Shiner can't stop killing. Seems like he can put it on pause a while, but then eventually something overcomes him. I reckon it's a habit he picked up in Afghanistan. I don't know why he couldn't just leave it back there. There might not even be a why. Probably not. It just is. A lot of the world just is. No rhyme or reason, especially the reason part. I came into this world to dirt poor parents roasted in a fiery car crash. I know a little bit about hard luck.

I've asked Shiner about Afghanistan, about what happened to him there, but he gives me the cold blue eyes glare.

"Mind your own damn business, Hap," he hisses. I know to clam up because one day he might kill me, too. That's just a notion. But I think I'm not immune to his dark side. I'm expendable, at some point. Maybe to just eventually be cast aside. No longer of use. Dumped by the side of a road. Or maybe worse. These are things I know and still I stick with Shiner. I don't know why. In America, there's a whole class of folks who can't afford to ask a lot of whys.

Shiner took me in when no one else would. I'd roamed the streets a while, scrounging out of dumpsters, panhandling for some change. I reckon he saw a little of himself, before Afghanistan, in me. I don't know that for fact. He'd never say it was so, of course. He doesn't say much at all. His eyes do a lot of the talking, those steel blue eyes that can flash hot or cold. I kind of fell into line behind him because it was the only option that got me out of sleeping in alleys and away from perverts. I don't think Shiner's that way. He keeps his hands—and words—to himself.

Now we're just rambling men, I guess. Tumbleweeds. Drifters in a stolen pickup and living off burgers and pizza when Shiner scores money, mostly from stealing or robbing a gas station, but at least I'm out of the rain and so I ain't complaining. Maybe I'm a voice when he wants to hear one. A couple of quiet tumbleweeds.

I say tumbleweeds again and Shiner says, "What about them?"

"I've never seen any."

"They just a weed, boy."

A few miles go by and I say, "but they don't have roots."

He looks at me.

"Because they're dead, boy. They don't have no damn use for roots."

I look away and drop the subject. That was the longest conversation we'd had in days. Shiner suddenly turns us onto a highway, and I see we are headed west.

"Where to, Shiner?"

"I reckon Arizona," he says after a moment.

"How come?"

"You want to see tumbleweeds, don't you, boy?"

I nod, thinking, it's the nicest thing Shiner has said to me in a long time.