It’s evening, dusky, almost cool enough to start dinner, and Mike is performing one of the little rituals in which he’s taken solace recently: walking the perimeter of his lot, checking the security of the fence and the gate, checking the roof for damage, waiting for the little embers that land in the yard to cool so he can throw their remains into the pile he’s made in the fallow strip of land by the canal across the street. Through all these recent troubles, his family’s low little white brick house has managed to maintain some dignity; thank God it isn’t one of those gaudy big houses built more recently at the foot of the bridge. Those things looked like the end of the world long before there was any reason to believe it was here. Now they’re decaying supernaturally fast, reveali...

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