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  Two of the fat brothers ran at him, and he reacted.

  Left elbow hard into William’s neck. The front of the throat doesn’t have much bone. All the bone is in the spinal column from the torso to the head, like a bridge between two major bodies of land. The rest of the neck is flesh and wires and the throat. Widow had a lot of force and strength, and he was experienced in using the elbow strike. For him, the trick was not to kill the guy although, in terms of self-defense, he figured he would’ve been well within his legal rights. But he was in Arizona and wasn’t sure about the state’s laws regarding murder and self-defense, and even though he would’ve been found innocent in a court of law, the American justice system still wasn’t much of a picnic, even for the innocent. He had seen military law in action and up close and personal. And he regarded the military to be far more efficient over its civilian counterparts in most of its bureaucracies. Coming face to face with the Arizona justice system wasn’t on the list of things he wanted to do.

  Even when an innocent man was arrested, he was still arrested, imprisoned, and had to await trial if there were charges brought against him. How long would it be before he actually went to trial? Months? A year? No, thank you. Not for Widow. He had zero interest in seeing the inside of a courtroom or a jail cell or even a police cruiser. He had seen more than his fair share of the inside of cop cars.

  He had given the guy a hard elbow to the front of the throat. Maybe enough to cause permanent voice damage, but not enough to kill him. The cracking sound that exploded from the guy’s windpipe was a good indication he would at least never sing again and he was out of the fight. But this guy wasn’t much good at speaking anyway. No real crime there. One down.

  Robert, who might’ve been the fattest of the three brothers, whipped past Widow completely. Which was good because Widow needed to be able to grab the guy from behind. He spun around to face the convertible and Robert’s backside. He reached out and grabbed a big handful of the guy’s carpenter overalls. He jerked him back, pivoted the two of them so that they now faced Willie and his Thompson rifle. Robert was now a huge human shield, and quite a good one, but only if Widow was strong enough to hold him upright, which he was.

  Widow pulled the guy’s shirt and overalls down hard from the back with his left hand, and the guy started to make choking sounds. Widow shoved his right hand into the guy’s open mouth and fishhooked him hard to the right. The fat brother stumbled in the direction of his pull. He didn’t fight back, and he didn’t try to escape Widow’s grip. He simply gave up. Widow had expected some resistance, in which case he was prepared to punch the guy in the kidney hard enough to make him submit and no more, but such a drastic attack hadn’t been necessary.

  Widow said, “Toss the gun!”

  Willie said, “Let ’im go!” and moved the rifle up so the stock was deep in his shoulder, which was the only way to shoot that gun without breaking your wrists.

  “Forget it! Drop the rifle!”

  “No way! Ya let ’im go!”

  “Willie, listen to your brother. William. Hear him?”

  Willie stayed quiet, and Widow stayed quiet, but both of them could hear the Thompson rifle clatter a bit as Willie started to shake. He was nervous, which made Widow smile.

  Willie said, “I don’t hear nothin’!”

  “Exactly. I hit your brother in his jugular.”

  Willie looked blank, like his fourth-grade teacher had just called on him to give his take on the Gettysburg address, and the only syllable he recognized from the question was burg, as in burger.

  Widow said, “His neck. I hit him hard in the neck.” He started to push Robert toward his brother, slow and steady, trying to get closer to the gun. He said, “Do you know what’s in your jugular?”

  “Of course, I know. Your throat’s in there.”

  “Not exactly, but you’re right. That’s what we call the throat, but actually, the throat is higher. It’s behind your mouth.”

  “So what?”

  “So the jugular’s different. It’s the place that’s full of blood vessels and veins and important stuff.”

  Willie’s eyes flickered, and he looked at the side of the truck. Like he was trying to see his brother. Which he couldn’t.

  William was wriggling around on the ground and stomping his feet, but without much force. Each stomp got a little slower and a little slower, like a dimming light.

