That made me uneasy and I decided to get in my truck and ride around some more. That retirement money was stacked up inside that bank account drawing 6.5 percent interest. I had beer and cigarettes unlimited. Dorothea had gotten that promotion and her boss liked her, took her out to lunch so she wouldn’t have to spend her own money. She had a real future in head of her.

I put my gun in the truck. Squirrel season was open, and that meant rabbit, too, and once in a while after dark you’d see the green eyes standing out in the cut fields that meant deer. Hamburger meat was $1.89 a pound. Double-ought buckshot was thirty-three cents. Some nights I was Have Truck, Will Kill, Palladio with a scattergun.

Those nights back then out on those country roads, with that sweet music playing and that beer cold between my legs and an endless supply of cigarettes and the knowledge that Dorothea was waiting back at home with her warm pubic hairs sometimes made me prolong the sheer pleasure of getting back to it, just riding around thinking about how good it was going to be when I got back. And then there was a little son of a bitch who didn’t have any, who’d never know what it was like or the heat that was in it, like a glove that fit you like a fist but better, wanner, wetter, no wonder he wanted some so bad it drove him to have one-way sex with strangers. Dorothea hadn’t said, but since she’d commented on the size of it, I figured his pud was down when he did it, not up. I wondered what he’d have done if some woman had walked over and slapped the shit out of him.