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“Whatever you stole,” I said, “I guess you already ate it all, right?”
“Listen to how they squish,” he said, walking around carefully on his heels.
“Let me check your pockets, man.”
He stood still for a minute, and I found his stash. I left him two of each, whatever they were. “Shift is about half over,” I told him.
The narrator has been looking for Georgie, who he calls “a pretty good friend.” He finds Georgie in a state of terror. The narrator determines that Georgie’s condition is due to the drugs he’d taken. But instead of reassuring his friend, the narrator takes advantage of Georgie’s state to steal his pills.
The act also shows the narrator’s poor judgment and the extent of his dependence on the drugs. Despite seeing Georgie’s bad reaction to these mystery pills, the narrator still feels compelled to take them himself. He soothes his guilty conscience by leaving Georgie “two of each” of the pills and giving him the good news that their shift is half over.
Georgie asked, “Does everything you touch turn to shit? Does this happen to you every time?”
“No wonder they call me Fuckhead.”
“It’s a name that’s going to stick.”
“I realize that.”
“‘Fuckhead’ is gonna ride you to your grave.”
“I just said so. I agreed with you in advance,” I said.
The narrator has just informed Georgie that he has accidentally sat on the baby bunnies and killed them. Georgie is upset because he felt proud of himself earlier for rescuing them. Georgie calls out the narrator’s tendency to ruin things in his life. Georgie warns him that he will likely have this terrible nickname for the rest of his life. The narrator calmly accepts this judgment and prediction. The narrator clearly has a history of self-inflicted misfortune since people already call him by his obscene nickname.
I felt the beauty of the morning. I could understand how a drowning man might suddenly feel a deep thirst being quenched. Or how the slave might become a friend to his master.
The narrator has spent the night in Georgie’s pickup truck during a snowstorm. Daylight wakes him. He has nothing on his mind. He doesn’t just see the world’s beauty, he feels it.
He also understands the dual nature of his drug use. The drugs are deadly, like the water that quenches a drowning man’s thirst. He is a slave to his master, the drugs he abuses. Yet he would not have witnessed this moment of calm, natural beauty if the drugs had not driven him to wander lost in the countryside the night before.
