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'Well', said Mai, pleased with the tack he had taken, 'not never gone wear my wedding ring in the hog pen no more, I tell you!'

'Get your finger bit off!' shouted Jim. 'You wear a wedding ring in the hog pen! Finger bit right off at the knuckle!'

The three men then indulged in a spate of laughter that relieved them somewhat; it had been a fright to see the amulet pop out of the hog's mouth, almost as if it had been cast up in derision.

Mai choked off a final laugh, whistled, and commented in a breathless whisper, 'Sure must have been a mean one to do what it did.'

Morris Emmons looked thoughtful a moment, and then said to the farmers, 'You know who Dean Howell is?'

It was Mai Homans-who commonly made the joke about Josephine Howell having poisoned her own husband by biting him in the ankle. And he had heard of Dean's accident, as had, in fact, the entire county. Jim Coltrane was reminded of the accident by his brother-in-law. 'You 'member - got his face blowed away at Rucca.' Jim nodded, and grinned, but then said, 'But what's that got to do with Miz Weaver or that thing? He's laid up now. They say he's got the brain of a winter turnip.'

'His wife was out to the Weaver farm', said Emmons, 'looking for this thing. She described it 'xactly.'

'It was hers?' asked Jim. 'It was Miz Howell's?'

'But Miz Weaver was wearing it', protested Mai.

'She must 've been wearing it, if it just then fell ou t of the pig's mouth', agreed Jim.

'But how'd Miz Howell know about it then?' asked Morris.

The two farmers shrugged.

'She told me to call her if I found this thing.'

'Maybe it's worth something', said Mai, 'maybe she knew it was worth something, and when she heard Miz Weaver was dead, she thought she might just as well tiy to get hold of it for herself. Take it to Montgomery to sell it in a pawnshop or something like that.'

'Maybe it's made of gold', suggested Jim.

'Let me see it', said Mai, and Morris handed it over to him. Mai turned it in his hands and held it up to his eyes. Jim watched his brother-in-law jealously, and as soon as he could, reached for the piece and took it away, examining it in exactly the same fashion.

Morris turned his back on the two farmers for a moment in order to peek through the door into the store to see if there were customers or if he were wanted there.

Mai glanced at Jim mischievously, and took the amulet away from him. In the transfer, the chain came apart, and the two farmers glanced with wondering grins at one another, for they had not seen the catch in its length.

Then Mai snuck up on Morris, Jim following only a step or two behind. The first farmer draped the amulet round Morris's neck, and - just as surprisingly as before - the two ends of the chain came together and locked shut. Mai laughed loudly and backed away, knocking into his brother-in-law.

Morris protested in a gruff voice,' 'Hey, what you doing? You're both good-for-nothing bastards!'

Mai and Jim convulsed themselves in laughter at the sight of Morris Emmons wearing a necklace. 'Goddamn trouble-making hippie!' Mai cried, and Jim echoed, 'Goddamn hippie! Goddamn hippie!'

Then Morris laughed too, and pushed Mai and Jim out of the cold storage room into the front of the store. He flicked off the light, and pulled the door closed behind him.

When Morris Emmons, Mai Homans, and Jim Coltrane emerged from the storage room in the back of the store, there were only two customers to be seen in the long wooden aisles. A little boy was standing in front of the counter near the cash register, picking through the cookies in a large display jar. An old countrywoman in a poke bonnet, who was the little boy's grandmother, was peering at cans of vegetables and soups on the shelves, trying to find the cheapest among a lot of containers that were all marked with the same price. She glared at Morris Emmons when he came out of the back.

'Can't hardly hear myself think out here, trying to decide about little Fred's dinner, come to visit me, with all that racket there in the back of the store', she murmured, and then commanded in a large voice, 'Fred, don't you put none of them cookies in your mouth!'

The child paid no attention to his grandmother, but broke one of the large fiat cookies in half, and then pushed both pieces into his mouth at once.

Morris Emmons rolled Ms eyes in consternation that it was old Miz Baines, who would be a trial to the devil himself, come to do her afternoon shopping. 'You two get on, I got Miz Baines to wait on out here.'

