..... Three days later Clayton has come to understand: this is Romeo and Juliet, John and Yoko, Luke and Laura, baby. This is love with a capital L. For the first time in his life he knows why they play all those syrupy songs on the radio. Before the Beauty Queen, he'd been an Iron Maiden, Megadeath, Guns 'n Roses kind of guy. Now, he can't get enough of pop ballads on FM radio. It makes him feel foolish, but in a nice kind of way, and even his dad's presence can't spoil his good mood.
..... He goes to her at sundown, kisses her cool, dry lips and is warmed by her presence. The Beauty Queen is more beautiful than ever. He likes the whiteness of her skin, the exotic blue tinge to her lips, the grace and peace in her eyes.
..... The morning after he found her, he dug through the old barn for an old chest freezer his dad had moved out there three years before. He'd washed it and let it air out for a while and then about busted his spine loading it into his International and lugging it to the smokehouse. But the Beauty Queen is worth the effort. She sleeps her days away safe from rats and field mice and raccoons, awaiting his return.
..... They lie on a lumpy, mildewed mattress he rescued from the town dump-- not exactly the bed of roses of the Beauty Queen deserves, but it will do for now, he supposes. He tells her about his trip into town with his father, skimming over the way the old man harangued him about applying for a real job before finally asking, "What the fuck, Clayton? You think you can cut yards and rake leaves and pick up odd jobs for the rest of your life? You think your momma and I are always going to support you?" There's no point in getting too deep into that. The important news is that no one really thinks she's missing. Everyone in town seems to believe that the Beauty Queen and her Lover Boy, who owed some not nice fellows a lot of drug money, took off for warmer weather-Florida or maybe even California.
..... "It's just the way I told you it would be," he says even though he hasn't told her that at all, just hoped it would be true.
..... And in his head the Beauty Queen says how she never doubted it. He was always smarter than people gave him credit for. Then she confesses that unlike the rest of their schoolmates, she never really believed he was weird. In fact, she says, she always secretly thought he was kind of cute. She was just afraid to say it to her friends. He tells her not to worry about that, not to worry at all. He forgives her completely. He kisses her again and then opens her thighs and rolls on top of her.
..... Afterwards, he lies with her beneath the blanket, speaking of the things that trouble him in his life. He tells her that he never meant to be weird, didn't know he was until the first day of kindergarten when Jeremy Mayes spotted him digging at a chigger bite on the back of his thigh and shouted, "Look at that! The weird kid's an ass picker!" For a long time he hated Jeremy Mayes, he tells her, but he gave that up when he finally realized that if it hadn't been Jeremy who branded him a freak, it would have been someone else. Everyone could tell by just looking at him. He forgave Jeremy Mayes. But he couldn't forgive his parents.
..... "They knew," he says. "Once I saw the way people at school looked at me I could see it on their faces, too. My whole life they knew I was a weirdo, but they didn't tell me. I wasn't prepared. They just sent me off to school like it was a big fucking joke."
..... He cries then, can't help himself, but the Beauty Queen doesn't mind, doesn't think of him as less of a man. He can feel sympathy and love rising from her cold skin.
..... "It doesn't matter," he says. "I've got you now. And we're going to have each other forever."
..... But he hears the Beauty Queen in the back of his mind, and her words make him shudder. It's been warmer today, she tells him. Spring will be coming soon. And then I'll rot. There's no electricity in here, no way to keep me fresh. I'll rot and be gone and you'll alone again. It breaks my heart to leave you, she says. But it's bound to happen.
..... He promises her that he won't let it. He'll do something. Stop the rotation of the earth, banish both spring and summer, whatever it takes for them to be together. But he knows even as he says it that those are hollow words, boastful nonsense from a terrified and inexperienced lover. This isn't the way happily ever after is supposed to end. But it will. And he realizes that there's nothing he can do about it.
..... Yes, she says. There is.
..... And Clayton is sure that the Beauty Queen has spoken aloud. He knows it's impossible, but he can still hear that voice, feel its vibration in his ears and the boards of the building.
..... "Tell me," he says.
..... She does and of course he's known all along. And he resists at first. And of course he gives in because, after all, true love inevitably demands sacrifice.

