When I was in my twenties, I plowed with a mule. It was the way my wife and I worked our garden, plus some land I used to grow extra food to sell.

I worked a lot of farm jobs then. Picking peas. Digging potatoes. Working in the rose fields, plus doing my own work.

The idea was to grow our own food, work part-time, and have time for me to write.

Didn't work out quite that way.

We worked from sunup to sundown, and by the time I was ready to write, I was beat.

I got a job in town.

In time, we used the mule less.

We bought some land with a pond, about twelve acres. Our intention was to build a house. We kept the mule there, going by daily to give it grain, check on it, file down its hooves, as it didn't wear shoes. (I'm talking metal shoes here, nothing from Paris.)

One day I came by to feed my mule, Mattie, and she was gone.

I never found her.

She had been mule-napped.

Somehow, that true-life incident led to this.

The Mule Rustlers

On a blustery, San Jacinto day, when leggy black clouds appeared against the pearl-gray sky like tromped-on spiders, Elliot and James set about rustling the mule.

A week back, James had spotted the critter while out casing the area for a house to burglarize. The burglary idea went down the tubes because there were too many large dogs in the yards, and too many older people sitting in lawn chairs flexing their false teeth amongst concrete lawn ornaments and sprinklers. Most likely they owned guns.

But on the way out of the neighborhood James observed, on a patch of about ten acres with a small pond and lots of trees, the mule. It was average-sized, brown in color, with a touch of white around the nostrils, and it had ears that tracked the countryside like radar instruments.

All of the property was fenced in barbed wire, but the gate to the property wasn't any great problem. It was made of hog wire stapled to posts, and there was another wire fastened to it and looped over a creosote corner post. There was a chain and padlock, but that was of no consequence. Wire cutters, and you were in.

The road in front of the property was reasonably traveled, and even as he slowed to check out the hog wire, three cars passed him going in the opposite direction.

James discovered if he drove off the gravel road and turned right on a narrow dirt road and parked to the side, he could walk through another piece of unfenced wooded property and climb over the barbed wire fence at the back of the mule's acreage. Better yet, the fence wasn't too good there, was kinda low, two strands only, and was primarily a line that marked ownership, not a boundary. The mule was in there mostly by her own goodwill.

James put a foot on the low, weak fence and pushed it almost to the ground. It was easy to step over then and he wanted to take the mule immediately, for he could see it browsing through a split in the trees, chomping up grass. It was an old mule, and its ears swung forward and back, but if it was aware of his presence, only the ears seemed to know and failed to send the signal to the critter's brain, or maybe the brain got the signal and didn't care.

James studied the situation. There were plenty of little crop farmers who liked a mule to plow their garden, or wanted one just because mules were cool. So there was a market. As for the job, well, the work would be holding the fence down so the mule could step over, then leading it to the truck. Easy money.

Problem was, James didn't have a truck. He had a Volvo that needed front-end work. It had once been crushed up like an accordion, then straightened somewhat, if not enough. It rattled and occasionally threatened to head off to the right without benefit of having the steering wheel turned.

And the damn thing embarrassed him. His hat touched the roof, and if he went out to the Cattleman's Cafe at the auction barn, he felt like a dork climbing out of it amidst mud-splattered pickups, some of them the size of military assault vehicles.

He had owned a huge Dodge Ram, but had lost it in a card game, and the winner, feeling generous, had swapped titles. The card shark got the Dodge, and James got the goddamn Volvo, worn out with the ceiling cloth dripping, the floor rotted away in spots, and the steering wheel slightly bent where an accident, most likely the one that accordioned the front end, must have thrown some un-seat-belted fella against it. At the top of the steering wheel, in the little rubber tubing wrapped around it, were a couple of teeth marks, souvenirs of that same unfortunate episode. Worse yet, the damn Volvo had been painted yellow, and it wasn't a job to be proud of. Baby-shit-hardened-and-aged-on-a-bedpost yellow.

Bottom line was, the mule couldn't ride in the front seat with him. But his friend Elliot owned both a pickup and a horse trailer.

