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safety deposit box for him so he wouldn’t lose it. You had Hall-of-Famer written all over you that year.”
    “I thought so, too.”
    “My uncle who raised me wanted me to be the first black State Supreme Court justice. He was a pro wrestler.” The sergeant moved his shoulders. “I’ll need a statement from both of you by tomorrow. Ance knows where my office is at Thirteen Hundred. Take the stairs. The elevator’s just big enough to hold the fat tub of shit.” He shook Doc’s hand again and went over to talk to the desk clerk, who was leaning dejectedly against the wall next to the office.
    “He doesn’t think much of you,” Doc told Ance.
    “He’s just about the best friend I’ve got in this town.”
    Doc was too tired to laugh. It was past midnight. He’d been up since 6:00 A.M., and he was due at the John Deere dealership in less than seven hours. He stirred to leave, but the bail bondsman kept his hands in his pockets. “Pro ball, huh? What was it, gambling?”
    “Drugs.”
    Ance turned half-around, disgusted. “Kids, Jesus Christ. What the fuck’s the matter with bourbon? It’s legal and you don’t have to mug old ladies to pay for it.”
    “I only did drugs once. It loused up my control.”
    “Sure, you got a bum rap. All my clients are innocent too. Take me home, kid.”
    The address Ance gave him was in Taylor. The bail bondsman, Doc had figured out, fueled himself on talk, but not in the aimless, redundant, can’t-get-a-word-in-edgewise way of Mickey Baline and others of that generation; even in his exhaustion Doc found himself paying attention. And as Ance talked, his speech grew more relaxed and less profane. Doc sensed that a guard was being lowered.
    “This wasn’t anything,” Ance said. “One time Taber and me traced this good old boy rapist all the way down to Tennessee, this little jerk-off place called Frog’s Creek or Toad’s Dick or something stuck way up on the side of this fucking mountain. Honest to Christ, we’re hanging on by our foreskins in the front yard. Well, Pa Kettle opens the door and there’s the whole family sitting in the parlor like you see in those oval pictures in antique stores, even Grandma in her hickory rocker with an autoharp in her lap and little Charlotte Rose on the floor with her Raggedy Ann. Pa says it’s been six months since he saw Veal—swear to God, that’s his name, Veal—but the place is built out of packing crates and I can hear someone walking around upstairs and it’s August so it can’t be Santa Claus. But we got out. I don’t start trouble in people’s homes. There was a saloon in town and we staked that out for a couple of nights, listened to “Okie From Muskogee” about a thousand times on the juke, until the good old boy comes in. Well, everybody in the place was his friend that night except us and they kicked the living shit right out of Taber and me, I mean my ears are still ringing. Next day we went back to his house with the sheriff, and he came away with us gentle as you please, on account of he was hung over bad with a fractured wrist to boot. Only little Charlotte Rose smashes Taber on the big toe with a hammer on our way out. They thought for a while he was going to lose the toe, but now it just gives him hell when it rains.”
    “Why didn’t you bring the sheriff with you the first time?”
    “Local law charges too much. They don’t care for bail men on principle, and bail men from out of town are lower than a snake’s asshole in places like that. They’re still waiting for Rhett to come back to Scarlett down there.” He lit a cigarette—Doc thought he had to see the NO SMOKING sign on the back of the front seat when he struck the match—and coughed. “Okay, so this time I’m out five grand plus your two bills. Beats hell out of getting stomped in a Tennessee saloon. I piss my pants every time I hear Waylon Jennings.”
    “I thought I was just getting a hundred.”
    “That was before I found out who