“Yeah,” Denny said. He looked at me too. When he put his hand on my knee—the skin at the sides of his nails was still white and translucent from the bay—his face did a small, bitter twitch. “Hey, so long, cocksucker.” He was trying to smile. “Hey, Hogg?” He blinked, and the twitch flickered again among his thin, acned features. “Goodbye and … thanks.”

“You’re very welcome,” Hogg said. “Now get on out.”

Denny pushed on the handle, jumped down to the asphalt, slammed the door, and walked toward the lighted truck stop. His pants were awfully big. Rolled up around his ankles like that they looked pretty strange. The belt—the studs glittered across his butt as he passed under the tin-coned lamp on the phone pole—was pretty far down, and lopsided. The sleeves rolled up above his elbows were like bags hanging off his shoulders. But I’ve seen guys in funnier clothes. When he got to the gravel, his step got a little more ginger to it and his hands started bouncing around his hips.

Four men came down the concrete steps of the restaurant. Denny went straight for them. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but they stopped to listen.

Once one of the men thought something Denny said was really funny and laughed.

Eight soiled knuckles in a row on the top of the carpeted wheel, Hogg watched through the bug-specked windshield.

They talked some more. Once Denny pointed back at Hogg’s truck.

The center knuckles rose.

The man who’d laughed put his hand on Denny’s shoulder and laughed again.

Two of the men walked away. Denny went with the man who’d laughed, toward one of the smaller trucks.

“Shit,” Hogg whispered, reached forward and started the motor.

We pulled around onto the highway, going back the way we’d come.

“He must be one lucky motherfucker, you know? The dumb-ass scumbag just might make it!” Hogg shook his head. “Guess I should’ve taken my clippers out and cut that damned thing off his dick—but, hell, he went through so much gettin’ it in there.…” He shook his head again. After awhile he said: “He might make it. Be his luck. I don’t see how he kept alive all this time.”

I fell asleep during the drive back.

Once I woke when we’d stopped at some all-night filling station. I looked up over the window edge to see Hogg, outside under the highway light, joking with the pump-jockey in his red baseball cap with the visor turned backward and a dirty blue collar open at his neck—like Hogg was any old trucker, bob-tailing it home after a run.

A couple of hours later, I woke again.