To be fair, the rumors about ole Mr Deutschman didn't say he'd actually dicked any schoolgirls. Probably just touched them and shit, you know. Real slime though, don't get me wrong. He used to be a school principal or something, all righteous and upstanding, back in the days before they'd bust you for that type of thing. Maybe even before talk shows, back when you'd just get ostracized by word of mouth. He probably used to get his hair cut at the fancy unisex on Gurie Street, with the coffee machine and all. But not anymore. Now he slinks through the valley behind the abattoir, to the meatworks barber shoppe. Yeah, the meatworks has its own barber on Saturdays, It's just ole Mr Deutschman and me here this morning. And Mom.

'Well don't listen to Vernon, the unisex usually takes off a lot.'

Her head-scarf and shades supposedly make her invisible. The invisible twitching woman. Me, I wear the reddest T-shirt you ever saw, like a goddam six-year-old or something. I didn't want to wear it. She controls what you wear by keeping everything else damp in the laundry.

'Well go ahead, sir, it'll only grow back.'

'Hell, Ma …'

'Vernon I'm only trying to help you out. We'll have to find you some decent shoes too.'

Sweat starts to pool in my ass. The lights are off, just one ray glows sideways through the door onto these green tiles. The air reeks of flesh. Flies guard two historical barber chairs in the middle of the room; white leather turned brown, cracked and hardened to plastic. I check them for arm clamps. I'm in one, Deutschman is in the other; his hands creep around under his gown. He seems happy to wait. Then a whistle blows outside, and the meatworks' marching band assembles on the gravel in the yard. 'Braaap, barp, bap,' band practice starts. One majorette I see through the door is about eighty-thousand years ole, her buns smack the backs of her legs as she marches. My eyes flee to a TV in the corner of the room.

'Look, Vernon, he doesn't have arms or legs, but he's neatly groomed. And he has a job, look - he even invests on the stock market.'

They ask the kid on TV what it feels like to be so gifted. He just shrugs and says, 'Isn't everybody?'

The barber mostly slashes mid-air; two halves of a fly hit the deck. 'Barry was here. Said there could be a drugs link.'

'A drug slink, yes,' says Mr Deutschman.

'A drugs link, or another firearm.'

'Another farm, uh-huh. I heard it was a panty cult - you hear it was a panty cult?'

On balance, today sucks. You don't want to be here if they find any drugs. So I'm here with two spliffs, and two acid pearls in my pocket; nasty gels, according to Taylor, like your mind would projectile-exit your nose if you took one. I tried to ditch them on the way down, but Fate was against me. Fate's always fucken against me these days.

Load my pack, and lope away is what I'll do; all crusty and lonely, like you see on TV. Ditch Taylor's dope, and lope away. More successfully than last night, with Lally and the world's media camped outside. I only got four steps away from my porch before they came a-sniffing. Now they think I take out the trash in my backpack. Last night was long, boy, long and shivery with ghosts and realizations. Realizations that I have to act.

'Vaine's coming down with they dogs,' says the barber. 'I'll tell her we need a SWAT team, with some of they automatic guns, that rip the meat off offenders' bodies, not any ole dogs.' Click, slash; he evens up my skull. I scan the floor for ears.

'Meat's better'n dogs,' says Deutschman.

'Sit still, Vern,' says Mom.

'I have stuff to do.'

'Well, Harris' store might take you on.'

'What?'

'For a job, you know - Seb Harris even bought himself a truck!'

'That ain't what I'm talking about. Anyway, Seb's dad just happens to own the whole store.'

'Well, you're the man of the house now, I'm counting on you to make good. All the boys I know have jobs, that's all.'

'Like which boys, Ma, like just who?'

'Well - Randy and Eric?'

'Randy and Eric are dead.'

'Vernon Gregory, I'm just saying if you want to prove you're all grown up it's about time you got wise to the way things work in this world. Be a man.'

'Yeah, right.'

'And don't you get smart either, in front of everybody. Don't let's end up like that other time after I found those underpants.' Deutschman's hand twitches under his gown.

'Damn, Momma!'

'Go ahead, cuss your mother!'

'I ain't cussing!'

'My God, if your father was here …'

'Here's Vaine,' says the barber. I spin out of the chair, ripping the gown off over my head.

'Well go ahead, Vernon - go right ahead and humiliate your mother, after all that's happened to me.'

Fuck her. I bang out through the screen into the sun. Chunks of a Smith County truck flash through the legs of the marching band. Martirio may be a fucken joke, but you don't mess with the boys from Smith County. Smith County has armored personnel carriers, for chrissakes. Trombones spit glare, horns throw back pictures of me puckering, melting, shrinking into the bushes at the steep end of the compound.

