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kill me and have my liver for breakfast."
    "With fava beans and a nice chianti , I reckon."
    The little man scowled. "What?"
    "Never mind," said Sam. "I'll be quick about it. I promise."
    Quietly, he went to work. First he dislodged Millie from the fire plug, which wasn't an easy task. He strained and pried at her silvery head until it finally popped loose with a moist, sucking sound. Sam rolled her body into the bed of the red wagon, then steered it down the sidewalk to where George Pendergast lay, his arms stiff, the fingers gnarled in rigor mortis. It took some doing, but he finally heaved him into the wagon, too. He wasn't sure that he would be able to haul them off, their combined weight was so heavy. But they were both small in frame and two of them put together equaled one John the Accountant. With a grunt and a tug, Sam got the wagon rolling and continued to pull to keep the momentum going.
    When he finally reached the church graveyard, Sam was exhausted. He dumped them in their intended places: George beside his wife, who died of a stroke five years ago, and Millie to the right of Sam's own beloved. She and Estelle had been lifelong friends, so it was fitting that they rest beside each other in death. But when he finally caught his breath and prepared to dig, he discovered that he had forgotten his shovel. Too tired to go back and get it, he simply left them where they lay. He said a little prayer over them – the first prayer he had said in a very long time. After Estelle had passed on, leaving him alone and depressed, he and the good Lord hadn't exactly been on speaking terms.
    He rested a while longer. Then, taking the wagon, he started back for Maple Street. He entered the fix-it shop and collapsed on the little bed in the back room. A wind-up alarm clock on top of the rolltop read 12:47. Sam lay there for a long time, thinking of Millie and George… of Rott and the puppies and kittens, of the bloody skins littering the sidewalks of Maple Street like furry bags with nothing inside. When sleep finally claimed him, it was a fitful one.
     
    That night he dreamt of the boy again.
    Sam was running across the front yard to where the boy sat on the ground, crying and rubbing at his right hand.
    "What's the matter?" he asked him in concern. "Did you hurt yourself?" The boy's fingers were red and swollen.
    He was shocked when the nine-year-old glared up at him angrily. "No! I didn't do it! It was Toby Hawkins and his buddies. Said I didn't need no extra fingers, so they reckoned they'd just yank 'em off. And they tried, Papa! I… I think they're broken!"
    "Here, let me take a look, son."
    But the boy wouldn't let him near him. He scrambled backward in the grass, until his back rested against the trunk of an oak. "Stay away from me! Haven't you done enough?"
    Sam couldn't believe his ears. "What sort of foolishness are you talking, boy?"
    "It's all your fault!" he cried. "You're the one who made me this way!"
    He regarded the boy sorrowfully. "I didn't make you… special … like this. It was God's doing."
    "Then I hate God's guts!" screamed the boy, his freckled face full of rage.
    It sickened Sam deep down in his soul to hear his only son speak in such a way. But he had said nothing.
    Maybe he should have.
     
    The following day was a scorcher. According to the Orange Crush thermometer mounted on the front wall of the fix-it shop, it was 98 degrees in the shade. The heat shimmered in waves in the distance, both coming and going out of town, like a transparent barrier blocking strangers from entering and residents from leaving. Of course that was just an illusion, but that's what it felt like.
    Sam sat in his place as usual, the Winchester resting across his knees and the .45 Colt lying in the seat of Estelle's rocker. Rott and his men were on the other side of the street, milling around, shooting the shit. They had looted the hardware store earlier that morning, taking every gun and round of ammunition they could