Laugh at me while you can. The last laugh is mine, for it is my stainless steel table you will lie on. The water that flushes away your blood and offal and the last perspiration you ever perspired will be charged to my bill. We’ll see how you like it then when there’s no one left in the round world to snigger to.

At the Bellystretcher he seated himself next to a pair of oldtimers in overalls and denim jumpers and ordered his coffee. He nodded to the two men and they gave him back little nods so distant as to barely qualify as greetings. A fierce anger perpetually ached in him but he’d learned to bank it. The living are capable of revenge the dead cannot exact. He just went back to sugaring his coffee.

He had a horror of people but he’d learned to control this too. All he had to do was imagine them naked and dead on his table with the pump humming their blood away and he’d be able to hold his own.

But on this morning one of the old men would not let him be. He kept sniffing the air ostentatiously and nudging the other oldtimer in the ribs, and after awhile he said, Somethin sure does smell sweet.

The other nodded. Flowers damn sure in bloom somewhere, he said. Breece pretended he didn’t hear him.

The man said, Somebody sure does smell good in here.

Breece turned to face him. He dreamed the old man’s face ashen and slackjawed, the rheumy eyes dry and staring.

Well, it’s obvious it’s not you, he said conversationally. You smell like cow shit and Sloan’s liniment.

It took all he had to say it. He commenced drinking his coffee though it was so hot it almost scalded his throat. The man next rose with his coffee and moved a few stools down. Breece finished his coffee and set the cup down hard. He laid too much money on the counter and rose and went out. The door closed behind him and the small bell chimed once and ceased.

You best leave him alone, Shorty, one of the men called. He ain’t just right in the head. One of these days he’s going to pull out a sawedoff shotgun about a yard long and put you to sleep. Then he’ll drag you by the hair of the head up the street to his parlor and embalm your dead ass.

Hell, I didn’t do nothin, Shorty said. The truth shall set you free. He did smell good. Put me in mind of an old gal off Tom’s Creek I used to go with.



It rained for four more nights and Tyler and his sister opened as many graves. These were nights of cold winter drizzles and sullen heavens with no one about and they felt perhaps rightly that the dark belonged to them. She seemed possessed by this folly. He’d begun to think her mad. Had begun to accept that this madness had infected him as well. For they both by now moved in a peculiar detachment from reality.