I was scared. But I got down, my knees between Jimmy's, and pulled his fly open. There was blood on his pants; it had run down from his shirt. I took out Jimmy's limp cock; as soon as I put my mouth around it, I felt Hogg's bare foot on the back of my neck; he mashed my face against Jimmy's fly. The zipper on one side scratched my cheek. The limp cock folded inside my mouth. I could hear Nigg and Dago and Denny coming up. "Just keep on suckin', boy! Just keep on suckin' that dick! You really gonna like this, cocksucker . . ." Jimmy's next "Uhhhh ..." was muffled. His legs moved,

  suddenly, like he was struggling. I twisted, still under Hogg's foot, to see. Hogg was wedging the gun barrel into Jimmy's mouth. Jimmy was pushing at it with one hand and the "Uhhhh ..." was a single sound now that kept going on.

  I could feel Hogg laugh through his foot on my neck. Then: three sounds at once—Crack! and I nearly bit his cock off, and hurt my neck jerking against Hogg's heel; splat! and a sort of spludge! Jimmy shook once. My mouth filled with piss.

  I didn't know it was going to happen, though; and I gagged. Piss came out my nose and stung.

  " Drink that stuff up, boy. You don't get a chance to get it like that too often. Drink it, boy. Drink it." Hogg chuckled; I could feel it in his foot and hear it. "A motherfucker'll piss every time if you shoot 'im in the head."

  I coughed, lost the spurting flesh.

  "Come on, come on, cocksucker! Don't waste it! Get it back in there!" So I pushed it back in my mouth; I tried to drink, got a lot, but lost a lot too. The night gravel was chilly to kneel on. It dug into my knees.

  "Jesus Christ. . .," Denny said. "I mean . . . Oh, wow!"

  Hogg let his foot up a little off my neck. "You finished?"

  I nodded. At which point the urine did actually run out. I coughed again and got my breath. I couldn't even see because my eyes had teared up so bad when I couldn't breathe. I blinked and sat back. My whole shirt was hot and wet. Piss was running down my chest and the inside of my left sleeve. I rubbed my knuckles across my eyes.

  Jimmy's chin was there. And something that might have been an ear, or might have been something just torn off his jaw. Then there was a mess with some hair one side of it. I didn't see any teeth at all, bottom or top. Blood had spurted around five and six feet.

  "Christ, Hogg!" Denny said. "I mean, goddamn . . . !" Denny's cock was still out his fly. But only half hard. His shoulders were scrunched up, and he kept moving his hands around on his leg a little jerkily. "I mean, the way you just... I mean, like that with the bastard . . . What did you . . . ?"

  "Huh?" Hogg turned, sort of surprised.

  "I mean," Denny said, "why did you . .. ?"

  "That fucker was crazy, man!" Hogg said; he dragged the gun butt back across the gravel, toward his shoe. His fingers worked on the

  barrel, which must still have been pretty warm. "You heard the way he was goin' on, about his reasons? The motherfucker was crazy as a fuckin' jaybird!"

  "Yeah," Denny said. "Yeah, but. . . well, you didn't have to—" "Aw, man!" Hogg lifted up his shotgun—I saw Denny jump a little. "The fucker was crazy, didn't you hear him—hey, you guys! Get him off the goddamn road, huh?"

  The nigger hoisted up Jimmy's ankles. The wop grabbed one of his arms. Gravel fell from the loose fingers.

  They dragged him toward the bush beside the road. He was awful loud going in.

  "You gotta shoot a crazy motherfucker like that," Hogg explained. "Or he's just gonna get guilty and go to the police and the next thing you know, they got your description and the whole thing. I mean, I seen it happen. It happened to me more'n once." "Well, suppose she went to the police," Denny said. One hand, moving on his hip, had snagged two fingers in his pocket. The other pulled at his baggy crotch. "I mean you didn't kill her. ..."

  Hogg considered. "Well," he said—there was more leaf chatter off the road as Nigg and Dago decided to pull Jimmy another few feet— "all these bitches suppose to be in so much trouble already, they ain't gonna go anywhere near the police. Leastwise that's what Mr. Jonas told me, see? But, now, even if she was to say 'Fuck it, I'm goin' anyway, I don't care,' and they was to come after us—well, if it was from her, somehow that would be okay. But if it was from that loose-assed cocksucker—" Hogg jerked his chin over where Nigg and Dago were tramping around off the highway—"that would just turn my stomach, somehow." Hogg shook his head, put the shotgun in his other hand, and put a hand on Denny's shoulder. "Come on, let's go back to the truck. Hey—!" he called to me. "Come on, cocksucker!" I followed.