'Don't you let the hog head bite you, Morris!' cried Mai, and his brother-in-law echoed, with variation, 'Don't you let it get its teeth sank in your arm, Morris!'

'You better open up all them mouths, on all them animals, Morris, and make sure you ain't got wedding rings and bracelets and belts and things all hidden inside there! Might be a treasure trove in them pigs' mouths!'

The two men laughed again, and Morris shooed them out from behind the counter. Their stupid jokes and taunts infuriated him. He had put up with these two brutes for close on to ten years, and they had even annoyed him when they were boys. But they were good customers now, and he had had to put up with it. Well, he considered, and cursed himself that he had never thought of it before: they needed him more than he needed them. He kept them supplied with their machinery, with the parts for those machines when they broke down, with the best seed, with the right fertiliser for their impoverished soil, with the only decent advice on how to run their dilapidated farms that they were likely to find in the whole of the Wiregrass. No matter what he did to them, they would continue to come back, because they had to. If they went into Pine Cone for their supplies, they'd soon enough fall over into bankruptcy - and then Morris Emmons would have a fine laugh himself.

Those two sorry men: they spoke evil, they smelled evil, and they were always willing to do a bad turn for someone, always ready to kick a staggering man. Their farms were falling to racking ruin, their wives - the ugliest two women ever to come out of the same womb - would fail down in the dirt not to have to speak to you when you passed 'em on the road; and them bird dogs that the two men claimed they 'raised'couldn'ttell aquail from a polled Hereford.

Morris Emmons glanced angrily down the centre aisle of the store, through the screen door, at Jim Coltrane's truck, parked just outside. In the cab, one of those stupid bird dogs was barking furiously at having been left for so long a time in the stifling enclosed space.

'Can't you keep that dog shut up?' Morris demanded.

■He's a watchdog', said Jim, 'and watchdogs s'posed to bark.'

The constant hoarse barking of the bird dog was irritating. Morris Emmons twisted the amulet between his fingers; it was still around his neck.

'What you got to be .watched, Jim Coltrane? You got nothing', snapped old Miz Baines.

'Don't you pick on him', said Mai, in an amused teasing voice. He actually relished the idea of a little verbal altercation between the old woman and his brother-in-law.

'Your no-good dog bit my little girl's little girl last blackberry season. I hope your no-good dog barks his throat out!' said old Miz Baines.

Jim Coltrane had moved over to the screen door; he was a little afraid of the old woman's tongue, and had just as soon depart Morris Emmons' store. But Mai lingered behind, leaning against a wall of canned goods and paper products. He leered at old MizBaines,and said, 'Your little girl's little girl was pulling down my scuppernong vines, and I catch her over at my place again, Miz Baines, I'm gone bite her!'

During this short exchange Morris Emmons squatted down behind the counter, and from the small rack just below the cash register, took the shotgun that he kept loaded, just in case of robbers. Laying this across his lap, he carefully filled his shirt and pants pockets with ammunition. Slowly he stood, pointed the gun directly down the aisle, and fired it at Jim Coltrane. Coltrane saw what was happening, but did not have the time to protest or move at all, before he was struck in the chest. He fell backward through the screen door into the red dust of the bare ground outside. He writhed a moment, twisted over on his stomach, and was dead. Mai was so surprised he fell back against the shelves, knocking over a whole row of tinned peaches and pears, but he was much too frightened to say anything.

'You gone crazy, Morris Emmons?' shouted old Miz Baines, shaking in her poke bonnet. 'What you want to do that for?'

Morris stepped from behind the counter, pushing little Fred out of the way, whose mouth, full of cookies, had gone suddenly very dry. Emmons walked slowly down the centre aisle of the store towards the screen door. Mai Homans crawled down along the lowest shelf, upsetting whole rows of canned goods as he proceeded. He imagined that if Morris had killed Jim for no reason at all, then it was probable that the man would turn on him next. Morris reached the door, and stepped through and over the corpse of Jim Coltrane.

Old Miz Baines turned to her grandchild and commanded him, 'Fred, don't you go looking at the dead man now, you get out of here before Morris Emmons comes back for
you!'

