The first I knew of it was when my father stormed through the screen door and kicked the hound out of the way. That was usually enough for me to head out before the door closed. This time it was me he was after.

My mother pulled some cold meat out of the icebox and heated biscuits and gravy from breakfast while he settled himself in his chair by the window. I knew the look. I figured he was trying not to actually kill me outright, or just beat me with the wide leather belt he kept hanging on a nail by the door. So this time I could not escape the look, or the fact that the belt was still on the nail. Something else was up, but he was well into the biscuits and gravy before I found out what it was.

After his dinner he drank his glass of buttermilk then reached out his large, hard hands and pulled me to him and asked if Orville Bunt had ever laid hands on me. Naturally I said no, partly because it was true, but partly because I instinctively knew the word no was the right choice in most matters where I might be involved. Orville, I told him, never so much as looked at me, never said a word as he went about his business on our farm. As far as I was concerned he was the hired man. That was all I knew. All I cared about. He was like one of the cows or horses we kept on the ratty forty acres in that hilly part of Southern Illinois where poor farms were eaten alive by rooting hogs and scabby looking chickens. Orville was just another part of the landscape as far as my cousin Bill and I knew. So I was more interested than usual. I knew something else as coming, and I did not have long to wait

My father looked at my mother and back to me and said , "Jack, You're a big boy and need to hear this. Orville Bunt is wanted by the police for molesting a boy and a girl from town. He is hiding out somewhere on this farm and I want you and your cousin to stay close to the house until he's caught. This is no time for two ten year- olds to be running loose. Do you understand?"

That got my attention even though I was not sure what being molested meant. Something deep inside me felt funny though, like when I've eaten too many apples, or know a spanking is coming for something I've done, or forgotten to do. I looked at him and saw his eyes narrow and his jaw tighten, so I said I understood. He let me back away into my mother's apron; her hands enclosed me and kept me there while he finished his coffee. This time he took down the old 16 gauge from over the fireplace and whistled to the dog. From the window I watched him walk across the barn lot to the field that led to the woods behind the barn.

Even important, scary or dangerous things seem to have a life of their own, and it wasn't more than a couple of days until I was playing in the yard with the dogs or riding my pony with Bill on the back, around the barn lot. A day later and we were once more free in the woods and nearby farmland.

So it was a shock when we spotted cans and litter by the old well deep in Turley's Woods. No one used the well because the water was brackish and smelled. But we played cowboys and Indians there and tied the pony to a sapling and made plans to rob a wagon train. This time we found our secret spot had been found by someone. And when the man turned from the well, we recognized Orville Bunt.

That funny feeling came again, as if I had to go to the bathroom. But Orville was still the hired man, and all thoughts of molesting had been forgotten. Still, my father's look that day in the kitchen meant something to me, deep down, so I stayed on the pony while Bill jumped off and stood next to me. "What you boys want here?" he asked. He stood beside the old well with a shotgun in his hand. He didn't move. He just looked at us. Bill started to lead the pony out of the thicket, but Orville said "Just hold it right there. Get on in here. Tie that pony and sit down." He cradled the shotgun, the barrel moving up and down in front of us, so Bill led the pony to the well and tied her to a branch of an elm. I stayed on the pony, too scared to move or run or anything. I just sat there and watched Orville look at me.

"What you boys doin in here?" he asked again. "Are you lookin for somebody?" He didn't ask it mean, but it made me scared. I wished my father was there to answer him. But Bill said we were just playing cowboys and Indians and this was our hideout. Orville started to smile, then stopped. One corner of his mouth curled up a little as he looked us up and down as if he were measuring something.

"Does your daddy know where you are?" Again he curled one side of his mouth, and spat into the well. We didn't answer fast enough, and we knew that he knew the answer. That was the first time I realized what my father was warning me about that day in the kitchen. And I wished, as never before, that I had told my dad or mom where we were going on our pony.

But then Bill did and said something I will never understand or forget. Before I could even think of an answer to Orville's question, he said "You're wanted for doing something to some kids, ain't you." At that moment I knew it was all over with playing cowboys and Indians. There was something of the feeling I would get when my grandmother told us ghost stories when we sat with her on the old swing in the yard as darkness slowly covered the tall thorn trees, barns, even my grandmother, so that her voice floated in the darkness surrounding us. There was the real possibility, I always felt at such times, that we would not ever leave that swing alive, that something terrible was about to happen.

