CROW: (more distance from HOSS, quieter) In the slammer he’s a useless. But he does his schoolin. Tries to keep a blind face. Storin up his hate cells. Drip by drip. Thinks he’s got it comin. Bangin out the street signs. Makin do his time time. Transforms into a Candy Cock to get his reprieve shine. Shinin through the dark time. Lost in the long sleeve. Long lost. Long ache in the blue moon wake. Just staked like Jesus to his bare rope bed. Shakin in the moonshine. Shakin. Calls it bitter bloody medicine and feels his whole sad man go under. Boom. Like that.

CHASER: Hoss. I ain’t stayin for this.

HOSS: (to CHASER) You stay! You stand right here! You be a witness. I’m gonna turn him over.

CROW: Over, under, around, and through. The badder the boy, the deeper the blue. The string fright. The raw face. Bone fear. White. Dread brings him out in macho shoes and strings him up, dick hard. Dead. Dread. It’s dread. Right? Dead to the core and dressed slick for the afterlife. It’s all over Rover. Roll over. Bark twice and die. Bark now! Book it. Whimper one time for the life of crime.

HOSS: (deep Delta Blues voice) Yeah, well I hear about all that kinda ’lectric machine gun music. Bazooka drool. Brains drippin off the ceiling. All that kinda ’lectric shuffle. Chi-town. North.

CROW: Hoodee, hoodee! Who we got here? Satchemup Joe? Satchemo?

HOSS: I hear you boys hook up in the toilet and play to the mirror all through the night. Imaging. Imaging. Scarfin chords off the radio. Thievin lead lines. Imitation harmonies.

CROW: Yubah. Twelve bars does goes a long way.

HOSS: It come down a long way. It come down by every damn black backstreet you can move sideways through. Deep Ellum. Maybelline. Before that. Long before. Snaking through giant dripping rubber trees. Cypress grove. Cheetahs shakin to it. Cipher, dead bird?

CROW: Hidee, hidee! We be trackin now! We be on the whiff.

HOSS: Fast tongue. Fast fingers. Speed. So fast everything blew out yer back window and you never even turned to look. Never saw it streaming, stuck to cactus like dead flags off Highway 66. Something lost now, boy? Something lost to you? Something way bygone.

CROW: Chub up. Chub it up.