  "Yeah, I guess so, Hogg.. .," Denny said. "But, well, I just—" "Come on, Denny," Hogg said ahead of me—the seat of Denny's pants was awful baggy and, in the roadlight, Hogg looked like he'd been sitting in black grease—"Look." The gun butt swung back by Hogg's knee as they ambled on. "The fucker is up there with us, beatin' on the bitch, and fuckin' on the bitch, and just gettin' into the whole thing. Then he's gonna turn around and tell us he's got reasons for actin' like he's doin'? Now you do somethin' like that,

  man, 'cause you want to. 'Cause you get your fuckin' jollies that way. 'Cause that's the way you like it. But can you think of a goddamn reason for doin' something like that, the way we done them women?—of somethin' they could of possibly done to someone else to make that all right, like he's tryin' to tell us?"

  After about four steps, where he got both hands in his pockets and then took both out again, Denny said, uncomfortably, "No.... But you ain't gonna go back there and kill that Mr. Jonas fella, the one who's supposed to be payin' us."

  "Now Mr. Jonas wants it done," Hogg said. "And I can think of reasons for wantin' to do what we been doin'. But Jimmy was up there doin' it with us. And that's somethin' else. Naw, the motherfucker was crazy. He's tellin' us about some reasons ... I know them reasons, I seen 'em before. And lemme tell you, in three days, them reasons weren't gonna be enough for him. And when he starts to feelin' guilty, we're the motherfuckers what gonna get in trouble. I seen it, Denny."

  "I don't know." Denny didn't sound so upset now, but he sounded funny in another way. "Maybe you could've done somethin' else that would have been all right, though ..."

  "I gave him his chance," Hogg said. "I asked him, did he wanna come along and help us on another job. You heard me, I asked him three goddamn times. If he'd come along with us, I wouldn't of harmed a hair on the motherfucker's head. Wouldn't of liked him no more than I did, but I wouldn't've of shot him. 'Cause then he would of been doin' it 'cause he wanted to do it, and maybe it would have come to him that's why he was doin' the other one. But reasons, man? I ain't got time for shit like that. I've let a couple of motherfuckers like that go—more'n a goddamn couple. And I was always sorry. So I give 'em a chance. Give 'em two or three. But I'm not gonna put my ass out for some crazy motherfucker like that to string up—with his goddamn reasons!"

  Denny grunted. "You didn't ask him three times. You only asked him twice."

  "Only asked him twice?" Hogg looked at Denny and frowned. "Well, goddamn, ain't that somethin'! I usually ask the motherfuckers three times. I really do."

  The nigger and the wop came up behind me, laughing about something that must have happened in the bush. Especially the nigger.

  I glanced back at them.

  "Hey, cocksucker," the wop said, and put his hand on my shoulder. "Goddamn . . . I" My shirt was soaked. "Goddamn, cocksucker ..." He shoved me away, but he was still laughing. "You're a goddamn motherfuckin' mess!"

  The wop's boots crutched the gravel siding. The nigger's bare feet shushed the small stones.

  Ahead, Hogg, with one bare foot and one boot, went shush, crutch, shush, crutch, shush, crutch, up to the cab door. He climbed in behind Denny, then leaned out and called:

  "Hey, you like that, cocksucker? You like that, drinkin' up that last good pint? How you like that, huh? Come on, you goddamn little wet-faced, two-bit skunk turd! Get your ass on up here, all of you. We still got work to do!"

  As the nigger and the wop stepped around me, I looked back down the road: under the roadlight, over gravel and asphalt, blood glistened like a sunburst.

  "Here you go, boy." Hogg picked me up over the hedge and set me down beside him on the dark grass.

  Ahead, Denny leaned forward to see in the lighted window. His back was to us. In the faint light, his elbow swung.

  There was a grunt; dead leaves crashed. Dago had vaulted over.

  "Goddamn...!" Nigg whispered. "Will you keep it down, huh?"

  The wop steadied himself on the nigger's shoulder. "Okay, okay.... Let's go, huh?"

  "We're goin', don't worry," Hogg said.

  We walked over the grass toward the house.

