“Count it out, mister, all of it, and put the money in a paper bag.”
The man did not move but fixed his gaze on Wiley, committing the details of his face to memory. Since he had not spoken to a soul in hours, he cleared his throat and licked his dry lips. “You look like you just come out of, or are going into, the service, boy. How old are you anyway? You wanted something all you had to do is ask, so put up that Colt and I'll oblige.”
Wiley thumbed back the hammer and locked it in place. “I'm not putting down nothing. Just put the money in the bag. Do it.”
“Son, I'll give you one chance to redeem yourself in this moment. Never point a gun at a man unless you fix to shoot him, and never shoot a man without the will to kill him, if need be. Now, I don't believe you have the desire to shoot that Colt in your hands.”
“Shut up.” He wagged the pistol at him. “Do what I tell you—”
“There can't be more than seventy, eighty dollars in here. You reckon a man's life is such a paltry sum, you go on ahead. Like I said, had you first asked, I'd a given you what you need, no questions, but you do me a harm, and the price of my life is your soul.”
“Shut up. You think I won't shoot you over seventy dollars, but that's where you're wrong. And if you are willing to spend your life at such a price, you place little value on it.”
“You share my disdain for life, son. But do not sell your soul so cheaply.”
Through the screendoor, Erica could see them arguing, so she fingered the pull trigger and slipped inside, brandishing the shotgun. The man behind the counter heard the door squeal on its hinges, saw the shadow enter the room. He remembered the pen, snug in his hand, and lifted it to make one final point. The shot left a quarter-sized hole in his shirt, hitting the pectoral muscle and passing through his back below the right scapula, twisting his frame like a boxer's jab. Without the noise and flash, he may not have realized the first shot, but the second, coming from the front of the store, felt like the sting of a host of wasps, the birdshot peppering the side of his face and blowing a hole through the hanging display of poker cards beyond his shoulder. The second shot echoed the first, a call and answer, the quake and the aftershock. The man fell to the floor, his face and neck bubbling blood, and Wiley and Erica froze, wondering what had possessed the other, the instant passing back and forth in hard stares, inscribing itself on the memory like a name on a stone. She cast off the wickedness that had leapt into her hands and dropped the shotgun with a clatter.
“You killed him,” Wiley screamed at her.
“I thought he was going to shoot you. Is he dead?”
Holding the pistol like the end of a rope, Wiley pulled his way forward, peering over the edge of the counter at the body on the floor, a red blot blossoming from the man's shirt, the skin on the side of his face and neck flensed and tattered. In his clenched fist, the pen rested between sentences. One of the man's shoes was untied, causing Wiley to reflex-ively check his own laces before he clambered over the counter and emptied the till, pausing long enough to stuff a handful of Hershey bars in his pocket. “He appears to be dead, but that was a pen, you idiot, not a pistol. We better get out of here in case someone comes, or he decides on resurrection.”
Disbelief cemented her to the spot, the fear that if she moved, the present could not be rewound to the moment before the gunfire, and further still to morning, when she last found Wiley irresistible instead of loathsome and dangerous. If she stood still, she could will time's revolution counterclockwise and halt the hurtling motion into the awful future. Wiley brushed past her, barking to pick up that gun and follow, but she did not move, and he was gone, leaving her alone in the store with that bloodied man, dead or dying. In a dusty corner by the flour and sugar and faded canned goods, the girl materialized. Neither smiling nor frowning, the girl appeared before her to reproach with silent witness, eyes round and knowing behind the crooked glasses. They watched each other across the room, hesitant to move or speak and break the spell. Una fingered the hem of her jacket and rolled on the balls of her feet. “You better go,” she said, “lest he leave you behind like an abandoned child in this forsaken place.”
Erica intuited that the apparition might vanish if she took her eyes off the girl. “I wrote you, like I promised. But I always meant to ask: what was your mother's name?”