WEBVTT

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There's one I haven't
read aloud before,

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which is also another
kind of a shooting story.

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Thought it was in
this book, here it is.

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This is called "Dundun."

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"I went out to the
farmhouse where

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Dundun lived to get some
pharmaceutical opium from him,

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but I was out of luck.

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He greeted me as he was
coming out into the front yard

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to go to the pump,
wearing new cowboy boots

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and a leather vest, with his
flannel shirt hanging out

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over his jeans.

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He was chewing on
a piece of gum.

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"McInnes isn't feeling too
good today, I just shot him."

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"You mean killed him?"

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"I didn't mean to."

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"Is he really dead?"

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"No, he's sitting down."

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"But he's alive?"

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"Oh sure, he's alive.

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He's sitting down now
in the back room."

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Dundun went over to the pump
and started working the handle.

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I went around the house
and in through the back.

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The room just through the back
door smelled of dogs and babies.

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Beatle stood in the
opposite doorway.

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She watched me come in.

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Leaning against the wall was
Blue, smoking a cigarette

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and scratching her
chin thoughtfully.

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Jack Hotel was over
at an old desk,

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setting fire to a
pipe, the bowl of which

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was wrapped in tin foil.

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When they saw it was only
me, the three of them

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resumed looking at McInnes,
who sat on the couch all alone,

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with his left hand resting
gently on his belly.

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"Dundun shot him?"

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I asked.

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"Somebody shot
somebody," Hotel said.

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Dundun came in
behind me carrying

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some water in a china
cup and a bottle of beer

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and said to McInnes, "Here."

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"I don't want
that," McInnes said.

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"OK, well here then,"
Dundun offered him

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the rest of his beer.

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"No thanks."

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I was worried.

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"Aren't you taking him to
the hospital or anything?"

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"Good idea," Beatle
said sarcastically.

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"We started to,"
Hotel explained,

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"But we ran into the corner
of the shed out there."

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I looked out the side window.

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This was Tim Bishop's farm.

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Tim Bishop's Plymouth I saw,
which was a very nice old gray

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and red sedan, had
sideswiped the shed,

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and replaced one
of the corner posts

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so that the post
lay on the ground,

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and the car now held
up the shed's roof.

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"The front windshield is in
millions of bits," Hotel said.

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"How did you end
up way over there?"

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"Everything was completely
out of hand," Hotel said.

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"Where's Tim anyway?"

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"He's not here," Beatle said.

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Hotel passed me the pipe.

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It was hashish, but it was
pretty well burned up already.

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"How are you doing?"

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Dundun asked McInnes.

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"I can feel it right here.

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It's just stuck
inside the muscle."

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Dundun said, "It's not bad,
the cap didn't explode right,

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I think."

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"It misfired."

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"It misfired a
little bit, yeah."

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Hotel asked me,
"Would you take him

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to the hospital in your car?"

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"OK," I said.

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"I'm coming too," Dundun said.

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"Have you got any
of the opium left?

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I asked him.

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"No," he said, "That
was a birthday present,

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I used it all up."

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"When's your birthday?"

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I asked him.

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"Today."

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"You shouldn't have used it all
up before your birthday then,"

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I told him angrily.

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But I was happy
about this chance

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to be of use I wanted to be the
one who saw it through and got

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McInnes to the doctor
without a wreck.

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People would talk about it, and
I hoped that I would be liked.

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In the car were Dundun,
McInnes, and myself.

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This was Dundun's 21st birthday.

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I'd met him in the
Johnson County facility

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during the only
few days I'd ever

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spent in jail, around the
time of my 18th Thanksgiving.

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I was the older of
us by a month or two.

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As for McInnes, he'd been
around forever, and in fact, I

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myself was married to one
of his old girlfriends.

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We took off as
fast as I could go

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without bouncing the shooting
victim around too heavily.

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Dundun said, "What about the
brakes, you get them working?"

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"The emergency brake
does, that's enough."

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"What about the radio?"

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Dundun punched the
button, and the radio

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came on making an emission
like a meat grinder.

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He turned it off and
then on, and now it

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burbled like a machine that
polishes stones all night.

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"How about you?"

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I asked McInnes, "Are
you comfortable?"

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"What do you think?"

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McInnes said.

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It was a long straight
road through dry fields

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as far as a person could see.

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You'd think the sky
didn't have any air in it,

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and the earth was made of paper.

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Rather than moving, we were just
getting smaller and smaller.

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What can be said
about those fields?

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There were blackbirds circling
above their own shadows,

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and beneath them, the cows
stood around smelling one

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another's butts.

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Dundun spat his gum
out the window while

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digging in his shirt
pocket for his Winstons.

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He lit a Winston with a match.

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That was all there was to say.

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"We'll never get off
this road," I said.

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"What a lousy
birthday," Dundun said.

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McInnes was white and sick,
holding himself tenderly.

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I'd seen him like that
once or twice, even when

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he hadn't been shot.

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He had a bad case
of hepatitis that

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often gave him a lot of pain.

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"Do you promise not to
tell them anything?"

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Dundun was talking to McInnes.

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"I don't think he hears
you," I said, "Tell them it

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was an accident, OK?"

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McInnes said nothing
for a long moment.

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Finally he said, "OK."

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"Promise?"

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Duncan said.

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But McInnes said nothing
because he was dead.

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Dundun looked at me with tears
in his eyes, "What do you say?"

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"What do you mean,
what do I say?

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Do you think I'm here because
I know all about this stuff?"

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"He's dead."

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"All right, I know he's dead."

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"Throw him out of the car."

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"Damn right, throw him
out of the car," I said,

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"I'm not taking
him anywhere now."

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For a moment I fell asleep
right while I was driving.

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I had a dream in
which I was trying

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to tell someone something,
and they kept interrupting,

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a dream about frustration.

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"I'm glad he's
dead," I told Dundun,

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"He's the one who started
everybody calling me fuckhead."

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Dundun said, "Don't
let it get you down."

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We whizzed along, down through
the skeleton remnants of Iowa.

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"I wouldn't mind working
as a hitman," Dundun said.

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Glaciers had crushed this region
in the time before history.

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There had been a drought for
years, and a bronze fog of dust

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stood over the plains.

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The soybean crop was dead again,
and the failed, wilted corn

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stalks were laid out on the
ground like rows of underthings.

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Most of the farmers
didn't even plant anymore.

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All the false visions
had been erased.

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It felt like the moment
before the Savior comes.

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And the Savior did come, but
we had to wait a long time.

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Dundun tortured Jack Hotel at
the lake outside of Denver.

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He did this to get information
about a stolen item,

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a stereo belonging to
Dundun's girlfriend,

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or perhaps to his sister.

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Later, Dundun beat a
man almost to death

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with a tire iron right out on
the street in Austin, Texas,

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for which he'll also
someday have to answer.

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But now he is, I think, in
the state prison in Colorado.

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Will you believe me
when I tell you there

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was kindness in his heart?

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His left hand didn't know
what his right hand was doing.

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It was only that certain
important connections

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had been burned through.

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If I opened up your head and
ran a hot soldering iron around

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in your brain, I might turn
you into someone like that."

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[APPLAUSE]

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