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“Because the fucker gets you down and pops your pimples if you got any,” the man said. He twisted the waxed ends of his black mustache. “Lucky for me I’ve always had a nice complexion.”

“What the hell does he do that for?”

“He likes to eat ’em,” another man said, from a cell across the way. “Some claim he’s a cannibal, got leftovers buried all over Florida, but I don’t buy it. He just likes to get attention, that’s what I think.”

“Jesus, someone oughta kill a sonofabitch like that,” Theodore said. He glanced at the acne scars on Roy’s face.

The mustache shook his head. “He’d be a hard one to kill,” he said. “You ever see one of them retards that can carry a car on his back? They had one of ’em at this alligator farm where I worked one summer down by Naples. You couldn’t have stopped that bastard with a machine gun once he got started. The Zit-Eater, he’s like that.” Then they heard some commotion down at the end of the hall. Evidently, the Communist wasn’t going to give up easy, and that cheered Roy and Theodore a little, but after a couple of minutes all they could hear was his crying.

The next morning, three broad-chested men in white coats came in with billy clubs and hauled the Zit-Eater away in a straitjacket to a nuthouse on the other side of town. The Communist quit bitching about the law after that, didn’t complain once about the fresh squeeze marks on his face or the blisters on his feet, just carried his phone books up and down the stairs like he was thankful they’d given him some meaningful work to do.

Theodore sighed, looked out over the blue gulf, the water smooth as a pane of glass that day. “That sounds nice, coffee for dessert. Maybe we could let them take us in, get a little break.”

“Shit, Theodore, I don’t want to spend the night in jail.” Roy kept one eye on the new wheelchair. He’d slipped into an old folks’ home a couple of days ago and borrowed it after the wheels on the last one gave out. He wondered how many miles he had pushed Theodore since they had left West Virginia. Though he wasn’t good with numbers, he estimated it had to be up around a million by now.

“I’m tired, Roy.”

Theodore hadn’t been acting right since he cost them the job with the carnival the summer before. A young boy, maybe five or six years old, eating a cardboard scoop of cotton candy, had wandered into the back of the tent while Roy was out front trying to drum up some customers. Theodore swore that the boy asked for help in zipping his pants up, but not even Roy could buy that one. Within minutes, Billy Bradford had loaded them up in his Cadillac and dumped them a few miles out in the country. They didn’t even get a chance to say their goodbyes to Flapjack or the Flamingo Lady; and though they had tried to get on with several other outfits since then, word of the crippled pedophile and his bug-eating buddy had spread fast among the carny owners. “Want me to go get your guitar?” Roy asked.

“Nah,” Theodore said. “I ain’t got no music in me today.”

“You sick?”

“I don’t know,” the crippled boy said. “It’s like there’s never no letup.”

“Want one of them oranges the trucker gave us?”

“Hell no. I’ve et enough of them damn things to last me till the Judgment Day. They still give me the shits.”

“I could drop you off at the hospital,” Roy said. “Come back for you in a day or two.”

“Hospitals, they worse than jails.”

“Want me to pray over you?”

Theodore laughed. “Ha. That’s a good one, Roy.”

“Maybe that’s what’s wrong with you. You don’t believe no more.”

“Don’t start in on that shit again,” Theodore said. “I’ve served the Lord in various capacities. And I got the legs to prove it.”

“You just need some rest,” Roy said. “We’ll find us a good tree to sleep under before dark.”

“It still sounds mighty nice. Them passing out coffee for dessert.”

“Jesus, you want a cup of coffee, I’ll go get you one. We still got some change left.”

“I wish we was still with the carnival,” Theodore sighed. “That was the best we ever had it.”

“Yeah, well, you should have kept