He wasn’t much taller, then. “Listen, listen to me good, kid,” the man said, and Rodney Parish noticed he was crying like a girl or something. “Listen, kid. If anyone, if anyone asks you what happened, tell ‘em…tell ‘em…this guy was coming real fast down the street and hit me after I’d stopped…”

He went on for a long time, explaining it really good for Rodney, so Rodney could blame it on the dead guy, and that wasn’t right until the man in the plaid vest promised to give Rodney fifty dollars, and gave it to him, right there.

Then it was all right, and Rodney told the policeman what the man in the plaid vest had told him to say. That was okay, then.

Then it was worth getting strapped by Daddy. Then it was okay, coming home late.

It took Rodney Parish only four months and thirteen days to realize how that sort of thing could be used. It was just renting yourself out, like Daddy did when he cut the men’s hair downtown. It was okay doing that.

As long as you got what you wanted. Because it felt good inside, doing bad like that. Of course you couldn’t always count on seeing an accident and having a nice man, like the man in the plaid vest, give you fifty dollars for a simple little thing like changing a story. But Rodney kept remembering the way the man in the car had looked, with the nice red stuff pouring out of his chest and the liquid, yellow look to the eyes. Besides, the fifty dollars hadn’t done him much good, not dribbled out the way he’d had to do it. He’d been smart enough to know that he couldn’t go out and buy a bunch of new things, things that he wanted for his stamp collection, for his coin collection, for his baseball bubble gum card collection. New acquisitions brought questions, so the fifty dollars had to be spaced out, but in four months it was gone.

And there were still gaps in all of the collections.