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heard someone say, “Give him air,” and the bulb heads moved away. The face of the snow-headed man moved into his line of sight, and the man bent over him, and he felt the man’s hands at his chest, unbuttoning his shirt. He began to breathe better. He rolled his head to the side and smelled the drying grass, and from that angle he could see the last of the sunlight hanging between the trees, as if a giant with an inflamed hemorrhoid was mooning him.
    The dog-man was repeating himself over and over, and finally Bill realized what it was he was saying.
    “One of us. One of us. One of us.”

Seven

    Bill had a fuse in his dick and it was being lit by the deputy. As the fuse burned down, taking his dick with it, nearing his balls, he knew there was going to be an explosion, but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.
    He just lay on his back on a little spit of land out in the middle of the swamp swarming with water moccasins, and couldn’t move. The deputy, whose jaw was hanging by a stringy strand of flesh, sat on a cypress stump and looked at Bill and moved what was left of his mouth. He couldn’t make a sound, but Bill knew he was saying, over and over, “Cocksucker. Cocksucker. Cocksucker.”
    Bill tried to lift his hands to put out the fuse, but nothing happened. He was confused by this. He had lifted his hands often enough, and had certainly pulled his johnson under some pretty difficult circumstances (such as trying to concentrate while the smell of his dead mother floated into his bedroom from next door and stuck up in his nostrils thick as dirty cotton wads), but now, he couldn’t do a thing with his thing. The fuse was almost to his balls, and when it went, well, it wasgoing to blow him all to hell and back, and it wasn’t going to do his nuts any good either.
    He thought maybe he ought to let it burn down and go. Here he was, all worn out on an isle in a swamp surrounded by water moccasins, a dead deputy dripping his jaw on a stump nearby, and his dick burning away as he lay helpless on his back, so maybe he ought to just lie here and close his eyes and let it all go, blow him out of this life and into nothingness. What was the point of going on?
    He lay there committed to doom, waiting to blow, then decided he couldn’t do that. Couldn’t just lie back and explode into nothingness. He felt stronger suddenly, reached for his dick, found it under a sheet, then heard, “One of us,” and opened his eyes.
    “No, Conrad,” said the white-haired man. “I don’t think so. I think he’s some kind of accident.”
    Bill considered this but couldn’t figure what the man meant by that. He was lying on a bed, naked under a sheet, holding himself, and the white-haired man was reaching over to lift his head with one hand and place a cup of water to his lips with the other.
    Bill looked up into the white-haired man’s face. The face was somewhat fleshy and pink and the eyes were so blue they looked almost purple. The lips were pale, and there was a hint of white stubble on his upper lip and chin. There was a bright light behind the man’s head, and it shined through his pale hair and around his head and looked like a halo.
    Bill drank.
    The dog-man, Conrad, was nearby, almost even with the edge of the bed, snuffling near the old man’s elbow. Conrad lifted his head and poked it close to Bill’s face.Bill rolled his head toward Conrad’s strange snout and pulsating nostrils. He could see the neatly trimmed mustache, under the dog-man’s nose like a trained caterpillar. He was so tired he didn’t really feel surprised, disgusted, or amused. He didn’t feel much of anything.
    The dog-man changed his snuffling from the old man’s elbow to Bill’s face. “One of us,” the dog-man said defiantly.
    “Have it your way,” said the white-haired man, lowering the cup, then lowering Bill’s head onto the pillow. “How are you, son?”
    Bill couldn’t speak. His tongue seemed too full in his