“I heard you shoot,” Fat Boy said. “You shot him, didn’t you?”

“Weren’t no choice,” Chaplin said.

“I didn’t mean for nothing like that to happen,” Bill said.

“That’s what I hate about jobs where you got to have guns,” Fat Boy 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 stomach fall 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.”