  They had left their truck running, and the engine hummed and the air conditioner quietly whirred through the internal pipes and vents as it pumped cold air into the cabin. The noises kept Willie from hearing his brother.

  Willie said, “William? Are ya all right?”

  Robert tried to answer, but Widow jerked his mouth hard to the right and pushed him harder to the front. His feet complied, and he moved closer to the barrel of the gun.

  “He’s not moving. He probably passed out already. Might be bleeding internally. You boys got health insurance?”

  “Insurance? Course, we got insurance. State requirement for businesses. Ya see our uniforms, right? Ya see this is a company truck, right?”

  “Insurance is good. Although I’m not sure it will cover a funeral for a fat tub of lard like your brother. I mean, you guys are criminals. And insurance companies always seem to find a way out of paying for funerals. You guys’re just handing them a reason.”

  “What ya talking about, funeral? You da one gonna have a funeral! I’ll shoot ya right here!”

  “You shoot that thing, and your brother here is gonna be the one who will need a funeral. Then you’ll be burying two brothers. Maybe the insurance company will pay in that case because one funeral for two people has to be cheaper than two separate funeral services.”

  Widow stepped closer and closer. He stayed snug behind his human shield, who still complied like a puppet. And he said, “Of course, maybe William will survive. Maybe he’ll just be a human vegetable. You know? Hooked up to all those machines?”

  “What ya talking ’bout?”

  “Willie, I’m talking about William being a veggie. I’m talking about you showing your brother how much you love him. You do love him, right?”

  “Of course, I love my brothers.”

  “That’s good, because if William is a vegetable, he’s going to need you to feed him and clothe him and change his diapers.”

  “What ya mean? Diapers?”

  “Willie, he’s not gonna be able to take a shit by himself. Who you think is gonna change his diapers and wash his ass for him?”

  Willie said nothing.

  “Have you ever seen your brother’s privates?”

  “You shut up!”

  “Willie, you gotta think about these things. If we don’t get William to a hospital, then you’ll have to be able to look at his privates and change his diapers and wash his ass. Are you ready for that?”

  Widow was now about five feet from the barrel of the rifle. He said, “Then again, maybe we can wait longer, and he’ll die. You got a family plot? Got a funeral parlor that your family does business with over the generations of idiots that have made up your family tree?”

  “What? We ain’t got no such arrangement!”

  Widow ignored him and said, “Bet they’ll give you guys a break like a discount. Two for one.”

  Just then, Widow stepped back away from Robert and then pushed off with his back feet and launched the fat brother into the other one and straight into the line of fire.

  Willie reacted and fired the gun and screamed, all at the same time. The gun didn’t fire. Lucky too, because then he really would’ve been burying his brother.

  There were only two possibilities why it didn’t fire. One, the rifle wasn’t even loaded. Which was possible. Widow wasn’t sure that Willie would’ve even known because he had pulled the hammer back and pulled the trigger as if it would fire, meaning that he believed it would. Being a muzzleloader, it was possible to miscalculate the weight. These guns only held one round, which wouldn’t have been much di
fference in weight for him to have noticed.

  The other possibility was that it could’ve jammed, which was a real risk with these rifles. It wasn’t common that a muzzleloader jammed, but it was far from unheard of.

  Robert went tumbling into Willie like one big hippo falling into another. They fell back, off balance, and stumbled backward on top of each other.

  Widow took the chance to make sure they stayed immobile. He jogged over to them, lifted his foot up, and stomped down on the back of Robert’s head. One fat head slammed down into the other. A loud crack echoed off the side of the truck. It sounded like a cement block dropped out of a fourth-story window crashing to a concrete street below, shattering into tiny little pieces.

  Widow stepped back and reached down. He grabbed Robert’s back collar and bunched it up. He rolled him off his brother, who was conscious and cupping his nose, which was inarguably broken.

  Robert squirmed from side to side and turned and spit out his two front teeth. He said something that was mostly inaudible, but Widow guessed it was something about a broken nose or broken teeth or both.

