Waiting. Whippoorwails sang at five in the morning. Half dark,  half light. A tree has been butchered.  Limbs cut. Bare. Frogs croaked. He sat on his back porch and listened.

He looked at what might have been. What once was. Grass long with brown spots. A rusted fence falling apart. Overgrown shrubs. Swings they used to play on. He’d push her into the sky. A dress waved.

Off in the distance, he heard semis going up and down 41. He knows that road. The two would drive to Chicago and watch movies all day long. Walk in Grant Park. She would sing to him old Cole Porter songs of being in love. Drank beers at Miller’s, where he first told the short brunette he loved her. Bought a ring on Jewelry Row. Autumn on Lake Michigan.

The old man read a J. D. Salinger short story once about a man who killed himself. He placed a gun to his head and didn’t look back.