Denny’s grubby fingers, gnawed knuckles ridged brown with blood, lay in a loose claw on his groin. The top button of his pants had come open under the twine and one side of his fly had fallen back. Above the hair his skin was wrinkled where his leg bent. The nail twisted through his cock stuck from under his wrist. It was so puffy no veins showed. It was translucent as lard around the red, spongy outrage. Blood had clotted the piss-hole and the punctured foreskin.

The wop hadn’t pulled the sleeper curtain. His back curved toward us above the seat. Each breath pulled the slash in his jumpsuit over the finger length of scar tissue, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

“Move over, cocksucker.” Hogg stretched out, pushing himself up along the seat until his head wedged against Denny’s hip. Denny moaned, in sleep. (The claw flexed. But he didn’t wake.) “Come on, you better use me for a mattress. ’Cause if I get on top of you, you’ll squash.”

I was standing with my sneaker toes under the nigger’s side and leaning on the seat back, the dashboard up against my ass. Hogg put his arm around me and pulled me down on him. I crawled around to get straight. Big, firm, his belly spread under mine. His thick arm, relaxing, spread on my back. I nosed the cloth, dry now, in his armpit. Dried sweat smelled half sour, half sweet. He shifted, tried to get his face under mine: his breath was like the inside of a full icebox that’s had the plug pulled for a month and then you open the door. “Here …” He pushed a hand around. “Suck it.” The bald end of his thumb jabbed my mouth. “And move your knee. I’m gonna jerk off.” I moved my knee. One arm slid down my back. His thumb slid in my mouth.

I lay, hugged to the mound of him, sucking his thumb, both fists up by my shoulders. When I felt him start to shake to his own beating, I began to rub off on his belly. The head of my dick was pushing up over the edge of my pants, rubbing on the belly hair between his open shirt flaps. He moved his thumb in my mouth, hairy-jointed and tasting like salty shit; the bald crown butted my tongue’s base.

“You know what I am?” he whispered in my ear, grinning. There was a scratch across his cheek; it looked like it was from the last paint tin the girl in the wheelchair had thrown; but I wasn’t sure.