It was my first time conversing with a rover. I was curious. “How old are you?” I asked him.

“I was born in ’27, in Nowheresville, Iowa, but took off for New York as soon as I could,” he said.

“Is that where it happened?” I said. “Where you…” I was unsure how to put it.

“Where I became a creature of the night?” Sally said, joking. “Yeah, that’s where.”

“How?” I said. “Why?”

“The old man has a jar of peanut butter there in the cupboard,” Sally said. “Let me at it, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

I took the jar down and gave it to him, along with a spoon I found in a drawer. He unscrewed the lid and dug in, scooping and licking while he talked.

“I met this cat in New York,” he said. “A colored cat like you, a trumpet player. His name was Daniel Carson, but everybody called him DC. We started making the scene together. It was just kicks at first, a good time, but we ended up real tight. I knew he was a rover, but I didn’t care. I thought it was kinda cool, kinda sexy. I even let him feed off me—got off on it, in fact.

“It was my idea he turn me. We had a good thing, and I wanted to keep it going. And it was good, for almost eight years. We bummed around, played gigs, got in trouble, got out of trouble, wore five-hundred-dollar suits, three-hundred-dollar shoes. It was a real gas. But then he got dusted.”

He paused, overcome by emotion. When he tried to go on, he couldn’t. “I’m done,” he said. He handed me the peanut butter jar and lay back in the crate. “You’re not gonna hold me being queer against me, are you?” he asked.

I was thinking of Benny, you know I was.

“No,” I said. “I won’t hold it against you.”

I closed the lid and snapped the locks into place. As I was leaving the camper, stepping out into the new day blooming, he called to me again.

“Where we headed?”

“I haven’t decided,” I said.

“Vegas,” he said. “If you’re looking for rovers, that’s where you should go.”

The rising sun set the mountains on fire. I stood in the parking lot, marveling at the sight and wondering if it was a message from God, and if so, what it meant. I came up with nothing, which proves, I guess, that I don’t have the imagination to be a prophet, so it’s a good thing I’ve been called to be a killer.