I fidgeted and looked in the mirror at the road behind. “Man, I don’t know. Couldn’t imagine nothing else. Not for me, anyway.”

Ezekiel laughed once, loud, boom, like a shotgun going off.

“Don’t be doing that, man. I about jumped out of my britches. Come on and let’s go.”

He shook his head again. “Maybe you knew you was needed down here, John. Maybe you knew we was singing, and telling stories, and waiting.” He stepped back into the dirt. “This is your ride, John. But I’ll make sure everybody knows what you done. I’ll tell ’em that things has changed in Beluthahatchie.”

He looked off down the road. “You’d best get on. Shoot-maybe you can find some jook joint and have some fun afore he catches up to you.”

“Maybe so, brother, maybe so.”

I han’t gone two miles afore I got that bad old crawly feeling. I looked over to the passenger’s side of the car and saw it was all spattered with blood, the leather and the carpet and the chrome on the door, and both those mangy hound dogs was sprawled across the front seat wallowing in it, both licking my razor like it was something good, and that’s where the blood was coming from, welling up from the blade with each pass of their tongues. Time I caught sight of the dogs, they both lifted their heads and went to howling. It wan’t no howl like any dog should howl. It was more like a couple of panthers in the night.

“Hush up, you dogs!” I yelled. “Hush up, I say!”

One of the dogs kept on howling, but the other looked me in the eyes and gulped air, his jowls flapping, like he was fixing to bark, but instead of barking said:

“Hush yourself, nigger.”

When I looked back at the road, there wan’t no road, just a big thicket of bushes and trees a-coming at me. Then came a whole lot of screeching and scraping and banging, with me holding onto the wheel just to keep from flying out of the seat, and then the car went sideways and I heard an awful bang and a crack and then I didn’t know anything else. I just opened my eyes later, I don’t know how much later, and found me and my guitar lying on the shore of the Lake of the Dead.