Hogg had stopped the truck. In his lap, he had a wax paper full of French fries. When I blinked and raised my head, he said: “Here …” and fed me a couple of handfuls. I ate right from his fingers—only I was so tired, I fell asleep licking ketchup off his thumb. When I woke again, my head was against Hogg’s big arm, shaking with the road. First I thought it was just a few minutes later. But the radio was on. (Some guy was singing about MacArthur Park, and how it was melting in the dark.…) Outside, swatting at the new blue like rags of black lace, trees flipped by.

As I sat up, between them I saw the gun-gray bay dragging back beside us.

Hogg glanced at me, grunted, then pulled the truck over to the shoulder. “Christ, I gotta take me a wicked shit! An’ my fuckin’ kidneys been workin’ overtime.” He reared back on the hand brake, opened the door, dropped to the road, and came around to my side of the truck. (The French fries paper was balled up under my hip.) I leaned out the window to watch. Hogg put both hands on the dusty fender, bent a little forward, and gave me a grin.

I heard what sounded like a fart—that got swallowed in something wet. Now he lifted the heel of his bare foot and shook his leg. Something fell loose inside his pants, dropped down inside to catch behind his knee. He shook his leg again.

I pushed down the door handle, jumped out, lunged forward, and flung myself on the shoulder’s dirt, a hand each side of his feet. The turd’s end, like some big nigger’s dick out at Crawhole, dropped from his cuff to lean against Hogg’s blackened heel.

“Shit,” Hogg drawled. As I was trying to push it in my mouth, he rocked his foot back on his heel, turned it—the hard cracked rim pushing my face aside—and mashed his foot on the turd. Shit wedged up through his grimy toes. I caught his ankle with one hand, tried to pull his foot over with the other, jabbed my tongue between them, tried to push them into my mouth.

Above me, Hogg chuckled. “That’s right, cocksucker. You’re a nasty little bastard.…”

His toes came up and clawed my tongue, gray with grit and shitpaste. Under the shit they were salty. He laughed again and let me get his foot up. I rolled almost to my back, gnawing on what crusted the ball, with dirt in it now, and small stones.

“Cocksucker,” he said, “I’m gonna fuck your face like a goddamn asshole. Get that shit all wet for me, that’s right—”

I scraped to the horn with my teeth.

“You ain’t nothin’ but a fuckin’ scumbag asshole anyway.”