Skull still reeling from the night. Has to steady himself against the truck bed, and then he sees it. He’s shocked that his thoughts haven’t once whipped to the iron, sitting right here on top of their garbage-bagged belongings. The fog of dawn has lifted. Maybe the morning sun has shed some light and restored rationality. If rivers are good enough for corpses chained to cinder blocks, then this one’s got to be as good as any for this potentially incriminating domestic appliance.

A soaked-dog shudder. Imagination running wild, galloping paranoid and pessimistic. The dogmonger will be fine, he tells himself. He’d called an ambulance. It’d been an accident.

Still though. Always smart to play it safe. He tugs the crewneck’s sleeve into a mitten over his fingertips. Then, just as he grasps the handle, a Subaru comes rolling down the dirt road and into the parking lot. A haggard stranger carrying a clothing iron down to the river at the break of dawn would look pretty weird, so he stuffs it under a Hefty bag full of clothes. Across the way, a white man in mesh running shorts steps onto the hatchback’s rear bumper, dipping into a stretch. While waiting the jogger out, Henry goes through Junior’s bagged wardrobe, sniff-testing T-shirts. They all smell of play and grass and Royal Pine air freshener.

As Junior dries off with a blanket and starts getting dressed, Henry pretends to be looking for something in the truck bed, stealing glances at the jogger, willing him to get on with his workout and disappear down a trail already. Time is tight. They’ve come a long way from town and still need to get gas before heading to school. But the jogger has traded the bumper lunges for some Caucasian version of tai chi, so ditching the iron will have to wait.

They stop at the first gas station they come across. After sending Junior to brush his teeth in the bathroom, Henry toggles the pump, putting exactly five dollars into the tank, which, at $3.23 a gallon, only gives him another twenty-two miles or so on the highway, about eighteen in town, and the trip to school alone will sink the gas gauge needle right back where it started this morning.