  There were white curtains inside, but they weren't completely closed. Hogg and me fell a little behind the others. Once he reached down to pat my ass; and got two fingers in the tear Big Chico had put in my trousers. We stopped, just before the window; I pressed back. One finger slipped in to the knuckle. The other was prodding. "Goddamn..." Hogg whispered. But I couldn't tell if he was talking about my ass or what we were looking at.

  A heavyish woman sat on the couch. She wore a house dress. Her hair was curly and brown and loose. She had on slippers and she was frowning at a paperback novel. One button had come loose on a small triangle of stomach skin I don't think anybody else in the room saw.

  Her husband—I guess it was her husband—sat in a big, green chair by a fireplace which had been converted from gas a long time ago; the gas nozzles had been hammered down. He wore a sleeveless undershirt. His hair was gray; gray hair stuck out from the crease of his armpits. He was very red in the neck. But his arms were pale. He

  was looking at a newspaper folded small.

  A redheaded kid, maybe my age, maybe a year older, sat cross-legged on the tan rug, at a chess board. (The janitor of the building where I used to live had taught me to play chess, which he said I was good at. Before he died.) We could hear the television set: it must have been right below the window—because we couldn't see it.

  The kid moved a piece, but didn't take his hand off.

  The woman uncrossed her legs.

  "Yeah ..." Hogg whispered. We were all crouching. Hogg's face moved next to mine. "That's gonna be some pussy." I felt him close to me, his stubble on my cheek. I smelled him, his sweat and his breath. He chuckled and wiggled his finger and I pushed back against it some more. His arm tightened across my back. "Man, Hogg's gonna have some fun gettin' his pecker into that!" The wop was in front of us now, Denny and the nigger behind. "I'm gonna stick it in that slop box and split her up. And split her down again."

  She put down her book, turned, and look directly at us. Everybody moved, just a little. Except Hogg, who went on:

  "She lookin' at the evenin' news report now. Don't even see us out the window above the fuckin' TV screen. Don't even know in a few minutes I'm gonna have that big ol' pussy wrapped around my dick like greased velvet, like itchy meat, like hot oysters with teeth—"

  It must have been Denny who flung the rock.

  It scared me; but the wop was already hitting out the other big pieces with the flat of his hand. He vaulted up and through. Hogg pushed me up next—the television overturned, and I heard more crashing glass (the tube) and crackling. Then Hogg, the nigger, and Denny came in.

  The woman stood up, but didn't know what to do next.

  The man was about to stand. His eyes went back and forth between us and his wife.

  Hogg's boot hit the chessboard; chess pieces rolled between pieces of glass. The kid, holding his hand over his face—I think he'd been cut—scooted backwards across the floor.

  "What the—" The man lunged. I guess that's what he thought he was supposed to do.

  Hogg hit him in the face.

  The man staggered back.

  Hogg followed and hit him again—in the stomach.

  The man sat down in the easy chair, blinking and gasping.

  Something hit Hogg's shoulder and spun off. It was the paperback book. The woman had thrown it hard as she could. Hogg just flinched his arm a little and didn't even look. She was looking, for something else to throw.

  "... motherfucker," Hogg grunted. He locked both fists together and brought them up against the man's chin. The head jerked. Both the man's hands bounced on the chair arms. He slumped to the side; a dribble of blood came out his ear and wormed down his jaw across his neck. "Shit." Hogg grunted again. "Can't bust a son of a bitch like that hard enough the first time—" Fists still locked—there was blood on his knuckles—he jerked them up again.

  The woman screamed—I turned—and swung the lamp down at the wop's head; she got his shoulder.

  The bulb went out; the glass base shattered and the shade rolled on the floor. The wop put his hand up to his face, took his hand away from his cheek. He had blood on his hands too. He smiled. "You cut me, lady. ..." He licked his bloody palm. "You cut me, lady, and I'm gonna cut you now." His other hand brought the knife out of his pocket. "I'm gonna cut a hole in your belly and fuck it, lady. I'm gonna cut your leg up like a Virginia ham and fry the slices for lunch. I'm gonna hack out a piece of your gut, poke out the shit, and wear it for a ring. ..."

  "... Jesus Christ," the woman whispered, and got back behind the sofa. "Oh, my God. ..." She was still looking.