Elliot had once seen himself as a horseman, but the problem was he never owned but one horse, a pinto, and it died from neglect, and had been on its last legs when Elliot purchased it for too much money. It was the only horse James had seen in Elliot's possession outside of stolen ones passing through his hands, and the only one outside of the one in the movie Cat Ballou that could lean against a wall at a forty-five-degree angle.

One morning it kept leaning, stiff as a sixteen-year-old's woody, but without the pulse. Having been there, probably dead, for several days, part of its hide had stuck to the wall and gone liquid and glue-ish. It took him and Elliot both with a two-by-four and a lot of energy to pry it off the stucco and push it down. They'd hooked it up to a chain by the back legs and dragged it to the center of Elliot's property.

Elliot had inherited his land from his grandfather Clemmons, who hated him. Old Man Clemmons had left him the land, but it was rumored he first salted the twenty-five acres and shit in the well. Sure enough, not much grew there except weeds, but as far as Elliot could tell the well water tasted fine.

According to Elliot, besides the salt and maybe the shit, he was given his grandfather's curse that wished him all life's burdens, none of its joys, and an early death. "He didn't like me much," Elliot was fond of saying when deep in his sauce.

They had coated the deceased pinto with gasoline and set it on fire. It had stunk something awful, and since they were involved with a bottle of Wild Turkey while it burned, it had flamed up and caught the back of Elliot's truck on fire, burning out the rubber truck bed lining. James figured they had just managed to beat it out with their coats moments before the gas tank ignited and blew them over and through the trees, along with the burning pinto's hide and bones.

#

James drove over to Elliot's place after his discovery of the mule. Elliot had grown him a few garden vegetables, mostly chocked with bugs, which he had been pushing from his fruit and vegetable stand next to the road.

James found him trying to sell a half bushel of tomatoes to a tall, moderately attractive blonde woman wearing shorts and showing lots of hair on her legs. Short, bristly hair, like a hog's. James had visions of dropping her in a vat of hot water and scraping that hair off with a knife. Course, he didn't want it hot as hog-scalding water, or she wouldn't be worth much when he got through. He wanted her shaved, not hurt.

Elliot had his brown, sweat-stained Stetson pushed up on his head and he was talking the lady up good as he could, considering she was digging through a basket and coming up with some bug-bit tomatoes.

"These are all bit up," she said.

"Bugs attack the good'ns," Elliot said. "Them's the ones you want. These ain't like that crap you get in the store."

"They don't have bugs in them."

"Yeah, but they don't got the flavor these do. You just cut around the spots, and those tomatoes'll taste better than any you ever had."

"That's a crock of shit," the lady said.

"Well now," Elliot said, "that's a matter of opinion."

"It's my opinion you put a few good tomatoes on top of the bug-bit ones," she said. "That's my opinion, and you can keep your tomatoes."

She got in a new, red Chevrolet and drove off.

"Good to see you ain't lost your touch," James said.

"Now, these here tomatoes have been goin' pretty fast this morning. Since it's mostly women buyin', I do all right. Fact is that's my first loss. Charm didn't work on her. She's probably a lesbian."

James wanted to call bullshit on that, but right now he wanted Elliot on his side.

"Unless you're doin' so good here you don't need money, I got us a little job."

"You case some spots?" Elliot asked.

"I didn't find nothin' worth doin'. Besides, there's lots of old folks where I was lookin'."

"I don't want no part of them. Always home. Always got dogs and guns."

"Yeah, and lawn gnomes and sprinklers made of wooden animals."

"With the tails that spin and throw water?"

"Yep."

"Kinda like them myself. You know, you picked up some of them things, you could sell them right smart."

"Yeah, well, I got somethin' better."

"Name it."

"Rustlin'."

Elliot worked his mouth a bit. James could see the idea appealed to him. Elliot liked to think of himself as a modern cowboy. "How many head?"

"One."

"One? Hell, that ain't much rustlin'."

