“I know, coz. I know. Just ain’t seen to it yet.” Jamie goes to light a Marlboro, that dumb-ass silver ring of his catching fire with the first of the morning sun. “It ain’t like we ain’t been busy. That last batch this boy brought is moving. I’m still cleanin’ up with that.”

That last batch . . . the white powder H the dead wetback brought them.

DOA, motherfucker.

Everyone around three states wants a taste of it, but no matter how pure or good it is, smack has never really been Little Paris’s thing. It makes him too soft, too fuzzy at the edges. The dope sex is good and all, sweet as pure cane sugar or honey, but he likes the way crank sharpens him right up, a whetstone to a knife, and that sex ain’t half bad, either.

Rough, angry, although sometimes just a little too much of both.

“If Danny were here . . .” But Jamie stops sudden, wise enough, or sober enough, anyway, not to hold Danny’s name in his mouth for too long. Little Paris has already done heard it a thousand times if he’s heard it once—from Daddy out loud and damn everyone else just under their breath—how he ain’t like Danny at all.

How Little Paris is gonna be the one to finally let slip through his fingers these mountains that one Glasser or another has held on to with an iron fist for a hundred years or more.

Goddamn.

No, he ain’t got the business sense his older brother had, probably never will, but even Little Paris knows a silver dollar when it falls into his hands, so when Jamie told him Danny’s wetbacks had started sending their mules out alone, well, then only a damn fool could let that slip through his fingers.

Goddamn money for free.

Jamie’s since been telling this boy’s compadres he got paid and moved on down the highway, like always, but it ain’t clear they believe him, although Little Paris figures it might help everyone if they just spoke better fucking English.

It’s possible it don’t matter quite what they say or even do with him now, since pride all but dictates they gotta come looking for him anyway, but Little Paris don’t put too much stock in that.

One dead or missing Mexican ain’t worth anyone’s trouble, and no one comes calling uninvited on a Glasser in these mountains.

Not in Lower Wolf.

Not for a hundred fucking years.

—

Although the Big Sandy Power Plant no longer burns the black rock, coal is still in Lower Wolf’s bones.

The deep, rolling green of the surrounding hills are knife-cut right down to them old, dark seams. In some places, the land’s been blasted away altogether, woods leveled and whole mountains beheaded, hundreds of thousands of years blown sky-high, or so they say.