“Man!” Hogg’s rubbing hand joined his other in his lap. “I think that was the one we both needed. Always been sort of partial to shit, ’specially my own. But you don’t get much of a chance to fuck in your own, less you got a cocksucker who likes a face full of it now and then.” He grinned at me, then closed the door beside him. “Shit … I’ll get drunk and eat me some fuckin’ dog turds off the street, sometimes—if it ain’t some drunk old nigger’s shit the black bastard pooped when he was squattin’ in the back alley. Sometimes dogshit’s better. Sometimes nigger shit. It depends on how you’re feelin’. But I wouldn’t ever eat no white guy’s shit—it ain’t low enough; unless I was a nigger myself, maybe; or it was maybe yours … just like you’d eat mine. You can’t get lower than eatin’ your own nigger cocksucker’s shit, now, can you? An’ I wouldn’t even eat yours a lot—not like you eat mine. ’Cause that’s the way we’re set up, us two. I’m the shit machine, and you’re my personal shit bowl and pee pot, right? I’m just tellin’ you, see, so you know I know how it is with you: a dog, a nigger—or somebody real close, like your own shit machine. That right?” Hogg grinned. “That in there—” He thumbed back toward the sleeper—“is some I couldn’t finish. You want it, later, go on … Real low—or real close. An’ that in there, that’s the lowest shit you could chow down on! Trust me. But then, I guess you know all about that already, don’t you? Man, I’ll tell you, cocksucker, I ain’t really too much better than fuckin’ Piper! He’s the one who taught me all this.”

I closed my door.

Hogg started the truck.

I kept rubbing one eye with my wrist because it itched.

Outside, the water and the sky just above it ran with gold.

Trees flashed between us and the bay.