  The other brother was more of a concern because he wasn’t moving at all. Widow rolled him over and tilted his head to the side, waiting to hear if the guy was breathing. He was. His chest moved up and down. His nose wasn’t broken, but his eyebrows were already turning black and red.

  Widow left him there and stepped on the rifle with his right foot. He bent down and picked it up, pulled the barrel down and checked to see if it was loaded. It was.

  He said, “Well, look at that. You’re unlucky. Either that, or you don’t clean the gun very well.”

  Willie said nothing.

  Widow said, “Your brothers are fine, but William will need a hospital. Better get there soon.”

  He took the rifle and walked over toward the desert landscape and faced it. He raised the gun and aimed up at the sky. He cocked the hammer, aimed at a cloud, breathed in and held it. He squeezed the trigger. The gun fired. The kick hammered the stock into his shoulder. A quick whip of white smoke ejected from the gun, and he pulled it away from his body.

  “Fires just fine. You really are an unlucky tub of lard!”

  Widow opened the rifle and pulled the brass out. He dropped it in the sand and stomped it down and down, burying it into the dirt.

  He walked back to the vehicles and looked at the three brothers. The second one was now awake and was rubbing his forehead like he had the headache of a lifetime, which he probably did. All three brothers squirmed around like broken turtles. They were all alive, but closer to death than most people.

  He said, “You’re all unlucky, but at the same time you’re lucky that this is all you get.”

  The girl stood by the driver side door. She clenched it with both hands and said, “That’s it? We’re going to let them get away with this? They might’ve killed us!”

  Widow said, “No. Not completely. We’ll call the cops, but let’s get on the road first. I don’t want to waste time filling out paperwork and reports and so on.”

  “That’s it?” she repeated.

  Widow said, “Look. You can call them and do reports and all that stuff if you want. I’d completely understand. And maybe you should. They might’ve done this before. They might do it again. I understand if you want to make sure that they get locked up.”

  She stared at him.

  “But the truth is that a phone call from the road will do the same,” he said. “The cops will come and arrest these guys and hold them. You can explain that you just wanted to leave as soon as possible. They’ll get it. Believe me.”

  “What about you? What do I tell them about you?”

  “Tell them the truth. Tell them I helped you. Tell them you don’t know me, and I vanished. Which is the truth. I’m not interested in helping the cops any more than I already have.”

  She nodded. She said, “I’m Scarlet.”

  “Widow.”

  She didn’t comment on his name like he’d expected but instead asked, “Do you want a ride?”

  “Of course. Let’s go.”

  Widow started to walk to the convertible, then he stopped and turned and went back to the truck. He grabbed the door lever and jerked it and opened the driver side door. He grabbed the key and switched off the ignition and pulled the key out. He jumped back out of the truck and put the key in his pocket.

  He leaned back in and pulled the lever to pop the hood. He walked around to it, lifted it open, and studied the engine for a moment. Then he started to rip and pull at things that looked important. He had never been a car expert or a mechanic and had no real car experience except for evasive drive training, but he knew that cars and trucks couldn’t run without wires and hoses and caps. So he jerked and pulled and ripped everything that was loose. One thing he jerked out that he could identify was the distributor cap. That was one thing he was certain they couldn’t drive without even though he wasn’t quite sure what the hell it did.

  He took all of the hoses and wires and the distributor cap. He opened the passenger door of the convertible and dumped himself down on the seat. He tossed the entanglement of hoses, wires, and the distributor cap down into the passenger side footwell.

  Widow looked over at Scarlet and said, “Come on. Let’s hit the road.”

  “Okay,” she said and opened the door and sat down. She cranked the car and reversed it so that she could turn the car around and head in the right direction, with the flow of traffic, which was only two oncoming cars, both of which slowed, the occupants leaning out and surveying the three guys on the ground. But neither of them stopped. Widow figured they felt it wasn’t any of their business.

