Moses sat in his greasy coffee-brown chair by the oil-drum stove, his jar of cloudy moonshine resting on one thigh. He was an ugly sight, sitting proudly with the pantomime demeanour of a king, the way drunks do in their own house. Stick-thin legs beneath his jeans gave him the appearance of a fairground stilt-walker, as though he concealed two wooden poles beneath the grimy denim. His whole haggard and pinched body was ravaged by a lack of any nutrition other than the booze he swallowed down like a suckling pig, and the odd piece of dismal food that Marlene made him eat when she was sober enough to remember they had to. Looked like he’d already been sick once, down the front of his pointy pocketed rodeo shirt, and there was something matting strands of his long black unbraided hair that fell forwards on his shoulders. This was round two of the day, Calvin figured.

Marlene was nearly out cold. Her jar lay on its side on the cracked linoleum floor, the caustic contents around her feet in a puddle as she lay slumped back on the pile of old clothes she’d been sitting on.

Calvin could hardly bear it. He had only come up there to that vile cabin to look for the boy and ask for his assistance but Moses had welcomed him in like a member of the family.

And so he sat with them, holding a broken cup of moonshine that was given by the grinning Wayne, looking on in horror and pity as Moses gesticulated and slurred insults at his semi-conscious wife, laughing at his own witless remarks with a mouth full of black and broken teeth.

Calvin had gulped down the filthy brew, knowing to close his nostrils to the stench as he drank, and waiting for that burning hot stream of pain to slip down his throat into his chest, before the blessed release of the raw alcohol started to pad out his head with a dull cushion. It had been practically pure ethanol. Another brew from the still of Milton Destaville, a big silent half-French Kinchuinick who moved his cabin monthly to foil any RCs that might find his popular laboratory.

The room was oppressively hot from the stove, but no warmth could make this dingy space feel homely. There were some curling black-and-white photos of Marlene in a barrel race tacked to the plasterboard wall opposite the curtainless window. Calvin thought she sure did look something in those days. Braids out at right angles to her head, her face clear and unlined as she gripped that nag with her knees. Hard to believe it was the same girl when you looked at the face of Marlene Hunting Wolf now. Her lifeless left eye-socket was closed and sunken, the skin scarred and fused together over it in a hideous reminder of what Moses could do when his tank was full.