***

..... His parents are sitting down for dinner -- pork chop casserole with Minute Rice and cream of mushroom soup-- when Clayton kills them. In the moment before he lifts the .357, so heavy and reassuring in his hand, he leans against the kitchen door, watching them. His mother pushes food around with her fork, a glass of ice water by her hand. She never drinks beer when the old man is home. That's okay though. He drinks enough for both of them. Three empty Pabst cans sit beside his place, as head down, he shovels the food in, pausing only long enough to wash down a mouthful with a swallow of beer.
..... Clayton on a memory from when he was five or six. His mother in a loose white dress sitting in a lawn chair and shouting out "warm" or "cold," while he runs through the back yard, an Easter basket banging against his chubby thighs as he searches for the colored eggs his old man hid for him. His eyes water, not because of what he's about to do, but because there are so few of these good memories and the ones he has are getting harder to recall every day.
..... "Your supper's on the stove," his mother says, barely glancing at him. "Wash your hands before you sit down."
..... His old man doesn't bother to look back at him at all. "The least you can do is show up to eat it on time. If I had my way I'd have dumped your plate in the garbage."
..... "Dad," Clayton says.
..... "What?"
..... "I love you."
..... That stops the old man. His shoulders tense, and he drops his fork on his plate, turns in his chair, his eyebrow raised in a question.
..... "Is something wrong?" he's asking.
..... Clayton squeezes the trigger. The .357 bucks in his hand, its roar setting his ears to ringing. The shot hits the old man just below the breast bone, punches him back against his chair, one arm flailing out wildly, knocking empty beer cans from the table. He grabs at the wound, his mouth working the way a fish's mouth will work when it's dropped on the bank, the hook still biting deep into its gullet. Clayton fires again. This shot catches the old man in the throat, comes out the side of his neck in a spray of blood and skin and bone, ricochets off the sink.
..... Wide-eyed, his momma holds up her hands like a cornered suspect in a television show. They're trembling, Clayton sees, and her skin is nearly the same bleached white as the Beauty Queen's. She doesn't try to run or fight back or even scream. She just sits there with her hands up, her lip quivering. Finally, when he turns the .357's barrel to her, she finds her words.
..... "Oh, Clayton," she says, more sad than surprised or frightened. "Oh, Clayton."

***

..... The afternoon of his twenty-first birthday Clayton stands at the living room window and watches a Sheriff's Department cruiser bounce along the ruts in the drive. His legs tremble when he thinks of how lucky it is that he decided to put his family away before he ran to town to shop for his birthday dinner. In the last couple of days he's taken to leaving them out more and more, his parents on the living room sofa, sitting with their legs touching, their hands interlaced, happy and in love, the Beauty Queen either at the kitchen table to share a romantic meal or, more often, waiting for him in his parents' marriage bed, her smile knowing, her legs parted in invitation. But this morning the Beauty Queen spoke up. Better safe than sorry, she said, so he dragged them all into the bedroom, drew the curtains and shut the doors.
..... Now he pulls on his parka, thinks of the .357 magnum lying on the nightstand in his bedroom. He wants to get it, but the knock on the door comes before he's three steps down the hall, and he stops, panicking, unsure what to do. He wants the gun, but maybe Sheriff Simmons will get suspicious if he's made to wait.
..... He's kept the thermometer on fifty since he carried the Beauty Queen into the house, but sweat breaks out on his forehead and runs down the small of his back. His heart wallops in his chest. There's another knock at the back door, and he gives up on the idea of the gun. On the way through the kitchen he thinks of his father's skinning knife in the catch-all drawer beside the sink. He takes the time to get it and to slip into his pocket, knocking be damned.
..... "I thought I heard you in there," Sheriff Simmons says, grinning a little.
..... Clayton closes the door behind him. "That was me alright."
..... Sheriff Simmons is a tall man, six two or three, raw boned and wiry in his youth but pot-bellied and slump shouldered now as he creeps towards retirement. He's balding on top, wears a thick black and gray mustache, has kind eyes.
..... "How you been getting along?" Simmons says. "I'm asking cause I ain't seen you in town very much lately."
..... "I was there this morning."
..... "Huh," Simmons says.
..... "I been busy lately."
..... Simmons glances over his shoulder, but there's nothing for him to see on the other side of the small pane of glass in the door. "Say you have? You working?"
..... "Well, I…" He thinks of lying but something like that would be easy to check. "No," he admits. "Just watching a lot of television."
..... "That keeps you busy?"
..... "I've pretty much made it a full time job," Clayton says.
..... Simmons smiles at the attempt at humor, but it's not a genuine smile. Clayton can tell that. It doesn't even come close to reaching his eyes, which are sharp now and distrustful and not at all friendly.
..... "You got any idea why I'm out here?"
..... "I figure…"
..... "It's got something to do with your momma and daddy," Simmons says."Ray Massey called me this morning, said your momma hasn't been to work all this week and no one out here's answering the phone."
..... "Huh," Clayton says because he can't think of anything else.
..... "He's worried."
..... "I bet he is," Clayton says quickly, picturing Ray Massey's suntanned face and white-toothed grin and wanting to take a chopping axe and split his head wide open.
..... "What's that supposed to mean?"
..... "Nothing."
..... Now it's the Sheriff's turn to say huh and then, "I called out to Peterson Trucking. They say your daddy's had a load waiting for two days . They been calling too. Nobody's been answering." He reaches into his coat pocket for a pack of Pall Malls, thumbs one out. "I figured I ought to swing by here and see if everything's okay." He lights his cigarette with a Zippo engraved with crossed pistols and exhales smoke at the sky. "Is it?"
..... "Is what?"
..... "Everything okay."
..... "Sure it is," Clayton says, trying to force himself to smile. "Why wouldn't it be?"
..... "I don't know. That's why I'm here." He exhales another little cloud of smoke. "Your daddy home?"
..... "No."
..... "Even though his rig's parked down there by the barn and his Ford Ranger's sitting right there in the drive?"
..... "Even though," Clayton says.
..... "What about your momma?"
..... "No."
..... Simmons smiles around his cigarette. "Even though that's her Plymouth I parked beside?"
..... "Right."
..... "Say, you wouldn't happen to have some coffee in the pot would you? Cold gets to me these days, and I need all the warming fuel I can get."
..... "We don't have none."
..... "No coffee?"
..... Clayton feels his face burn and his tongue wanting to tie up into a stammer. "Instant," he says quickly. "We don't have one of those Mr. Coffee's. Instant's all we got."
..... Simmons smile is broad and friendly. "Well, hell, son that's fine with me. Beggars can't be choosers. That's what they say, isn't it?" He steps closer and Clayton can smell the aftershave, English Leather like his old man wears. "How about we go in, have a cup of coffee where it's warm and see if we can't make sense out of all this?"
..... "No," Clayton says. "I mean I don't have time. I got to…"
..... And now Sheriff Simmons isn't smiling at all. His eyes-how could Clayton have ever thought they were friendly-are as hard and narrow as a hawk's catching sight of a rabbit breaking cover.
..... "You're telling me I can't come in?"
..... "Yes," Clayton says, his voice barely above a whisper, his eyes turned away. "That's what I'm saying."
..... Simmons shakes his head and sighs. "So I've got to go to all the trouble of driving back to town, waiting around until Judge Watkins cuts me a warrant and then coming back out here? Because that's exactly what I'm going to do. Come back with a warrant."
..... "It's just that…" he lets the words trail away and tries again. "The place is dirty," he says. "And I haven't been feeling all that well lately, not like myself. I didn't mean to be rude."
..... "I don't need a warrant?"
..... "No," Clayton says. "My momma's probably going to kill me when she finds out I let you in with things looking this way, but I don't want you to go to all that trouble for nothing."
..... Clayton opens the door and stands aside, ushering him in. Simmons claps his shoulder and crosses the threshold.
..... "Cold in here," he says, stepping into the kitchen.
..... Clayton closes the door behind them. "Furnace hasn't been working all that well lately."
..... Simmons glances down at the birthday cake, the slowly thawing steak, the melting ice cream Clayton's left on the table. Then his eyes move to the hallway.
..... "Smells funny in here," he says.
..... And when he says it, he seems to recognize the scent for what it is. His hand drops to his gun belt, his thumb unsnapping the trigger guard on his holster. But it doesn't matter. The old Sheriff has made the rookie mistake of allowing someone to get behind him, and Clayton has the knife in hand.

