I had hoped he would come back. But he didn’t, not until that night. I wanted to run to him, to say, ”Daddy! You’re back! You’re back home again!“ But then I saw that he was crying.”

“Crying?!” Spanning said.

“Yes, crying. I ran up to him and hugged him, but it was almost as if I wasn’t there. I asked him what had happened to make him so sad. He said, ”Do you know who loves me more than anyone else in the world?“”

There was silence, then Spanning scoffed, “You probably said it was your mother, because God knows she had him by the balls.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I said, but I was wrong.”

“Then it must have been you.”

“No-you know that isn’t true.”

“Well, if he said it was me, he was right, but he sure as hell didn’t give a damn about me. He was too busy with you and your mother to bother with me.”

“But he didn’t see me for a dozen years,” Travis said. “If he loved me so much, he would have done for me what you did for him, right?”

Spanning didn’t answer.

“If you love someone, you take care of them and protect them, right?”

“Of course you do!”

“You didn’t run away from your responsibilities, did you?”

“Goddamned right, I didn’t.”

“You were more of a father to him than he was to me.”

“Some ways.”

“He could be selfish, couldn’t-he?”

“Could be? I never met a more selfish man.”

“But even so, he loved you. We all knew that. He always talked about how much you had done for him. He knew. In his heart of hearts, he knew. He knew you’d do anything for him. He knew you even gave up the woman you loved for him. She could have had you, and everything would have been fine. But she wouldn’t take you, would she?”

There was a long silence. “You see?” Spanning said. “You see? You know, don’t you? I thought he might not have shown them to you. You were just a kid. But he came home that night and showed them to you, didn’t he? Now, where are they? I just want them back. Your mother wouldn’t give them to me, so I was going to get them myself.”

“But then those old biddies at the apartment building called the cops on Deeny, right?” Rachel said.

“Yeah. And then this cousin-one of the damned Kellys who turned their noses up at him! The whore’s family! A Kelly goes in there and takes everything out of the apartment. But then I see how it works. You planned this, Travis. You’re staying with your cousin. I know you know about them. I even tried to get old Ulkins to tell me. You saw what happened to him. Now tell me-where are they?”

“I wonder how pissed ol‘ Deeny is,” Rachel said, apparently knowing what the follow-up would be if she didn’t distract him from whatever “they” were. “Maybe she’s fetching the cops on you as we speak.”

He laughed. “She’s in this as deep as I am.”

But evidently it made him worry, because once again he went to the door. I opened my pocket knife to the sharpest blade. I heard him go out on the front porch again, and I came around the corner of the doorway. I tried to cut the ropes on Rachel’s wrists, but she whispered, “Give it to me and get out of here!” I placed it in her hand, blade side against the ropes. The screen door squeaked open and I pulled back.

“None of this whispering between yourselves!” Spanning shouted.

I heard him cross the floor, then a loud crash, and trying not to think about what was happening, hurried to the back door.

“I didn’t touch you! What’d you fall over for?” I heard him saying.

“I thought you were going to hit me.” Travis’s voice.

“Well, if you think I’m going to let loose of this gun to pull you up, you whispered for nothing, because you can stay down there for all I care!

After that, I was outside again.

I wouldn’t have gone, except that I had decided to light the fire. It was a moment’s work. One match and it was blazing. I threw the shotgun cartridges in and ran toward the front of the house. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take the shells to explode, or if they would, or what would happen to them, but if those spray-paint canisters were going to do what I thought they would, I didn’t want to be looking into the fire when they blew.

I never found out if it was the stench of the burning latex, the smoke of the other substances, or the rather fantastic banging that the paint cans made in that bathtub, but Gerald Spanning ran out of his house, and I ran in.

Rachel was already up and cutting Travis’s bonds.

“That story you told him about the night Gwendolyn died-” she was saying.

“Total bullshit,” he said, and she laughed as we helped him to his feet.

Outside I could hear Gerald swearing at Deeny-whom he blamed for starting the fire-and turning the hose on.

“Get Travis out of here,” Rachel said to me. “Spanning will be back in here in no time.”