Orville reached up and pulled me off the pony before I could say anything. Down I went to the ground beside Bill and up came the gun to cover us. "This here is real cowboys and Indians, boys. We ain't playin here. And because Bill here has got such a big mouth, you both are in a heap of trouble you don't know nothin about. But you're goin to find out more than you want to know real quick."

I knew nothing would help us then. My father was pulling stumps out of the bottoms with the big work-horse, and mother was probably looking for eggs in the barn. I wished I was there, feeling beneath those warm feathers for the eggs, sometimes holding them up to the light so I could see the life pulsing just beneath the thin egg skin. I don't know what Bill was thinking.

"My dad knows where we are," I said. Bill looked at me, but I didn't bat an eye. I don't know why I said it. I hadn't planned it. "And he's coming after me." I knew that part sounded false, and so did Orville. I tried to stand up, but couldn't, but he went down on one knee and said, "and why is he comin after you?" His mouth curled up again, this time in a mean way, and his hand went to my knee in an awkward pat that sent shivers down my back.

"I don't think he knows a damn thing," he said. "I think you boys are in the wrong place and don't nobody know nothin about where you are or what you're doin. That's what I think."

He reached into his backpack and brought out a rope and tied my hands behind my back. I started to cry, and he said "It's a sight too late for that," and looped another coil over my head and pulled it tight until I had trouble breathing. Just then Bill jumped on the pony and dug his heels hard into her side and bolted out of the thicket before Orville could reach his shotgun. I didn't know if that was the end for me then or not. Bill was gone, and I was tied up just like when Bill tied me up in our games. But then the rope was loose while Bill figured what to do with me. And when enough time had passed, I got to tie him up. No one got hurt. No one went home feeling he was beaten.

Orville picked up his few belongings and pulled me behind him through the thicket and across Shoal Creek that ran through Turley's Woods and into the Mississippi. When I stumbled and fell he cursed me and said, "You little bastard, you better follow right or there won't be enough of you to find."

I had to trot to keep up with him, stumbling against roots, and trees. The rope was kept tight so I had to hold my head up or choke. I hoped Bill was finding my dad in the bottoms. He would know what to do. I wondered, though, if this might be my last day. Orville Bunt was going to keep me alive as long as it suited him, then he would kill me, maybe molest me. The word had terrible meanings as I stumbled and fell in the tangle of alders. We were close to the river, and the train tracks. Then I knew what he meant to do. If he got me on a boxcar my father would never find me. I knew it. And I felt my pants grow warm and damp.

Then I saw Bill sitting on the pony dead ahead of us. Orville had been slogging through the deep grass, but when he looked up and saw him sitting on the pony he stopped and let go of the rope. Just at that moment Bill charged into us hard, right into Orville, who grunted as he fell, arms outstretched, the shotgun falling to the side. But before Bill could turn the pony Orville was on his feet and reaching for the gun. I could do nothing but yell, but Bill did it all. He jumped from the pony and grabbed a heavy stick and struck at Orville as he fired. I felt the hot sting of the shot tear into my side and I went down, more from shock than the pain. Bill lay bleeding in front of Orville who was shaking in anger. He panted and cursed, and after getting his breath, yanked me to my feet and headed for the railroad.

The river was shallow at that point, and we waded in with him half-dragging me through the dark water to the other side where he let me lie while he put his ear on the rails to listen. I looked back to see if I could see Bill but there was nothing but trees and the hard blue Illinois sky and the slow moving river, just a if nothing unusual had ever happened there.

When the train rounded the bend it slowed enough for him to run along beside the cars until he found an open boxcar. He threw me into the dark car, scrambled in behind me, and pulled the door shut. For a minute I could not see him. But I knew he was staring at me, and I felt him tug on the rope, reeling me in close to him, and in the darkness I felt his hand on my leg. But a coughing sound out of the darkness made him stop, listening.

Suddenly there was a pop, and a tiny flare lit the car, and I saw two men hunkered down in a corner, the remains of a dinner in front of them, and without thinking I said "Help me. Please help me. He's got me."

He jerked the rope hard and I gasped once and keeled over. Orville looked at the men, his hand on the shotgun. No one said anything. More matches were lit, then something flared up until the car was veiled in a half-light. The men looked at us but did nothing. They watched Orville with his gun and one said "Mister, whatever you're doin it's none of mine." And he pulled a bottle from his pocket and took a long drink.

