It’s four o’clock in the morning. Christmas lights shine on the trailer in July. A Ford up on concrete blocks.

The porchlight is on. A million mosquitoes fly around it. Cigarette butts soaking in a bucket of rain water. The grass is yellow.

He drinks his coffee in the dark. There are no lights on in the home. The black liquid, from the day before, is cold. He stirs it with his finger, then sucks the tip. The old man takes a sip. Bitter, he says. But it’ll do.

Cars and trucks go up and down Highway 10. Mostly semis coming and going to and from the truck stops up on 65. Names like Pilot, Love’s, and an adult shop called The Lions Den, dot the interstate. The old man listens to the soft noise and continues his morning routine of cold coffee and loneliness.

This hermit sits in his easy chair with cigarette burns in it. He lights a butt from the ashtray and begins to sing while picking up a piece of short rope on the dingy carpeted floor. The song he’s selected is Our House by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.

Now everything is easy cause of you, he sings softly while making the rope into a noose.

I’ll light the fire, he continues singing and places the noose around his neck. While you place the flowers in the vase that you bought today….