The child grabbed a handful of cookies and scampered out the side door of the store. The old woman looked at Mai Homans and sneered, 'That's what you get forraising scuppernongs, Mai Homans!' and then she followed her grandchild out of that place of sudden death.

Mai crawled to the front window of the store and peered through; he saw Morris advancing slowly on the truck. Mai stared a moment at the corpse of his brother-in-law, watching the blood form a thick pool underneath the body, and then he began to shake. He faltered backward and staggered out the side door, running after old Miz Baines and little Fred. They were stepping gingerly over some electrified fence into the safety of a neighbouring cow pasture.

Morris Emmons walked slowly and deliberately to the truck thai had belonged to the man he had just killed. The bird dog inside, sensing that something was terribly wrong, had stopped its barking and set up an even more fearsome howl. Morris peered through the window by the driver's side of the cab, and the dog leapt viciously against the glass. Morris Emmons stepped back a couple of feet, raised the rifle and fired directly at the panes. The side windows on both sides of the cab were blown out in an instant. The dog had dropped below the level of the glass and was uninjured; it jumped through the window and smashed against Morris's chest. The animal careened to the ground, and set up another round of barking, snapping at Emmons' ankles and pulling at his pants legs. In a moment the dog went and sniffed at the corpse on the ground, while Emmons tried to kick it. The dog turned and bit Emmons' leg, and then ran off, barking.

Emmons fired at the dog, but missed, and only blew up agreat cloud of red dust. When that had cleared, Emmons could see that the dog had crawled between the rails of the border fence, and was running away across a pecan orchard, heading for the peanut and cotton fields a few hundred yards away.

Grimly, Emmons gave chase. He was awkward in running, in climbing over the fence, in trying to load his rifle again as he ran across the uneven earth of the pecan orchard. He had to stop several times to retrieve shells that bounced out of his shirt pocket. The dog kept always a few dozen yards ahead of him, and when Emmons paused, the dog turned back and began to howl.

But despite Emmons' hurry and his flailing limbs, and his

sweating back, the man's face was set and expressionless - as blank as the gold-and-jet surface of the amulet bouncing on its chain around his neck.

Made curious by the gunshots, a number of black field hands had gathered in twos and threes at various fence posts within sight of Emmons and the dog, and among themselves discussed that the dog might be rabid, or wondered what it had done to make Emmons so angry. As they watched, however, Emmons' jerky movements and his feverish chase of the dog made them nervous, and they realised that they had much more to fear from the man with the rifle than from the dog. The field hands - men, women, and children - who had been weeding the rows of cotton and peanuts, moved swiftly along the fence, well out of Emmons' way, and then circled back towards the bam and outbuildings of the farm where they were employed. Emmons and the dog were headed that way, but there was much more protection in buildings than in open fields and orchards.

Emmons would raise his gun to fire; the dog would stop a moment, then suddenly leap to one side, or behind a tree, and the shot would miss him. The game had become stylised, and the crazed hunter and his canine prey progressed slowly and lurchingly towards the barn, crossing the several acres of low cotton and peanut plants.

All the black workers that
¹
had been gathered around the barnyard had scattered, retreating around the back of the building, or into a neighbouring field of corn where they dropped to the ground below the level of the yard-high plants. A bravs few climbed into the upper platforms of the barn, where hay was stored, and stared down through cracks between the planks, watching to see if Morris Emmons was going to be successful in killing the dog. They all abandoned the baling machine into which they had been feeding the last cuttings of the winter ground cover; the machine, set just inside the great front door of the barn, hummed softly, its gears turning against nothing, the wire inside poised to wrap securely the shredded dry grass.

The barking dog stopped just at the entrance of the barn, snarled fiercely at the approaching Emmons, and then turned inside into the darkness. Without hesitation, Morris Emmons stepped into the barn, but unable to adjust immediately to the dim light inside, he peered about a couple of times, not able to see much of anything. The dog had stopped barking, and Morris was confused by the sounds of cats that made their home in a near corner and by the shuffling of the very nervous men on the platforms above him. Emmons lifted the rifle to his shoulder, and turned around slowly, with the intention of shooting the dog as soon as it came within his vision.