“Somebody locked the snow gate on the state road, so I turned in here for the night,” Clete said.

“That road is not state-owned. It’s private. But you probably didn’t know that,” the driver said. The accent was slightly adenoidal, perhaps Appalachian or simply Upper South.

“My map shows it as a state road,” Clete said. “Would you mind cutting your engine? I’m starting to get a headache, here.”

The driver’s physique was nondescript, his face lean, his brown hair dry and uncombed, ruffling in the breeze, his smile stitched in place. A half-circle of tiny puncture scars was looped under his right eye, as though a cookie cutter had been pressed into his skin, recessing the eye and dulling the light inside it. His shirt hung outside his trousers. “Have you caught any fish?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Clete replied. He looked at the passenger. “What are you doing?”

The passenger was a hard-bodied, unshaved man. His hair was black and shiny, his dark eyes lustrous, his flannel shirt buttoned at the wrists and throat. He wore canvas trousers with big brads on them and a wide leather belt hitched tightly into his hips. The combination of his unwashed look and the fastidious attention he gave his utilitarian clothes gave him a bucolic aura of authority, like that of a man who wears the smell of his sweat and testosterone as a challenge to others. “I’m writing down your license number, if you don’t have an objection,” he said.

“Yeah, I do object,” Clete said. “Who are you guys?”

The unshaved man with black hair nodded and continued to write on his notepad. “You from Lou’sana? I’m from down south myself. Miss’sippi. You been to Miss’sippi, haven’t you?” he said.

When Clete didn’t reply, the passenger said, “New Orleans flat-ass got ripped off the map, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, the F-word in Louisiana these days is FEMA,” Clete said.