Actually, vice did have its moments. Now Lois tells me she doesn't want me to bring my gun home at night. She's into Zen, meditates every day, sends our money to some Buddhist priest out in Colorado, and tells me she doesn't want her kids growing up around guns. Guns are bad, see, but this character out in Colorado that takes my bucks is good. Two weeks ago I came in wired, so she started crying and blowing her nose into a whole box of Kleenex. So I had a couple more hits of Jack Daniel's and told her how you and I had spent the afternoon combing pieces of a fourteen-year-old kid out of the garbage dump with a garden rake. Fifteen more minutes of tears and nose-honking. So I cruise for some booze and almost get nailed on a DUI. Not very good, huh?"

"Everybody has family trouble sometimes."

He was frowning out the window, his thoughts collecting in his eyes. He lit a cigarette, drew in deeply, and flicked the match out into the sunlight.

"Man, I'm going to be a chainsaw by two o'clock," he said. "I'm going to have a couple of beers with lunch. Sedate the brain, settle the stomach, mellow the nerves. Does that bother you?"

"It's your day. You can do whatever you want to with it."

"She's going to split. I know the signs."

"Maybe y'all will work it out."

"Come on, Dave, you didn't get off the boat yesterday. It doesn't work that way. You know how things were just before your wife took off."

"That's right, I do. I know how things were. Nobody else does. You get my drift?" I grinned at him.

"All right, I'm sorry. But when it's going down the toilet, it's going down the toilet. You don't turn it around by leaving your piece in a locker. Pull into that truck zone. It's too damn hot out here."

I parked in the loading zone by Pearl 's and cut the engine. Cletus was sweating in the sunlight.

"Tell me honestly," he said, "would you have done something like that just to please your wife?"