"It's a mule. You can get maybe a thousand dollars for one. They're getting rarer, and they're kind of popular now. We rustle it. We could split the money."

Elliot studied on this momentarily. He also liked to think of himself as a respected and experienced thief.

"You know, I know a fella would buy a mule. Let me go up to the house and give him a call."

"It's the same fella I know, ain't it?"

"Yeah," Elliot said.

#

Elliot made the call and came out of the bedroom into the living room with good news.

"George wants it right away. He's offerin' us eight hundred."

"I wanted a thousand."

"He's offering eight hundred, he'll sell it for a thousand or better himself. He said he can't go a thousand. Already got a couple other buys goin' today. It's a deal and it's now."

James considered on that.

"I guess that'll do. We'll need your truck and trailer."

"I figured as much."

"You got any brown shoe polish?"

"Brown shoe polish?"

"That's right," James said.

#

The truck was a big, four-seater Dodge with a bed big enough to fill, attach a diving board, and call a pool. The Dodge hummed like a sewing machine as it whizzed along on its huge tires. The trailer clattered behind and wove precariously left and right, as if it might pass the truck at any moment. James and Elliot had their windows down, and the cool, April wind snapped at the brims of their hats and made the creases in their crowns deeper.

By the time they drove over to the place where the mule was, the smashed spider clouds had begun to twist their legs together and blend into one messy critter that peed sprinkles of rain all over the truck windshield.

They slowed as they passed the gate, then turned right. No cars or people were visible, so Elliot pulled over to the side of the road, got out quick with James carrying a rope. They went through the woods, stepped over the barbed wire fence, and found the mule grazing. They walked right up to it, and Elliot bribed it with an ear of corn from his garden. The mule sniffed at the corn and bit it. As he did, James slipped the rope over its neck, twisted it so that he put a loop over the mule's nose. Doing this, he brushed the mule's ears, and it kicked at the air, spun and kicked again. It took James several minutes to calm it down.

"It's one of them that's touchy about the ears," Elliot said. "Don't touch the ears again."

"I hear that," James said.

They led the mule to the fence. Elliot pushed it almost to the ground with his boot, and James and the mule stepped over. After that, nothing more was required than to lead the mule to the trailer and load it. It did what was expected without a moment's hesitation.

There was some consternation when it came to turning truck and trailer around, but Elliot managed it and they were soon on the road to a rendezvous with eight hundred dollars.

#

The place they had to go to meet their buyer, George Taylor, was almost to Tyler, and about sixty miles from where they had nabbed the mule. They often sold stolen material there, and George specialized in livestock and just about anything he could buy quick and sell quicker.

The trailer was not enclosed, and it occurred to James that the mule's owner might pass them, but he doubted the mule would be recognized. They were really hauling ass, and the trailer, with the weight of the old mule to aid it, had slowed in its wobbling but still sounded like a train wreck.

When they were about twenty-five miles away from Taylor's place, James had Elliot pull over. He took the brown shoe polish back to the trailer and, reaching between the bars while Elliot fed the mule corn on the cob, painted the white around the mule's nose brown. It was raining lightly, but he managed the touch-up without having it washed away.

He figured this way Taylor might not notice how old the critter was and not try to talk them down. He had given them a price, but they had dealt with Taylor before and what he offered wasn't always what he wanted to give, and it was rare you talked it up. The trick was to keep him from going down. George knew once they had the mule stolen they'd want to get rid of it, and it would be his plan to start finding problems with the animal and to start lowering his price.

When the mule was painted, they got back in the truck and headed out.

Elliot said, "You are one thinker, James."

"Yes sir," James agreed, "you got to get up pretty goddamned early in the morning to get one over on me. It starts raining hard, it won't wash off. That stuff'll hold."

#

When they arrived at Taylor's place, James looked back through the rear truck window and saw the mule with its head lowered, looking at him through sheets of rain. James felt less smart immediately. The brown he had painted on the mule had dried and was darker than the rest of its hide and made it look as if it had dipped its muzzle in a bucket of paint, searching for a carrot on the bottom.

