I stick his wallet in one pocket and one of the pistols in the other and go out on the walkway. The parking lot is full of pickup trucks. Past them is the highway and a truck stop all lit up on the other side. Alamo it’s called. Davy Crockett king of the wild frontier got killed at the Alamo. I draw the pistol and point it at the gas pumps. You close one eye to aim. Pow. I pretend this time but if Jesse finds me I’ll shoot him for real. I’ll practice till I can knock a bean can off a fence post till I can hit a silver dollar throwed in the air. ’Cause I’m sure he’ll dust me if he gets the chance. He ain’t never believed me about the Little Devil.

I cross to the truck stop. They got every kind of potato chips in the store there every kind of candy every kind of soda pop. There’s hula girls for your dashboard fishing poles and tackle and Wile E. Coyote belt buckles. They even got CB radios.

I pick one up and ask how much. The cash register man says, Seventy-five dollars plus tax. Does it work? I say. We wouldn’t be selling it if it didn’t, he says. Jesse’s wallet is fat with twenty-dollar bills. I hand the man four to make eighty. He gives me back one and some change.

There’s slot machines by the bathroom. Star Spangled Sevens. I hand the cash register man another twenty-dollar bill and ask for quarters. He gives me a paper-wrapped roll and ten dollars back.

I sit at the game and tap it three times. Three times for three sevens. It don’t work. I drop coins and pull drop coins and pull but the damn thing doesn’t hit. The cash register man comes over smoking a cigarette. Mind if I watch? he says. I tell him there ain’t much to see but he’s welcome.

I only got two quarters left when three BARS come up and some coins jingle into the tray. The cash register man says, I’d quit while you’re ahead, and I say, I guess you’re right, and stuff the quarters in my pocket.

I take my CB into the diner and sit at the counter. The waitress lady is as old and fat as Mama but’s got yellow hair. She calls me handsome when she brings the menu. How are ya handsome? I tell her to give me hotcakes sausage and scrambled eggs. And orange juice. A big glass not a little one. I ask if they got blueberry syrup. Better places got blueberry syrup. Nope sorry, she says, only maple but it’s just as sweet. She asks me, You with the road crew? No ma’am, I say, passing through.