Dale’s a scrawny bit of nothing, one of those guys who’s skinny from eating crap and never sleeping, not from taking care of himself. Underneath the thin hunch of his shoulders, he’s carrying a potbelly around. Just a little one.
He always wears this green hoodie with holes in the cuffs for his thumbs and a black KGB hat. He’s into the secret police, special forces, that kind of thing. KGB, OSS, Spetnaz, Gestapo. He’s got a whole notebook full of names, dates, codewords, articles. Pictures he drew.
Dale never gets lost. “It’s my nose,” he says, tapping the heavy bridge of it over his beard. “Lotta iron in it, in my blood. Pulls me north. Never get lost. This kinda nose, only guys get it. Girls never get it. They get lost all the time. It’s a guy thing.”
He bought his girlfriend a copy of the Kama Sutra for her birthday. “We’re going through it,” he says. “One new position a night.” They have a favorite? “Number 69,” he says, grinning. “Leastaways, so far.”
Between times he races dirtbikes. Motocross. Dale takes it pretty seriously. He’s broken his leg twice, and cracked a rib three times. He says, “It happens. You just kind of take it. What else can you do? Everyone falls off sometimes.” His casts fill up with signatures. His girlfriend doesn’t sign them, though. She thinks it’s bad luck. “Girls, hell,” he says. “What are you gonna do?”