Pontiac’s ex grabbed her boy by one arm and threw him back in the minivan. She didn’t even come back for the puppies. We heard the child scream as she jabbed at the ignition slot with her key. “If that boy is blind, I am going to sue the skin off you, you sick fuck!” Which prompted the first facial movement of the day from Pontiac. He actually half-smiled, sweeping his arms wide to include the burned-out Pontiac and rotten barn and chemically dead earth with a sweep of his arm. “Come on, baby girl, you think I’d give up all this without a fight?”

“You sick fuck,” his ex said again. She wore a snug scarf and eyeglasses so large her face was mostly hidden. She stuck out her hand. Pontiac slapped a baggie into it. “Do I get a ‘thank you,’ honey?”

That’s when the second awful thing happened. Pontiac reached out, grabbed the scarf and pulled it off, knocking her glasses off in the process. Revealing the same ball-of-dough scar tissue with thumb-plunked eyeballs, painted on brows and nub of a nose. Her screams drowned out her child’s. Pontiac was twitchy but philosophical. “Bitches. They hate you but they love what can do for them.”

I had to walk back to the main road—he wouldn’t let me park nearby, in case I had ideas—with the crank in my shoe and two dead Snoopies in my knapsack. Later, on impulse, I gave the puppy corpses to a pair of homeless white guys warming their hands over a barrel. Maybe they could cook them. No matter how low your situation, it’s always important to give something back.

I turn on the radio in the car and there is a former meth addict named Steve on a call-in show talking about Satan’s Dandruff, and how he “turned his life around” with the Lord. He is talking about a delicate subject. “The flip side of the sex compulsion is complete lack of impulse control. By which I mean more and more violence. I don’t like to say this, but sometimes that’s what they wanted. This wasn’t Victoria’s Secret sex. When you sign on the dotted line with Satan, he takes away your shame gland.”

DOPA BONER

You can’t not talk about it.