Before Hydro killed the two lovely children, he had been having a pretty good day, this one day, a Sunday, excellent in fact. Hydro was about twenty and didn’t have real good sense, but he did a pretty good job looking after Mr. William Tell’s store. Mr. William Tell said he couldn’t complain. First thing he did the day of the killing, even before his friend Louis got there, was he ate a peach pie, the whole thing, with a big steel spoon, which his daddy packed in his lunch bucket. Deep dish, crust tough as a saddle. Fresh peaches, too, grown on stunted little black peach trees out on the island, beyond the fishshack, gathered in peck-sized baskets.
Then, after Hydro ate his pie and rinsed off his spoon (wrenched it off, he said), he pumped a few gallons worth of red gas, one dollar two dollar, off and on, all day long, for whoever came by. He sold a few half-pints of Mr. William Tell’s whiskey, some bonded, some white, including some potato whiskey that smelled like coal oil.
After that was when Hydro’s best friend, little Louis McNaughton, came out to visit with him and read some comic books. Louis was not but ten years old and fat as a butterball, wore round pink-rimmed glasses. Louis was the doctor’s boy. Louis could stay gone from home all day and nobody would miss him. Louis was back in the pantry, where Mr. William Tell stored the bootleg, sitting on the floor, reading old Gerald McBoing Boings and Tales from the Crypt. Nobody in Mississippi had a comic book collection that could beat Hydro’s.
Hydro hollered, “Louis, you want some Dinty Moore?”
Dinty Moore stew was for special days only, like today. Confession day.
That’s another reason this day looked like it was going to be a good one. Leonard Reel had come out to William Tell to confess his sins to Almighty God. Leonard Reel was an extra-fat melancholy man. He kept quails in a chicken house in his backyard and picked up truck drivers at the Shell station out by Fort Pemberton and usually wanted to kill himself after sex with them. It was a pretty good confession, first few times you heard it, but then it got tiresome after a while. That was Hydro’s opinion, anyway.
Louis hollered, “Okay.” He meant he would have some stew with Hydro and the others. Hydro knew Louis wouldn’t be getting any supper at home, he might as well eat out here.
Hydro said, “But if you eat stew, you have to listen to Leonard confessing. It’s one of Mr. William Tell’s rules.”
Louis said, “Is Mr. Magoo Gerald McBoing Boing’s daddy or granddaddy or what?”
Preacher Roe was in the store, of course, to listen to Leonard confess. He wore a black shirt and backwards collar, almost like a Catholic. He was tall and smart and wore an eye patch.
Two blues singers were out at the William Tell for a while, Blue John Jackson, the big man, and The Rider, the albino. They said they were headed on over to the knife fight in Holcomb, they would have to skip the confession today.
Preacher Roe looked up. He said, “There’s a knife fight in Holcomb?”
Hydro served up the stew and Leonard Reel confessed. There wasn’t much to tell, but he gave it all he had. Leonard said he peeked in a shower stall and saw a truck driver lathering up. He drew the story out as well as he could, but there wasn’t much more to it than that.
Preacher Roe looked a little disgusted. He said, “You mean to say all you did was peek at him?” He looked to Hydro like he would rather have been at the knife fight, if that’s all he had to confess.
Before confession was over one more person showed up, Morgan, the sharpshooter, in the pickup he got when he was living down in Texas. Morgan was tiny as a midget, almost. He was a foundling, got raised up by a hoodoo woman, and it stunted his growth. He looked like a department store dummy, perfectly shaped. Nineteen years old, with yellow hair and rosy cheeks and red lips. Ever since he got back from Texas Morgan wore white shirts and a black leather vest and cowboy boots. He had stopped by the William Tell Grocery to pick up oil for his truck, it was smoking pretty bad.
Preacher Roe said, “Hey, Morgan.”
Morgan just looked at him.
Preacher Roe said, “I don’t guess you got anything you want to confess.”
Morgan looked away, and so Preacher Roe dropped the subject.
Out behind William Tell, just beyond the back stoop, a sugarcane field stretched far out across the Delta, under the golden sun, all the way to the flatwoods. The sugarcane was fenced off from the backyard of the store by four strands of barbed wire. Large, kitelike birds circled high above the swamp. Hydro was having a good day.
After confession, the sharpshooter looked out the back door of the store across the sugarcane. There was a big watermelon sitting on the back porch of the store. He said, “Hydro, what’ll you take for that watermelon?”
Hydro said, “That’s Mr. William Tell’s personal watermelon.”
Morgan was carrying his silvery pistol in his hand.
Morgan said, “It’d be some good dessert, to top off that stew.”
