Full Dark, No Stars

only diner, but their luck was almost al gone. The counterman was from Elkhorn, Nebraska, and although he hadn’t been home in years, his mother stil faithful y sent him issues of the World-Herald in large bundles. He had received just such a bundle a few days before, and he recognized the Omaha Sweetheart Bandits sitting in one of the booths.

Instead of ringing the police (or pit security at the nearby copper mine, which would have been quicker and more efficient), he decided to make a citizen’s arrest. He took a rusty old cowboy pistol

from under the counter, pointed it at them, and told them—in the finest Western tradition—to throw up their hands. Henry did no such thing. He slid out of the booth and walked toward the fel ow, saying:

“Don’t do that, my friend, we mean you no harm, we’l just pay up and go.”

The counterman pul ed the trigger and the old pistol misfired. Henry took it out of his hand, broke it, looked at the cylinder, and laughed. “Good news!” he told Shannon. “These bul ets have been in

there so long they’re green.”

He put 2 dol ars on the counter—for their food—and then made a terrible mistake. To this day I believe things would have ended badly for them no matter what, yet stil I wish I could cal to him across the years: Don’t put that gun down still loaded. Don’t do that, son! Green or not, put those bullets in your pocket! But only the dead can cal across time; I know that now, and from personal experience.

As they were leaving ( hand-in-hand, Arlette whispered in my burning ear), the counterman snatched that old horse-pistol off the counter, held it in both hands, and pul ed the trigger again. This time it fired, and although he probably thought he was aiming at Henry, the bul et struck Shannon Cotterie in the lower back. She screamed and stumbled forward out the door into the blowing snow. Henry caught

her before she could fal and helped her into their last stolen car, another Ford. The counterman tried to shoot him through the window, and that time the old gun blew up in his hands. A piece of metal took out his left eye. I have never been sorry. I am not as forgiving as Charles Griner.

Seriously wounded—perhaps dying already—Shannon went into labor as Henry drove through thickening snow toward Elko, thirty miles to the southwest, perhaps thinking he might find a doctor there.

I don’t know if there was a doctor or not, but there was certainly a police station, and the counterman rang it with the remains of his eye-bal stil drying on his cheek. Two local cops and four members of the Nevada State Patrol were waiting for Henry and Shannon at the edge of town, but Henry and Shannon never saw them. It’s 30 miles between Deeth and Elko, and Henry made only 28 of them.

Just inside the town limits (but stil wel beyond the edge of the vil age), the last of Henry’s luck let go. With Shannon screaming and holding her bel y as she bled al over the seat, he must have been driving fast—too fast. Or maybe he just hit a pothole in the road. However it was, the Ford skidded into the ditch and stal ed. There they sat in that high-desert emptiness while a strengthening wind blew snow al around them, and what was Henry thinking? That what he and I had done in Nebraska had led him and the girl he loved to that place in Nevada. Arlette didn’t tel me that, but she didn’t have to. I knew.

He spied the ghost of a building through the thickening snow, and got Shannon out of the car. She managed a few steps into the wind, then could manage no more. The girl who could do triggeronomy

and might have been the first female graduate of the normal school in Omaha laid her head on her young man’s shoulder and said, “I can’t go any farther, honey, put me on the ground.”

“What about the baby?” he asked her.

“The baby is dead, and I want to die, too,” she said. “I can’t stand the pain. It’s terrible. I love you, honey, but put me on the ground.”

He carried her to that ghost of a building instead, which turned out to be a line shack not much different from the shanty near Boys Town, the one with the faded bottle of Royal Crown Cola painted on

the side. There was a stove, but no wood. He went out and scrounged a few pieces of scrap lumber before the snow could cover them, and when he went back inside, Shannon was unconscious. Henry lit

the stove, then put her head on his lap. Shannon Cotterie was dead before the little fire he’d made burned down to embers, and then there was only Henry, sitting on a mean line shack cot where a dozen

dirty cowboys had lain themselves down before him, drunk more often than sober. He sat there and stroked Shannon’s hair while the wind shrieked outside and the shack’s tin roof shivered.