  Ten seconds later, Widow and Scarlet were on the road and on their way to Las Vegas, on their way to getting to know each other, stopping for gas, stopping for coffee, and then continuing on their way to a motel off the Las Vegas Strip. They spent four days and three nights there, entangled in sheets, getting to know each other. The sheets were clean and fresh on the first day, but Widow had opened the door and slipped the do not disturb sign over the door’s knob, and not once did any of the maids or the hotel manager come to knock. But on the third night, a security guard for the hotel came by and hammered a big fist on the door.

  Widow and Scarlet were spent and had been lying there talking, which wasn’t something that they had done much of.

  “Who could that be?” she asked.

  Widow said, “I’ll get it.”

  Scarlet was a beautiful woman. She was tiny but had a frame like an athlete, which matched her profession. She was actually a dancer in a topless burlesque show at Caesar’s Palace. Widow didn’t judge. She claimed it was art, tasteful. He didn’t disagree.

  She explained that she hoped that she still had a job there since she had called in sick two days in a row, but tomorrow she’d have to go. She started to express her fear to Widow that if she didn’t show up on the next night, then management might give her position to an understudy who had been eager to get a spot on stage.

  She had explained to Widow that Las Vegas had unions, and she was a member of one. They couldn’t just fire her without good cause. The casinos all ran on point systems, which meant that whatever the excuse for why an employee wasn’t at work, it didn’t matter. Every absence was worth one point, and two on the weekend. Right now, because of Widow, she had accumulated two points. If she reached five points, then she would be suspended, and seven meant she was terminated. She had to go to work the next night. No question. Because she was already at three, and she couldn’t afford a suspension. That meant two weeks with no pay.

  Widow shrugged and got up from the bed. He stopped in the middle of the hotel room and stretched. She studied his long, thick back like it was the first time she was seeing it. He looked like a tree from the back. His shoulders and arms more like long, thick branches than human body parts. She moved her eyes to one of his arms and studied his sleeve tattoo, which she had seen on the first morning. Scarlet l
iked tattoos, and she liked guys with tattoos, and she liked military guys. She assumed that Widow had once been in the military. There was an Air Force base near Las Vegas. She thought that maybe he was headed to that base to meet with his old military buddies, but he never seemed to mention it.

  Widow acted like a man with nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get there. He hardly talked about himself, and he never explained the tattoo. It was a sleeve tattoo, and his forearm had a stylistic American flag draped around it. It looked like some kind of Army tattoo, but she wasn’t familiar with the specifics of the US military branches. So she didn’t ask.

  Widow searched the floor and the lowlands of the bed comforters and sheets and the clothes that lay at his feet for his pants. It was unusual that he’d go so many days and nights without buying new clothes for himself. It just so happened that he hadn’t needed clothes for a few days. Not his T-shirt. Not his shoes. Not his socks. And certainly not his pants.

  He figured that even if he had never seen the Las Vegas Strip, which was the only reason a million people visited Las Vegas every week, then he’d still leave Las Vegas with a great impression of the city. No doubt. Widow wasn’t the type of guy to exchange phone numbers and emails and Facebook profiles because he didn’t have any of that stuff. He didn’t do Viber or WhatsApp or Snapchat or whatever.

  The giant fist outside pounded on the door again.

  Widow said, “Wait! I’m coming!”

  He bent down and shifted the pile of clothes from one side of him to the other. He found his pants. He pulled them out of the pile and stood up straight. The legs were twisted together like a pretzel. He whipped the pants out in front of him. Once. Twice. Then he put them on and zipped up and buttoned. He walked to the door and unlocked the deadbolt and jolted the door open.

  A heavy guy stood in the doorway, an older black man with a beard and a bald head, freshly shaved. The guy had the frame of a former bodybuilder who no longer put in the effort like he used to. He wore some kind of secondhand, store-bought security guard uniform. One of his hands was empty and down by his side. The other was out in front of him with a big flashlight. The beam was off.