Morgan opened up his pistol, and the cylinder gate flipped out with what you might call a hush of oiled nickel. He checked to see was it loaded. Then he snapped the cylinder back into place.
Hydro said, “I guess it would, at that.”
Morgan stuck his pistol in the front of his pants. He said, “That wasn’t no real confession we just listened to, I hope y’all realize that.”
Louis finished his stew and went back in the pantry to read some more comic books.
Leonard said, “Turn that light on in there, Louis, you going to put out your eyes, reading in the dark.”
Preacher Roe said, “You’re probably thinking about Mexican confession.” He was talking to Morgan.
Morgan spun the pistol on his finger. He flipped it over to his left hand and spun it again. He shrugged and didn’t say anything else.
Hydro picked up all the dirty plates and ran some water in the sink and squirted in some Joy and made it foam up.
Morgan asked if Hydro wanted to see some pistol-shooting.
Hydro said okay. He said his daddy, out on the island, loved to shoot a pistol in the house, it was one of his favorite things.
Everybody else thought watching some pistol-shooting would be okay, too, even Louis.
Morgan said, “I heard your daddy shoots the refrigerator. Don’t it melt the ice cream?”
Hydro said, “He don’t keep frozen goods in the one he shoots.”
Somebody said sharpshooting was about the only thing that could tear Louis away from Plastic Man.
Louis McNaughton could hear them out there, from where he sat in the pantry. He had plenty of good reason to hate the sharpshooter, and everybody knew it, but Louis didn’t say anything. He just laid his comic books aside and followed the others out the door.
Hydro went out in back of the store and lugged the watermelon down the steps, a big green-striped number, and dumped it into a wheelbarrow and rolled it over to the barbed-wire fence on the edge of the sugarcane field.
It took him a while, but he was finally able to wedge the melon between the top two strands of barbed wire, like the sharpshooter showed him. It just hung there in between the strands of wire. He pushed the wheelbarrow off a little to the side.
Morgan said, “I’ll give you two bits for them cantaloupes I seen in the store.”
Hydro went back inside for the cantaloupes.
Leonard Reel said, “Ain’t you hot?” Talking to the preacher about his black shirt.
Preacher Roe said, “It’s for the Lord.”
Hydro came back outside with the cantaloupes. He looked across the sugarcane field in the direction of Roebuck Lake, where he knew his daddy was cleaning fish on the island, far away. He wished his daddy was here to see some trickshooting. He missed his daddy when he was away from him too long.
Preacher Roe said, “That’s a mighty fine looking pistol, Morgan. Truly it is. That would be a genuine Texas six-shooter, it looks like, now, wouldn’t it?”
Morgan held the big pistol up and let the afternoon sunlight catch the chrome like a mirror. He twirled it on his finger.
He said, “It takes some practice.”
Leonard said, “I wouldn’t mind shooting a pistol like that myself.”
Preacher Roe said, “You don’t know the first thing about a pistol, Leonard.”
Hydro’s friend Louis, the little fat boy, pushed his glasses up on his nose. Louis said, “Let me hold that pistol.”
Everybody looked at Louis. Morgan especially looked at him. He said, “Not today, Junior.”
The sharpshooter turned to the others now. He told Hydro, “Balance one of them cantaloupes up on a fence post, down to the right of the watermelon. Just hold on to the other one.”
Hydro put the cantaloupe on the fence post and walked back up on the porch with the other three men. Hydro said, “Is this going to be some trickshooting? Is this going to be some Wild West Show shooting, Morgan?”
Morgan spun the pistol so fast it looked like a hubcap. He said, “You know, I took that oil-burning pickup of mine away from a Mexican.”
Everybody nodded their heads, they knew about it.
Hydro said, “Is this another confession?” Morgan didn’t answer so he decided to shut up.
Leonard said, “You stole it from him?”
Nobody wanted to ask if he killed the Mexican.
Morgan said, “What’s a wetback doing with a truck in the first place?”
The others nodded. That’s right, sure is, right as rain. Hydro still thought it would make a fine confession.
There was no remembering Morgan’s hand moving from his side, or the silvery pistol leaving his belt. Everybody was watching, even the boy, and especially Hydro, but they just didn’t see it. There was no slow motion, or stop-action, none of the usual ways of seeing a thing that you can’t see except in the memory of it. No blur, even, no glint of chrome in the afternoon light.
Only, one moment, Morgan standing at ease on the back porch, with his hands by his side and speaking of his truck, and the next moment a roar, an explosion of high caliber ammunition, and a streak of fire a foot long blazing out of the end of the barrel.
