I talk like a lady who knows what she wants, and other things which I would mention, but Ernie's charging over here with kids behind, screaming like they are chasing him and not vice versa and him whipping a cut aerial like a wildman.
I get the tea instead.
My hands hold the tea and a can and an opener as I make my way backward, rear first, out the front end and down the cinderblock pile that is my stair. I heap it all onto my card table and yell, What's the story?
Ernie is huffing and puffing all the way down my trailer-side and the aerial is bowing for or against me. I duck.
Those kids, he says, and almost gets one.
But they disappear. There's no thin air around here, but kids have a way with the edges of things. By the time Ernie's huffed and puffed his buttoned-down self across the four corners of my frontage, they've high-tailed it, they've gone.