BALLARD’S NEW SHOES sucked in the mud as he approached the pickup truck. He had the rifle under his arm and the flashlight in his hand. When he got to the truck he opened the door and flicked the light on and trapped in its yellow beam the white faces of a boy and a girl in each other’s arms.

The girl was the first to speak. She said: He’s got a gun.

Ballard’s head was numb. They seemed assembled there the three of them for some purpose other than his. He said: Let’s see your driver’s license.

You ain’t the law, the boy said.

I’ll be the judge of that, said Ballard. What are you all doin up here?

We was just settin here, the girl said. She wore a sprig of gauze ferns at her shoulder with two roses of burgundy crepe.

You was fixin to screw, wasn’t ye? He watched their faces.

You better watch your mouth, the boy said.

You want to make me?

You put down that rifle and I will.

Any time you feel froggy, jump, said Ballard.

The boy reached to the dashboard and turned on the ignition and began to crank the engine.

Quit it, said Ballard.

The engine did not start. The boy had raised his hand as if he would bat at the riflebarrel when Ballard shot him through the neck. He fell sideways into the girl’s lap. She folded her hands and put them under her chin. Oh no, she said.

Ballard levered another shell into the chamber. I told that fool, he said. Didn’t I tell him? I don’t know why people don’t want to listen.

The girl looked at the boy and then she looked up at Ballard. She was holding her hands in the air as if she didn’t know where to put them. She said: What did you have to go and do that for?

It was up to him, said Ballard. I told the idjit.

Oh god, said the girl.

You better get out of there.

What?

Out. Come on out of there.

What are you goin to do?

That’s for me to know and you to find out.

The girl pushed the boy from her and slid across the seat and stepped out into the mud of the road.

Turn around, Ballard said.

What are you goin to do?

Just turn around and never mind.

I have to go to the bathroom, the girl said.

You don’t need to worry about that, said Ballard.

Turning her by the shoulder he laid the muzzle of the rifle at the base of her skull and fired.

She dropped as if the bones in her body had been liquefied. Ballard tried to catch her but she slumped into the mud. He got hold of her dress by the nape to raise her but the material parted in his fist and in the end he had to stand the rifle against the fender of the truck and take her under the arms.

He dragged her through the weeds, walking backwards, watching over his shoulder. Her head was lolling and blood ran down her neck and Ballard had dragged her out of her shoes. He was breathing harshly and his eyeballs were wild and white. He laid her down in the woods not fifty feet from the road and threw himself on her, kissing the still warm mouth and feeling under her clothes. Suddenly he stopped and raised up. He lifted her skirt and looked down at her. She had wet herself. He cursed and pulled down the panties and dabbed at the pale thighs with the hem of the girl’s skirt. He had his trousers about his knees when he heard the truck start.

The sound he made was not unlike the girl’s. A dry sucking of air, mute with terror. He leaped up hauling at his breeches and tore through the brush toward the road.

A crazed mountain troll clutching up a pair of bloodstained breeches by one hand and calling out in a high mad gibbering, bursting from the woods and hurtling down the gravel road behind a lightless truck receding half obscured in rising dust. He pounded down the mountain till he could run no more nor had he breath to call after. Before long he had stopped to buckle his belt and he went lurching on, holding his side, slumped and breathing hard and saying to himself: You won’t get far, you dead son of a bitch. He was halfway down the mountain before he realized he did not have the rifle. He stopped. Then he went on anyway.

When he came out on the valley road he looked down toward the highway. The road in the moonlight lay beneath a lightly sustained trail of dust like a river under a mantle of mist and for as far as he could see. Ballard’s heart lay in his chest like a stone. He squatted in the dust of the road until his breathing eased. Then he rose and started back up the mountain again. He tried to run at first but he could not. It took him almost an hour to make the three miles back to the top.

He found the rifle where it had fallen from the truck fender and he checked it and then went on into the woods. She was lying as he had left her and she was cold and wooden with death. Ballard howled curses until he was choking and then he knelt and worked her around onto his shoulders and struggled up. Scuttling down the mountain with the thing on his back he looked like a man beset by some ghast succubus, the dead girl riding him with legs bowed akimbo like a monstrous frog.