look for a smile. I feel it in his words: "Sex and violence don't mix. Why waste good violence on sex?" But Roger—my best friend as a kid, best man at my wedding six years ago—is concentrating too hard to smile. He's staring down the barrel of his 30.06, waiting for that snapping turtle to stick his head above water again. He doesn't want it eating the game fish in his pond. I've seen him shoot half a dozen since junior high.

"I never hit her," he says evenly. "I never hit her even once."

"Of course you didn't," I say.

"I don't know what makes her say that, Jimmy."

Roger never uses Carla's name since she left. But she's not a "cheating bitch" or "worthless whore" either, like some other friends' ex-wives—or my own, once or twice, when pain won out over pride.

"Come on, don't worry about it. No one believes her." The lie feels like dirt on my tongue.

I like Carla. She's smart, and secure enough about it that even in high school she didn't play dumb. One time she told me of a nightmare Roger had, over ten years after he got back from Vietnam. He was writhing on his stomach, she said, whimpering over and over Burning people smell so bad without waking up.

"I didn't dare touch him," she said. She put her hand on my arm. "You're the only one I've told this to. Not even him." Carla stared off at nothing, nodding slowly. She shrugged. "Especially not him."

Roger's finger is tight on the trigger. Suddenly he looks away from his target, straight at me.

"Remember when we were kids, and we found that dead bullfrog on the other side of the pond? Nailed down on a stump?"

I nod. I can still see that spread-eagle frog, belly-up and leathery black from the sun, its gut a squirming ball of maggots. It gave me nightmares for a week.

Roger takes aim again, out across the water.

"I didn't do that," he says.