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Cutter wanted to argue, but his balls were hurting something fierce. It was all he could do to take one breath after another and make like he was fine, and he was determined to do just that. He wasn’t about to let them think him a sissy on top of everything else.

“He been eyein’ that gas station for a while,” someone behind Verne said, calling out to be heard above the rap of rain on a rusted tin gutter nearby.

Someone else called, “Last time was the supply store. Couldn’a been more ’n two months ago.”

A third voice said: “He’s trouble. Been trouble since the day he was born. No wonder his daddy drunk so much.”

Cutter turned a deaf ear to the talk. He’d heard it before. His eyes were on Eugene, whose eyes were on him. He was starting to feel dizzy.

Verne bent over at the waist, rain dripping off the visor of his cap. “So what you got to say for yourself, sonny? Just can’t keep your nose clean, can ya? I’m gonna have to lock ya up again, and if Judd presses charges, you gotta go to Portland. Got yourself a lawyer? Ya may need one this time.”

“He doesn’t have any lawyer,” Eugene muttered. He was looking closely at Cutter, who had broken out in a cold sweat and was ash white. “Doesn’t have any parents, doesn’t have any money, doesn’t have any food from the looks of him.” The knee came off his groin. In a helpless reflex, Cutter rolled to his side and curled up. Eugene’s hand went to his shoulder, ostensibly restraining. “Deep breath,” he murmured in a low voice.

Cutter took a deep breath, then a second when the first one was ragged. After a third the dizziness began to ease. In the next instant Eugene released the pressure on his shoulder and helped him sit up. With all eyes on him, Cutter shrugged off the helping hand.

“So what you got to say for yourself, sonny?” Verne repeated.

“To you, nuthin’,” Cutter answered in a voice deliberately made deep.

“You want to say it to the judge?”

“It don’t much matter. He ain’t gonna give any more of a damn about me ’n you do.”

“Then we might as well give it a try,” Verne concluded and straightened. “Okay, folks. Back to what you was doin’ before Cutter Reid got you out in the rain.” He watched while the first of the onlookers turned to leave. “Judd, you gonna press charges?”

“Damn right I am. He got no right lookin’ to wipe me out that way. I work hard for my money. He ought to try doin’ that for a change.”

Verne turned back to Cutter, who was gingerly pushing himself to his feet. Upright, he was taller than the police chief. He knew that from experience and wanted the advantage it gave.

“You hear that, sonny? You’re in trouble this time. Judd’s gonna press charges, an’ what with everythin’ else you done in the past, it ain’t gonna be good.”

“Nuthin’s good,” Cutter said, in the grip of a familiar bleakness. “Tell me somethin’ I don’t already know.”

“You know what it’s like in prison?” Eugene asked.

Cutter looked off in the opposite direction, not caring what he saw as long as it wasn’t Eugene. He might have gained a physical superiority over Verne in the last year, but he had a way to go to catch up with the big man who owned half the town.

“It’s mean,” Eugene went on, “meaner than anything you ever known. Meaner than anything you ever dreamed. It’s dark and hard and unforgiving, and once you’re in there, you’re a con, then an ex-con. You think it’s tough goin’ through life with your daddy’s name? Well, tack ex-con after it, and see how that feels.”

Cutter thought of Eugene’s big house and his big car and his big bankbook, and made a disparaging sound. “How would you know?”

“I had a friend once. Born right here, just like you. Alvie Joplin, remember him, Verne? No, I guess he was before your time.” He addressed Cutter again. “Car theft was his specialty, only he didn’t do it here, he did it down in Boston. After a time they caught him and put him away, and when he got out, he tried to find a job, only he was an ex-con, and people were nervous hiring an ex-con. Since he wasn’t good at much of anything but stealin’ cars, he tried it again, and they sent him away again. He was longer in gettin’ out that time, and he wasn’t a kid anymore, older and hardened, so when he needed money to eat, he took a job for some quick money. It was right down his alley, stealin’ a car, only he used the car to help his two buddies get away after they robbed a bank.”

