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way the trailer’s windows were boarded up, its door padlocked, made him think it might be a crystal meth lab but, without probable cause—a neighbor complaining, an explosion—he couldn’t check it out.
    Every time he cruised past, the white residents frowned from chairs on their porches, thin tattooed bleach-blond women with babies on their laps, strained-looking grandmothers in housedresses smoking cigarettes, garbage in the yards, clotheslines with sheets lifting in the wind, sheer panties, nylons. In one yard was an old Chevy Vega, no hood, bitterweed growing through the engine block, windows broken, the trunk open—he’d seen a dog sitting in there once with its tongue out. Seen a goat on a rope, too, castoff car parts speared by grass, fishing lures dripping from the power lines. An old camper shell used for a chicken coop and chickens and guinea hens running wild in the weeds. A duck in a kid’s wading pool. Kids revving four-wheelers in the deep grass. He didn’t know what it was about white folks and four-wheelers, but every damn house seemed to have one.
    And the dogs.
    Each place yielded half a dozen, rarely any known breed, mostly just Heinz 57s, a throng of unneutered, collarless barking mongrels waiting for his Jeep whenever he rounded the curve at the bottom of the hill, chasing him until the woods picked back up.
    Here they came now, the whole furious, joyful tide of them, parting as he rode through, barking alongside the Jeep, three or four big dark ones loping along with bass voices, a few mediums and several small yappers. He saw the postal Jeep up ahead, newer model than his, nice paint job, parked to the side of the road in the shade, its flashers on. He knew the driver, a woman named Olivia. They’d met in the Chabot Bus and gone out a couple times, but she had two young boys. Silas wasn’t much for kids and she wasn’t much for a man who didn’t swoon over her children. On one of their dates they’d discussed White Trash Ave., which he’d confessed to calling it, and she’d told him it was the bane of her route, she refused to get out and deliver any package to those white folks’ doors because of the dogs. Instead, she’d blow her horn, which she knew pissed them off, and if nobody came, she’d just put a notification in the box, saying come to the post office. And why didn’t he like children?
    Olivia was out of her vehicle now, standing with four other women, all white, one holding a baby. Shannon hadn’t gotten there yet. In the nearest yard, its grass to their knees, three boys, two crew cuts and a mullet, stood watching. One had a BB gun and another a plastic bow and arrow set.
    Silas coasted to a stop and killed his engine, the dogs gathering at his door, one little biddy one that jumped so high it kept appearing in his window.
    “Get down,” he said, fingering his Taser, which, like his pistol, he’d never used.
    “Sellars,” a woman called, “get them damn dogs.”
    The boy with the BB gun, shirtless, dirty face, came to the Jeep and started kicking at them, allowing Silas to push his door open. The boy with the mullet joined him and helped drive the dogs back.
    “Hey, 32,” Olivia said.
    “Hey, girl.” He approached the crowd, carrying his camera, the women looking him up and down, him touching the brim of his hat.
    “Hey,” one young woman said. “I’m glad you here.” She wore cut-off jeans and a tank top over a sports bra. She was barefooted. Attractive. Maybe twenty-two, -three years old. Tattoos on both forearms and one peeking from the low neck of her tank and another, a green vine, tracing up out of her jeans. You couldn’t help but wonder where it started. “My name’s Irina Mott.”
    “Hey, Mrs. Mott. 32 Jones.”
    She tilted her head and squinted cutely in the sun. “Just Irina.”
    “It’s her mailbox,” Olivia said.
    “Her snake-of-the-month club arrived early,” said another young woman, pierced nose, black eyeliner.
    “Yeah,” Irina