Henry fried up and then ate what was left of a three-day-old can of Spam and made himself a weak pot of coffee, of which he only drank about half before setting the rest aside for the morning. He then broke out the bottle of cheap whiskey he opened that morning and had been nursing most of the day as he drove down the road. It was one of only two he had left. After slipping into the numb oblivion that kept the nightmares at bay, he lay down in his bedroll and got ready for one more of a thousand sleepless nights spent tossing and turning, and wishing things were different.

Henry woke early, just as it began to get light, but before the sun would peek up over the hill that was home to the lone tree. He stirred the fire, bringing the dying embers back to life, chucked another cow pie on the flames, and stirred it again. Once he had a decent fire going, he heated the coffee pot and drank what he hadn’t finished the night before. The substance in the pot was even worse that morning, and Henry could barely get it down his throat without wincing.

When he had choked down about as much of the rancid concoction as he thought was prudent, he grabbed his last bottle of whiskey that he had opened after finishing the one he had been nursing the day before, along with a bar of lye soap, and went to the water tank. He stripped himself naked, and taking the bottle and the soap, he carefully climbed into the tank. The water in the tank was relatively warm for that early in the morning, around sixty degrees, but still plenty cold for someone with so little fat on his body. Henry had always weighed between one hundred seventy-five and one hundred eighty pounds when he worked his own ranch—about right for his leggy six-foot frame and the amount of work he did. But since Annie and Josh died, he was down to one hundred sixty pounds. When he climbed into the tank, he was actually closer to one fifty-five, and his ribs and shoulders showed it.

He took a long drink from the bottle, put the cap back on and sent it adrift in the tank. Then, as quick as he could, he went to washing himself. He spent as little time in the tank as possible and still tried to get all the important parts as clean as he could before taking his bottle and his soap and getting out. He used his dirty shirt to dry off, then went to his satchel and got out the cleanest clothes he could find. The shirt he chose, a faded denim button down, was wrinkled and dirty, but the cleanest of the bunch. That was more than he could say for any of his jeans.

He then placed a small, round mirror on the windmill and shaved the week’s worth of stubble off his face. When he finished, he put on his shirt, reached into the satchel and pulled out a light wool vest and wrinkled neckerchief and put them both on. He took a swig from the bottle and looked in the mirror at his weathered and tired image. He shook his head in disgust, as if not believing what he was seeing, took the mirror down and placed it back in the satchel. After carefully cleaning up his campsite, and taking two more long pulls from the bottle, Henry climbed in the truck and headed back down the little path to the main road.