James decided to say nothing to Elliot about this, lest Elliot decide it really wasn't all that necessary to get up early to outsmart him.

Taylor's place was a kind of ranch and junkyard. There were all manner of cars damaged or made thin by the car smasher that Taylor rode with great enthusiasm, wearing a gimme cap with the brim pushed up and his mouth hanging open as if to receive something spoon-fed by a caretaker.

Today, however, the car smasher remained silent near the double-wide where Taylor lived with his bulldog Bullet and his wife, Kay, who was about one ton of woman in a muumuu that might have been made from a circus tent and decorated by children with finger paints. If she owned more than one of these outfits, James was unaware of it. It was possible she had a chest full of them, all the same, folded and ready, with a hole in the center to pull over her head at a moment's notice.

At the back of the place a few cows that looked as if they were ready to be sold for hide and hooves stumbled about. Taylor's station wagon, used to haul a variety of stolen goods, was parked next to the trailer, and next to it was a large, red Cadillac with someone at the back of it closing the trunk.

As they drove over the cattle guard and onto the property, the man at the trunk of the Cadillac looked up. He was wearing a blue baseball cap and a blue T-shirt that showed belly at the bottom. He and his belly bounced away from the Caddy, up the steps of the trailer, and inside.

Elliot said, "Who's that?"

"Can't say," James said. "Don't recognize him."

They parked beside the Cadillac, got out, went to the trailer door, and knocked. There was a long pause, then the man with the baseball cap answered the door.

"Yeah," he said.

"We come to see Taylor," Elliot said.

"He ain't here right now," said the man.

"He's expectin' us," James said.

"Say he is?"

"We got a mule to sell him," James said.

"That right?"

"Mrs. Taylor here?" James asked.

"Naw. She ain't. Ain't neither one of them here."

"Where's Bullet?" Elliot asked.

"He don't buy mules, does he?"

"Bullet?" Elliot said.

"Didn't you ask for him?"

"Well, yeah, but not to buy nothin'."

"You boys come on in," came a voice from inside the trailer. "It's all right there, Butch, stand aside. These here boys are wantin' to do some business with George. That's what we're doin'."

Butch stood aside. James and Elliot went inside.

"So is he here?" James asked.

"No. Not just now. But we're expectin' him shortly."

Butch stepped back and leaned against the trailer's kitchen counter, which was stacked with dirty dishes. The place smelled funny. The man who had asked them to come inside was seated on the couch. He was portly, wearing black pants and black shoes with the toes turned up. He had on a big, black Hawaiian-style shirt with hula girls in red, blue, and yellow along the bottom. He had greasy, black hair combed straight back and tied in a little ponytail. A white, short-brimmed hat with a near flat crown was on a coffee table in front of him, along with a can of beer and a white substance in four lines next to a rolled dollar bill. He had his legs crossed and he was playing with the tip of one of his shoes. He had a light growth of beard and he was smiling at them.

"What you boys sellin'?" he asked.

"A mule," James said.

"No shit?"

"That's right," Elliot said. "When's George coming back?"

"Sometime shortly after the Second Coming. But I doubt he'll go with God."

Elliot looked at James. James shrugged, and at that moment he saw past Elliot, and what he saw was Bullet lying on the floor near a doorway to the bedroom, a pool of blood under him. He tried not to let his eyes stay on Bullet long. He said, "Tell you what, boys. I think me and Elliot will come back later, when George is here."

The big man lifted up his Hawaiian shirt and showed him his hairy belly and against it a little, flat black automatic pistol. He took the pistol out slowly and put it on his knee and looked at them.

"Naw. He ain't comin' back, and you boys ain't goin' nowhere."

"Aw shit," Elliot said, suddenly getting it. "He ain't no friend of ours. We just come to do business, and if he ain't here to do business, you boys got our blessing. And we'll just leave and not say a word."

Another man came out of the back room. He was naked, and carrying a bowie knife. He was muscular, bug-nosed, with close-cut hair. There was blood on him from thighs to neck. From the back room they heard a moan.