Hot grasses heckle my face on the way up the hill; skeeterhawks twitch through the air, but dust is too bored to rise up. One cloud hangs in the sky, over my empty, desperate body. My ole lady won't run after me. She'll stay back, tell all my slime to the boys, so they can wear a knowing smile next time they see me. Underpants my ass. And there's no drugs link, is there fuck. Jesus never had the damn money. See Hysteriaville here? Science says there must be ten squillion brain cells in this town, but if you so much as belch before your twenty-first birthday they can only form two thoughts between them: you're fucken pregnant, or you're on drugs. Fuck it, I'm outta here. Life's simple when I'm angry. I know just what to do, and I fucken do it. Underpants my fucken ass.

I'll tell you a learning: knife-turners like my ole lady actually spend their waking hours connecting shit into a humongous web, just like spiders. It's true. They take every word in the fucken universe, and index it back to your knife. In the end it doesn't matter what words you say, you feel it on your blade. Like, 'Wow, see that car?' 'Well it's the same blue as that jacket you threw up on at the Christmas show, remember?' What I learned is that parents succeed by managing the database of your dumbness and your slime, ready for combat. They'll cut you down in a split fucken second, make no mistake; much quicker than you'd use the artillery you dream about. And I say, in idle moments, once the shine rubs off their kid - they start doing it just for fucken kicks.

I stop dead. Something crackles around the bend on the track. It's the red van, spinning a trail of fluff-balls down the hill. Like somebody with oldtimer's disease, who doesn't remember what's good for them, I glance at my T-shirt. 'Ping,' it jackrabbits to Lally. He stops with a crunch, forcing down the electric window with the flat of his hand. Tappets mark time with my heart, tic, tic, tic.

'Big man!'

I wave, like I'm in the freezer section at the fucken Mini-Mart or something. I should drop the drugs where I stand, but the dogs are close by. They'd know. Anyway, I ain't that decisive in life, not with all this grief on board, not with my anger evaporated. It fucken slays me. Van Damme's your man if you want the drugs dropped right here.

Lally calls me over. 'See those cops? They came from your place - jump in.'

Ginseng clinks around the floor as we cut a fresh trail toward home.

'Where's the rest of your head?' Lally slicks down his eyebrows in the mirror. You can tell the mirror hasn't pointed at the road awhile.

'Don't ask,' I say.

'You going somewhere?'

'Surinam.'

He laughs. 'How'd you get down here? I didn't see a car this morning …'

'We walked.' I'm supposed to say Mom's car is in the shop. But it ain't in the shop. The car paid for the new rug in the living room, the one Brad wipes his fingers on.

'What do you think the cops want?'

'Search me.'

'Tch.' Lally shakes his head. 'Things won't get any easier, you know. Take my advice - I could cut a report by sundown, it could air by tonight - Vern? I think it's time to tell your story. Your real, true story.'

'Maybe,' I say, slouching low in the seat. I feel Lally watching me.

'You don't even have to appear, I can patch it together from clips of friends and family. Camera's loaded, big man. Just say the word.' I hear Lally's offer, but just sit wishing Marion Nuckles would tell his damn story. He knows I'm clean, he was there. I can't believe I get all the heat - me, who has family secrets to watch out for - while he lounges around in goddam silence. I mean, what's he holding back?

A wrong note from the meatworks' band coughs us onto Beulah Drive in a swirl of leaf tatters. A baby marketplace has grown around the pumpjack since I've been gone. One stall sells Martirio barbecue aprons, just like Pam's. Next to it, some media men pay a buck a hit for some fudge from Houston. One of the fudge sellers gloomily puts on an apron. The apron sellers gloomily munch fudge. My face goes Porked Monkey. It's the face for when life around you travels in fucken dog years, but you stay frozen still. For instance, a whole mall grows around the pumpjack, but I'm here with the same problems I went out with this morning. I just look down, herd ginseng with my foot.

'Take one,' says Lally.

'Say what?'

'Take some ginseng, keep your strength up.'

As he says it, I notice the ginseng is the same shade of piss as the acid pearls in my hand. Dogs would never smell through the ginseng. I reach down for a bottle, but Lally brakes to avoid a stray teddy under the Lechugas' willow; I overbalance, the dope cigarettes fall from my hand.

Lally switches off the engine, looks at the joints, picks one off the floor, sniffs it, and grins. Then he looks at me. 'Tch - you could've just said you didn't want to share.'

'Uh, they ain't mine actually.'

'Not for long, anyway,' he says, frowning into his mirror.

I spin around to see the Smith County truck nose onto Beulah Drive, a block behind us. Velcro fucken ant-farms seize my gut.