In Hydro’s memory, the explosion in Morgan’s hand was a single report, boom, like a cannon, loud enough to cause a lengthy echo and cause the circling birds overhead, above the sugarcane, to tilt in the air from the sound as it reached them, but in fact what he heard was not one shot but six, faster, closer together, than he could imagine a trigger being pulled twice, or even once, let alone six times in succession. Hydro stood there in amazement and love.
The first bullet hit the cantaloupe dead center, and before the spray of juice could even reach the outside air, the second bullet struck, and before the fissure in the cantaloupe rind could open up, the third bullet hit, and the little melon exploded, rind and meat and seeds and guts, and blew apart backwards into the sugarcane.
The other three shots hit the ponderous old green-striped watermelon, suspended above the earth in barbed wire, and broke it apart. It collapsed into a low ditch in three big ugly pieces, like a fat man falling down and breaking apart, the meat as red as guts. The big dark birds circling above the swamp, tilting at the sound of the gunfire, neither gained nor lost altitude, and only kept circling and circling above the trees and cane.
Hydro fell in love with the sharpshooter. He didn’t love him as much as he loved his daddy, who shot the refrigerator for love and a memory of the heart; and Hydro’s bones didn’t ache for him the way they ached for his mama, who he never knew, a long time gone; and he didn’t even love him as much as he loved Louis, the strange child who was the doctor’s boy and who shared Wonder Woman and Green Hornet—but you couldn’t watch anything as beautiful as two melons busting open and slick seeds blowing out into a sugarcane field without falling in love.
The sharpshooter released the cylinder and ejected the spent shells. He reached into his pants pocket and took six new cartridges from a small, green pasteboard box and reloaded the silvery handgun and put the little box of bullets back into his pocket.
He handed the spent casings to the child. He said, “Little souvenir for you, sport.”
Louis took the bullet casings and stuck them in his pocket and rattled them like loose change and suppressed his hatred of the sharpshooter.
Nobody said anything much for a few minutes. The sharpshooter put the gun back in the front of his pants. Hydro was still holding onto the second cantaloupe, shifting it in his hands, first one hand and then the other. He wanted to say something to the sharpshooter, to ask him the meaning of guns, or of love, but even Hydro knew he didn’t have good sense and wouldn’t have no idea what to say, what was the right question to ask.
After a while Preacher Roe stepped down off the porch and walked out to the fence where the pieces of the striped melon lay. He took a Barlow knife out of his pocket and bent over and cut a big hunk of heart out of the busted melon and scraped the seeds off with the blade and then wiped the blade on his pants.
He put a piece of melon in his mouth and the juice ran down his chin. He said, “Sweet as sugar candy.” He cut out another hunk and brought it over to Louis.
Leonard Reel stepped down off the porch then. He said, “Long as you got your knife out, Preacher Roe, why don’t you cut me off a stalk of that cane?”
Preacher Roe reached his arm through the barbed wire as far out as he could and snagged a stalk of sugarcane and bent it towards him. When it was bent down pretty good, he cut through it with his Barlow knife and pulled the whole stalk back through the fence.
He cut off a length of cane about six inches long and stripped away the hard green bark and handed it to Leonard.
Leonard chewed and sucked on the cane.
Preacher Roe said, “Don’t let that sugarcane be reminding you of nothing Leonard.”
The two men smiled together at the small joke. Leonard held up the shank of cane. He said, “I ain’t going to need to confess over this.”
The men were quiet for a while. Louis’s hands were sticky from the melon. Leonard offered a stalk of sugarcane to Louis, but he shook his head.
In a minute, Morgan said, “Hydro, stand out yonder by the fence.”
Hydro would do anything Morgan told him. He didn’t even say, “How come?”
Hydro walked down the steps, off the porch, and stood out by the fence. He was still carrying the second cantaloupe.
Morgan said, “See can you balance that lope up on your old melon head.”
Hydro said, “Balance it?”
Morgan said, “Go on.”
Hydro lifted the cantaloupe up and put it on top of his head, but it wouldn’t stay. When he started to let go of it with his hand, it rolled off. He had to catch it and try again.
Hydro said, “It’s kindly round-bottomed.”
Morgan said, “Don’t drop it.”
Hydro stood out by the fence holding the cantaloupe on his head with one hand. His other hand hung down by his side.
He said, “You are a crack shot, ain’t you, Morgan?”
Morgan took out his pistol. He looked at Leonard, and then he looked at Preacher Roe.
He said, “I don’t know which one of them melons to aim at, the one on top or the one on bottom.”
The four men chuckled a little, Hydro too. Hydro didn’t mind being the butt of a joke, now and then. It was all part of a good day, today.
