The table is bare. No beer cans, nor bricks of pot on it. Walter sits on the couch with his feet firmly on a floor that’s never been swept. He points the remote at the television as he does every day.  The hum of the refrigerator is getting louder, and so is the chained dog across the street. The old man sits quietly.

Light comes through the window. It is the start of a new day. Walter pulls out a cigarette and lights it. He walks into the kitchen and looks for coffee as if he’s never been in his own house. The old man slams cabinet doors above and below the cheap linoleum counters. He looks inside the coffee maker, where there are used grounds, pours water in, and waits for a pot of light brown water. The dog is getting louder, and the refrigerator stops humming; dead, broken, like everything else in the trailer. The old man waits.

In walks Bobby with bricks of pot. He doesn’t have as many this time. Only seven, neatly wrapped packages. The kid places them on the table and has a seat in the metal chair. 

Waiting on something?

You could say that, Walter replies.

You and your brown water, he pulls out a twenty, wads it up and throws it at the old man. Go get yourself a real coffee, Bobby orders. I don’t know. A Starbucks or Timmy Hortons. Hell, there’s a gas station up the street, he laughs. Get out. Get some fresh air.

Had a dream the other night. Or, a memory came to me.

Yeah. What was it?

About the first time I met Thelma.

That a fact?

Just a kid back then. Both of us were.

Well. She was dad. You were robbing the cradle.

That’s a crude way of putting it.

It’s the right way of putting it.

Really?

She used to tell me stories about you two. Driving around the country. Getting lost. I didn’t know if they were true or false.

They were true.

Figured as much. She used to hold me at night when you were at work. She’d sing songs.

Hold you huh?

Yeah. Real tight like. Did she hold you like that dad?

Like what?

Tight.

None of your business what kind of holding she did to me.

I didn’t think so. We loved each other. She said she loved me. She ever tell you that?

What do you think?

I think she loved me more.

Bobby unwraps a package of Marijuana and rolls a joint with paper from his front pocket. He lights it with a large orange torch. 

Yeah, old man. I think she loved me more.