"Sheriff was there that day, all right. He was s'posed to go bird-hunting, but he changed his mind damn quick when Lal Machen came in and told nun that he was expecting Al Bradley that very afternoon."

"How did Machen know that?" I asked.

"Well, that's an instructive tale in itself," Mr Keene said, and the cynical smile creased his face again. "Bradley wasn't never Public Enemy Number One on the FBI's hit parade, but they had wanted him-since 1928 or so. To show they could cut the mustard, I guess. Al Bradley and his brother George hit six or seven banks across the Midwest and then kidnapped a banker for ransom. The ransom was paid-thirty thousand dollars, a big sum for those days-but they killed the banker anyway.

"By then the Midwest had gotten a little toasty for the gangs that ran there, so Al and George and their litter of ratlings run northeast, up this way. They rented themselves a big farmhouse just over the town line in Newport, not far from where the Rhulin Farms are today.

That was in the dog-days of '29, maybe July, maybe August, maybe even early September... I don't know for sure just when. There were eight of em-Al Bradley, George Bradley, Joe Conklin and his brother Cal, an Irishman named Arthur Malloy who was called "Creeping Jesus Malloy" because he was nearsighted but wouldn't put on his specs unless he absolutely had to, and Patrick Caudy, a young fellow from Chicago who was said to be kill-crazy but as handsome as Adonis. There were also two women with them: Kitty Donahue, George Bradley's common-law wife, and Marie Hauser, who belonged to Caudy but sometimes got passed around, according to the stories we all heard later.

"They made one bad assumption when they got up here, sonny-they got the idea they were so far away from Indiana that they were safe.

"They laid low for awhile, and then got bored and decided they wanted to go hunting. They had plenty of firepower but they were a bit low on ammunition. So they all came into Derry on the seventh of October in two cars. Patrick Gaudy took the women around shopping while the other men went into Machen's Sporting Goods. Kitty Donahue bought a dress in Freese's, and she died in it two days later.

"Lal Machen waited on the men himself. He died in 1959. Too fat, he was. Always too fat. But there wasn't nothing wrong with his eyes, and he knew it was Al Bradley the minute he walked in, he said. He thought he recognized some of the others, but he wasn't sure of Malloy until he put on his specs to look at a display of knives in a glass case.

"Al Bradley walked up to him and said, "We'd like to buy some ammunition."

"Well," Lal Machen says, "you come to the right place."

"Bradley handed him a paper and Lal read it over. The paper has been lost, at least so far as I know, but Lal said it would have turned your blood cold. They wanted five hundred rounds of.38-caliber ammunition, eight hundred rounds of.45-caliber, sixty rounds of.50-caliber, which they don't even make anymore, shotgun shells loaded both with buck and bird, and a thousand rounds each of.22 short- and long-rifle. Plus-get this-sixteen thousand rounds of.45 machine-gun bullets.

"Holy shit!" I said.

Mr Keene smiled that cynical smile again and offered me the apothecary jar. At first I shook my head and then I took another whip.

"This here is quite a shopping-list, boys," Lal says.

"Come on, Al," Creeping Jesus Malloy says. "I told you we wasn't going to get it in a hick town like this. Let's go on up to Bangor. They won't have nothing there either, but I can use a ride."

"Now hold your horses," Lal says, just as cool as a cucumber. "This here is one hell of a good order and I wouldn't want to lose it to that Jew up Bangor. I can give you the.22s right now, also the bird and half the buck. I can give you a hundred rounds each of the.38- and.45-caliber, too. I could have the rest for you... "And here Lal sort of half-closed his eyes and tapped his chin, as if calculating it out. "... by day after tomorrow. How'd that be?"

"Bradley grinned like he'd split his head around the back and said it sounded just as fine as paint. Cal Conklin said he'd still like to go on up to Bangor, but he was outvoted. "Now. if you're not sure you can make good on this order, you ought to say so right now," Al Bradley says to Lal, "because I'm a pretty fine fellow but when I get mad you don't want to get into a pissing contest with me. You follow?"

"I do," Lal says, "and I'll have all the ammo you could want, Mr-?"

"Rader," Brady says. "Richard D. Rader, at your service."

"He stuck out his hand and Lal pumped it, grinning all the while. "Real pleased, Mr Rader"

"So then Bradley asked him what would be a good time for him and his friends to drop by and pick up the goods, and Lal Machen asked them right back how two in the afternoon sounded to them. They agreed that would be fine. Out they went. Lal watched them go. They met the two women and Gaudy on the sidewalk outside. Lal recognized Gaudy, too.

