I ran up on a Negro fishing by a bridge and stopped and hollered at him and asked him did he have anything to drink. It turned out it was Barthy, or Bartholemew, Pettigrew, a Negro I’d been knowing for most of my life. I had even picked some cotton with him a long time before, in my teenaged years. He didn’t want to let on like he had anything to drink, but I knew he did because he always did. He was an old-timey Negro, one that wouldn’t give you any sass. Of course I don’t think one man ought to have to bow down to another one because of the color of his skin. But I had to get down in the creek with him and squat down talking to him before he’d even let on that he might have anything to drink. And what he had wasn’t much. Three Old Milwaukees in some cool water that his minnows were swimming around in. We talked about cotton and cows for ten minutes and corn some, then finally I gave him a dollar and got one of his beers. He didn’t know where U. T. Oslin was.

By the time I’d gone about a mile I’d finished half of that one. I knew that wasn’t going to get it. I had a dog to bury, and I knew it would take more than one half-hot Old Milwaukee. I checked my billfold and I think I had four dollars. I kept driving slower and drinking slower, but the closer I got to the bottom, the hotter it got. I drank the rest of it and chunked the can out the window. I would have loved to’ve had about a cold six-pack iced down, and about ten dollars worth of gas in my truck. I could have rode and rode and drank then. I decided I might better get back to the house and see if I could find my checkbook.

Mildred wasn’t in yet. My old dog hadn’t moved any. I poked him a little with my tennis shoe toe. He just sort of moved inside his skin and came back to rest. I estimated the time before Mildred would be home. I judged it to be about forty-five minutes. That was enough time for a shower, piss on burying the dog. I figured I could do it when I come back in. I’d already taken that first drink and I wanted another one. And I told myself it wasn’t every day a man’s dog up and died.