“What happened to him?” Verne asked, fully taken with the tale.

But Eugene kept looking at Cutter, who was looking right back at him. “Cops got ’im. Shot ’im. I read that he was in serious condition, so I went to the hospital. Didn’t even recognize him. It had been ten years since I’d seen him. He looked thirty years older. But that was as old as he got. He died the next day.”

Cutter was used to people lecturing him, and there was always a moral to their stories that was tailor-made for him. It was too convenient. “Nice tale,” he said.

“True tale,” was Eugene’s comeback.

“So you gonna learn somethin’ from that, sonny?” Verne asked.

Coming in the breath after Eugene’s vow, Verne’s gloating voice was a rude abrasive to Cutter. “I ain’t gonna learn nuthin’ from you,” he spat.

“Well, that’s just fine,” Verne said, “but you’re comin’ with me whether you like it or not.” When he closed a hand around his prisoner’s arm, Cutter knocked it away. “Watch it, sonny. I don’t want to have to add resistin’ arrest to the charges.” This time, though, when he reached for Cutter, Eugene was the one who stopped him.

“I want him, Verne.”

Cutter’s eyes shot to Eugene while Verne said, “You what?”

“I want him. Let me have him for the rest of the day.”

“You gone mad?”

“Do I look like I’ve gone mad?” Eugene asked, his tone dead serious.

“What are you gonna do with him?”

“That’s between him and me. Any problem?”

“You want him, you got him. But I’d be careful if I was you. Turn your back on him and he’ll be gone.”

“I’m not turning my back.” He took Cutter’s arm. “Let’s go.”

Cutter didn’t resist. He didn’t know why, whether it had to do with the choice being between Eugene and Verne, memory of that hard knee in his groin, curiosity about what Eugene had in mind, or something else. But he went along, albeit uneasily. Eugene was more commanding than Verne any day. He was also stronger, quicker, and more wily. Making a break for it would be hard. Not that Cutter planned to do that, at least not right off. It might be worth sticking around if there was promise of a hot meal in it.

“Where you takin’ me?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

“I want to know.”

“If you wanted to know where you were goin’, you should’a gone with Verne.”

Manacled to Eugene by a single strong hand, Cutter didn’t have much choice but to march alongside him, through the rain and the mud, back to the scene of the crime.

They didn’t talk. Cutter wasn’t good at conversation in the best of circumstances. When they reached the car, Eugene opened the passenger’s door and nudged him in.

He balked then. “I got mud all over me.”

“So do I.”

“Your car’s new and clean.”

“So? I don’t plan on stayin’ out in this rain forever, and I’m sure as hell not goin’ to walk for miles in it. You may be young and insensitive, but I’m gettin’ cold. Now get in.”

He gave Cutter another push, a firmer one this time. Cutter got into the car.

Slamming the door, Eugene rounded the car and climbed in behind the wheel. He shot Cutter a glance. “You missed your chance. The keys were here in the car. You could’a taken off when I was goin’ around.”

But Cutter was cold and tired. It never occurred to him to take off. Not that he was about to tell Eugene that. “I don’t know how to drive.”

“No? So how do you get around?”

“Motorcycle.” He snorted. “Got no gas for it now, thanks to you.”

“You want gas, you can earn the money to buy it.”

Cutter snorted again but didn’t say another word. He thought it was fine and dandy for Eugene St. George to talk about earning money. He lived an easy life, had everything he needed, and if there was something he wanted, all he had to do was open the company till and help himself. No one would call him a thief. No one would come running after him, threatening to lock him up. Some people had it made in life, that was all there was to it, and Cutter wasn’t one of them. He couldn’t earn decent money because he wasn’t trained for a damn thing. The only jobs he could get were ones any idiot could hold. They always bored him so he quit.

Eugene was heading out of town, not in the direction of the big brick home or the gem pits but in the opposite direction, the one that was familiar to Cutter. “Where are we goin’?”

