who sat in two recliners, which had been dragged around to face her. Both men were leaning back with their feet up. The two girls, Edna and Helen, sat to one side, on dining room chairs. And an empty chair sat next to them.

FLOOD WAS LOOKING at Einstadt and Rooney, but when she heard Virgil’s boots on the floor, she glanced at him and said, “Put the gun down, Virgil. Take a seat.”

“I really don’t have a lot of time for conversation—” Virgil began.

Einstadt snapped, “Sit down, goddamnit, she’s got a shotgun pointed at me.”

Alma was left-handed, Virgil noted, which explained why he hadn’t seen the long gun. She had the butt braced against the back of the chair, under her arm, with her trigger hand by her side, her other hand on the forestock. Not a pump; the gun was a Remington semiauto twelve-gauge. The muzzle was about six feet from Einstadt’s belly. That also explained why the men were sitting the way they were. With their feet up, higher than their hips, they couldn’t move quickly. If Alma really wanted to shoot them, she could.

Virgil asked, “What’s going on?”

“Sit down,” Alma Flood said.

“I don’t want to shoot you, Ms. Flood,” Virgil said. “There’s been enough shooting tonight.”

“Maybe and maybe not,” she said. “But I’ve got this trigger about half pulled, and if you move that gun toward me, I’ll pull it the rest of the way. You’ll be killing two Einstadts with one shot.”

“Sit down, please, sit down,” Rooney whined. Rooney was sweating hard, though the room was cool.

Virgil sat. He kept the gun in his hand, resting on his right leg, and put the radio down between his legs, with the microphone up, and hoped that Schickel and Jenkins and the others could hear it. “What happened here?” he asked.

“From what I hear, you know most of it,” Alma said. “We’re talking about that.”

“We’re having a trial,” Helen said. “Because of Rooney, mostly, but then maybe for Grandfather, too.”

“What’d Rooney do?”

The shotgun barrel swung to Rooney, the muzzle moving a short four or five inches, not nearly enough time for Virgil to do anything even if he’d been prepared. Alma said, “In the World of Spirit, nothing too serious. He took his women, just like the rules say he can. That being me, and then the girls. But as I understand it, under most laws, and maybe even normal Bible laws, we were raped.”

“If you didn’t consent, then it’s rape. If he had sexual relations with the girls, it’s rape whether or not they consented, because they’re too young to give consent,” Virgil said.

“I was taught it was the right thing, from the time I was a boy,” Rooney said, a pleading note in his voice.

Edna said, “We were begging you not to.”

“We was always taught girls need to be broke in,” Rooney said. “It’s not my fault we was always taught that.”

Virgil said to Alma, “Let the law take care of this. If you shoot him, you’re going to go to prison. After what you’ve been through, that hardly seems right.”

“What do you think I’ve been in, for forty-three years?” Alma asked.

Helen said to Virgil, “He took me upstairs and he was so ready, he was like a bull; he pulled all my clothes off and he ripped my blouse, not on the seam, but right across the fabric so I can’t fix it, and it’ll always have a rip in it.”

She was fingering her dress; Virgil said, “That’s not such a big deal anymore, even if it was—”

“We’re only allowed two dresses,” Edna said. “More than that would be vanity.”

Alma said, “What’d he do after he pushed you on the bed?”

“He made me suck on him and then he serviced me, and then he made Edna suck on him and he serviced her, and then he made both of us suck on him, and then he went into me the dirty way.”

Alma asked, “Tell Mr. Flowers how often he did that.”

“Almost every day. He’d hit me, slap me, really hard....” The girl’s voice was rising, as though she were reliving it.

Virgil jumped in and said, “Miz Flood, maybe you shouldn’t be putting the girls through this. They need treatment.”

“I think they do, and I’m sure they’ll get it, that you’ll see to it if I can’t,” Alma said. “But that’s not the question here. The question is Rooney. Now, I’m an old crow, and these men don’t like me as much as they used to,