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I put my arm around her shoulders, hooked my hand into her armpit, and hauled her to her feet. She muttered protests and slapped weakly at me with one stinking hand. Lea me lone. Want to go to slee.

And you will, I said. But in your bed, not out here on the porch.

I led her-stumbling and snoring, one eye shut and the other open in a bleary glare-across the sitting room. Henrys door opened. He stood in it, his face expressionless and much older than his years. He nodded at me. Just one single dip of the head, but it told me all I needed to know.

I got her on the bed, took off her shoes, and left her there to snore with her legs spread and one hand dangling off the mattress. I went back into the sitting room and found Henry standing beside the radio Arlette had hounded me into buying the year before.

She cant say those things about Shannon, he whispered.

But she will, I said. Its how she is, how the Lord made her.

And she cant take me away from Shannon.

Shell do that, too, I said. If we let her.

Couldnt you Poppa, couldnt you get your own lawyer?

Do you think any lawyer whose services I could buy with the little bit of money I have in the bank could stand up to the lawyers Farrington would throw at us? They swing weight in Hemingford County; I swing nothing but a sickle when I want to cut hay. They want that 100 acres and she means for them to have it. This is the only way, but you have to help me. Will you?

For a long time he said nothing. He lowered his head, and I could see tears dropping from his eyes to the hooked rug. Then he whispered, Yes. But if I have to watch it Im not sure I can

Theres a way you can help and still not have to watch. Go into the shed and fetch a burlap sack.

He did as I asked. I went into the kitchen and got her sharpest butcher knife. When he came back with the sack and saw it, his face paled. Does it have to be that? Cant you with a pillow

It would be too slow and too painful, I said. Shed struggle. He accepted that as if I had killed a dozen women before my wife and thus knew. But I didnt. All I knew was that in all my half-plans-my daydreams of being rid of her, in other words-I had always seen the knife I now held in my hand. And so the knife it would be. The knife or nothing.

We stood there in the glow of the kerosene lamps-thered be no electricity except for generators in Hemingford Home until 1928-looking at each other, the great night-silence that exists out there in the middle of things broken only by the unlovely sound of her snores. Yet there was a third presence in that room: her ineluctable will, which existed separate of the woman herself (I thought I sensed it then; these 8 years later I am sure). This is a ghost story, but the ghost was there even before the woman it belonged to died.

All right, Poppa. Well well send her to Heaven. Henrys face brightened at the thought. How hideous that seems to me now, especially when I think of how he finished up.

It will be quick, I said. Man and boy Ive slit nine-score hogs throats, and I thought it would be. But I was wrong.

Let it be told quickly. On the nights when I cant sleep-and there are many-it plays over and over again, every thrash and cough and drop of blood in exquisite slowness, so let it be told quickly.

We went into the bedroom, me in the lead with the butcher knife in my hand, my son with the burlap sack. We went on tiptoe, but we could have come in clashing cymbals without waking her up. I motioned Henry to stand to my right, by her head. Now we could hear the Big Ben alarm clock ticking on her nightstand as well as her snores, and a curious thought came to me: we were like physicians attending the deathbed of an important patient. But I think physicians at deathbeds do not as a rule tremble with guilt and fear.

Please let there not be too much blood, I thought. Let the bag catch it. Even better, let him cry off now, at the last minute.

But he didnt. Perhaps he thought Id hate him if he did; perhaps he had resigned her to Heaven; perhaps he was remembering that obscene middle finger, poking a circle around her crotch. I dont know. I only know he whispered, Good-bye, Mama, and drew the bag down over her head.

She snorted and tried to twist away. I had meant to reach under the bag to do my business, but he had to push down tightly on it to hold her, and I couldnt. I saw her nose making a shape like a sharks fin in the burlap. I saw the look of panic dawning on his face, too, and knew he wouldnt hold on for long.

