The word appears 2 times.
This book takes place during the Vietnam war and centers around a drug smuggling attempt gone bad. Needless to say some of the characters are not the most upstanding of citizen's.
..... The main character meets a younger man in a bar. The younger man starts with:
"You see the fight last night? What a fuckin' slaughter, right?" The kid advanced a step or so closer. "I tell you the only way you get a nigger to bleed is put a razor in your glove."Hicks decided that he was crazy. He was not opposed, in principle, to beating up on crazy people.
.....The second instance Ray Hicks is thinking about being scared and how to deal with it.
At the Training School, he was still pissing his pants at thirteen. He'd carry the underwear around with him, hidden, afraid to put it in the laundry because it was labeled. Hid it under the bed and then did the same with the next pair. Oh my God, two pairs of them all pissed on, they'll beat shit out of me.Terrible thing.
Like the nigger who shined shoes in the basement of the enormous roadhouse they had near the Jacksonville stock-car track. Old man who went back to oughty ought. Whenever a drunk staggered down the stairs, he'd grin. Grin for all he was worth. The meaner the old boy who came down to piss, the wider that grin got, big horse teeth straining under the lip meat.
Smiling through. Shit, maybe he was amused.
What's funny, boy?
No - There's no forgiveness for that, nobody can forgive anybody for making them that scared. No man forgives another man for scaring him like that.