The way Hogg had been fucking on my mouth with his shit, then him going on about the dog collar, had put me in mind of the two garbage men for a time now. They’d been on my mind, actually, from when I first woke up.

On the barge’s back, the white guy’s hair, as he stood at the rail, looked as red as the water around him—it could have been blond. But in the sunrise, it looked red.

More trees came between the truck and the bay.

“I just don’t know, cocksucker. Somethin’ about you.” Hogg tugged at the wheel, and we came around the inlet and straightened out. “Now when Nigg and that bikey run off with you, I could just as easy’ve said, good riddance and fuck the little bastard, you know? I ain’t worried about no little cocksucker like you spillin’ off his mouth about what we done. Naw, that ain’t your style. But I don’t know. There’s just somethin’.”

What I was thinking was that I could probably get off as soon as we stopped at the diner—slip out through the bathroom window, maybe. Or just run when he wasn’t looking. It wouldn’t be hard to hitch out to Crawhole soon as the morning’s work traffic started. I wondered if Big Sambo would take me back on his tug.

He’d paid out fifteen dollars for me, after all.