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carpet, and sees all the water on the bathroom floor. I can still remember him yelling at her. I got up and walked down the hall. I heard him pick her up and her scream. I looked inside and he was holding her by her ankles. He was yelling at her and she was screaming. He started dunking her head in the tub water. Over and over. I was screaming at him, he looked at me and yelled at me. Then he let go of her ankles, and when he did I ran for the door. But I didn’t make it.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
    He began crying again. ‘And that was nothing. That was nothing. That was just one night. There were others.’
    ‘Come on,’ she said and stood up. ‘Let’s get out of here. Let’s go home.’
    He wiped his eyes and finished his beer.
    ‘All right,’ he said.
    She held out her hand to help him stand, and he reached for it.

Chapter 8
Johnny Cash
    They walked to the car and set off for home. Once they had got out of the Flying J and onto the highway, though, he had opened a beer and taken a drink off the half pint he’d bought her, and changed his mind. All of a sudden he wanted to go to the party in the desert. He turned the car around, drove back to the truck stop, and bought a twelve pack of beer and a fifth of Jim Beam. He put in a mixed tape of Johnny Cash and had the girl drive.
    ‘The crazy thing’, he said, ‘is that Johnny Cash wrote that song “San Quentin” for the guys in there, the inmates, and just for that one show. During the concert he talks about the song, then plays it for them. The prisoners like it so much he asks if they want to hear it again, and of course they yell their asses off, ’cause he’d just written a song about them, so of course they want to hear it again. So he does it again and everyone goes ape shit. The craziest thing is, when you buy the record, it’s on there, both times. Back to back.’
    She rolled down her window and rested her arm on the top of the door while she drove. The breeze rushing past her, the night air on her arm, blowing through her hair.
    ‘You remember when we saw him at that outdoor place in San Diego?’
    ‘Yeah,’ she said.
    ‘We stayed at that motel. That was one of the best times in my life. I remember it that way. You and me sleeping the whole day away. And then us getting dressed up and going out to eat and then seeing that show.’
    ‘He was good, too,’ the girl said.
    ‘He was fucking great. Even for being such an old timer, he was good.’
    Jimmy took a flashlight from the glove box and turned it on. He was looking at a flyer. ‘I hope all these guys aren’t a bunch of gun shooting idiots. Do you remember that skinhead party where there was a band in the backyard and the sliding glass door got broken by those two drunk girls fighting?’
    ‘I remember that,’ she said.
    ‘I don’t know if I told you, but I had this conversation with a guy there. He says that the cops are on his ass ’cause they think he threw a Molotov cocktail at some black lady’s car. But he tells me, “No way did I do it, man.” He doesn’t know me from anyone. I’d never met the man before in my life. I could have been an undercover cop. He was drunk, a real moron, you know? So I ask him, “Why do they think you did it?” And he looks at me and says, “They’re picking on me ’cause I’m a skinhead. If it was me that did it, if I’d of thrown it, it would have torched the fucking car. There’d be nothing left. Those dumbfuck cops say it hit the trunk and could’ve gotten to the gas tank and so I could be up for attempted murder. But the fucker landed on the hood. The cops don’t know shit. Maybe I was there, but I didn’t make it. If I made it, it would’ve exploded. The guys I know can’t hit anything, but I got the arm.” He was that fucking dumb. I mean, he couldn’t even keep his story straight. And he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, not for even one night, not even in front of someone who doesn’t give a shit about him or what he