The huge man wakes in darkness, and fumbles for his flashlight. He switches it on and sees the form of the sleeping woman nearby.

“Wake up,” he rumbles, and she sits up blinking like a bat, the blinding light in her eyes.

“Eh? What? Who's there?'

“Get up. Light the lantern,” he tells her, and she slowly sits up, rubbing herself. “LIGHT THE LANTERN.” She comes awake fully and begins obeying his command. Eventually a coal-oil-kerosene-like odor permeates the stench of their immediate surroundings and he says, “Did you bring me what I told you?'

“Okay. Pippy brings the good boy his fine things.” Amazingly she had brought him a sack containing some of the items he'd asked for. So she wasn't altogether useless. He snatched a can of Spam and quickly keyed it open, slapping the rectangle of meat and congealed grease out into his huge hand. Without even wiping the packing gelatin off, he took a ferocious bite, swallowing two-thirds of the meat in a single bite. In less than five minutes the old woman watched him consume the entire contents of a bag of groceries. “Good Big Boy eats all his fine dinner.” She waited for his next utterance.

He looked at her with some degree of irritation. He had tortured and killed people who had irritated him less than she did. Yet he felt no particular rage against her. She was somewhere along the evolutionary ladder between mankind and animal. He might let her live awhile longer if she didn't annoy him further.

“Look, see Pepper's puppy. He can walk just like the doggies with four foots. You look real close and only see three foots on puppy. See?'

He lurched to his feet, taking the heavy bag in one hand and the lantern in the other.

“Listen to what I tell you, sonny boy,” she commanded in a stern voice that caused him to glance at her, and the hard eyes looked for just a fraction of a heartbeat but she wasn't worth bothering with, and he was too tired to even shrug. Daniel turned away from her, the light sending ghostly movement of oily shadows over them, and he could hear her voice from the blackness behind him saying something about “pretty Pip would eat her dessert” as he lumbered out of the subworld for the last time.

He had known where he was going to come up and he scrutinized the street carefully before he felt comfortable with the idea of coming out of the manhole. There was an alley immediately behind him, and as he slid the heavy cover out of the way and squeezed through the opening, a Billy Batsonizing boom of thunder cracked down out of the sky and Chaingang's mighty lungs filled with the almost overpowering pungency of “fresh” Chicago air.

WINDER (EAST BUCKHEAD)

The two rednecks were in a cheap motel on the outskirts of town. Wire-skinny and hard-rock tough, the mean mammer-jammer calling himself Bo Johnson crumpled up the empty Bud and flung it viciously across the room in the direction of the wastebasket. He glowered at the white trash peckerwood he'd gotten saddled with.

“I mean, sweet JESUS you gin’ ta hafta start LISTENIN’ TO ME ya goin’ to end us both up back inna fuckin’ slammer, ya know.” He was pacing the small room and his nervous energy was as scary to the other man as a loose high-voltage line crackling in the air beside him. It had been different inside.

Them and the other white boys against the smokes and Messicans. But shit, he wouldn’ let up onna man.

“Well, hell,” he began.

“Well hell iz right, John. Sweet JESUS youuns can fuck somp'n up. DAMN. I couldn’ fuckin’ BELIEVE it, I mean we go up air'n shit ‘n ya go ‘n write MY fuckin’ name inna damn book. What in the seventeen sweet names of the damn DEVIL couldya be thinkin’ about, huh?'

“Shit, it ain't mah fault, Wendell, an’ I didn't write YOUR name any more'n you wrote MY name,'

“I wrote YOUR name? WHAT THE HOLY HAPPY FUCK YA TALKIN’ ABOUT, BOY?” The stupid one, whose name was John Monroe, flinched at the screaming, wondering if the people next door would hear the hollerin'. He made the calm-down gesture with palms out in front of him, as if warding off evil, saying, “Ya done wrote PARTA my name,” talking in a whisper, trying to placate the other man with his tone, “JOHN-son. Get it? Ya done writ Bo JOHN-son onna damn card ‘n, shit, ya know, then I got sorta confused an'—'

“Ya got sorta confused awright.” At least he was talking in a halfway normal voice you couldn't hear a block away if you was deaf. “Well, hell, man, I jes’ writ the first fuckin’ thing come in my head, so I put down there I was Bob Wendell, now that ain't using—Well it is your name but I mean it ain't either ‘cause hell anybody lookin’ for somebody named Wendell De Witt, they ain't gonna’ put two and two together there ya know like Bob Wendell don't even sound like Wendell De Witt or nothin’ and even—'

“See what I mean, John, you don't fucking LISTEN to what I'm tellin’ ya. You got to start payin’ attenshun to me, goddammit.” He smacked a hard fist into his other hand and it sounded like the loudest possible tooth-rattling slam of a door. “JESUS IN HEAVEN, ya goin’ ta git us tripped up iffn’ ya don't pay a-fuckin'-TENshun.” Monroe imagined what it would be like to get hit in the face with that hand.

“I'm sorry.'

“You're sorry,” he mimicked, “you're confused. See that don't help. Ya understan’ what I'm tryin’ to tell ya?” Monroe nodded but he had to say it,

“Yeah, but if we ‘uns had stayed in the same damn room we wouldna hadda write on two cards we coulda writ like we was brothers or somethin'.'

“I done already said in the car.” He was shaking his head in total exasperation.” I don't WANNA stay in the same room like a coupla fuckin’ faggots.'

“Hell, I ain't no faggot.'

“I never said ya was a faggot. You're as dumb as fuckin’ stone but I never done accused ya of being no dick- suckin', ball-lickin', cunt-asshole turd-packin’ faggot. What I said was—and listen to what I'm sayin’ ‘cause I AIN'T GOIN’ TA SAY IT AGAIN, I never said ya was no faggot. I said I don't-want-to-stay inna-same-fuckin'-room-like- we-was-two-faggots. Get it? AWRIGHT.'

“But—'

“I had my fill of that shit when I was in goddamn jail and that is plain enough of that shit for me. I ain't stayin’ inna same room with somethin’ I ain't fuckin'. ‘Less you want me to start dickin’ YOU inna ass ya better git that shit straight goddammit.'

“Shit I can be with that awright. I never could abide no faggots myself. I let one suck me off one time when I was out in California—'

“Yeah, well I don't think we got time to go in to all that shit right now, man. We gonna do somethin’ here or not? Because if we ain't, then I'm gonna make somethin’ happen on my OWN, ya unnerstand?'

“Hey.” Monroe tilted his head. “I hear ya'. I want to go for some of that shit.'

“That's the way I like ta hear ya talk. Now let's plan how we're goin’ ta git them pipes.'

“Dale's got him a nice little Beretta, man.” He pantomimed holding a handgun and played like he shot the lamp. “PPPPSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH HHKKKKKK KKKKKKKEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW!'

“We ain't goin’ ta use no traceable pipes, butt-wipe. Ack like you got some fuckin’ sense.'

The other man as if in agreement hawked up a gooey oyster and spit it in the general direction of the motel wastebasket.

“What we goin’ do is go down to Helferd's.'

“Uh-huh.'

“Go down there about eleven-thirty onna Friday night when the cops is all out lookin’ for pussy or eatin’

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