Cousin Ted picked up Paul’s empty bottle and wiggled it at the bartender, but Paul got up from his seat, begging off. “I got to go now.”

“Aw, come on,” Ted told him. “One more won’t kill you.” He flashed his pearly dentures and reached for him. But Paul was too quick and had gained the door before the bartender could pry open another Dixie. At the entrance he bumped into old lady Fontenot’s crazy brother, Simon, coming up the steps.

“Hey, T-Bub, let’s do like the vampires walking past the funeral home,” he said.

“What?”

“Let’s stop in for a cold one.” Simon slapped Paul on the back and brayed like a mule. Ted and Octave heard the laughter and came out to drag Simon up the steps into the bright light and crashing voices.

“T-Bub,” they called through the door as he walked down the street. Their voices were hysterical and harmless. “Hey, T-Bub, you ashame of us?” Cackling laughter.

* * *

He sat in a porch rocker until the mosquitoes found him, and then he went inside, rubbing the fiery stings on his neck. In bed, images ignited in his head—drunk relatives, unusual dogs, weather-ruined houses. It seemed that the town he’d become used to like an old pair of pants no longer fit him. Now he was thinking things he didn’t want to think. He closed his eyes and listened for distractions. He heard the deep and far-off steam whistle from Calumet Factory send its aspirate hum through the willows, then the sawmill watchman’s muted high-pitched signal, the hoot from the bridge’s long-bell air whistle, the thrum of a northbound towboat’s Kahlenberg air trumpets, and finally, a fluting train whose approaching thousand wheels sounded over Tiger Island like a wave rolling over the moon-buffed metal roofs and into T-Bub’s rising dream.

* * *