'Here, give them to me,' says Lally. He lifts himself up, and stashes the joints through a tear in the seat.

'Thanks - I'll be right back.' I fly across our lawn, into the house, and up the hall to my room, where I pick the cap off the ginseng. I take Taylor's LSD pearls and poke them into the bottle. They blend right into the piss, and the cap replaces like new. I drop the bottle into the Nike box, next to my padlock key, and hide it back in my closet. As I stroll onto the porch, all nonchalant, cooled by a sweat of relief, I see Vaine Gurie, Mom, and a Smith County officer arrive in the truck. Air-conditioning blows their hair like seaweed underwater, except Mom's, which blows more like one of those tetchy anemone things. Lally sits quiet in the shade of the Lechugas' willow. I guess he turned out okay, ole Lally, in the end. 'A good egg,' as the once-talkative Mr Goddam Nuckles would say.

Fate suddenly plays its regular card. Leona's Eldorado sashays past the pumpjack, full of musty, dry wombs and deep, bitter wants. Mom withers. The fucken timing of these ladies is astounding, I have to say, like they have scandal radar or something. They foam out of the car like suds from a sitcom washing machine, except for Brad, who stays in back. He's eating a booger, you can tell. Betty Pritchard gets out and starts to strut around the lawn like a fucken chicken.

'I think I need the bathroom - I just can't be sure with this infection.'

Leona and George take the high ground by our willow. 'Hi, Doris,' they wave. I almost make it back into the house, but Vaine Gurie unfolds faster than you'd expect from the cab of the truck. 'Vernon Little, come down here please.'

'Another setback, Doris?' asks Leona, hopefully.

'Well it's nothing, girls,' says Mom. 'There's some fudge inside.'

'We don't have long,' says Leona, 'they're coming to lay the sunken patio at three.'

'Well, I thought it was the people with my Special Edition,' says Mom, scuttling over the dirt. 'I saw the car, and thought the new fridge was here …'

'Ma?' I call. She doesn't hear.

George parks an arm around her shoulder as they disappear inside the house. 'Honey, of course they'll come after him if he insists on looking like that - that haircut's the pits.'

The screen clacks shut, Mom's voice trails away into the dark. 'Well I couldn't sway him, you know how boys are …'

'Vernon,' says Gurie. 'Let's go for a little ride.'

I search her face for signs of uncovered truth, imminent apology. None appear. 'Ma'am, I wasn't even there …'

'Is that right. Makes it difficult to explain the fingerprints we found then, doesn't it.'

Picture a Smith County Sheriff's truck with me inside, sitting quiet on a road between three wooden houses. Bugs chitter in the willows, oblivious. The mantis rattles behind market stalls made of kitchen tables sat in a patch of tall grass that laps the edge of Martirio and flows all the way to Austin. Then Brad Pritchard appears at my window; nose to the sky, finger pointed at his shoes.

'Air Maxes,' he states. 'New.'

He stands with his eyes shut, waiting for me to blow a fucken kiss, or break down weeping or something. Asshole.

I lift my leg to the window. 'Jordan New Jacks.'

He squints momentarily before pointing at my Nikes. 'Old,' he explains patiently. Then he points at his. 'NEW.'

I point at his, 'Price of a Barbie Camper.' Then at mine, 'Price of a medium-range corporate jet.'

'Are not.'

'Are fucken too.'

'Enjoy jail.'

His shuffle across the lawn turns into a scamper up the porch steps. A single raised finger shines back at me through my own front doorway, until the screen cracks shut in front of it. Then, just as the officers start the truck, the screen swings open again. My ole lady bursts out, and hurries down to the road.

'Vernon, I love you! Forget about before - even murderers are loved by their families, you know …'

'Heck, Ma, I ain't a murderer!'

'Well I know - it's just an example.'

Lally shoots me a stare from his van, motioning like a camera with his hands. 'Just say the word!' he yells.

Mom stands helpless in the road behind us, and parks her chin on her chest. Her lips prime up for tears. The pain of it ploughs me over, inside out. I spin to see Lally through the back window as he rushes to her, puts a hand to her shoulder. Her ole soggy head leans toward it. He slides his shoulder under to absorb her tears, then stands tall, and stares gravely at my truck disappearing.

I can't take it. I lunge across Gurie and holler back through her window with all the air in the fucken world: 'Do it, Lally - tell 'em the fucken truth.'

Jail is sour tonight. Dead like the air between your ass and your underwear when you're sitting down. A TV buzzes somewhere in the background; I listen out for a news-flash about my innocence, but instead the weather report theme plays. I hate that fucken theme. Then a voice bangs down the corridor. Footsteps approach.

