Pinpoints find me, fuel my velocity — I do not tire — I have no schedule, and, as prey, I have but three concerns: escape, evasion, and return.

      But I cannot return

      unless I know where I’ve gone,

      and that is the relentless difficulty

      which neither preachers

      nor geographers can remedy.

      A planter down near Tutwiler said he saw a strange-actin, funny-dressed feller runnin’ around his equipment shed. Two teenagers said they looked out of their car up on the levee and seen a maniac with a hook for a hand. I’d like to know who told that one for the first time. How many hook-handed maniacs you reckon there could be? And why is it always teenagers who sees ’em?

      Anyhow, the point is that finally they was sightings of “the maniac” up and down Highway 61 as far south as Shelby and as far north as Dead Nigga Slough, up between Lake Cormorant and Walls. And it was when he began to be referred to as a maniac that started me to thinking about being able to blow him away and not having to explain it.

      Now, if that sumbich had been the kinda good ol’ boy I have some repect for, I’da had a whole different attitude about the entire episode. But he wuddn. He wuddn the kinda guy that a person growed up with and went out with after the ballgame on Fridays and screwed sheep with just for the hell of it. Screwin’ sheep was supposed to be against the law, but what was they gon’ do—put one nem little wooly muthafukkas on the witness stand? It’d a been my word against hers anyhow.

      They used to say that down at State College they was a half-human, half-sheep thing in a jar. It sounded pretty awful, mainly because of what it meant might happen to you if you wuddn careful. Think about it. It would be the unde-fukkin-niable proof that you’d been out screwin’ sheep. I mean, don’t you know back then they was a lotta good ol’ boys down there at Cow College that hated to look at that thing in the jar on account of they was afraid they was gonna see their spit’n image.

      Some people, especially women, find it hard to believe all that went on, but it did, and for as far back as I can remember, too, till finally they wuddn no more livestock due to the way the farmin’ situation changed and all. But, hell, by then it didn’t make no difference no way, ’cause I was already long growed up and didn’t care about that kinda thing no more. But I’ll tell you what, every time I’m somewheres of a Sunday, which ain’t much, and they’re servin’ lamb and mint jelly, I always feel a little bit uneasy. It’s things like that, later on, that make you think about what you’re going to do before you do it instead of just shoot’n from the hip, if you know what I mean. I guess if I could say one thing about screwin’ sheep, it really made me appreciate family values.

      But it was a lotta fun. We had us a time back in nem days. They was this one ewe that belonged to old man Peyton, and we used to go out and catch her in his pasture out near the levee. One night that old ewe looked back over her shoulder at me and said, “Junior Ray, you’re a baaaaaad boy.”

      That’s a joke.

      Why is it men are the only ones that do shit like that? I mean, can’t you just see a whole carload of cheerleaders flingin’ empty pints of Jim Beam out the windows, tearin’ out along a gravel road to fuk sheep? Or, better yet, after the big game, one of the high school heroes says to his girlfriend, “Want to go to the dance?” and she says, “Hell, no, muthafukka, I wanta go screw sheep.” That could be that sumbich’s greatest nightmare, and it’s no wonder them planters was in such a sweat to get mechanized and stick to row crops.

      But there were mules,

      and mules were food

      and numerous enough

      to fatten the vultures who,

      at that very moment, may, in fact, have been consuming the time and place, devouring it hunk by hunk until, finally, only the bones remain and those so scattered only mice can find them.

      Anyhow, get’n back to what I was tellin you, one day in the middle of all that commotion over the disappearance of that asshole Leland Shaw, I was set’n in the Sheriff’s office with my feet up on my desk, eat’n one nem pimento cheese sammidges the Methodist ladies sent over, and drinkin’ a Coke, and I looked over at Voyd who was read’n last month’s Field and Stream, and I said, “Voyd,” and he didn’t say nothin’, and I said, “Voyd, I’mo find that gotdamn maniac.” And Voyd, still readin’ Field and Stream—or more likely just lookin’ at the pitchers—says, “Junior Ray, that sumbich ain’t no maniac.”

      And I said, “Well, he’s sure as shit gon’ be one when I get through with his ass—I’mo find that sumbich—I’mo find ’im!”

      “You not gon’ do doodly squat, Junior Ray,” he says to me. “You couldn’t find your dick with a hard on, much less some crazy fool runnin’ around the county scarin’ one half of ever’body to death and worryin’ the shit out of the other half about whether he’s gon’ catch cold or not.”

      “Well, Voyd,” I said, “You’re right about one thing—I ain’t gonna find him—we are gonna find him, and we are gon’ get started right now, so get your ass up and come on!”

      We went out the side door of the courthouse, got in my patrol car, which was parked under the big white oak, and scratched off outa the parking lot. I turned on the blue lights and the sireen, and took off out the Beat Line Road toward Savage and the Yellow Dog.

      Just about all the roads was still gravel then, except for Highway 61; so, dry as it was, I raised a lotta dust blastin’ outta town on the Beat Line Road, goin’ east. Then I cut off the blue lights and the sireen when we got past the city dump. We was gonna go check out a so-called sighting by some niggas out between Savage and Prichard. One of ’em said he heard a painter, and the other two said it was a man howlin’ out in the woods over on the other side of the Yellow Dog, between the railroad tracks and the Coldwater River.

      I didn’t believe it was no painters left around there, but Voyd claimed Leroy Whalum swore they was one right out where we was goin’ and said Leroy said he’d heard it and seen its footprints in a rice field as far up as Lost Lake.

      Anyhow, when me and Voyd was clippin’ along out the Beat Line road, just fo we got to the Dog, Voyd says, “looky yonder at that old silo.” And I says, “Uhn-huhn,” not thinkin’ much about it. And Voyd says, “That sumbich is full of cotton seeds.” Now that got my attention, for a moment anyway, and I said, “That’s a gotdamnn helluva thing to have in a silo. Who put cotton seeds in it?” And Voyd said he didn’t know but that, one afternoon, him and Sunflow’r was parked out there the other side of it, and he got out of the car to take a leak and decided to look up in the chute. And that’s when he found out the thing was jam-ass-packed to the top with old cotton seeds, and