Raylan got up to get a beer from the refrigerator. Joyce asked him, as she always did, if he wanted a glass. Raylan said no thanks. After another pause, aware of himself and aware of Joyce sitting with her drink, he said, “Why don’t you put that new Roy Orbison on?”

She said, “All right,” but didn’t move, lighting a cigarette now, a new habit she’d picked up being around Harry. The first time she played the new Roy Orbison for him the CD came to “The Only One” and Joyce said if she were still dancing she’d use it in her routine. Joyce had moved her hips to the slow, draggy beat and showed Raylan where she’d throw in the bumps. “’Every one you know’s been through it.’ Bam. ‘You bit the bullet, then you chew it.’ Bam.” Raylan liked it.

When they were first getting to know one another, almost a year ago, he’d told her how he’d worked for different coal operators in Harlan County, Kentucky, where he grew up, and before joining the Marshals Service. He told her, “I’ve worked deep mines, wildcat mines, the ones you go into and scratch for what’s left, and I’ve stripped.”

Joyce said that time, “So have I.”

He said, “Pardon me?”

She hadn’t wanted to tell him too soon about working as a go-go dancer when she was younger-one of the few topless performers, she said, without a drug habit. Like it was okay to dance half-naked in a barroom full of men as long as you weren’t strung out. He told her no, it didn’t bother him-not mentioning it might’ve been different if he’d known her when she was up there showing her breasts to everybody. No, the only thing that bothered him now was her devoting her life to poor Harry.

She’d say she wasn’t devoting her life, she was trying to help him.

Sitting at the kitchen table again Raylan thought of something and began telling about the bust he’d taken part in that morning. Telling it in his quiet way but with a purpose:

How they went to an address out in Canal Point to arrest a fugitive known to be armed and dangerous.