“Then I passed out,” Hogg explained. “Pissed myself up like a goddamn ten-year-old. Shit all over myself. When I woke up this mornin’, I was a mess! Ain’t had a chance to really clean nothin’ up, either. But I guess if we keep the windows open, once we get rollin’, with the breeze comin’ through, it won’t be so bad.”

“Oh.” Whitey frowned. “Yeah.” He nodded. “Well, that’s just about what it smells like. I guess you can get on, now. We’re supposed to look in all the cars and things before they leave here, but I don’t guess you got no crazy-insane, seventeen-year-old psychopathic killer in there, do you?” Whitey grinned up at me again.

“I’d about guess the same.” Hogg looked up too. “But it wouldn’t hurt none to check. Boy,” he said. (The hand tightened on my leg. I could feel teeth tight together against my thigh, the lips pulled back.) “Run the sleeper curtain back there and let’s have a look.”

I got up on one knee—the hand slipped to my ankle; and it was shaking again—and turned in the seat. I pushed the sleeper curtain two feet down its runner.

Inside was a piece of gray blanket, and a newspaper it looked like nobody had ever read, though it was wet on one side, and, in the back, some dog turds or something.

Whitey stood on tiptoes to look.

Hogg grinned at him. “Yeah, I would about say we didn’t.”

Whitey’s face wrinkled a little, and his light, light eyes narrowed. He glanced once at Hogg. He was just realizing that not all the smell was the truck. “Naw, you ain’t got nothin’ in there.” He stepped back. (I sat down again.) “You can get on.” He turned around, walked away. By the green Chrysler, he glanced back, gave me a sort of sad half-smile, then walked on.

Hogg came around to the driver’s side, opened the door, swung up under the wheel, slammed the door beside him, reached down for the starter, turned the key—the motor turned over and Hogg’s leg eased up the clutch—and said, looking straight out the windshield, “Denny, you are one lucky motherfucker!” We rolled forward across the lot.

Hogg dropped a hand from the carpet-taped wheel to Denny’s head—suddenly, gripping him by the hair, he turned the face up. Light spilled on the stained cheeks. Denny’s mouth was wide. His tongue and eyes glittered. The lips were working like a landed fish. “What’d you do? Recognize my truck while I was down on the docks lookin’ for the cocksucker, then sneak in and hide?” Hogg let go.

Denny’s head fell over against my hip. Denny’s hand moved up to my knee again.

“Naw,” Hogg said, “you just better stay down there out of sight till we get away from here.”