I was living in a shack 

 

with a microwave and a hot plate and a brand new shower with peel your skin off water pressure and a mattress and a card table and a bookshelf about thigh high. I had statues of David and Moses that I bought at two different thrift stores and the old ladies who sold them to me said you want this old thing with a look in their eyes that screeched, faaaaggg-ittt. My neighbour, the owner of my shack, was an isolated old man named Doug. He had this beat to shit one eyed cat named Red who would sleep on one of the chairs on my porch and whenever I’d go out for a smoke he’d snarl and hiss as I slid into the rocking chair across from him saying, Eee-zee Red. Eee-zee. After I lost the job I tried to write the novel but it still wasn’t (and still isn’t) ready to be written so I’d sit inside at the card table drinking beers and writing poems and when that got old I’d drive into town and drink more beer and listen to some country band in some tourist saloon in the dead season with a dozen locals who didn’t speak a lick to one another or clap when the show was over. The beer was light and ice cold and I’d be ready to go home around three but I’d say to myself and do what? Try and write? So I’d go walk alongside the ditches and the train tracks and go down by the river and think about the past and how I got here and the book and by that time the sun would be setting so I’d drive home through piles of dead deer and gluttonous buzzards and tip toe past Red and crawl into bed and open some book and a bottle of wine and just before lights out I’d pray, God, please oh please get me out of here.  

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