It wasn't a good idea, but Earl didn't know that as he fastened the chinstrap on his helmet and inched the shopping cart over the edge of the ravine.
"Accidental-slash-dental coverage. No, that's not a typo. It's the category of insurance related to incidents of an unintentional sort, resulting in damage to your teeth. I'd say that's about what we're dealing with here, wouldn't you?"
"Yef. I gueff fo." Earl nodded.
The tissue around the stumps in Earl's gums was the colour of turnips. One eyetooth, mostly intact, jutted out at a ridiculous angle. The dentist prodded it with a latex-coated finger. Pain exploded from that spot in a pattern that reminded Earl of spiderwebs, or maybe the stripes on a watermelon. "Yep," the doc said, "that's a mid-root coronal fracture. This one's got to go, too." He picked up a pair of grippers. "Want to do it right away? No sense in waiting."
"Uh-kay." Pain again. Twisting, white-hot rivers that began with the motions of the dentist's wrists and traveled at light speed through Earl's head, straight through his brain and out the other side. "Uhhhh," he said.
"...so that's pretty much why I can do this," and Earl pulled a beer out of the plastic ring pack and opened it against his front teeth.
"What was that, Earl, four years ago?"
"I reckon five." He swigged from his can.
"Think you could bite open a bottle?"
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