No latch to open the window, but there were worse things than imagining his breath as a prairie wind against the cold window. He blew a gauzy patch onto the pane, obscuring the plains beyond. A fingertip blotted a penny-sized aperture into the frost, and through it he saw everything he could ever ask for. A pinch of land would do just fine. After all, now that he was so minuscule, who was to say itty-bitty Henry couldn’t chisel out a little nook for himself and his family? This time around, he wouldn’t bother anybody. He would keep out of everyone’s way, keep his head down and eyes fastened to the task at hand, he swore it.

It took three transfers and a twenty-minute walk along the shoulder of a county road to reach the Indigo Hills sign. Night fell without ceremony, as if dusk had forgotten him, too. No sunset pyrotechnics for his return, just the sad confetti of brown leaves beneath charcoal clouds.

Five years had done a number on the trailer park. The rougher, western end’s neglect had spread to their side, what used to be the nicer half of the park. The years had smashed beer bottles on the streets, chucked bald tires into front yards. Coughed away paint and sneezed mold onto aluminum siding. Put up and forgotten campaign signs, let them soak and prune along with the garden gnomes, folding chairs, pinwheels, and flamingos. As he approached his truck in the driveway, he thought back to picking Michelle up for their first date. Pulling in and seeing her slung over an aluminum lawn chair in a heroic slouch. How she’d marched through the bong smoke, her Doc Marten stomp somehow bellicose and blasé all at once. How her grin was almost cruelly cool as she eyed him like a midnight snack, which she could savor as easily as spit out.

Bone rapped against wood. The knocks were coming from behind his truck, ratcheting quicker and sterner against the front door. A gravelly voice told Michelle it knew she was in there.

It was the park manager, Sandi. The name had always suited her. Virginia Slims had sizzled her face into a shovelful of dry soil. An aging biker groupie, she loved nothing more than gossiping with the leather-vested, Santa-bearded tenants, and climbing onto the backs of their Harleys, whose exhaust pipes were far less menacing than her voice. She’d never liked Henry, and now reminded him of this with a sneer.

“I want my money,” she told him.

“Nice to see you, too.”

Her face knotted in thought. As if only now registering his prolonged absence, or, more likely, determining the appropriate racial slur for him. She made her way down the steps, the lattice facedown over coarse grass. As she passed, she reminded him she wanted her fucking money.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Don’t get your diaper in a bunch.”