The speckled pup and the boy. Out gone and lost in the woods through the long summer afternoons that tipped into evening before both would turn up, a pair of sweetly fragrant hungry tired pleasured small animals. Sleeping one next to the other in his bed upstairs. Jamie would wake before dawn and hear the puppy crying and then moments later the boy coming downstairs to let her out. Evenings sleeping on the floor of the kitchen, in the small parlor, the radio playing, the puppy stretched prone, the boy wrapped up to her, his knees drawn tight against her with his arms loose over her. The two of them wrestling in the hemlock duff afternoons, the boy sitting on his knees as the puppy bolted tight figure-eights around his outstretched arms. For a while every small object in the house torn or shredded or punctured by the fine driven points of her teeth. Jamie would sit a morning with his coffee regarding his shoe left out the night before and admire her work.

And still he could not leave the house alone. Starting the Packard was all that was needed to bring boy and pup out of the woods or house or river or even some hole in the ground for all he knew and the way they looked both piled together into the passenger side of the seat. Streaked and dirty and intent. The pup lying on her back with her four legs spread out between man and boy, her head resting on Foster’s thigh, her eyes locked on Jamie. Foster with a hand on her belly. Never asking where they were going. Not even looking at his father. His eyes already slipped down, half into himself, half waiting for the car to slide into gear, for motion to retake him.

So Jamie became the bootlegger with boy and dog in tow. Most of his clients were people he knew well, men who’d been buying in bulk for years now. Many from the hotels: a desk clerk or bellcaptain or stableman or whoever else it was for the thirsty guest to see. Others: railroad men or lumber bosses or area barbers or druggists. Some called Foster by name and would stop by the side of the car to reach in and fondle the puppy. Others ignored these passengers the same way they ignored any indication of knowing the details of the winter Jamie and Foster had just passed through. Some few, new men who’d tracked Jamie round the slick whispers and had the right name to mention to him, some of these looked strangely upon the boy or Jamie or both and to these men Jamie would always speak up easy—“It’s my boy Foster. Shake hands with the man, Foster”—His eyes on the stranger a slick glint like the side of a new coin as he made the introduction.