Hydro said, “I’d say the one on top.”
The men laughed again, and Hydro realized he had made a joke.
The sharpshooter turned to the others. He said, “Who wants first shot?”
Preacher Roe and Leonard just stood there.
Morgan looked at Leonard. He said, “Have you ever shot a pistol?”
Leonard said, “Well, no.”
Morgan held out the pistol for him to take. He said, “Hold it with both hands, then. To steady it good.”
The pistol passed between the two men, and Leonard stood there holding it.
Morgan said, “Go on.”
Leonard said, “Go on?”
Preacher Roe said, “Be careful. Aim a little high, maybe, just to be safe.”
Leonard said, “You want me to—?” He looked out at Hydro, with the cantaloupe on his head.
Hydro called, “Try not to shoot me in the head.”
Leonard held the pistol out in front of him with both hands.
He cut his eyes over at Morgan, and then looked back at Hydro. He said, “You know what? This thing feels fine.”
Preacher Roe said, “Aim a little high, Leonard. This might not be such a great idea.”
Hydro called out again, “Try not to shoot me in the head, okay?”
Morgan said, “Cock back the hammer first.”
Leonard did as he was instructed.
Just then the pistol went off. It sounded like a car running up on a metal bridge across the swamp, ba-rong.
Everybody looked at Hydro, who hadn’t moved.
Morgan said, “Goddamn! Excuse my French, but give a person some warning.”
Hydro was still holding the cantaloupe on his head.
Morgan said, “Lemme see that gun, Leonard.”
Just then Leonard cocked the pistol, held it out in front of him again, and fired off another shot.
The men looked at Hydro again. He still hadn’t moved.
Hydro said, “I heard that one in the air, it come whizzing past my ear.”
The sharpshooter took the pistol from Leonard.
Leonard said, “That’s pretty good for a first try.”
Preacher Roe said, “Beginner’s luck.”
Morgan handed the pistol to Preacher Roe.
Preacher Roe took it and held it in his hand for a minute. He said, “It’s warm as toast.”
Morgan said, “Your turn, Preacher.”
Preacher Roe said, “I never claimed I could hit anything with a pistol.”
He held the heavy pistol out in front of him. Hydro smiled like he was having his picture taken. The preacher pulled the trigger, one time, two times, blam, blam, and missed both times.
Hydro kept standing by the fence. He called out, “My arm’s getting tired.”
Leonard said, “Did you hear the bullets, Hydro?”
Hydro said, “No, sure didn’t.”
Leonard gave the preacher a look. Preacher Roe said, “I aimed a little high, just to be safe.”
Morgan took the gun away from Preacher Roe.
Morgan walked out to where Hydro was standing. He said, “Okay, Hydro, give it here.”
Hydro took the cantaloupe off his head and held it in front of him in both hands, like a bowling ball.
He said, “My arm was getting tired.”
He handed the cantaloupe to the sharpshooter. Morgan took the melon and handed the pistol to Hydro.
Morgan said, “You shoot it.”
Morgan bent over and pounded one end of the cantaloupe down on the ground and flattened it. He put it up on his head and held it for a minute until it stayed. He stood out by the fence with the lope balanced up on his head. Morgan was so short the canteloupe made him look normal height.
Hydro said, “Me?”
He said, “Get back over there by the porch.”
Hydro walked over to the porch and turned back around, with the pistol dangling by his side.
Hydro said, “Morgan—”
The sharpshooter shouted, “What?”
He said, “I don’t think I want to do this.”
Morgan yelled, “Shoot it.” Hydro started to raise the gun, then dropped his hand by his side again.
Morgan shouted, “There is no hope, Hydro. Do it because we’re all alone in the world.”
Hydro said, “Don’t talk like that, Morgan. Please don’t.”
Morgan yelled, “Do it because your daddy’s going to die some day. Do it because you won’t ever see him again, you won’t be able to live at the fishcamp.”
Hydro raised the pistol out in front of him and cocked the hammer. He had started to cry. The gun was heavy but it did not tremble in his hands.
He said, “Don’t tell me bad things, Morgan.”
Morgan yelled, “Do it, Hydro. Shoot the fucking cantaloupe. Shoot it now.”
Leonard and Preacher Roe weren’t even watching as the cantaloupe exploded on Morgan’s head, seeds and meat and rind. They were already walking back inside the store. They might play some checkers. Mr. William Tell had Chinese checkers, if Hydro hadn’t lost all the marbles.
Louis was watching, though, the child. Louis was transfixed. He saw everything, surface and core. He watched as the big chrome revolver jumped in Hydro’s hand, fire and white smoke from the barrel, cordite in his nostrils. He watched as the melon took the bullet into itself like oxygen into healthy lungs, took it like milk into a baby’s mouth from a mother’s breast, swallowed it and made it a good part of its good self.
