“Huh?” Denny looked sharply at Hogg. “Yeah, I … maybe.” His head drifted back. Frowning, he dug at his stomach with the fingers of one hand. The other had gotten wedged between his leg and mine, like he’d forgotten it there. “Yeah. I guess that one was.…” He looked at Hogg again. “But some of ’em, I used a screwdriver in the eye, man! Shit!” Denny screwed up his face; his hand pushed at his groin. “… all right. You said that was all right. You don’t have to kill the … In the grocery store … in the supermarket, I didn’t kill ’em all. But it’s all right, huh? It’s pretty easy … rip!” His hand swung up, dropped in his lap again. “Just like that—Rip!—right in the throat. That wasn’t bad. Beatin’ ’em to death is hard, though. ’Cause you ain’t sure when they’re dead so you just have to beat some more. But mostly it’s easy. I could show you. Sure. It’s all right—”

Hogg took one hand off the wheel, turned in the seat—his arm went way back into the sleeper curtain—and hit Denny upside the head, about as hard as he could.

Denny gasped and rocked forward against the dashboard, both hands spread on the windshield.

Hogg was back driving when Denny’s hand jerked across the glass, jerked again, then came back to his cheek to rub. He swallowed, swallowed again; he was breathing hard.

“You cut out that kind of talk now,” Hogg said, looking out for another curve. “Somebody other than me or the cocksucker hear you going on like that, they might just think you were crazy.”

Denny gasped, pushed himself back in the seat. “All right … that’s—” He gasped again, his face all twisted like crying. He kept rubbing his cheek. But he didn’t squirm so much. “Yeah …” he got out. “All right.”

We took a curve close to the shoulder.

Hogg dropped his hand from the wheel again, this time to Denny’s knee. He slid his hand toward the boy’s groin and back. “Now if I’d’a hit you on the ass like that, you’d’a shot your wad.” He grinned. His big fingers closed on Denny’s crotch. “How’s it feel?”

Denny’s knees fell apart. His mouth opened. His face wrinkled around it. “… all right.”

“Hey, cocksucker—” Hogg glanced at me—“take it out for him and let’s get a look. Denny, when’s the last time you come?”

“I … I killed ’em.…” Denny looked at Hogg’s hand in his lap and shook his head. “I kept on killin’ ’em … But I didn’t come, you know? It hurt … But it didn’t make me shoot.…”

“Best reason in the world I know to give it up.” Hogg flexed his fingers in the stained, stiffened cloth. “You ain’t gonna kill nobody no more, that right?”

“Huh …?” Denny asked.