"So," Mr Keene said, looking at me bright-eyed, "what do you think Lal done then? Called the cops?"

"I guess he didn't," I said, "based on what happened. Me, I would have broken my leg getting to the telephone."

"Well, maybe you would and maybe you wouldn't," Mr Keene said with that same cynical, bright-eyed smile, and I shivered because I knew what he meant... and he knew I knew. Once something heavy begins to roll, it can't be stopped; it's simply going to roll until it finds a flat place long enough to wear away all of its forward motion. You can stand in front of that thing and get flattened... but that won't stop it, either.

"Maybe you would have and maybe you wouldn't," Mr Keene repeated. "But I can tell you what Lal Machen did. The rest of that day and all of the next, when someone he knew came in-some man-why, he would tell them that he knew who had been out in the woods around the Newport-Derry line shooting at deer and grouse and God knows what else with Kansas City typewriters. It was the Bradley Gang. He knew for a fact because he had recognized em. He'd tell em that Bradley and his men were coming back the next day around two to pick up the rest of their order. He'd tell them he'd promised Bradley all the ammunition he could want, and that was a promise he intended to keep."

"How many?" I asked. I felt hypnotized by his glittering eye. Suddenly the dry smell of this back room-the smell of prescription drugs and powders, of Musterole and Vicks VapoRub and Robitussin cough syrup-suddenly all those smells seemed suffocating... but I could no more have left than I could kill myself by holding my breath.

"How many men did Lal pass the word to?" Mr Keene asked.

I nodded.

"Don't know for sure," Mr Keene said. "didn't stand right there and take up sentry duty. All those he felt he could trust, I suppose."

Those he could trust," I mused. My voice was a little hoarse.

"Ayuh," Mr Keene said. "derrymen, you know. Not that many of em raised cows." He laughed at this old joke before going on. "I came in around ten the day after the Bradleys first dropped in on Lal. He told me the story, then asked how he could help me. I'd only come in to see if my last roll of pictures had been developed-in those days Machen's handled all the Kodak films and cameras-but after I got my photos I also said I could use some ammo for my Winchester.

"You gonna shoot some game, Norb?" Lal asks me, passing over the shells.

"Might plug some varmints," I said, and we had us a chuckle over that." Mr Keene laughed and slapped his skinny leg as if this was still the best joke he had ever heard. He leaned forward and tapped my knee. "All I mean, son, is that the story got around all it needed to. Small towns, you know. If you tell the right people, what you need to pass along will get along... see what I mean? Like another licorice whip?"

I took one with numb fingers.

"Make you fat," Mr Keene said, and cackled. He looked old then... infinitely old, with his bifocals slipping down the gaunt blade of his nose and the skin stretched too tight and thin across his cheeks to wrinkle.

The next day I brought my rifle into the store with me and Bob Tanner, who worked harder than any assistant I ever had after him, brought in his pop's shotgun. Around eleven that day Gregory Cole came in for a bicarb of soda and damned if he didn't have a Colt.45 jammed right in his belt.

"Don't blow your balls off with that, Greg," I said.

"I come out of the woods all the way from Milford for this and I got one fuck of a hangover," Greg says. "I guess I'll blow someone's balls off before the sun goes down."

"Around one-thirty, I put the little sign I had, BE BACK SOON, PLEASE BE PATIENT, in the door and took my rifle and walked out the back into Richard's Alley. I asked Bob Tanner if he wanted to come along and he said he'd better finish filling Mrs Emerson's prescription and he'd see me later. "Leave me a live one, Mr Keene," he said, but I allowed as how I couldn't promise nothing.

"There was hardly any traffic on Canal Street at all, either on foot or by car. Every now and then a delivery truck would pass, but that was about all. I saw Jake Pinnette cross over and he had a rifle in each hand. He met Andy Criss, and they walked over to one of the benches that used to stand where the War Memorial was-you know, where the Canal goes underground.

"Petie Vanness and Al Nell and Jimmy Gordon were all sitting on the courthouse steps, eating sandwiches and fruit out of their dinnerbuckets, trading with each other for stuff that looked better to them, the way kids do on the schoolyard. They was all armed. Jimmy Gordon had himself a World War I Springfield that looked bigger than he did.

