“Pickups,” Raylan said, “with a. 30-. 30 racked in the back window. Otherwise they drive Cadillacs. I wouldn’t mind talking to ’em, though it’s not my reason to stop by. I thought I’d buy a jar and take it down memory lane. I’m on my way to Evarts and on to Eastover, where I dug coal as a boy.”

“You managed to get out,” Pervis said, “before bad habits set in.”

“I was lucky,” Raylan said. “I didn’t mind going to school, found I liked to read stories.”

“Else you’d be wanted for bustin into drugstores,” Pervis said. “Clean out the painkillers and sell ’em to folks want to stay numb, not have to think.”

“You carry those people?”

“The ones grow reefer in their backyard I keep on the books. They sell a crop and pay their store debt with hunnert-dollar bills.”

“Can I ask why they call you Speed?”

He was stringy and stooped in his seventies, wore a hairpiece that wasn’t bad, though Raylan could tell Pervis set it on his head every morning. Had a neat part that was in it forever. Pervis let his expression sag into deep lines. He had not smiled since Raylan entered the store.

“I sold ninety-proof whiskey clear as spring water, not a speck of charcoal in her. I sold it from a Ford looked like it was stock I used as my store. Never stopped runnin these hills and acquired ‘Speed’ as my handle. You understand this was fifty years ago. I raced quarter-mile dirt and worked up to try NASCAR. Came up against Junior Johnson and seigohnson aw my future get put on the trailer.”

“You sell groceries now,” Raylan said, “and your boys run your other business.”

Pervis said, “Finally gettin to it, aren’t we?”

“I’m not Drug Enforcement,” Raylan said. “Long as they got nothin on you I don’t either. But I’m told you got fields of marijuana, a good thousand acres, from here to West Virginia.”

“What’s good about it?” Pervis said. “You plant a third for the law, a third for the thieves and what’s left you sell to dealers, the ones makin the profit. I’m confidin this to you so we don’t waste time lyin to each other. I didn’t know your daddy, but I’ll swear by your granddaddy. Six years I came over to Harlan and sold all the liquor he cooked and we did better’n fair.”