Light hung: the Sawtooths blazing orange and gold as Daniel raced at the dark Blitzes and Peg pointed over his shoulder to some ridge beyond which he had shot something or other and maybe even his leg, partially lost with a spent magnum cartridge. Pegleg spoke of how his Thompson sub-machine gun laid down such a pretty pattern when he went target shooting: of how some cowboys, who had come around one night with their girls and their guns and told everyone to put on their clothes because they were embarassing their girls, had high-tailed it at the sight of his tool; he spoke and a couple hours passed and the Californians and New Zealanders left--Peg pinching the girls on the buttock and inviting them back--and we were all alone.
It was light: everything faded and the Sawtooths curved about us and we curved about Pegleg. He kept right on talking: showing his tricks to Bridget and Jenny, hanging a whirlpool device on the pool's ladder. Bridget and Jenny would grab the ladder, around the device, and Peg would grab their ankles and stretch them out flat, spreading their legs a bit, and they would giggle and Peg would spread a bit more and ask if it didn't feel damn good. Peg's wife appeared from nowhere and he told her to get some moonshine and homemade wine and she did.
Just a sip out of the Jack Daniels bottle in which Peg kept his hot as ice and clear as crystal brew was enough to feel a hell of a jolt, but Daniel had to go and pour the whole thing into his beer and Gay came back and, taking off her denims, climbed into the tub and suddenly it was right. Shooting stars peeled off the cob of the Milky Way, iridescent silk whipped off the rich black and yellow health of night, plunging into the darkness of the valley where a pair of headlights twined down the pass 20 miles away. Peg wondered whether he ought not go and get his gun.
Daniel was stark raving and told Bridget he could be a hell of a man and she said oh can you and he said wait and see and she spread her palms and he pounced and she sighed and the night poured liquid and the water glowed liquid and the air bent in liquid waves of soundlessness and Gay broke the liquid soundlessly and went her own way. And she was gone.
Calling it a night, Peg climbed out, telling Daniel to pull the plug when he was finished. Bridget and he stopped this writhing, uncoiling out of the water like salamanders; slickly limp, warm, shivering. Briggs and Jenny headed up to the Delac where Gay wasn't, Jenny telling Briggs about Gay's black eyes, the bandaged stabs on her arm, the bruises on he chest. And Gay was dying of T.B. and wouldn't go see a doctor and Briggs leaned back against the Delac, its door open and insides all aglow in the depth of nothing, and our odds were ruined.
Daniel, Bridget and I followed Peg up to his tiny, one-room cabin. A loaded shot-gun and squat, scoped hunting rifle hung over the door, a long-necked banjo and the Thompson over the bed. Peg turned on his tape deck, gave Peanut a piece of licorice, and pulled out the Thompson's clip: 90 rounds a minute of bloated, stumpy bullets. Peanut cried and Pegleg picked his banjo and Daniel got down on the floor where the child was and then wasn't when her mother picked her up, and said how she had the life and wasn't it the best while Pegleg invited Bridget back, smiling under his red, balding head, his glasses glinting and the polyeurethane over the windows smoking as I thanked him and plunged out into the pitch and ran a path I couldn't see to the road, running like the devil just for the hell of it. Not to wait for Daniel to stagger up the path on Bridget's arm, asking what was wrong and then, after saying something really must be done, passing out in the backseat of the Delac, on his sweetheart's lap. Not to walk back to Peg's picking my way through the blackness with a load tread and louder whistle so Peg would hear me loud and clear and not blast me when, stepping onto his porch, his door popped open a crack and he stood naked in the glow, his hands hidden as I told him we'd be on his property a while longer, if it suited him. Briggs and I hadn't come to Pegleg Mac's to cruise his rutted road, the night's sweat dripping off the Delac as she heaved in the ruts, looking for a girl out wandering in stars she said were "fucking intense," feeling all cold and wooden inside. Coming out to Pegleg Mac's, we hadn't counted on poking through these depths, strung to the short end of the Delac's lingering lights, all caught up in this black region that was so soft and cold, suspending them like feathers dusting the tarnished edges of the burning, empty space.
Gay staggered out of dusky nowhere. She was sobbing a bit and a little red-faced and I couldn't quite put my arm around her. Briggs stared at the road ahead and drove fast paMmmmmst the whorehouse of which Pegleg had informed us, and fast up Galena and fast to Ketchum. In the backseat all was quiet except for a few snores from Daniel: the road sucked under soundlessly; the trees didn't moan; there was no wind; the radio crackled, playing "This is the Last Song I'll Sing for You"; the night hung out beyond us; I thought what art from the artless.
Three days later old Daniel and Gay were back together for another month. Bridget and Jenny were staying over and Briggs and I were out hustling. We were all shouting across the fiber-board, and though nobody talked about Pegleg Mac's, we found plenty other low brow chit-chat.