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said. “I hate it.” Fat Boy drove off peeling rubber. “I hate it big. I knew someone was gonna get shot.”
    “Well,” Chaplin said, “it weren’t you, so that’s good.”
    “It ain’t good,” Fat Boy said. “It ain’t good at all.”
    “It don’t matter now,” Chaplin said, counting the money. “Goddamn, we got maybe three thousand dollars here.”
    At that moment there was a loud explosion and the car’s rear end did a quick dodge to the right, went off the road and into a ditch, turned over and righted again next to the woods.
    Bill licked blood off his mouth and let his stomachfall back down to its proper place. He had taken a bite out of the seat in front of him, but all his teeth were still intact, and his tongue wasn’t bit in two. He only had mashed his lips.
    Chaplin sat next to him, very still. The sack with the Roman candles had been in front of Chaplin, and the wreck had driven him forward into one of them; it had fitted itself snugly into his eye socket. He was bent at the waist with the candle in his eye. He had one hand on the candle as if to pull it out, but he hadn’t lived long enough. Blood ran along the candle and down over his hands and spilled into his lap and onto the car seat.
    Fat Boy, who had a split bloody nose and a knot on his forehead big enough to wear a hat, turned in his seat, held his head, and looked at Chaplin.
    “Shit!” he said. “Shit!”
    Bill opened the door, stumbled out and fell down. Fat Boy got out. He leaned against the side of the car. He said, “Blowout. Fuckin’ tire blew out. Dumb shit Chaplin could have stole a better car.”
    Bill fell down and lay on the grass for a moment, then got up. He used his pocketknife and a few hard kicks to open the trunk, pulled out the jack, the tire iron, and the spare.
    “What you doin’?” Fat Boy said.
    “What’s it look like?”
    “Chaplin’s dead!”
    “He ain’t gonna get no more alive if we leave the tire flat. We got to get out of here.”
    Bill put on the emergency brake and set to work jacking up the bumper to get at the blown tire. It was a real job in the dark and Fat Boy continued to wander aboutthe car like a lost duck. He seemed to want to go somewhere but couldn’t quite figure which direction to take.
    “Get your ass over here and help with these lug bolts,” Bill said.
    Fat Boy lumbered over and got the lug wrench and went at it. He worked the bolts loose, popped two of his knuckles open in the process, pulled the tire off. Bill slipped on the spare. Fat Boy screwed down the bolts and Bill lowered the wheel and Fat Boy tightened them. Bill rolled the bad tire off into the woods and tightened down the trunk lid with a piece of a coat hanger he found back there. They got in the crumpled car, Bill on the passenger side now, and Fat Boy drove them out of there.

Three

    They drove along the highway very fast and passed a deputy sheriff’s car running emergency lights and siren.
    “Shit,” Fat Boy said. “Is that for us?”
    “Got to be. Or at least for the shooting. Someone must have heard it and called. You think anyone could have seen us in the dark?”
    “Ain’t that dark,” Fat Boy said. “And the stand had lights. We got to hide this car.”
    “Can’t we dump it near your car?”
    “Too far away. In a minute them cops’ll be on our ass like hemorrhoids.”
    Fat Boy found a little road to the right and took it, drove down into the thick woods. The headbeams showed sparkles to the left and right. Bill realized there was water in the woods.
    “Where the hell are we?” Bill said.
    “I ain’t never been down here,” Fat Boy said. “But I know it’s the bottoms. I know some niggers fish down here all the time. They say you get down in here good, ain’t nobody ever gonna find you. There’s supposed to be enough bodies down here, you could dig them all up and count ’em, there’d be enough to fill a town.”
    Fat Boy threw an eye on the rearview mirror, said,