Ken McElroy was a town bully in rural Skidmore, Missouri. He’d been accused of dozens of felonies- pedophilia, rape, arson, burglary and cattle rustling. He was prosecuted twenty-two times, but avoided conviction on all but his last charge. He was shot in broad daylight, and his murder was never solved.

It was the shock of real time, how fast and gory it was, seeing a mass of animated muscle and nerve- a mass that spoke in words, drove, interacted with the people around him even if those interactions were frequently, well, unpleasant- reduced to an inanimate, reduced to just a messy something that would either rot and stink or burn. There was the shock of how simultaneously awkward and graceful it was, how the blood arced out of Kenny McGill’s head and chest as he staggered like bull that’d been sideswiped by a semi.
   Before he fell, he looked down and laughed as his chest flesh hung off of him, as if attached by hinges. “You fucking cowards,” he laughed. And it was true, this was a guerilla attack by three men. With their hunting rifles, they’d fired from behind Kenny’s baby blue pick-up, his stack of lumber, the forked tree beside his house.
   However, they’d argue this wasn’t an act of revenge. This was a long running problem, and it had to go, and there was only one way to get rid of it, a way that didn’t require pride or honor. No pride or honor was involved in this sort of thing anyway.
  When he finally went down, the bleeding would stop for a while, then resume, like it was timed. There seemed to be something eerily controlled about all the bleeding, like the blood had a mind of it’s own and knew what it was doing, or like it was being pulled by magnets underground.
   The principals in the act, Ron Miller, Cory Huck and Dennis Leroy, nursed tall boys of Old Style around a small wooden table in the dark of Meyer’s Tavern. Carl, the diminutive, bartender, bald, ruddy and shriveled, gave them a grim, knowing look as he bought them their first round. They wouldn’t have to pay for a drink the rest of the day, they may never have to pay for one again.
  “I don’t know fellas,” Cory said, looking down into the open tab in the top of his beer can, like it’s a keyhole with a view to some sort of escape. “Maybe I’m not so tough, but this doesn’t sit right.”
   “Think of it this way,” Ron swigged from his beer. “Will you miss it? Poisoned livestock, stolen livestock, our fucking barns and houses being burned down, being chased out of our own fucking yards with shotguns?”
  “Our fucking wives and daughters being raped?” Dennis chimed in with an incredulous sneer.
   “That’s all…I know,” Cory sighed. “Something…I can’t help thinking he was a human being, though. Like, he’d have grown old and feeble eventually, maybe would have come around, maybe would have been under our thumbs or something somehow.”
   “Yeah,” Dennis nodded. “But how long would you be willing to wait? I mean, did he have to kill somebody before it came to this? He about has. There’s at least one guy who can’t walk again because of him, another guy who’ll never have full range of his arms.”
  “Truth be told,” Ron looked out the bar’s window, “nobody would’ve wanted to see that anyway. Thinking about it now, it was about as much for him as it was for us.”
  “How do you figure that?” Dennis asked.
  “Think he wanted to go out quiet and peaceful? No. This is all about who he was.”
  “Still doesn’t sit right,” Cory mumbled.
  “Don’t say that anymore,” Dennis pointed at Cory. “Never say that again. Okay, no, it doesn’t sit right. And you know what? It won’t. Not ever, not with any of us, so just stop saying it.”
   “Well what should I do?”
  “Just shut the fuck up about it,” Dennis said in a harsh whisper. “Forget about it.”
  “You have to let it go,” Ron said quietly, in an even patient tone. “I know, this hangs over all of us. But we have to move on.”
  “What if somebody comes through asking about him, though?”
  Ron and Dennis looked at each other.
  “Cory, this is BFE man. We’re basically invisible here.”
  “Is this how we’re gonna handle everything, though?”
  “There was nothing the law could do for us, man. No. This, we had to.”
   Cory looked away, then down at his beer.
  “I know what you’re thinking Cory,” Dennis said in a warning tone. “Just don’t say it. And for that matter, best not say anything. Understood?”
  Cory nodded while looking down, and the three men continued drinking in silence.