Darren Conaway is drunk and in a jealous rage. Anybody who knows him would tell you he’s been like that for years. but his girl, Connie, won’t leave him, maybe she’s a little scared to. But after a night drinking in Cookeville, he might leave her no choice.

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The old maple’s trunk shivered once. A buckshot blast rustled its boughs in the pitch black canopy. The 12-gauge boom rumbled through the dark valley geometrically and deliberately, the way a leaf grows. Misspent pellets scattered yards behind its roots like a sudden, violent rain.

Connie cried uncontrollably but silently behind it, a skill she knew. All of the other times she thought he’d kill her before seemed unparalleled. This is it, she thought. She could hear Darren’s ragged breath. He knew she was behind the tree. But she didn’t hear him reload. The silent seconds stretched out slowly. She tried to look around at the last things she’d see, roots and sticks.

You coward bitch, he yelled into the black woods. Come out and set me straight then. If you’re gonna stand up, by god, then stand up. Let me have it.

Darren burped whiskey. He wiped his wet mouth on his shirt sleeve and stared at the oily double barrel cradled in the crook of his arm. He looked past the treetops to the starry sky and felt the warm breeze on the hair of his thick arms. He looked back at his gun and forgot what he was doing. He felt alone in the woods. His pulse slowed.

Connie winced at his footsteps crackling the dry leaves. They hissed and then whispered until she could hear nothing. Even still she kept quiet. Darren knew the woods. She kept squat and silent behind the tree until her hot knees gave way to the ground. She finally breathed heavily and loudly like birth was over.

She sat knock-kneed and cried into her palms but knew she had to make a move. She tried to think. Incomplete concepts and memories rose and fell in her head through a sweaty malaria. She wanted to be in her bed. She wanted to be warm, naked under Darren’s old baseball shirt. She sniffed hard and stood on weak legs.

Splinters splayed around her feet in the perfect moonlight. She walked around the trunk and could see its fresh, wide-open wound like a burst blister. She knew he didn’t aim to kill her, just to scare her for what she’d said. If he wanted to kill me, he would’ve, she thought. Secretly she admired his reserve and, more secretly, the love this showed.