"I see a kid go walking toward Up-Mile Hill-I think maybe it was Zack Denbrough, the father of your old buddy, the one who turned out to be a writer-and Kenny Borton says from the window of the Christian Science Reading Room, "You want to get out of here, kid; there's going to be shooting." Zack took one look at his face and ran like hell.

There were men everywhere, men with guns, standing in doorways and sitting on steps and looking out of windows. Greg Cole was sitting in a doorway down the street with his.45 in his lap and about two dozen shells lined up beside him like toy sojers. Bruce Jagermeyer and that Swede, Olaf Theramenius, were standing underneath the marquee of the Bijou in the shade."

Mr Keene looked at me, through me. His eyes were not sharp now; they were hazy with memory, soft as the eyes of a man only become when he is remembering one of the best times of his life-the first home run he ever hit, maybe, or the first trout he ever landed that was big enough to keep, or the first time he ever lay with a willing woman.

"I remember I heard the wind, sonny," he said dreamily. "I remember hearing the wind hearing the courthouse clock toll two. Bob Tanner came up behind me and I was so tight-wired I almost blew his head off.

"He only nodded at me and crossed over to Vannock's Dry Goods, trailing his shadow out behind him.

"You would have thought that when it got to be two-ten and nothing happened, then two-fifteen, then two-twenty, folks would have just up and left, wouldn't you? But it didn't happen that way at all. People just kept their place. Because-"

"Because you knew they were going to come, didn't you?" I asked. There was never any question at all."

He beamed at me like a teacher pleased with a student's recital. That's right!" he said. "We knew. No one had to talk about it, no one had to say, "Wellnow, let's wait until twenty past and if they don't show I've got to get back to work." Things just stayed quiet, and around two-twenty-five that afternoon these two cars, one red and one dark blue, started down Up-Mile Hill and came into the intersection. One of them was a Chevrolet and the other was a La Salle. The Conklin brothers, Patrick Caudy, and Marie Hauser were in the Chevrolet. The Bradleys, Malloy, and Kitty Donahue were in the La Salle.

They started through the intersection okay, and then Al Bradley slammed on the brakes of that La Salle so sudden that Caudy damn near ran into him. The street was too quiet and Bradley knew it. He wasn't nothing but an animal, but it doesn't take much to put up an animal's wind when it's been chased like a weasel in the corn for four years.

"He opened the door of the La Salle and stood up on the running board for a moment. He looked around, then he made a "go-back" gesture to Caudy with his hand. Caudy said "What, boss?" I heard that plain as day, the only thing I heard any of them say that day. There was a wink of sun, too, I remember that. It came off a compact mirror. The Hauser woman was powdering her nose.

That was when Lal Machen and his helper, Biff Marlow, came running out of Machen's store. "Put em up, Bradley, you're surrounded!" Lal shouts, and before Bradley could do more than turn his head, Lal started blasting. He was wild at first, but then he put one into Bradley's shoulder. The claret started to pour out of that hole right away. Bradley caught hold of the La Salle's doorpost and swung himself back into the car. He threw it into gear, and that's when everyone started to shoot.

"It was all over in four, maybe five minutes, but it seemed a whole hell of a lot longer while it was happening. Petie and Al and Jimmy Gordon just sat there on the courthouse steps and poured bullets into the back end of the Chevrolet. I saw Bob Tanner down on one knee, firing and working the bolt on that old rifle of his like a madman. Jagermeyer and Theramenius were shooting into the right side of the La Salle from under the theater marquee and Greg Cole stood in the gutter, holding that.45 automatic out in both hands, pulling the trigger just as fast as he could work it.

"There must have been fifty, sixty men firing all at once. After it was all over Lal Machen dug thirty-six slugs out of the brick sides of his store. And that was three days later, after just about every-damn-body in town who wanted one for a souvenir had come down and dug one out with his penknife. When it was at its worst, it sounded like the Battle of the Marne. Windows were blown in by rifle-fire all around Machen's.

"Bradley got the La Salle around in a half-circle and he wasn't slow but by the time he'd done he was running on four flats. Both the headlights were blowed out, and the windscreen was gone. Creeping Jesus Malloy and George Bradley were each at a backseat window, firing pistols. I seen one bullet take Malloy high up in the neck and tear it wide open. He shot twice more and then collapsed out the window with his arms hanging down.

"Gaudy tried to turn the Chevrolet and only ran into the back end of Bradley's La Salle. That was really the end of em right there, son. The Chevrolet's front bumper locked with the La Salle's back one and there went any chance they might have had to make a run for it.