The naked man looked at them, then at the man on the couch.

"Friends of Taylor's," the man on the couch said.

"We ain't," James said. "We hardly know him. We just come to sell a mule."

"A mule, huh," said the naked man. He didn't seem bashful at all. His penis was bloody and stuck to his right leg like some kind of sucker fish. The naked man nodded his head at the open doorway behind him, spoke to the man on the couch. "I've had all of that I want and can take, Viceroy. It's like cutting blubber off a whale."

"You go on and shower," Viceroy said, then smiled, added: "And be sure and wash the parts you don't normally touch."

"Ain't no parts Tim don't touch," Butch said.

"I tell you what," Tim said. "You get in there and go to work, then show me how funny you are. That old woman is hardheaded."

Tim went past Butch, driving the bowie knife into the counter, rattling the dishes.

Viceroy stared at Butch. "Your turn."

"What about you?" Butch said.

"I don't take a turn. Get with it."

Butch put his cap on the counter next to a greasy plate, took off his shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and shoes. He pulled the knife out of the counter and started for the bedroom. He said, "What about these two?"

"Oh, me and them are gonna talk. Any friend of Taylor's is a friend of mine."

"We don't really know him," James said. "We just come to sell a mule."

"Sit down on the floor there, next to the wall, away from the door," Viceroy said, and scratched the side of his cheek with the barrel of the automatic.

A moment later they heard screams from the back room and Butch yelling something, then there was silence, followed shortly by more screams.

"Butch ain't got Tim's touch," Viceroy said. "Tim can skin you and you can walk off before you notice the hide on your back, ass, and legs is missin'. Butch, he's a hacker."

Viceroy leaned forward, took up the dollar bill, and sucked up a couple lines of the white powder. "Goddamn, that'll do it," he said.

Elliot said, "What is that?"

Viceroy laughed. "Boy, you are a rube, ain't you? Would you believe bakin' soda?"

"Really?" Elliot said.

Viceroy hooted. "No. Not really."

From the bedroom you could hear Butch let out a laugh. "Crackers," he said.

"It's cocaine," James said to Elliot. "I seen it in a movie."

"Good God," Elliot said.

"My, you boys are delicate for a couple of thieves," Viceroy said.

Tim came out of the bathroom, still naked, bouncing his balls with a towel.

"Put some clothes on," Viceroy said. "We don't want to see that."

Tim looked hurt, put on his clothes and adjusted his cap. Viceroy snorted the last two lines of coke. "Damn, that's some good stuff: You can step on that multiple."

"Let me have a snort," Tim said.

"Not right now," Viceroy said.

"How come you get to?" Tim said.

" 'Cause I'm the biggest bull in the woods, boy. And you can test that anytime you got the urge."

Tim didn't say anything. He went to the refrigerator, found a beer, popped it, and began to sip.

"I don't think she knows nothing," Tim said. "She wouldn't hold back havin' that done to her for a few thousand dollars. Not for a million."

"I reckon you're right," said Viceroy. "I just don't like quittin' halfway. You finish a thing, even if it ain't gonna turn out. Ain't that right, boys?"

James and Elliot didn't reply. Viceroy laughed and picked up the beer on the coffee table and took a jolt of it. He said to himself, "Yeah, that's right. You don't do a thing half-ass. You do it all the way. What time is it?"

Tim reached in his pocket and took out a pocket watch. James recognized it as belonging to George Taylor. "It's four."

"All right," Viceroy said, satisfied, and sipped his beer.

#

After a time Butch came out of the bedroom bloody and looking tired. "She ain't gonna tell nobody nothin'. She's gone. She couldn't take no more. She'd have known somethin', she'd have told it."

"Guess Taylor didn't tell her," Tim said. "Guess she didn't know nothin'."

"George had more in him than I thought, goin' like that, takin' all that pain and not talkin'," Viceroy said. "I wouldn't have expected it of him."

