I always think I’m going to find something when I go out at night, I don’t know why. I always think that, and I never do. I always think I’ll find a woman. But if you go out in sadness, that’s all you’re going to find. It was too quiet in there with him sitting next to me drooping his head, so I got up and put some change into the jukebox. I just had sat down and picked up my beer again when he leaned over and said, “Take me home, Leo. Please, please.”

There wasn’t anything else I could do. I couldn’t sit there and drink beer with gas in my tank and him saying please to me. All he wanted was to get home and get up the next morning in time to go to work. I knew the other guys would stay until last call, and I knew they had his money. I stared at them but they wouldn’t even look at us. I picked up my coat and put it on and I led him to the door. I had to help him down the stairs so he wouldn’t fall, and then I had to help him into the car. I had some beer on the back seat, and I gave him one after we got up on the bypass.

Squirrel always talked through his nose. I guess he had a birth defect, a partial palate or something like that, but it wasn’t hard to understand him. I think it was easier to understand him when he was drunk. I guess he talked slower then. I know I do.

“How many times you ever seen me drunk, Leo?” he said.

“I don’t know, Squirrel. Not many.”

“You ain’t never seen me drunk, have you?”

“Not too many times,” I said. “I think I saw you drunk about six months ago, out there one night.”

“How bout opening this beer for me? I can’t get this god-damn thing open.”

I opened the beer for him and then gave him another cigarette. It was still raining and I was dreading that drive up that muddy road like an asswhipping. I knew with my luck, I’d get about five miles up in the woods before I slid off into a ditch, then I’d have to walk all the way out and wake up somebody who had a tractor while Squirrel slept it off in the car. I wasn’t just real damn happy thinking about it.

“I been ready to go home for the last three hours, and them sorry sumbitches wouldn’t even take me home,” he said.

I told him it was hell to get off with some sorry sonofabitches who wouldn’t even take you home.

“I don’t mean to impo on you, Leo. You know that. Please, please.”