" Dwayne's bad chemicals made him take a loaded thirty-eight caliber revolver fromunder his pillow and stick it in his mouth. This was a tool whose only purpose was tomake holes in human beings. It looked like this:In Dwayne's part of the planet, anybody who wanted one could get one down at hislocal hardware store. Policemen all had them. So did the criminals. So did the peoplecaught in between.Criminals would point guns at people and say, " Give me all your money," and thepeople usually would. And policemen would point their guns at criminals and say, " Stop" or whatever the situation called for, and the criminals usually would. Sometimes theywouldn't. Sometimes a wife would get so mad at her husband that she would put a holein him with a gun. Sometimes a husband would get so mad at his wife that he would puta hole in her. And so on.In the same week Dwayne Hoover ran amok, a fourteen-year-old Midland City boyput holes in his mother and father because he didn't want to show them the bad reportcard he had brought home. His lawyer planned to enter a plea of temporary insanity,which meant that at the time of the shooting the boy was unable to distinguish thedifference between right and wrong.· Sometimes people would put holes in famous people so they could be at least fairlyfamous, too. Sometimes people would get on airplanes which were supposed to fly tosomeplace, and they would offer to put holes in the pilot and co-pilot unless they flewthe airplane to someplace else. "