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tongue, black in the shadow of her hair, darted in and out of her mouth.
    He put his head back and said: “Okay.”
    He closed his eyes and thought about the hand job she had given him under the east stands of the practice field when she was in the tenth grade and then the first time he had asked her for a date and they were in his Ford pickup, parked and kissing to the point of exploding there behind the A&W Rootbeer stand in Tifton where they had driven on a Friday night to first see a movie because there was no movie in Mystic and then go for a hamburger they never got because he reached over and dragged her in with him behind the steering wheel and they had started kissing and trembling and going at each other with both hands and it had been the same ever since. All the way through high school they had been at each other as though they were fighting a war.
    Lying there in the snakepit, they both heard the sound of a car motor a long time before they knew it was actually coming onto the football field with them, and they were being hit by the gravel and sand raining through the chicken wire before they knew the car was spinning around and around the place where they lay.
    Joe Lon straightened up and Berenice came up behind him and they saw Buddy Mallow’s patrol car at the same time. Buddy hung out the window grinning, and whooping at the top of his lungs.
    “Goddammit,” he screamed at them as he one-handed the Plymouth around and around the pit where they sat hunkered, turning to follow him, “goddammit, ain’t life grand!”
    In the car beside him, a woman, small and dark, sat very still and did not turn her head.
    “Crazy bastard’s got another one,” Joe Lon said. But Berenice had already lowered herself upon him again and did not answer.
    “How’s at?”
    “What?” said Joe Lon. When he looked up from his beer, Buddy Matlow was watching him from across the counter.
    “You better go on home, son,” said Buddy Matlow, “you started talking to you beer.”
    “Just thinking out loud,” Joe Lon said.
    “Who was the crazy fucker answering you?” said Buddy.
    Joe Lon shrugged and looked at the ceiling. The night was beginning to get cool. Joe Lon got up and went over to the window and closed it. “You want another beer?”
    “I could drink another one, if it was give to me.”
    Joe Lon brought it out of the back room. Buddy still had half a glass of moonshine. He took a sip and chased it.
    Joe Lon said: “You wouldn’t want to let Lottie Mae go home, would you?”
    “What?”
    “Buddy, I’m too tired and hurt to talk about it.”
    “Don’t talk about it then,” Buddy said. “I don’t know as it’s any of you business.”
    “It bothers the niggers. If it bothers them, it bothers me.”
    “How’s at?”
    “They unload the shitters. They hep me. I told George I’d speak to you.”
    “You real worried about George, are you?”
    “He ain’t the only one in the family. I don’t even know how many connections they got and they all hep me out one way or the other. I said I’d speak to you.”
    “All right, you spoke to me.”
    “You wouldn’t want to let her go home, would you?” 
    Buddy Matlow watched him steadily for a long moment, then he drained the water glass. “Sure,” he said. “Okay. I’ll send her home tonight.”
    “I prechate it,” said Joe Lon.
    Buddy Matlow reached for his back pocket where he had his wallet chained to his cartridge belt.
    “On me,” Joe Lon said. “I owe you.”
    “Decent of you,” Buddy said. He turned and went out to his Plymouth Cruiser, where he sat behind the wheel smoking. His face was mottled and every now and then he spat out the window. He couldn’t seem to cut any slack anywhere. He’d earned it. Goddammit, he knew he’d earned it but nobody would own up to it. If you couldn’t cut a little slack behind a ruined All-American wheel—ruined in defense of the fucking U S of A, where could you cut it? He thumped the cigarette in a