Tim nodded his head. "When you shot his bulldog, I think he was through. Took the heart right out of him. Wasn't a thing we could do to him then that mattered."

"Money's around here somewhere," Viceroy said.

"He might not have had nothin'," Butch said, walking to the bathroom.

"I think he did," Viceroy said. "I don't think he was brave enough to try and cross me. I think he had the money for the blow, but we double-crossed him too soon. We should have had him put the money on the table, then done what we needed to do. Would have been easier on everybody all the way around, them especially."

"They'd have still been dead," Tim said, drinking the last of his beer, crushing the can.

"But they'd have just been dead. Not hurt a lot, then dead. Old fat gal, that wasn't no easy way to go, and in the end she didn't know nothin'. And Taylor, takin' the knife, then out there in that car in the crusher and us telling him we were gonna run him through, and him still not talkin'."

"Like I said, we killed the bulldog I think he was through. Fat woman wasn't nothin' to him, but he seemed to have a hard-on for that dog. He'd just as soon be crushed. But I still think there might not have been any money. I think maybe they was gonna do what we were gonna do. Double cross."

"Yeah, but we brought the blow," Viceroy said.

Tim grinned. "Yeah, but was you gonna give it to 'em?"

Viceroy laughed, then his gaze settled lead-heavy on the mule rustlers. "Well, boys, what do you suggest I do with you pickle heads?"

"Just let us go," James said. "Hell, this ain't our business, and we don't want it to be our business. It ain't like Taylor was a relative of ours."

"That's right," Elliot said. "He's cheated us plenty on little deals."

Viceroy was quiet. He looked at Tim. "What do you say?"

Tim pursed his lips and developed the expression of a man looking in the distance for answers. "I sympathize with these boys. I guess we could let 'em go. Give us their word, show us some ID, so they spill any beans we can find them. You know the littlest bit these days and you can find anybody."

"Damn Internet," Viceroy said.

Butch came out of the bathroom, naked, toweling his hair.

"You think we should let 'em go?" Viceroy asked.

Butch looked first at Viceroy and Tim, then at James and Elliot. "Absolutely."

"Get dressed," Viceroy said to Butch, "and we'll let 'em go."

"We won't say a word," Elliot said.

"Sure," Viceroy said. "You look like boys who can be quiet. Don't they?"

"Yeah," Tim said.

"Absolutely," Butch said, tying his shoe.

"Then we'll just go," James said, standing up from his position on the floor, Elliot following suit.

"Not real quick," Viceroy said. "You got a mule, huh?"

James nodded.

"What's he worth?"

"Couple thousand dollars to the right people."

"What about people ain't maybe quite as right?"

"A thousand. Twelve hundred."

"What were you supposed to get?"

"Eight hundred."

"We could do some business, you know."

James didn't say anything. He glanced toward the door where the men had been at work on Mrs. Taylor. He saw the bulldog lying there on the linoleum in its pool of hardened blood, and flowing from the bedroom was fresh blood. The fresh pool flowed around the crusty old pool and bled into the living room of the trailer and died where the patch of carpet near the couch began; the carpet began to slowly absorb it.

James knew these folks weren't going to let them go anywhere.

"I think we'll take the mule," Viceroy said. "Though I ain't sure I'm gonna give you any eight hundred dollars."

"We give it to you as a gift," Elliot said. "Just take it, and the trailer it's in, and let us go."

"That's a mighty nice offer," Viceroy said. "Nice, huh, boys?"

"Damn nice," Tim said.

"Absolutely," Butch said. "They could have held out and tried to deal. You don't get much nicer than that."

"And throwing in the trailer too," Tim said. "Now, that's white of 'em."

James took hold of the doorknob, turned it, said, "We'll show him to you."

"Wait a minute," Viceroy said.

"Come on out," James said.

Butch darted across the room, took hold of James's shoulder. "Hold up."

The door was open now. Rain was really hammering. The mule, its head hung, was visible in the trailer.

"Ain't no need to get wet," Viceroy said.

James had one foot on the steps outside. "You ought to see what you're gettin'."