I must have passed out from the rope around my neck because the next thing I knew someone was laughing, then others laughed from a corner of the boxcar. As things cleared in my head I found the rope was loose around my neck, though my hands were still tied behind my back. Orville was sitting with the other men at the back of the boxcar, playing cards and drinking. Now and then one would look over at me and laugh.

"Looks like he'll live," one said. "Too bad. Now he'll have to be killed all over again." And they all laughed and passed the bottle around and slapped each other on the back. One threw the empty bottle across the car, shattering it. I thought of my parents, but I knew they were not going to come in through that heavy sliding door for dinner, my father carrying me on his shoulders while the old dog cracked bones on her gunny sack behind the stove.

"Whatcha goin' to do with him?" one of the men asked. "I guess I know what you want to do with him." And they laughed again. Orville laughed too and looked over at me, half of his mouth curled up.

"What I'm goin to do is my business," he said. "I wouldn't be makin' any plans for him if I was you." He said it hard and low and the laughing stopped and they just sat there in the dim light, staring at Orville, his shotgun across his lap

"All I'm sayin is that he might be worth more alive than otherwise." The one with the dirty beard moved away from the circle and leaned against the door. Orville backed off and cradled the shotgun. "This here kid is goin' to have lots of folks out lookin for him. Probably lookin already. This freight is goin' to cross the big river soon and once we're in Missouri maybe we can figure out what to do that will make us all some money."

Orville curled his mouth. One of the men moved toward the door and slid it open. We all blinked at the sudden sunlight. The sweet smell of the river tasted good in my mouth after the inside of the closed boxcar. Once we had crossed the Mississippi at Alton to go see the Arch in St. Louis, and my father had let me stick my head out the window as far as I could so I could see and smell the muddy river moiling and rolling around the huge stone supports of the bridge. I breathed in the fresh air and wondered how anyone would ever find me in Missouri.

"I don't need nobody figurin' anything out. Just move away from that door and get back to the other bottle you've got in your pocket. This is as far as you go in thinkin' about what I aim to do." Then he started for me, but the train made a lurch and a great clacking noise as if it was going through a tunnel and the man in the corner made a lunge at Orville and before I knew it the one by the door jumped him too. But Orville was faster, and rolled over and fired the shotgun at the same time, hitting the man by the door, who fell in front of me, his stomach bloody. He had his eyes open, but I knew he was dead. Then Orville whirled around and kicked the other one away from him and said "Mister, I guess this is your lucky day that I didn't fill you with this here shot. But if you don't do what I tell you you'll wish you had."

He broke the gun and put in two more shells and snapped it closed. "Now get over to that door," and he motioned with the gun for the man to hurry up. Then he told him to turn around so he could see him real good. And then he shot him, point blank. The man crumpled in the doorway, his hands cradling his stomach. He looked at me, but said nothing as Orville put his foot against his chest and pushed him out.

I remember how far down it was from our car when I rode with my family across the river and I remember thinking about how it would be to jump. It made me dizzy to think of it then. Now I thought nothing, felt nothing. The man was gone, backwards over the tracks, down into the slow-moving river. Orville stood looking out over the river, silhouetted in the hot sun, his arms and legs like sticks coming out from his body as he stood spraddle-legged, breathing the fresh air. It was then I noticed he was not holding the gun.

The next few seconds were not parts of time. There was no time. Everything stopped in place. The train seemed to hover in space. The river was a dark blue ribbon, the sunlight a soundless echo in my head and I seemed to move in slow-motion, inching my way on my back to the door, raising my feet together, waiting for him to turn, for that half-curled lip, for him to grab for the shotgun. What he did was make a quick arc into that bright blue sky. I don't remember hitting him in the back with my feet, pushing into and through him as hard as I could. I don't remember crying there on my back inside that smelly boxcar, or the dead man beside me, with his eyes still open.

What I remember, now, and always will, is the sudden slowing of the train as it crossed over the river, and the screech of its brakes as it came to a steady, gritty stop, the boxcar just over the river, the rest of the train spread across the river back into Illinois, my father's face in the door, his stained straw hat on the back of his head. I think I remember the whirling red lights on the police cars and the one siren slowly winding down, until all was quiet there in the sun, the river flowing behind me, my father crawling toward me, his large, hard hands removing the rope around my neck, saying something about the pony coming home and them finding the thicket and Bill, dying, on the ground. That's all I remembered for a long, long time. More would come later. More than I wanted.