Knockemstiff

by Donald Ray Pollock

“Goddamn it, boy,” he said, “how many times I gotta tell you about bitin’ them fingernails? You sound like a mouse chewin’ through a fuckin’ sack of corn.”

It used to be a gas station, and Sammy and I slept in the back. On rainy nights the fumes rising out of the oil-stained cement smelled like dinosaur blood.