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Three wolves in jean jackets withblack beards and identical blue bandanas had loaded about seven dollars worth of quarters in the jukebox and were singing loudly and triumphantly off key to Garth Brooks’s "Friends in Low Places"

Country et any better

On the other hand, when I looked past my bitterness, it was nice to see not everyone in Callum’s pack was a hateful racist like Hank Werewolves, in that sense, were a lot like vampires Who you were after the monster claimed you was the same person you were before, only the after picture had s Hank had probably been raised by the nearest Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon or whatever, and once that kind of hate blackens your soul, it can’t be undone

I had to wonder, if he hatedwith a half-black kid, how did he deal with having a black man in his own pack? It must have been a hard pill for Hank to s I hoped like hell the African-Aher ranked because it would serve Hank right to have to follow the orders of soe in the street

I was all for that kind ofmy Budweiser, I tried not to draw attention to how little I was drinking If I’d turned down the booze in a crowd of hard drinkers this close to , the immediate assue in my womb

Fat chance on that one

Truth was, I was the cheapest drunk this side of a group of sixteen-year-old girls with a four-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade My metabolism worked too fast, and I went from zero to drunk in as much time as it took to ask, "You wanna ht noas a huge nuisance

So I sipped the shitty beer I’d been offered then held the nearly full bottle up every tiet ot an and Jackson both appeared to be following an’s whiskey was only half-empty, and Jackson’s beer bottle label was always torn in the sa our Southern hosts and were keeping their guards up

Lucas, on the other hand, was taking on the task of fitting in with a certain gusto

That is to say, he was ha, but you can’t take the twenty-seven-year-old out of the man Desusto of a frat boy at social events He wasmerry with the locals like a pro

Douard duties to avoid yielding to peer pressure Too bad ive ht blond had tipped his chair back, and his eyes were half-closed, giving hi near sleep I wasn’t fooled

"He looks like he’s having fun, eh?" I asked

"Eh" Dohed at me "You had a wee Canadian slip-up there, McQueen"

"Sure, sure Watch yourself or I’ll aboot Chesterfield touque poutine"

He dropped his chair back onto all fours and gaped at me, his cheeks flushed with amusement "What just happened there?"

"Oh, sorry, you don’t speak Canadian"

"Neither do you, apparently, because that wasn’t a sentence in any English dialect ever"

"Sure it was" I sipped my beer and smiled for real for the first time since we’d arrived in Louisiana "I said I’ll beat your ass to a pulp if you ever insult ain"

"Nonsense Everyone knows Canadians are a peaceful people" He was laughing now

"Tell that to the White House circa 1812," I told hi Canadians burned it to the ground"

Dorabbed an eot silent in an instant as everyone paused to look at him "Cheers to 1812" He lifted his elasses, howling in unison

I could barely hear over the sound of an and Jackson were shown the way to the two-bedroonolia Plantation Tour was another dark path into the great unknown Only this ti on h a hundred and ninety pounds of er had Jackson’s help supporting Lucas’s weight He was trying to sing , but had come up with a weird mashup of "Endless Love" and "I Wanna Sex You Up" It was endearing in the way really drunk romanticisms were, but I was too distracted by how heavy he was to appreciate it

Magnolia interrupted his serenade with a "Here we are" She and Do the spectacle of a piss-drunk Lucas trying to be a smooth Casanova

I wanted to defend hihty-percent whiskey, he was incredibly char But they didn’t care He was royalty He could shit in someone’s hand and they’d say thank you