“Your place.” He peered through the windshield. “Is this the turn?”

Instantly Cutter was wary. Folks from town came to his place only when something was wrong, like when his daddy ran the old truck into a tree or when his mama died. “Why are we goin’ to my place?”

“So you can change your clothes. Is this the turn?”

The reason was fair enough. “Yeah.”

As soon as Eugene made the turn, the Lincoln began to bounce on the rutted road, and the deeper into the woods they went, the worse the bouncing became. Momentary relief came with the occasional spin of a wheel, but the tires were new, regaining their traction every time. So the jolting went on. “Jesus,” Eugene breathed at one point, “and you do this on a cycle?”

“I got a hard butt.”

“Must have a hard head. Why in the devil don’t you live in town like everyone else?”

“’Cause this place is mine. It’s all I got.”

“It’s isolated.”

“I like it like that.”

“You ought to be with people.”

“I don’t like people.”

Eugene snickered. “You picked the wrong planet, boy.”

“I didn’t pick a goddamned thing,” Cutter blurted. “It was picked for me. I didn’t have no say at all. Even this house”—which was coming into sight, looking pathetically ramshackle in the rain—“was forced on me, but it’s the only one I got.”

The car came to a stop. Yanking at the door handle, Cutter was quickly out and tramping through the sludge toward his front door. With a single push it was open. He went through without looking back and kicked it shut with a heel, just like he always did. In the next instant, Eugene threw it open again.

“Don’t you have any manners?” he growled.

Cutter hadn’t expected him to come in. He didn’t need help changing his clothes. “What do you want in here?”

“I want to look around.” He was scanning the room with a disapproving look on his face. “You live here?”

“Something wrong with that?” Cutter asked. He didn’t love the place either, but it was the only home he had.

“Sure is. It’s a mess,” Eugene decided. From a battered table covered with dirty cardboard containers and plastic plates, he moved past an upholstered chair whose shabbiness was barely hidden beneath a pile of worn clothes. “It’s filthy, and it smells. Don’t you have any pride?”

“I wasn’t expecting guests.”

“What I’m talking about’s got nothing to do with guests.” He glanced into the shadows, of which there were many, and frowned. “Where do you sleep?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Where do you sleep?”

Cutter hitched his head toward the darkest end of the room, where a narrow ladder led to a loft. In the barely discernible light, the loft didn’t look large enough to hold much. Eugene apparently thought the same thing. “You fit?”

“I manage.” He watched Eugene stare at the loft for another minute before dropping his eyes. They fell on the old, grimy-topped potbelly stove that stood out from one wall.

“Is that for heat?”

“When I got wood.”

“And when you don’t?”

“I make do.”

“You freeze.”

“Hey, man, I’m not the only one. Lots of people around here don’t have heat.”

“Not if I can help it,” Eugene muttered. He tugged at a lamp chain. Nothing happened. “And you didn’t pay your bill.”

“I
couldn’t
pay my bill. Besides, what do I need lights for? When it gets dark, I go to sleep.”

“So how do you read?” To Cutter’s chagrin, Eugene had spotted the books that were sticking out from under the clothes on the chair. “Did you steal them?”

“They’re from the library.”

“Did you steal them?”

“No.”

Eugene lifted one. “
Catcher in the Rye
. Any good?”

“It’s okay.”

“What’s it about?”

“Some kids.” He prayed Eugene wouldn’t ask more. He liked the book, felt a kind of affinity for the rebelliousness of Holden Caulfield, but he had a feeling he’d missed a lot of what the author was trying to say. That was what his teachers had always told him, that he was missing things. Personally, he didn’t care. He liked to read, but he didn’t want to be forever taking apart every line. So he missed some hidden meaning. So what?

When Eugene tossed the book back to the chair, he was relieved, but his relief was short-lived. Folding his arms over his chest, Eugene leaned back against the door. “Got anything clean and dry in this mess?”