  Suddenly the wop stooped, lifted up the front edge of the couch: the back crashed into her stomach and knocked her against the wall. I didn't think it was that hard. But maybe she was just scared: "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ..." Her cry went up and down, weakly, and she tried to turn away and pull herself along the wall, palms flat against blue paint.

  Hogg took a handful of the man's hair, held up the head, and punched the mouth so hard the head flew to the side. Things inside

  the mouth broke. "Shit, I like that "He grinned, and picked up

  the lampcord that had the broken bulb and holder hanging from it. "Here, tie the bastard up, nigger."

  The nigger took the man's limp arm and moved around the chair.

  Hogg went to the end of the couch and pulled it, growling over the floor, away. The woman fell against him, flailing. He pushed her back. I guess he thought she was going to fall over the arm of the

  couch, but she didn't. He slapped her, and grinned. " You like that?" He slapped her again, with the other hand, too hard to be playful, but in a playful way. "You like that. . . ?" He slapped her again.

  "Stop it... !" she shrieked. "Oh, for God's sake, stop . . . !"

  Hogg pulled apart his zipper. "Lady, we ain't even started."

  She tried to lunge past him, but he caught her and pushed her back, really hard this time. Only he didn't let go of her dress. She fell back on the couch, and three more buttons broke. She pulled at the cloth once to cover herself, realized she couldn't, and then just pulled her feet back on the couch, watching to see what he was going to do. As her feet went up over the edge, she lost one slipper.

  Hogg bent his knees, hooking his thumb behind his dick. It came out, bobbing.

  The expression that was on her face dropped off. She started to get another expression.

  Hogg chuckled.

  That one dropped off too.

  Hogg stepped sideways in front of the couch.

  "Jesus Christ . . . !" the wop said, and began to laugh, his fist crossed with the fist holding the knife, against his belly. "Look at that fuckin' bitch! She's so fuckin' scared, she's gonna shit."

  "Suck it! "Hogg said.

  She was still trying to pull her dress across her breast; it had a big red circle around the nipple that made me think of the inside of a can of tomato soup.

  Hogg knocked her hand: she jerked it away much further than the knock would have. "Suck it, sweetheart."

  She just blinked. Her hand closed on the edge of the couch cushion, and I thought, at first, she was going to try and throw it.

  "Come on, sweetheart." Hogg bent and pushed her torn dress off both shoulders and stood back. "You better suck it, bitch. Or you gonna be sorry you didn't." He thrust his hips forward.

  She blinked at the swinging head with its loose hood.

  Then piss hit her cheek.

  She jerked her face. He smacked her across the mouth. Which cut his stream. But there was still a wet blotch on her shoulder and one sleeve. Tears of piss crossed her cheek; and in the corner of her mouth was a single drop. She pressed her lips together, pulling them back in her mouth. The drop in the corner rolled to her chin.

  Grinning, Hogg moved his legs apart a little and shifted his hips

  like he was gonna piss again.

  She made a sound.

  He said: "Suck it."

  (The nigger put his hands on my shoulder behind me, to watch. I could feel the head of his dick high on one of my buttocks.)

  "Open wide. Take it in."

  She opened her mouth. A drop ran across her upper lip.

  He leaned forward.

  (The nigger's hands tightened on my shoulders.)

  "Hey, cocksucker," Hogg said, "squeeze my nuts while this bitch is workin' on me. Come on, come on. Squeeze 'em. Hard, motherfucker." I pulled away from the nigger and came forward.

  I reached, from the back, between Hogg's legs. The cloth was cold and still wet. I got his balls in my hand; closed my hand.

  "Tighter, cocksucker!"

  He was rocking backward and forward, so it was hard to help from pulling.

  "Goddamn...!" the nigger whispered. Then, he pushed between me and Hogg, grabbing for her—

  "Hey, nigger!" Hogg said.

  —and yanked her dress the rest of the way down. Hogg pulled free; he was pissing again, his stream spurting around on the couch; but he was laughing.

  I heard her dress go. I heard her underpants tear.

  She tried to push the nigger away, gasping and crying out and biting off the gasps. She had a lot of black hair on her cunt. The nigger yanked up one leg; you could see the raw pussy hanging through like skirt steak. The wop grabbed her other leg—and even though he still had the knife, she struggled pretty hard. The nigger, his mouth wide, squatted, grabbed her over the other leg, and pushed his face into her. I saw the muscles tighten along the back of his jaw—