But that sick feeling around the heart would not go away. I worked my way under my truck, fitted a crescent wrench around the nut on the oil pan, and applied pressure with both hands while flakes of dried mud fell in my eyes. Then the wrench slipped and I raked my knuckles across the pan. I heard the telephone ring inside.

I crawled out from under the truck, went in the house, and picked up the receiver. The skin was gone on the tops of two of my knuckles.

"What's happening, Dave?"

" Dixie?"

"Yeah. What's happening?"

"Nothing important. What is it?"

"Are you always this happy in the morning?"

"What do you want, Dixie?"

"Nothing. I'm in the lounge over in that shopping center on Brooks. Come on over."

"What for?"

"Talk. Relax. Listen to a few sounds. They got a piano in here."

"You sound like your boat already left the dock."

"So?"

"It's nine o'clock in the morning."

"Big deal. It's twelve o'clock somewhere else. Come on over."

"No thanks."

"Darlene dumped me in here while she went running around town. I don't want to sit in here by myself. It's a drag, man. Get your butt over here."

"I've got a few other things on my mind."

"That's what I want to talk with you about. Dave, you think you're the only guy who understands your problem. Look, man, I pick cotton every day in that same patch."

"What are you talking about?"

"Some people are born different. That's just the way we are. You go against what you are, you're gonna have a mess of grief. Like Hank Junior says, some people are born to boogie, son. They just got to be willing to pay the price."

"I appreciate all this, but I'm going to sign off now."

"Oh no you don't. You listen to me, 'cause I been there in spades, right where you're at now. When I got to Huntsville from the county jail, I hadn't had a drink in six weeks. I felt like I had fire ants crawling on my brain. Except I learned you can get almost anything in the joint you can get outside. There was a Mexican cat who sold short-dogs of black cherry wine for five bucks a bottle. We'd mix it with syrup, water, and rubbing alcohol, and it'd fix you up just about like you stuck your head in a blast furnace.

"So one time we had a whole crock of this beautiful black cherry brew stashed in a tool shack, and one time while the boss man was working some guys farther on down the road, we set one guy out as a jigger and the rest of us crapped out in the shack and decided to cooler ate our minds a little bit. Except about an hour later, when we're juiced to the eyes, the guy outside comes running through the door, yelling, "Jigger, jigger."

"The boss man was this big redneck character from Lufkin named Buster Higgins. He could pick up a bale of hay and fling it from behind the truck all the way to the cab. When he took a leak he made sure everybody saw the size of his dick. That's no shit, man. The next thing I know, he's standing there in the door of the toolshed, sweat running out of his hat, his face big as a pumpkin. Except this guy was not funny. He thought rock 'n' roll was for niggers and Satan worshipers. He looks down at me and says, Tugh, didn't your parents have enough money?"

"I said, 'What d'you mean, Mr. Higgins?' He says, 'For a better quality rubbers.' Then he took his hat off and whipped the shit out of me with it. Next stop one month in isolation, son. I'm talking about down there with the crazoids, the screamers, the guys who stink so bad the hacks have to wash them down with hoses. And I had delirium tremens for two fucking days. Weird sounds snapping in my head, rockets going off when I closed my eyes, a big hard-on and all kinds of real sick sexual thoughts. You know what I'm talking about, man. It must have been ninety degrees in the hole, and I was shaking so bad I couldn't get a cup of water to my mouth.

"I got through two days and thought I was home free. But after a week I started to have all kinds of guilt feelings again. About the little boy in the accident in Fort Worth, about my own little boy dying in the fire. I couldn't stand it, man. Just that small isolation cell and the light through the food slit and all them memories. I would have drunk gasoline if somebody would have give it to me. So you know what I done? I didn't try to get the guilt out of my mind. I got high on it. I made myself so fucking miserable that I was drunk again. When I closed my eyes and swallowed, I could even taste that black cherry wine. I knew then it wasn't never gonna be any different. I was always gonna be drunk, whether I was dry or out there juicing.

"So in my head I wrote a song about it. I could hear all the notes, the riffs, a stand-up bass backing me up. I worked out the lyrics for it, too You can toke, you can drop, Drink or use. It don't matter, daddy, "Cause you never gonna lose Them mean ole jailhouse Black cherry blues."

I rubbed my forehead with my hand. I didn't know what to say to him.

"You still there?" he said.

"Yes."

"You gonna come over?"

"Maybe I'll see you another time. Thanks for the invitation."

"Fuck, yeah, I'm always around. Sorry I wasted your time."

"You didn't. We were good friends in college. Remember?"

"Everybody was good friends in college. It all died with Cochran and Holly. I got to motivate on over to another bar. This place bugs me. Dangle easy, Dave."

He hung up. I stared listlessly out into the sunlight a moment, then walked outside and finished changing the oil in my truck.

She drove up in her red Toyota jeep a half hour later. I guess I knew that she was coming, and I knew that she would come when Alafair was at school. It was like the feeling you have when you look into the eyes of another and see a secret and shared knowledge there that makes you ashamed of your own thoughts. She wore a yellow sundress, and she had put on lipstick and eye shadow and hoop earrings. The sacks of groceries in the back of the jeep looked as though they were there only by accident.

Her lipstick was dark, and when she smiled her teeth were white.

"Your hat," I said.

"Yes. You found it?"

"It's in the living room. Come in. I have some South Louisiana coffee on the stove."

She walked ahead of me, and I looked at the way her black hair sat thickly on her neck, the way the hem of her dress swung across her calves. When I opened the screen for her I could smell the perfume behind her ears and on her shoulders.

I went into the kitchen while she found her hat in the living room. I fooled with cups and saucers, spoons, a bowl of sugar, milk from the icebox, but my thoughts were as organized as a puzzle box that someone had shaken violently between his hands.

"I try to shop in Missoula. It's cheaper than Poison," she said.

"Yeah, food's real cheap here."

"Dixie Lee came along with me. He's in a bar right now."

"He called me. You might have to drag him out of the place on a chain."

"He'll be all right. He's only bad when Sal lets him take cocaine." She paused a moment.

"I thought maybe you wouldn't be home."

"I got a late start today. A bunch of phone calls, stuff like that."

She reached for the cups and saucers on the drain board and her arm brushed against mine. She looked at my eyes and raised her mouth, and I slipped my arms around her shoulders and kissed her. She stepped close against me, so that her stomach touched lightly against my loins, and moved her palms over my back. She opened and closed her mouth while she held and kissed me, and then she put her tongue in my mouth and I felt her body flatten against me. I ran my hands over her bottom and her thighs and gently bit her shoulder as she wrapped one calf inside my leg and rubbed her hair on the side of my face.

We pulled the shades in the bedroom and undressed without speaking, as if words would lead both of us to an awareness about morality and betrayal that we did not care to examine in the heated touch of our skin, the dry swallow in the throat, the silent parting of our mouths.