She told me not to draw her. One night after she fell asleep I drew her in the TV chair, slack-jawed, leaning into the smoke from her cigarette still burning in the beanbag ashtray at her feet. It is summer and here at the facility there are mosquitoes and black flies. The mosquitoes breed in the lake, into which the track dumps horse shit and piss. The lake is shit color like what's in it.
Ducks live on the lake, deer drink from it, truant boys from town fish in it.
They stand on the lip of the lake and dangle their little lines. The sun slants off their bare shoulders and chests, their puny abdomens. It helps to know the roads. Where they wind to, where the cross, where they circle back. There are main roads open all year, secondary roads open from May until October, tertiary roads used by hikers, loggers, trappers, hunters, people like myself.