A R Thunder Bob used to drive for Consolidated Freight before the small bones began to press against the nerves in his lower back and his right foot went numb. Now he slouches in blue suspenders, forearms propped on a steel desk, doing my taxes. In the den his wife watches the Simpson trial and he wants to get me done, squinting down at last year's forms and muttering, a Chesterfield burning away between his fingers. You need more write-offs, he says, peering sideways through the smoke.
Rain blowing in off the bay rattles the windows and the branches of the pin oaks moan.
He knows my wife moved out last year. You watch, he tells me. Soon they'll start messing with Social Security. I dream that a hunched, mudcaked creature prowls the landscape, entering our homes while we rest. It leans over us with ragged breath, the smell of quicklime and swamp water rising, misting our faces in sleep.