"It'll do," Viceroy said. "It ain't like we're payin' for it."

Butch tightened his grip on James, and Elliot, seeing how this was going to end up and somehow feeling better about dying out in the open, not eight feet from a deceased bulldog, a room away from a skinned fat woman, pushed against Butch and stepped out behind James and into the yard.

"Damn," Viceroy said.

"Should I?" Butch said, glancing at Viceroy, touching the gun in his pants.

"Hell, let's look at the mule," Viceroy said.

Viceroy put on his odd hat and they all went out in the rain for a look. Viceroy looked as if he were some sort of escapee from a mental institution, wearing a hubcap. The rain ran off of it and made a curtain of water around his head.

They stood by the trailer staring at the mule. Tim said, "Someone's painted its nose, or it's been dippin' it in shit."

James and Elliot said nothing.

James glanced at the trailer, saw there was no underpinning. He glanced at Elliot, nodded his head slightly. Elliot looked carefully. He had an idea what James meant. They might roll under the trailer and get to the other side and start running. It wasn't worth much. Tim and Butch looked as if they could run fast, and all they had to do was run fast enough to get a clear shot.

"This is a goddamn stupid thing," Butch said, the rain hammering his head. "Us all standing out here in the rain lookin' at a goddamn mule. We could be dry and these two could be—"

A horn honked. Coming up the drive was a black Ford pickup with a camper fastened to the bed.

The truck stopped and a man the shape of a pear with the complexion of a marshmallow, dressed in khakis the color of walnut bark, got out smiling teeth all over the place. He had a rooster under his arm.

He said, "Hey, boys. Where's George?"

"He ain't feelin' so good," Viceroy said.

The man with the rooster saw the gun Viceroy was holding. He said, "You boys plinking cans?"

"Somethin' like that," Viceroy said.

"Would you tell George to come out?" the man said.

"He won't come out," Butch said.

The man's smile fell away. "Why not? He knows I'm comin'."

"He's under the weather," Viceroy said.

"Can't we all go inside, it's like being at the bottom of a lake out here."

"Naw. He don't want us in there. Contagious."

"What's he got?"

"You might say a kind of lead poisonin'."

"Well, he wants these here chickens. I got the camper back there full of 'em. They're fightin' chickens. Best damn bunch there is. This'n here, he's special. He's a stud rooster. He ain't fightin' no more. Won his last one. Got a bad shot that put blood in his lungs, but I put his head in my mouth and sucked it out, and he went on to win. Just come back from it and won. I decided to stud him out."

"He's gettin' all wet," Butch said.

"Yeah he is," said the chicken man.

"Let's end this shit," Tim said.

James reached over and pulled the bar on the trailer and the gate came open. He said, "Let's show him to you close-up."

"Not now," Viceroy said, but James was in the trailer now. He took the rope off the trailer rail and tied it around the mule's neck and put a loop over its head, started backing him out.

"That's all right," Viceroy said. "We don't need to see no damn mule."

"He's a good'n," James said when the mule was completely out of the trailer. "A little touchy about the ears."

He turned the mule slightly then, reached up, and grabbed the mule's ears, and it kicked.

The kick was a good one. Both legs shot out and the mule seemed to stand on its front legs like a gymnast that couldn't quite flip over. The shod hooves caught Viceroy in the face and there was a sound like a pound of wet cow shit dropping on a flat rock, and Viceroy's neck turned at a too-far angle and he flew up and fell down.

James bolted, and so did Elliot, slamming into Tim as he went, knocking him down. James hit the ground, rolled under the trailer, scuttled to the other side, Elliot went after him. Butch aimed at the back of Elliot's head and the chicken man said, "Hey, what the hell."

Butch turned and shot the chicken man through the center of the forehead. Chicken man fell and the rooster leaped and squawked, and just for the hell of it, Butch shot the rooster too.

Tim got up cussing. "I'm all muddy."

"Fuck that," Butch said. "They're gettin' away."

