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drink would be, Chris hit the brakes and we got out. The two big men who’d shackled Smith turned to Ratcliffe, cocked their heads, and shrugged, a three-second ballet of abdication that Ratcliffe joined by empurpling from sole to crown. And so seems to go the trip and the world: one man’s relief’s another’s pain.
    We drank, sang, and wept. The driver and his friend went off and fucked. We slept and drank and slept. Ratcliffe made the muscle men shackle Smith back up. We started on our way.
    In the best of times, if there is such a thing, a certain kind of man will not be content with a drunk that lasts a day or two. In times like these, if there are times like these, no one will be content with anything. Chris Newport, for one, was not content to let his shame remain within his breast, but had to distribute it over the population of the bus, which he did by driving as fast as he could, without letup, while the men yelled at him to stop for another drink. And red-haired Jack Smith was not content to stay bound a second time, nor was he content not to put on a second show for the crowd of men at the back of the bus, in which he drank a double shot of rotgut and pantomimed contentment by laughing, smiling, hugging himself, swaying side to side, and opening his mouth in the shape of the word “Ahh.” And one man was not content to let a moving bus not let him reach the booze of which he’d not yet had enough.
    That man was Happy Lohengrin, who’d used and cast off Chris—though, a ventriloquist of agency, he made Chris feel he’d done the casting off. The back window being sealed, Happy slipped out the port side and onto the bus’s warm metal roof. He climbed down the back and tightroped along the steel armature by which we were hitched to what had become the bar car. When he was midway across, Chris—a man whose great, grizzled, one-armed body easily converted shame to rage—braked hard. Happy lost his balance, and would have plunged beneath the bar car’s wheels had he not dived for and caught a rope hanging from the bus’s stern. The men who watched made a noise in awe of his valor and skill.
    Happy climbed to the roof of the bar car. Smith swung open the door at its back. Happy, supple as quicksilver, slid off the roof and into the arms of red-haired Smith, whom he tried to french. Smith shoved him away, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, cocked his head at Happy, and shook a shame-on-you finger at him. Happy threw his head back and laughed, Smith poured, they clinked and downed their shots, Smith poured, they clinked and drank again, Happy tried to cuddle Smith, Smith shoved him away, they drank and laughed again, the two performers angling toward the window that framed them and was framed by our window, which in turn was framed by our eyes.
    There followed several days on which Chris drove the bus in a nonstop snit from dawn to dusk and a man who wanted a drink in that time had to take the Happy route out the port, over the roof, down the stern, across the armature, over the trailer, and into Smith’s waiting arms. Chris begrudged this silently, Ratcliffe did so noisily, Smith enjoyed it cannily; the other men were men, who’ll slake their simple thirst by drastic means if nothing else will do.
    A man called Herb went over, or tried. He was called Herb for the hydroponic crop of weed he grew and sold in jail, being another of the early-release convicts who constitute half the population of the bus. While we’ll be paid—if we survive—in water, food, and fuel, the convicts, for the trouble of taking this trip, receive the trouble of taking this trip. Nor has it been lost on Herb and his mates that this bus differs from jail only insofar as it’s more crowded and volatile, smells worse, and what surrounds it makes most of what goes on in jail look like a walk in a field of poppies. Herb climbed to the roof, down the stern, and was crossing