'Don't you let me find them burgers gone, I mean it. Sure, right, it's Dr Actions Diet Revolution now, huh. All your noise about Prettykins, and now - don't tell me - it's a fuckin burger diet, right? Sure, fuckin protein, uh-huh. What? Because there is no other news except your fuckin barn of an ass …'

The man stops outside my cell. Light through the grille outlines a fuck-you pout crowded with teeth. Barry E Gurie - Detention Executive, says the badge. He sees me awake, and presses the phone into his neck.

'You ain't pullin your rod in there are ya, Little? You ain't chokin your chicken all day and night, are ya?' He laughs this smutty laugh, like Miss goddam Universe just sucked his boy or something. Even at long range his breath hits you like a solid block, just slithers down your face leaving a trail of onion-relish and lard. What a disgusting human being, I swear. If this is how much of an asshole everybody's going to be, about such a devastating fucken issue, then I better get the hell out of town. Maybe even out of Texas. Just until they get the story straight. Nana's ain't even fucken far enough, the way folk are behaving right now.

Barry continues his rounds, lingering for the rest of the night down by the TV. I lay back onto the bunk in my cell, and drift into the important and scary business of my future. Remember that ole movie called Against All Odds, where this babe has a beach-house in Mexico? That's where I can run. Mom can visit after things die down. There she is, sobbing with joy, ole spanky-cheeked Doris Little, who could be played by Kathy Bates, who was in that movie Misery. Tears of pride at the excellent sanitation, and at my decent, orderly life. See how it works? It's the future now, young Vernon has been vindicated. Now he's buying her a clay donkey, or some of those salad utensils Mrs Lechuga makes such a big deal about. The salad utensil seller would say to me, 'You want the same kind Mrs Lechuga got, or you want the Deluxe edition?' There's a fucken point up Mrs Lechuga's ass. See? That's definitely my new plan. I like the food just fine, burritos, and cappuccinos and whatever. They say money's cheap down there, hell - I could really make good. Folk must live in those beach-houses, for real.

But the pessimist in me says, 'Kid, forget vacations, what yez need is a cake wid a fuckin bomb in it.' My pessimist has a New York accent, don't ask me why. I ignore it. The question of the babe needs thought; you never see guys running alone, admit it. Who to take is Taylor Figueroa. She's in Houston now, in college or something, on account of being older than me. But she's the fox to take. Moist air stirs me through the bars of my cage, and in my mind it becomes a shunt of hormone from the lip of her skirt. I'll take that girl to Mexico, see if I don't. Now that I'm grown up, now that I've been to jail and all. I wasn't close to her at school, even though we nearly made out once. I say nearly because, fucken typical of me, I had her on a plate and I let her go. You're just never taught when to be an asshole in life. There was this senior Party that I wasn't invited to, and Taylor was there, face as soft as panties, just her big wet eyes seeped out. She left the party and crashed on the back seat of a Buick in the Church parking lot, where I just happened to be with my bike. She was wasted. She called me over. Her voice was sticky like freshly bitten cake. Some drugs fell out of her clothes onto the ground by the car. I picked them up. She said to keep them for her, in case she passed out or whatever. I kept them too, you know it. Boy was she fucken bent though. She started saying my name, and writhing around the back seat of the car. Don't even ask me who drives a fucken Buick at our school, but she added some value to his back seat. I helped unpeel her shorts a little, 'So she could breathe' - her words, not mine - I didn't even know you could breathe from down there. Brown Wella Balsam hair licked her body all the way down to her buns, where gray cotton tangas peeped out; clefted heaven in workaday dew. She was wasted, but conscious.

So guess what your fucken hero did, take a shot. Vernon Gonad Little went into the party and sent her best friend out to mind her. I never got a finger to her panties, even though I was close enough to catch the lick-your-own-skin-and-sniff-it disease that wastes me today; fucken hauntings of hollows between elastic and thigh, tang ablaze with cotton and apricot muffin, cream cheese and pee. But no, duh, I went inside. I even kind of strode in, like a TV doctor, all fucken mature. It fucken slays me, she was right there. I tried to look her up again, but Fate deployed the shutdown routine you get whenever you miss a ripe opportunity in a dumb way. A billion reasons she can't be located, and fucken blah, blah, blah. So much for Taylor Figueroa.

Tonight, though, my hand is her mouth. Every stroke of my boy brings her cotton closer, burrows vents for her fruit-air to escape and waste me. Mexican fruit-air, boy, if I have my way. As I abandon myself to the dream, muffled wisps of the TV-news fanfare travel the corridor like an infection. Then a prisoner snorts with laughter.