“Works for me. Sit down. How you been keepin?”

“Little of this, a little of that.”

“From what I hear you been gettin a lot of this,” he says, placing his hands on imaginary hips and humping the empty air.

“It’s honest work.”

T-Man laughs. “Ain’t ever been anything honest about it.”

Simon nods and looks around. The slope of the bank is arrested by a retaining wall built from old tires, a terrace of vulcanized rubber that juts over the slope of hardy weeds and rusted tin. Behind T-Man Simon sees an opening dug into the hillside framed with old timbers and rough packing pallets. A blanket hangs in lieu of a door.

“Nice digs.”

“I’m homesteading. Another five years and I get forty acres and a mule.”

“You seen my nephew?”

“That skinny one?”

“Ain’t but one. You know.”

“I don’t get any visitors except the ones I want.”

T-Man’s hair is matted with leaves and grease. He hasn’t shaved or changed in weeks.

“But you get out. You hear things.”

“I’d tell ya, Si. I ain’t heard nothin.”

“I don’t hear much anymore.”

“That’s what pussy’ll do to ya. Deafen you right up.”

“You look like shit, T-Man. You look like a fuckin bum.”

T-Man snorts and pats his hair.

“I am a fuckin bum. But,” he gestures at the clearing and the fire and the damp mouth of his cave, “I’m makin it on my own. I ain’t no burden.”

“No. You right about that.”

“I can see everything from here. The lawyers jogging across the river in the morning, students out for romantic walks. Everything passes down there,” he says, gesturing toward the river with his eyes. “You know how many times a week those Southsiders dangle someone off the bridge? I can give you the figures. Your old neighborhood’s changing. Big time. My kind’s kickin out yours. Won’t be long and Franklin won’t be the rez anymore. It’ll be the hood.

“Back in Nam.” He shifts on the pail and turns the possum. “Back in Nam we woulda given just about everything for a command like this. Three-hundred-degree field of vision. Height of land. Troop movements. From here I could call in any kind of strike I want. Watch the ordnance come in nose first.”

“You ain’t seen or heard nothin?”

“How long’s he been down here?”

“Month or two.”

“He got a place?”

“He’s down at Little Earth.”

“They hold tight down there.”