***

..... Clayton has finished his porterhouse and baked potato and is waiting to light the candles on his birthday cake when he hears the cars approaching. He gives in to temptation and rushes to the living room to see how many are coming. Five of them, three locals and a couple of state troopers, are rushing into the drive, lights dim, sirens off. He lets the curtain fall closed and hurries back to the kitchen where his family is waiting.
..... Before joining them at the table, he takes a second to admire the scene. On the night of the murders he'd carefully washed and then bandaged his parents wounds, and now, his father is dressed in the charcoal gray suit he only ever wore to weddings and funerals, his mother in her favorite skirt and sweater, the one that always made her seem like a college girl. The Beauty Queen, stunning in her nakedness, sits at the head of the table next to Clayton's chair. He smiles at her and sits down as he hears the thud of slamming car doors.
..... He uses his left hand to hold hers, grips the Sheriff's lighter in his right. He hears them out there, taking up positions, hears someone say, "That's the Sheriff's cruiser sitting right there in the open."
..... That surprises them but Clayton isn't sure why. What would have been the point of moving it? When Simmons didn't come back to the office or answer his radio, they would have come looking anyway. He had better things to do with his time-- like make love to his woman and cook his birthday dinner and then, when he was finished, unhook the gas line from the stove. They're moving around out there. Sooner or later one of them will knock on the door. He shakes his head. They're too close to the house, too close to the big old propane tank that's likely to blow once things get started. For a second, he thinks about stepping to the door and warning them but decides against it. Why bother? It wasn't like anyone had ever done him any favors.
..... He takes a deep breath. It's almost over now, but he has no regrets. The last few days have been the best of his life. And isn't that what true love really is? A few snatched moments of solace on the way from one darkness to another?
..... "Happy birthday to me," he says like Frosty in that old cartoon.
..... Still holding the Beauty Queen's hand, he fires the lighter. And in the stuttering heartbeat before the explosion, he has time to wish for happily ever after-whatever that might mean in the blackness that is to come.