Hoyt sat under the canvas awning in a chair bought from Sears, one of them extruded aluminum kind painted lime green, now mostly flaked-on rusted metal. The horseshoe-shaped tubing leaned to one side as Hoyt's two hundred pounds rocked back and forth in the noonday sun. He was shirtless, wearing jeans, hanging below a belly that was beginning to bulge and a gimmie cap that covered his thinning blond hair. He sipped his third or fourth drink and had just taken a large swallow, set the Mason jar at his feet, and was drifting off to the sound of quietness when he heard the rattle of a much-used motor. There across the road stood a sorry-looking pickup with no paint whatsoever, just patches of rust and loaded to the gills with an old mattress, a cracked table, and a few chairs. When the engine died and the truck stopped, the body seesawed back and forth, as if trying to make up its mind whether to fall over or stand upright, until it finally shuddered to still.

A little guy, not much more than five and a half feet tall and skinny as a fence post, jumped to the ground from the driver's seat. He didn't look like much, had a kind of heel-dragging walk, a head shaped like a summer gourd, and he wore a set of denims that had seen the wash tub once too often. He opened the driver's door with a creak of its hinges, stretched and yawned, showing a number of missing teeth, then faced the ramshackle house with a wry smile.

The passenger door opened to show a large woman, little of it fat, weighing twice as much as the little guy, who slid off the tattered seat to the ground. She wore a pair of beat-up, size twelve tennis shoes, holes cut out for the little toe on each to make room for comfort, and she planted both feet firmly in the dust. She wore a sack dress, which hung from her sloping shoulders with the name Pillsbury Flour barely visible across the hem, had a strong face, sure as hell not the type to take any nonsense. Her black hair hung in tight curls down her back, covering some of the printing circling the collar.

Following the woman was a young girl of eighteen, at least six feet tall, with the body of a model, blond headed, and so pretty she took Hoyt's breath away, making him wonder how she could possibly be the daughter of such woebegone parents. Not a word was spoken as the three stood looked at the squatty house until the young girl began making some awful noise, yelling at her daddy while the momma was quiet, only shaking her head as the daddy ignored both and began unloading the pickup.

Hoyt was beside himself, thinking that for the first time he owned a place where he could live in peace, away from people, shit, get as drunk as he wanted, by God, go naked and swim in his pond like he did when he was a kid.

He hollered, "Hey, you bunch, what the hell you doing on my land?" Then he added while he rushed at them, swaying a little and arms waving, "You don't even think about unloading that crap; just turn around and get out of here before I call the sheriff."

Looking at Hoyt scared the hell out of the family, that half naked monster of a man with hair standing on end, clodhopper boots covered in mud and maybe more than a little drunk. But the little guy had gumption or maybe just desperation, and he stood his ground, saying, "Mister, I don't know who you are, but I got me a piece of paper right here showing that I bought this here house from a man in Memphis, a man by the name of Biggun."

And sure enough, when the little man shakily handed over the piece of paper, there it was in black and white, just legible enough to read, and sure enough that son-of-a-bitch Biggun had put one over on Hoyt.

That's when Hoyt lost it, saying, "How do I know this piece of crap is legal?"

He reached for the paper, when he suddenly felt a blow, blacked out, then woke, finding himself laying in the dust, his head bleeding like a stuck pig. The pretty young girl was standing over him, a rock as big as a baseball still in her hand, saying, "Mister, you even try to get up and I'm gonna use this rock again and bust the other side of your head." Then she pointed at her daddy and said, "Can't you see, you damned old drunk, that my dad is sick? Besides, I was with him when we bought this shack and it looks like we got the worse end of it."

By the time the girl had said a mouthful, her momma was kneeling over Hoyt holding his gushing head with a piece of cloth from her old dress that she had torn off at the hem, then soaked with water from a jug. She sobbed, "Jenny, you done hurt this man bad. He's bleeding something awful. Throw that stone down and help me before he bleeds to death."

For the first time, Jenny seemed a little scared. The big ape didn't look none too good with the way that blood was coming down his face, but Hoyt, as he lay in the dust, was awake and knew that he had been in enough rock fights as a kid to know that his head was just a bleeder, that he was getting a terrible headache, and that he had a knot the size of an egg on his forehead. When Hoyt opened his eyes, that pretty little girl was leaning into his face with a worried expression.

Hoyt said, "By God missy, that's some arm you got. Damn girl you coulda killed me."

The momma insisted that Hoyt lay still until the bleeding slowed, then the whole family helped him to his feet and Hoyt took stock of them, thinking what a sorry bunch they were. The skinny little guy did most of the talking, saying his name was Homer and the wife was Maggie, and, of course, Hoyt had sure as hell met Jenny. Meanwhile Maggie just kept looking at Hoyt, and seeing that he was still wobbly, made him sit on a stump while she fumbled around in the truck. She came back with a wide-mouthed jar of some sort of ointment smelling of linseed oil and lard that stanched the bleeding. Then all four stood and gaped at the rundown mess that they had bought.

Hoyt, still leaning on the two women, asked Homer, "How in the living hell did you get talked into buying this place? Hell, it ain't fit for pigs."

Homer, with a sheepish grin said, "Well I been knowing Biggun all my life, and when I lost my job at the steel mill down on the island, he overheard me talking and said he had a place to buy real cheap." Then he added, "Biggun done lied once too often, mister. Him and me been friends since we were young'ns and he showed me pictures and said it was a good place to raise Jenny away from the city. He didn't tell me it was just a shack way out in the woods." He paused and looked down the gravel road. "Hell, I ain't sure we can find our way back to Memphis." With that the little guy sat down on the running board, elbows on his knees, his head down between his legs, and looked as if he might cry.

Hoyt, thinking he needed a drink, told the family that he was going back to his trailer and freshen up, in spite of Maggie's objections. She was worried about the knot on his head, which by then resembled a large, overripe pear. After sitting in his favorite lawn chair, sipping a jar filled with Jim Beam, crushed ice, and elderberry leaves, Hoyt began to think about Homer. After all, everybody gets jigged once in a while and Biggin had a line of bullshit that fooled a lot of people. If Biggin took off for the west as he had said he was going to do, then that family was in a fix, and Hoyt was finding himself attached to them. That young'n had spunk, and one look told him that the little guy had some kind of problem. Hell, Hoyt thought, I might get lonesome once in a while. I...