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ticket in those EZ-on, EZ-off convenience stores where they sell beer, bait, ammo, Motor Trend
magazine, and ten thousand kinds of candybars. If there’s a bingo hall in the town where they stop, a
bunch of them are apt to go on over, take a table, and play until the last cover-all game is finished. At
one of those games, Greedy G (rube name Greta Moore) won five hundred dollars. She gloated over
that for months, and although the members of the True have all the money they need, it pissed off
some of the other ladies to no end. Token Charlie wasn’t too pleased, either. He said he’d been waiting
on B7 for five pulls from the hopper when the G finally bingoed.
“Greedy, you’re one lucky bitch,” he said.
“And you’re one unlucky bastard,” she replied. “One unlucky black bastard.” And went off
chortling.
If one of them happens to get speed-trapped or stopped for some minor traffic offense—it’s rare,
but it does happen—the cop finds nothing but valid licenses, up-to-date insurance cards, and
paperwork in apple-pie order. No voices are raised while the cop’s standing there with his citation
book, even if it’s an obvious scam. The charges are never disputed, and all fines are paid promptly.
America is a living body, the highways are its arteries, and the True Knot slips along them like a
silent virus.
But there are no dogs.
Ordinary RV People travel with lots of canine company, usually those little shit-machines with
white fur, gaudy collars, and nasty tempers. You know the kind; they have irritating barks that hurt
your ears and ratty little eyes full of disturbing intelligence. You see them sniffing their way through
the grass in the designated pet-walking areas of the turnpike rest stops, their owners trailing behind,
pooper-scoopers at the ready. In addition to the usual decals and bumper stickers on the motorhomes
of these ordinary RV People, you’re apt to see yellow diamond-shaped signs reading POMERANIAN
ON BOARD or I MY POODLE.
Not the True Knot. They don’t like dogs, and dogs don’t like them. You might say dogs see through
them. To the sharp and watchful eyes behind the cut-rate sunglasses. To the strong and long-muscled
hunters’ legs beneath the polyester slacks from Walmart. To the sharp teeth beneath the dentures,
waiting to come out.
They don’t like dogs, but they like certain children.
Oh yes, they like certain children very much.
2
In May of 2011, not long after Abra Stone celebrated her tenth birthday and Dan Torrance his tenth
year of AA sobriety, Crow Daddy knocked on the door of Rosie the Hat’s EarthCruiser. The True was
currently staying at the Kozy Kampground outside Lexington, Kentucky. They were on their way to
Colorado, where they would spend most of the summer in one of their bespoke towns, this one a place
Dan sometimes revisited in his dreams. Usually they were in no hurry to get anywhere, but there was
some urgency this summer. All of them knew it but none of them talked about it.
Rose would take care of it. She always had.
“Come,” she said, and Crow Daddy stepped in.
When on a business errand, he always stepped out in good suits and expensive shoes polished to a
mirror gloss. If he was feeling particularly old-school, he might even carry a walking stick. This
morning he was wearing baggy pants held up by suspenders, a strappy t-shirt with a fish on it (KISS
MY BASS printed beneath), and a flat workman’s cap, which he swept off as he closed the door behind
him. He was her sometime lover as well as her second-in-command, but he never failed to show