It’s late for a nap and he’ll keep me up late. Then the dead will be riled by the radio in the lake and I’ll spend the remaining night fending them off in waves as they float in.
Mosquitoes will descend in clouds around my ears, orbiting in the atmosphere of the repellant I swath myself with. And it will not rain.
Last night for a time I had hope. A lone thunderhead boiled up in the otherwise clear and stifling sky, but as the night unwound the cloud became illuminated from within and remained where it was, exploding with a constant lightning and dull, distant echo.
It was nothing more than dust and sulphur from the weekend warriors, surplus shells from the last great war given out to druggists and policemen for their edification and supposed education. An unholy storm on a socalled reservation.