She nodded.
"But these fellows are jumping at your windows."
Nic nodded again. "I lost a hard drive when the transformer first blew. It's sitting out on the table by the window. They've spotted it and are trying to getto it."
There was a squirrel—maybe the same squirrel, maybe a different one—scratching at the front door. Bobby clapped his hands. It scampered a few yards, then sat up on its haunches, twitching its tail and poised for another leap at the door.
"Is that something squirrels do?" he asked. "Doesn't seem right to me. It's not like there's anything for them to eat in a computer."
Nic took a breath before explaining. "There's something on the hard drive—something that got trapped there when the hard drive failed. Now, instead of just a few squirrels stuck in a rut, it's attracting more and more of them."
Bobby Walker opened his mouth, but shut it without saying a word as another squirrel leaped at the window. The glass shuddered in sunlight.
"Maybe you should hide that hard drive where the squirrels can't see it. Too bad it's attracting squirrels. If it was turkeys or deer you'd really have something going during hunting season—"
Nic's imagination took a Hitchcockian turn as she imagined Thanksgiving-sized birds hurling themselves at the trailer.
"Or you could just bring it out here and give the little beggars what they want. I'd like to see what they'd do with a worthless hard drive."
"It's broken, not worthless. If I don't get it back to the manufacturer, I've got to pay for the new one."
"Then take it to the post office. Let them worry about the damned squirrels."
Nic sighed and told Bobby Walker about the disappearing man she'd encountered on her way to the post office.
"Just some crazy old man—"
She told him about the luminous woman with silver tears.
"A dream—"
"Not a dream," Nic insisted. "I wished it were a dream. I even tried to wish myself awake, but I wasn't asleep to begin with." She saw disbelief in Bobby Walker's eyes. "You must think I'm the one who's crazy."
"Not crazy. Someone who doesn't want to be here and would give anything to be anywhere else. It's too bad—"
Before Bobby could share the rest of his insight, they were both startled by two squirrels striking the window in quick succession.
"I better hide that hard drive."
Nic bounded up the stairs and didn't object when Bobby Walker followed her. The hard drive was in plain sight on the table. So was the bowl of milk-soaked bread. Nic grabbed it first, but not quickly enough.
"There's where you've made your mistake," he said flatly.
"Where?"
"Well, ma'am—I told you, bread in a bowl of milk won't work. That's for Scottish brownies. What we've got around here are suth'run brownies. You want to catch a suth'run brownie, ma'am, you've got to set out beer and a dish of pork rinds, or some of those little hot dogs in a can—"
Nic froze.
"That was a joke," Bobby Walker insisted. "You've got to laugh at yourself, Nicole Larsens, or whatever's eating at you is gonna make you crazy."
"I don't belong here."
"Nobody belongs here." He opened his arms to include the whole trailer park. "We're just passing through on our way up, or down."
"Which way do you think I'm going?"
"Can't tell yet."
"And you?"
"Can't tell that either. Up, I hope."
Nic offered to make coffee and washed the incriminating evidence out of the cereal bowl while the elixir filtered into the pot. She returned the hard drive to its antistatic pouch and stuffed the pouch into the cardboard box which, after a moment's thought, she put in the oven.
"It doesn't work," she explained. "And it's so dirty, I wouldn't use it, even if it did."
"Why not just take the box to the post office?"
"Because today's Saturday and the post office isn't open at this hour on Saturdays; and, besides, I'm going to try the beer thing."
"Do you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, too?"
Sarcasm sounded different with a mid-Florida drawl, but no less biting when wielded by an obvious expert. Nic had underestimated Bobby Walker and his bright-red pickup.
"There are squirrels knocking themselves silly against my window—"
But the twitchy multitude was fast departing. Only one squirrel chewed rubber on the hood of Nic's car, another pair circled the traps that held their siblings or cousins, the rest had scattered.
"Out of sight, out of mind," Nic and Bobby Walker said together, then fell silent together, wondering if something significant had taken place.
"Can I borrow a can of beer?" Nic asked to break the silence.
"You could, if I had any. Never got a liking for the stuff. Tastes like horse piss. Wouldn't do you any good right now, even if I did. According to my momma, brownies are nocturnal. 'Course, what did my momma know? She never caught one, not in Scotland or Florida. Could be our Florida brownies like their beer in the morning or, could be, they spend the whole day racing squirrels and don't get thirsty till the squirrels go to bed. My daddy's kind of like that."
Nic would have asked a few polite questions about the Walker family if she'd gotten the change, but with coffee still dripping into the pot, Bobby Walker got restless.
"I'd better load those squirrels into my truck and take them out to the woods—it's cruel to leave them trapped up. You going to want me to set 'em out again later today, or do you think the beer will do the trick?"
"Better set them out," Nic decided and knew in a dark corner of her heart that the reason had nothing to do with squirrels.
"You gonna put the beer in the oven with the box or put 'em both where the squirrels can see them?" Bobby asked, with his hand poised about the doorknob.
"I don't know, Nic admitted. "I'll decide tonight and tell you tomorrow."
Bobby Walker drove off with the squirrel traps and was still gone when Nic went shopping for a single can of beer and another of Vienna-style sausages.