Even the mule had bolted, darting across the yard, weaving through the car crusher and a pile of mangled cars. Their last view of it was the tips of its ears over the top of the metallic heap.

Tim ran around the trailer and saw James and Elliot making for a patch of woods in the distance. It was just a little patch that ran along both sides of the creek down there. The land sloped just enough and the rain and wind were hard enough that the shot Tim got off didn't hit James or Elliot. It went past them and smacked a tree.

Tim came back around the trailer and looked at Butch bending over Viceroy, taking his gun, sticking it in his belt.

"He bad?" Tim asked.

"He's dead. Fuckin' neck's broke. If that's bad, he's bad."

"We gonna get them hillbillies?"

"There ain't no hills around here for a billy to live in. They're just the same ole white trash they got everywhere, you idiot."

"Well, this ain't Dallas . . . we gonna chase 'em?"

"What for? Let's get the TV set and go."

"Got a stereo too. I seen it in there. It's a good'n."

"Get that too. I don't think there is no money. I think he was gonna try and sweet-talk Viceroy out of some of that blow. A pay-later deal."

"He damn sure didn't know Viceroy, did he?"

"No, he didn't. But you know what, I ain't gonna miss him."

A moment later the TV and the stereo were loaded in the Cadillac. Then, just for fun, they put the chicken man and Viceroy in the chicken man's truck and used the car crusher on it. As the truck began to crush, chickens squawked momentarily and the tires blew with a sound like mortar fire.

With Viceroy, the chicken man, and the chickens flattened, they slid the truck onto a pile of rusted metal, got in the Cadillac, and drove out of there, Butch at the wheel.

On the way over the cattle guard, Tim said, "You know, we could have sold them chickens."

"My old man always said don't steal or deal in anything you got to feed. I've stuck by that. Fuck them chickens. Fuck that mule."

Tim considered that, decided it was sage advice, the part about not dealing in livestock. He said, "All right."

#

Along the creek James and Elliot crept. The creek was rising and the sound of the rain through the trees was like someone beating tin with a chain.

The land was low and it was holding water. They kept going and pretty soon they heard a rushing sound. Looking back, they saw a wall of water surging toward them. The lake a mile up had overflowed and the creek and all that rain were causing it to flood.

"Shit," said James.

The water hit them hard and knocked them down, took their hats. When they managed to stand, the water was knee-deep and powerful. It kept bowling them over. Soon they were just flowing with it and logs and limbs were clobbering them at every turn.

They finally got hold of a small tree that had been uprooted and hung to that. The water carried them away from the trees around the creek and out into what had once been a lowland pasture.

They had gone a fair distance like this when they saw the mule swimming. Its neck and back were well out of the water and it held its head as if it were regal and merely about some sort of entertainment.

Their tree homed in on the mule, and as they passed, James grabbed the mule's neck and pulled himself onto it. Elliot got hold of the mule's tail, pulled himself up on its back where James had settled.

The mule was more frantic now, swimming violently. The flood stopped suddenly, and James realized this was in fact where the highway had been cut through what had once been a fairly large hill. The highway was covered and not visible, but this was it, and there was a drop-off as the water flowed over it.

Down they went, and the churning deluge went over them, and they spun that way for a long time, like they were in a washing machine cycle. When they came up, the mule was upside down, feet pointing in the air. Its painted nose sometimes bobbed up and out of the water, but it didn't breathe and it didn't roll over.

James and Elliot clung to its legs and fat belly and washed along like that for about a mile. James said, "I'm through with livestock."

"I hear that," Elliot said.

Then a bolt of lightning, attracted by the mule's upturned, iron-shod hooves, struck them a sizzling, barbecuing strike, so that there was nothing left now but three piles of cooked meat, one with a still visible brown nose and smoking, wilting legs, the other two wearing clothes, hissing smoke, blasting along with the charge of the flood.

"The Mule Rustlers" was originally published in 2001 in The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology. It was later included in Mad Dog Summer and Other Stories (Subterranean Press, 2004). "The Mule Rustlers" © 2001 Joe R. Lansdale.