I put one knee on the bed and one hand on her shoulder. Then I slashed through the burlap and the throat beneath. She screamed and began to thrash in earnest. Blood welled through the slit in the burlap. Her hands came up and beat the air. Henry stumbled away from the bed with a screech. I tried to hold her. She pulled at the gushing bag with her hands and I slashed at them, cutting three of her fingers to the bone. She shrieked again-a sound as thin and sharp as a sliver of ice-and the hand fell away to twitch on the counterpane. I slashed another bleeding slit in the burlap, and another, and another. Five cuts in all I made before she pushed me away with her unwounded hand and then tore the burlap sack up from her face. She couldnt get it all the way off her head-it caught in her hair-and so she wore it like a snood.

I had cut her throat with the first two slashes, the first time deep enough to show the gristle of her wind-pipe. With the last two I had carved her cheek and her mouth, the latter so deeply that she wore a clowns grin. It stretched all the way to her ears and showed her teeth. She let loose a gutteral, choked roar, the sound a lion might make at feeding-time. Blood flew from her throat all the way to the foot of the counterpane. I remember thinking it looked like the wine when she held her glass up to the last of the daylight.

She tried to get out of bed. I was first dumbfounded, then infuriated. She had been a trouble to me all the days of our marriage and was a trouble even now, at our bloody divorce. But what else should I have expected?

Oh Poppa, make her stop! Henry shrieked. Make her stop, o Poppa, for the love of God make her stop!

I leaped on her like an ardent lover and drove her back down on her blood-drenched pillow. More harsh growls came from deep in her mangled throat. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, gushing tears. I wound my hand into her hair, yanked her head back, and cut her throat yet again. Then I tore the counterpane free from my side of the bed and wrapped it over her head, catching all but the first pulse from her jugular. My face had caught that spray, and hot blood now dripped from my chin, nose, and eyebrows.

Behind me, Henrys shrieks ceased. I turned around and saw that God had taken pity on him (assuming He had not turned His face away when He saw what we were about): he had fainted. Her thrashings began to weaken. At last she lay still but I remained on top of her, pressing down with the counterpane, now soaked with her blood. I reminded myself that she had never done anything easily. And I was right. After thirty seconds (the tinny mail-order clock counted them off), she gave another heave, this time bowing her back so strenuously that she almost threw me off. Ride em, Cowboy, I thought. Or perhaps I said it aloud. That I cant remember, God help me. Everything else, but not that.

She subsided. I counted another thirty tinny ticks, then thirty after that, for good measure. On the floor, Henry stirred and groaned. He began to sit up, then thought better of it. He crawled into the farthest corner of the room and curled in a ball.

Henry? I said.

Nothing from the curled shape in the corner.

Henry, shes dead. Shes dead and I need help.

Nothing still.

Henry, its too late to turn back now. The deed is done. If you dont want to go to prison-and your father to the electric chair-then get on your feet and help me.

He staggered toward the bed. His hair had fallen into his eyes; they glittered through the sweat-clumped locks like the eyes of an animal hiding in the bushes. He licked his lips repeatedly.

Dont step in the blood. Weve got more of a mess to clean up in here than I wanted, but we can take care of it. If we dont track it all through the house, that is.

Do I have to look at her? Poppa, do I have to look?

No. Neither of us do.

We rolled her up, making the counterpane her shroud. Once it was done, I realized we couldnt carry her through the house that way; in my half-plans and daydreams, I had seen no more than a discreet thread of blood marring the counterpane where her cut throat (her neatly cut throat) lay beneath. I had not foreseen or even considered the reality: the white counterpane was a blackish-purple in the dim room, oozing blood as a bloated sponge will ooze water.

There was a quilt in the closet. I could not suppress a brief thought of what my mother would think if she could see what use I was making of that lovingly stitched wedding present. I laid it on the floor. We dropped Arlette onto it. Then we rolled her up.

Quick, I said. Before this starts to drip, too. No wait go for a lamp.

He was gone so long that I began to fear hed run away. Then I saw the light come bobbing down the short hall past his bedroom and to the one Arlette and I shared. Had shared. I could see the tears gushing down his waxy-pale face.

Put it on the dresser.

He set the lamp down by the book I had been reading: Sinclair Lewiss Main Street. I never finished it; I could never bear to finish it. By the light of the lamp, I pointed out the splashes of blood on the floor, and the pool of it right beside the bed.

