I discovered the seat wouldn’t move, so I managed to get situated with my legs splayed out on either side of the steering wheel. I shut the door, then pulled the car up in front of the trailer and cut the engine and the lights. I stuck the half-pint down the front of my pants. Then I looked in the rearview mirror: Purcell was still at the curb, under a streetlight, standing over the injured man talking and gesturing. It looked like he was haranguing a corpse.

I leaned over to get at my pants pocket and took out the hundred and fifty and put it on the dash behind the steering wheel. I just couldn’t abide the idea of having to think of Purcell everytime I played the Gibson. I would’ve rather seen it in the hands of Campfire Girls.

The pawn shop opened a half-hour before the liquor stores. I’d been waiting in a coffee shop across the street. I had the Gibson’s empty calfskin case and a Epiphone in its case. I was going to pawn the Epi which would give me the last fifty I needed to get the Gibson back, plus another sixty or seventy. That much would get me to Shreveport, and I figured I knew enough people in Dallas I could find someone who’d drive out and get me.

I went in the pawn shop, the bell ringing over my head, and right away I noticed the Gibson wasn’t on its stand in the line of guitars that sat on a high shelf in the back. Holding the two cases I suddenly felt like an idiot in a Norman Rockwell painting. The empty one felt light enough to throw through the display window.

The owner was still wearing his pea coat and was at the back of the long shotgun room behind a line of jewelry cases to my left. He came up front.

"It’s gone," he said. "Girl bought it last night not long after you came in."