The day Spenkelink was put to death a popular Jacksonville disc jockey aired a recording of sizzling bacon and dedicated it to the doomed man.

Mr Gray didn't care much for Jonesy's body (or so he told himself; in truth it was hard not to feel at least some affection for something capable of providing such unexpected pleasures as 'bacon' and 'murder'), but it did have to take him another couple of hundred miles.

It smelled like heaven, like love, like home and family and Sunday mornings at her grandparents' house. It smelled like...Bacon.

It started the way so many good things do: with bacon.

And hey, bacon made everything better.

I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can't.