More is running out of the quilt, he said. If Id known how much blood she had in her

I shook the case free of my pillow and snugged it over the end of the quilt like a sock over a bleeding shin. Take her feet, I said. We need to do this part right now. And dont faint again, Henry, because I cant do it by myself.

I wish it was a dream, he said, but he bent and got his arms around the bottom of the quilt. Do you think it might be a dream, Poppa?

Well think it is, a year from now when its all behind us. Part of me actually believed this. Quickly, now. Before the pillow-case starts to drip. Or the rest of the quilt.

We carried her down the hall, across the sitting room, and out through the front door like men carrying a piece of furniture wrapped in a movers rug. Once we were down the porch steps, I breathed a little easier; blood in the dooryard could easily be covered over.

Henry was all right until we got around the corner of the cow barn and the old well came in view. It was ringed by wooden stakes so no one would by accident step on the wooden cap that covered it. Those sticks looked grim and horrible in the starlight, and at the sight of them, Henry uttered a strangled cry.

Thats no grave for a mum muh He managed that much, and then fainted into the weedy scrub that grew behind the barn. Suddenly I was holding the dead weight of my murdered wife all by myself. I considered putting the grotesque bundle down-its wrappings now all askew and the slashed hand peeking out-long enough to revive him. I decided it would be more merciful to let him lie. I dragged her to the side of the well, put her down, and lifted up the wooden cap. As I leaned it against two of the stakes, the well exhaled into my face: a stench of stagnant water and rotting weeds. I fought with my gorge and lost. Holding onto two of the stakes to keep my balance, I bowed at the waist to vomit my supper and the little wine I had drunk. There was an echoing splash when it struck the murky water at the bottom. That splash, like thinking Ride em, Cowboy, has been within a hands reach of my memory for the last eight years. I will wake up in the middle of the night with the echo in my mind and feel the splinters of the stakes dig into my palms as I clutch them, holding on for dear life.

I backed away from the well and tripped over the bundle that held Arlette. I fell down. The slashed hand was inches from my eyes. I tucked it back into the quilt and then patted it, as if comforting her. Henry was still lying in the weeds with his head pillowed on one arm. He looked like a child sleeping after a strenuous day during harvest-time. Overhead, the stars shone down in their thousands and tens of thousands. I could see the constellations-Orion, Cassiopeia, the Dippers-that my father had taught me. In the distance, the Cotteries dog Rex barked once and then was still. I remember thinking, This night will never end. And that was right. In all the important ways, it never has.

I picked the bundle up in my arms, and it twitched.

I froze, my breath held in spite of my thundering heart. Surely I didnt feel that, I thought. I waited for it to come again. Or perhaps for her hand to creep out of the quilt and try to grip my wrist with the slashed fingers.

There was nothing. I had imagined it. Surely I had. And so I tupped her down the well. I saw the quilt unravel from the end not held by the pillow-case, and then came the splash. A much bigger one than my vomit had made, but there was also a squelchy thud. Id known the water down there wasnt deep, but had hoped it would be deep enough to cover her. That thud told me it wasnt.

A high siren of laughter commenced behind me, a sound so close to insanity that it made gooseflesh prickle all the way from the crack of my backside to the nape of my neck. Henry had come to and gained his feet. No, much more than that. He was capering behind the cow barn, waving his arms at the star-shot sky, and laughing.

Mama down the well and I dont care! he sing-songed. Mama down the well and I dont care, for my masters gone aw-aaay!

I reached him in three strides and slapped him as hard as I could, leaving bloody finger-marks on a downy cheek that hadnt yet felt the stroke of a razor. Shut up! Your voice will carry! Your-. There, fool boy, youve raised that god damned dog again.

Rex barked once, twice, three times. Then silence. We stood, me grasping Henrys shoulders, listening with my head cocked. Sweat ran down the back of my neck. Rex barked once more, then quit. If any of the Cotteries roused, theyd think it was a raccoon hed been barking at. Or so I hoped.