The melon blew backwards off of Morgan’s head, weightless almost, as if it had been a dustbunny swept away with a straw broom. Louis knew, without knowing, that the power of bullets was meaningless illusion, like movies, like card tricks and ventriloquism. Cantaloupe parts went everywhere, meat and seed and rind and sugar water, a million droplets, fragments, into the air. The air around Morgan’s head, where the cantaloupe burst, was like a golden aura, a halo of cantaloupe juice.
Morgan didn’t even look back at the cantaloupe, where it lay in the weeds behind him. He walked to Hydro and took the pistol and shucked out the empties and handed them to Louis and reloaded and stuck the pistol back in his pants. He grabbed the bottom of the leather vest with his hands and snapped it like a whip.
He said to Louis, the little fat boy with pink-rimmed glasses, “Hydro can shoot like a motherfucker, cain’t he, four-eyes?”
THAT WAS all that happened for a while. Later on, after the sun went down, Hydro turned on a light out by the pumps. Morgan’s truck needed four quarts of oil. The four men and Louis stood together in the driveway while Hydro raised the hood and filled up the crankcase. Louis thought of his mother and father and his little sister Katy at home. Hydro thought of his daddy, out on the island at the fishcamp. Hydro didn’t hold it against Morgan for talking so mean, for saying those things about his daddy dying. He knew it was just a way of talking, just a way of wishing you were dead.
Morgan walked around his truck, kicking his tires, hanging around. He wiped off his hands on Hydro’s oily rag and handed it back to Hydro.
He said, “One time, late at night, I went in this diner, down in El Paso.”
Hydro loved to hear a story. He said, “What’s a diner?”
Preacher Roe said, “It’s like a café in a streetcar.”
Hydro said, “What’s a streetcar?”
Preacher Roe said, “Hush up, Hydro.”
Morgan walked around in back of the truck. He said, “I’m going to pump me two dollars’ worth of red gas, while I’m at it.”
Leonard said, “You need to get out more, Hydro. Get your daddy to take you to Greenville some time.”
Hydro checked the dipstick one more time and slipped it back in the tube. He screwed the crankcase cap back in place and slammed down the hood. He wiped his hands on an oily rag and went back and took the hose from Morgan and pumped the gas.
The day was about over. Preacher Roe said, “Well, I got to be going. You coming with me, Leonard?”
Leonard said to Morgan, “What about the diner in El Paso? You’re not going to leave us hanging, now are you?”
Morgan said, “It was this boy and girl, sitting together in a booth. That’s all. That’s all I meant to say. They were just sitting there, eating tortillas.”
Leonard said, “Hydro, don’t go asking what a tortilla is. I mean it.”
Preacher Roe said, “I got to be moving on down the line. Thanks for the Dinty Moore, Hydro. Let’s go, Leonard. You coming or not?”
Leonard said, “Are you sleeping out here at William Tell these days, Hydro?”
Hydro said, “Mostly weekends.”
Preacher Roe said, “Mr. William Tell, he’s good to you, isn’t he?”
Hydro said, “He’s okay.”
Leonard said, “Yeah, I’m coming. I got to go feed my quails. They’ll be wondering where I’m at, about now.”
Preacher Roe said, “Well, get in the car, then. Let’s go. I’ll drive you by the house.”
Preacher Roe said, “Flies’ll be getting in that watermelon, out by the fence.”
Hydro said, “I’ll clean it up. I’ll bury it in the sugarcane field.”
Leonard said, “Bye.”
Preacher Roe said, “Leonard, we all loved the part about you sneaking a look at that truck driver in the Shell station showers.”
Hydro said, “I liked the part where you wanted to die. That was my favorite.”
Preacher Roe said, “Okay, y’all take it easy, we’re taking off now.”
Preacher Roe and Leonard drove off in the preacher’s car. The others watched it move on down the road, out of sight.
Morgan turned to the little boy. He said, “Get in the truck, short stuff. I’ll drop you off at your house. I know where you live.”
Hydro said, “Ain’t you going stay out here with me, Louis? I got Gerald McBoing Boing.”
Morgan said, “Ain’t no skin off my ass.”
The truck was smoking when it pulled away, up the gravel drive towards the highway. Through the rear window you could just barely see the back of the sharpshooter’s head, he sat so low in the seat.
Louis said, “You got the new Gerald McBoing Boing?”
Hydro said, “Did you get enough supper? I got some hot tamales and crackers, if you’re still hungry.”