Can he really be that simple? You teach a dog a trick, a horse, and it remembers forever. So how come every few years he has to remind a grown man not to steal potato chips from the store? Could it be Edgar’s messing with him and secretly reveling in his frustration?

Jesse makes him walk into the bathroom, take off his undershorts, and put them in the sink. Edgar’s not crying anymore and seems to have forgotten he ever was. “Not too hot,” he says when Jesse turns on the shower. He’s a big fella, bigger than Jesse, over six feet tall, round as a barrel, and getting fatter every year. He’ll always be fifty years old outside and ten inside his head, a child bearing a man’s shell, and Jesse will always have to look after him, because he promised their mother he would. What else could he do, a dying woman’s last wish?

He unwraps the cake of soap that came with the room and hands it to Edgar. Edgar smells it, licks it, and makes a face.

“It’s soap, not candy,” Jesse says.

“Smells like candy,” Edgar says.

He sings while he showers, his current favorite song, about truck drivers who band together to outwit the Highway Patrol. He knows all the words, including the talking parts, and even cups a hand over his mouth to mimic the sound of a CB radio.

“Wash everywhere,” Jesse yells over the singing. “Under your arms, your ass.”

“Ten-four, good buddy.”

Jesse strips the sheets off the bed. The mattress is already so filthy that one more stain won’t be noticed. He tosses the sheets onto the bathroom floor, will wash them in the shower later.

Edgar stops singing. “I’m hungry,” he says.

“There’s Pop-Tarts,” Jesse says.

“I mean really hungry.”

The neon sign of the drive-in restaurant across the road from the motel is missing letters. H MBUR      SH K S  FR  S. The first time Jesse and Edgar traveled this stretch, it was part of the highway that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles. There was nothing but orange groves here then, and on that frigid January night when they passed through, they stopped to look at the smudge pots—crude oil-burning stoves kept blazing among the trees until dawn in an attempt to warm the air and prevent the fruit from freezing.

Thick clouds of greasy smoke billowed from the pots, smoke that scratched at Jesse’s throat and blackened the faces of the men tending the fires. They looked like demons freshly sprung from hell as they slouched in the orange flicker of the flames, eyes and teeth shining out of the darkness. The sight scared Edgar, set him to whimpering.

“What’s that? Haints?” he asked.

“No,” Jesse said. “Just men.”