I lay there thinking about her for a long, deep time. What I wouldn’t give to feel her on me now; her skin on mine and that long, soft chocolate hair in between as her head rests on my chest, listening to the drumming of my fading heart. Her breasts would be pressed up against my stomach and her back arched high, her thighs grinding slow against my hipbones and that enveloping, womanly warmth would linger at my loins before it spread out like an ocean wave across my body. All the way to the tips of my toes and the longest hair on my head.

But that ain’t the way it was. She was long gone years back and now I was bound for a cold place, lying there on the linoleum and bleeding out like a stuck saint. The floor was clean and cool to the touch, smelling high of Ajax or Pinesol. Artificially fresh and weirdly sterile. That was the first thing I noticed when I went down, though now it was mixed with the coppery stench of all that dark red leaking out of my gut.

My thoughts were surreal, like an opium fog had slid over my brain. I knew it was my body fighting the pain in the only way it could, helping me along on my transition to whatever comes after. But Jesus, what a high. I closed my eyes again, feeling her lips on my neck in the quiet dark of that tiny old bedroom, the rumble and crash of a late summer thunderstorm outside, the tapping of the rain on the trailer’s old rusted roof. Would that I had expired right then and there, but a din arose in my ears and brought me back to the cold floor of the Dixie Mart.

I rolled my head to the right, catching a glimpse at the counter and the source of all the troublesome noise. Seems the clerk was in a bit of a tussle with the bad guy. Through some foolish notion of heroism, or perhaps real heroism, the clerk had managed to reach across the counter and had both hands wrapped tight around the wrist of the big man’s gun wielding arm. As they struggled, the clerk came up over onto the counter, flailing about like a fish. The big man with the dreadlocks began pounding the clerk with his other fist; heavy, hurtful thuds against the face, the neck, the shoulders. And the clerk there the whole time, never giving up, taking blows like a fuckin’ prize fighter. Though he wouldn’t last long. In a few seconds, the big man would get in a good one and the clerk would lose his grip on the man’s wrist. Then Mr. Dreadlocks would point the barrel of that pistol down and let loose a few rounds which, at that close a range, would bore through the clerk’s flesh and lodge into the counter beneath him or smash the glass of the lottery display case and find a final resting place in a roll of some losing scratch-off tickets. Nobody ever wins in a place like this.

Damn, but it was inspiring to watch. So much so that before I could even get the idea in my head, I found myself lifting my right leg up, bending it at the knee and pulling it toward me, building up some gusto before I shot it out straight and the heel of my workboot nailed Mr. Dreadlocks square in the side of his knee.

It buckled and he dropped like a sack of potatoes and the clerk came over the counter with him, still latched onto his wrist with all the stubbornness of a pissed-off copperhead. When the two of them hit the floor the pistol went flying out of the big man’s hand and pinwheeling across the floor. In my direction. Not much time for anything to be done. Mr. Dreadlocks was now using both hands, fixing to toss the little clerk to the side and scramble to get the weapon back.

Again, before I could even sort out the options, I wiggled over to the left a bit and sat up, reaching over to the pistol. Searing pain shot from the wound in my belly out to the farthest reaches of every nerve in my chest and I growled in pain and anger as I splayed my fingers out, finally getting them clumsily around the butt of the gun. The big man had cleared himself of the clerk and was up on hands and knees moving fast toward me, teeth bared like a beast and so close I could smell his awful breath. Gripping it tight I brought the pistol up and pointed it dead in between the eyes of the wolf.

There was an instant there, maybe a fraction of in instant, when he saw the inevitability of what was to come and that realization spread over his face like a wildfire and something in his eyes went dead before the bullet even left the chamber. He’d seen the same thing in me just moments before when he plugged two rounds into my gut, though even then I could see in his eyes he’d still not gotten used to the killing. No matter how many times he’d pulled that trigger over the course of his young, troubled life or how much meth he’d smoked, somehow the consequences always came as a surprise to him. But that wasn’t half as surprised as he looked right then as I squeezed my finger back and closed my eyes. The weapon blasted forth and recoiled in my hand, and I went backward. The top of his head shattered and a spray of gore and thickly bound black hair was the last thing I saw before I was prone on the floor again and looking up at the flickering, buzzing lights of the drop ceiling. I slipped my fingers from around the pistol and breathed a sigh of relief that the troublesome noise was gone and I searched in my mind for a way back to that memory I’d been torn from.

But the clerk was over me, looking down at me, panicked and punching numbers on a cordless phone and reciting the Dixie Mart’s address to what must be a dispatcher on the other end of the line. Then he was in my face, smacking my cheek and shouting at me in a thick foreign accent.

Stay with me. Help is coming. What’s your name?

I tried to smile but spat up blood, the metallic taste of it filling my mouth. I wheezed something to him as my lungs filled. It was something about her, but I’m not sure he understood.

He shook his head and seemed long in the face. No, he said, you tell her yourself. You’re going home.

Turns out he was right. Behind him I saw more faces, ones familiar to me. Grandfolks and distant relatives long since passed, Virginians all, seemed to crowd the aisles, looking down on me with placid faces. Closing my eyes, I wound through the streets and lanes of Franklin, past the mill and down along the Blackwater River and I found my way back to that thunderstorm. Back to our old home. Back to her penetrating eyes and perfect ruby lips. Back to pressing sweet, smooth flesh, kisses, nuzzling, her long hair tickling my face, cool sheets on bare skin. Warmth, and her taste like harvestberry pie.