Birds took off from the trees as I sat up, screaming Pru's name, reaching out for her, trying to grab her hands as she slid backwards into the dark and fog surrounding us. I sat there for a moment, in the back of the Ford pickup, both hands reach out for something, someone, who wasn't there.

After a moment I flopped back onto the sleeping bag, staring at the indigo sky being slowly lit by the rising sun. I reached out and groped around till I found the Zippo and my pack of cigarettes, lighting one and taking a long drag.

That ended up with me coughing my lungs clear for a good five minutes, kneeling on the bed of the truck and hanging over the side.

I shouldn't have slept outside. The dew had set into my lungs.

I picked up the cigarette from where I'd dropped it into the truck.

Pru doesn't like you smoking with that damaged lung

Pru's dead.

Remembering that made me sit in the back, my face in my hands, and cry for a while. It hurt so bad, my whole chest hurt, that for a long while all I could do was cry. When I was done the sun had crested the horizon, the sky blue. I dropped the tailgate and sat on it, smoking the cigarette and wearing nothing but my boxers and a t-shirt.

One of the chipmunks chattered at me in anger, probably for waking up her chipmunklings, but eventually it fucked off back into the trees to do chipmunk things.

I thought about what I needed to do, in what order, mentally preparing myself for the big job I had ahead of me. The first thing I did was being making each big job into its component parts. From there, the different parts into the smaller jobs that made each part up, and then into the details.

When I was done with the cigarette I grabbed a bottle of juice and an orange, peeling it carefully and chucking the peelings out into the grass for the little animals. The citrus cleared the taste out of my mouth and the water slaked my dry mouth. Once I was done with all the breakfast I could handle I got up and got dressed, just dressing in the clothes I'd been wearing the day before. I walked into the woodline, took a leak, and walked back through the grass.

The dew left my pants soaked to mid-thigh, but that was all right.

First thing I did was check the meter to see if any juice was flowing. There wasn't any meter, and nobody had hotwired any power, so at least the wiring would be cold. The fusebox was inside and I went inside, snapping the breakers back and forth out of habit to make sure there wasn't any power. I grinned, noting I snapped them three times out of habit.

That was OK.

I took the cover off, looking at the wiring. There was a mouse nest inside, so the first thing I did was clear the nest out, then checked the wiring. It was older, but looked good. A few of the breakers needed replacing and I pulled them out, examining them. The contacts were rusted out. I sighed and made a mental note to go in and get new breakers when I went to the diner for a hot lunch.

I decided to start with the first things. I got the dolly off of the pallet and drug it inside, taking a break to let my breathing calm down, then went over to the hot water heater. It was as short twenty gallon tank. I disconnected it from power and pipes and pulled it, noticing that there was another mouse nest under it.

I sighed, and got to work, pulling all the appliances out of the trailer. I pulled them around to where the car was rusting away, leaving them there.

After that I got the ladder and climbed up on the roof.

I was able to spot the two leakers right away, and three more spots I was suspicious of. I started pulling the tar paper off, stripping the roof down the plywood in the June sunshine. I took plenty of breaks, drinking bottled water, and by the time my cheap Timex told me it was lunch I had even pulled the four plywood panels off that were obviously damaged. I'd made up my mind to pull all the plywood off as I climbed down.

The roof vent had leaked, same with the plumbing air pipe. I'd probably have to tear out most of the walls, put up drywall and panelling.

But that was OK. It would give me something to do.

I drove into town, bought a new breaker box in its entirety, a burger and fries to go, and headed back to the trailer. I sat there, eating the greasy burger, and could almost hear Pru chiding me for not watching what I eat.

Funny. She'd been worried about my heart, and hers was the one that gave out.

The realization left me in tears and it took a few minutes for me to get it under control.

My appetite ruined, I wrapped the burger back up and went over to grab the nylon rope. I rigged a lifting harness with it, using my old Air Assault training, and started lifting plywood up onto the roof. One by one I replaced each panel. Twice hauling up 2x4's to replace damaged beams. I pulled all the old insulation, hauling up the rolls I'd planned on using on the interior walls to insulate the roof and ceiling.

It was late afternoon by the time I finished laying down and tacking down the tar paper undercoating and I was sweating pretty good, taking a break to smoke a cigarette, when I saw a power company truck come around the corner and pull into the clearing where the trailer was. A guy in electric company coveralls got out, checking the work order then looking around at all the equipment and supplies.

"You Sam English?" She asked me. I hadn't realized it was a woman until she spoke.

"That's me," I said, jumping down.

"Oh my God, don't do that," She said. She took off her baseball cap and wiped her forehead. "Scared the dickens out of me."

"Sorry," I told her. I walked up to her and she shook her head.

"Jumping off roof's like that is why ya got a limp like ya do, mister," She said.

I just shrugged.

"OK, I hooked up your line at the pole. I'm gonna check it at the meter housing, and if you have power, I'm going to put in the meter," she told me.

"I pulled the whole breaker box," I told her. "Mice have been in the wiring. I'm mainly worried about the pump."

"Let's see where your pump breaker is," She said.

Together we walked around the back. She searched in the grass for moment. "Found it."

She pulled a wrench out of her toolkit. "I'm gonna disconnect it. That breaker looks in pretty bad shape."

"Probably is," I said.

She checked the power, grunted, then went out and got a meter. The new meter on the wooden 4x4 looked out of place, but once she hooked it up she looked at it.

"No power drain. Looks like everything's disconnected," she said.

I followed her back to the truck and waited for her to finish writing out the work order. She held out the clipboard, I signed, and she tore off my copy.

"Here, thanks for coming out so fast," I said, handing her two twenties.

"That's not necessary," She said.

"I insist," I told her.

She shrugged, taking the money and pocketing it.

"Be careful working, you've got power now," She told me, getting into her truck. "Let us know if you have any problems. Don't blow your arms off."

"I won't, thanks," I told her.

I walked out to the shed, noticing that it had once had power. It took me a bit to find the line, and I backtraced it to make sure it wasn't live.

There was another 4x4 that had fallen into the grass with another little breaker box on it. I sighed, making sure the breakers were off, and drove back to town. I bought three small breaker boxes, cleaning them out, and left again.

Poor Pete was going to have to completely restock at the rate I was going.

I ate the leftovers and two ham sandwiches for dinner, and got back to work.

By the time the sun started going down, I had over half the trailer reroofed.I'd worked steadily, mechanically, ignoring the blisters and the burn of sore muscles. I kept drinking water, staying hydrated while I worked, and climbed down as soon as it started getting dark.

I slept in the back of the truck again.

And dreamed of Pru.

I woke up the woods around me when I came up out of the sleeping bag screaming, this time seeing Pru reduced to shredded meat by an artillery shell, almost able to feel the blood dripping down my face. I shook off the dream, getting up slowly and stiffly.

Muscles I'd almost forgotten I'd had hurt.

Out in the grass, in my boxers and combat boots, I slowly went through some of the half-forgotten warm up katas. Starting out slowly and steadily, then moving till I felt looser, more limbered up.

I grabbed a roll of toilet paper and went out in the woods, coming back and wiping down with a rag aftewards.

It was kind of funny. There I was out, in the waist high grass around a decaying trailer, completely naked except my boots, washing with a rag and a bottle of water. I got dressed, this time in clean clothes, ate another orange, drank a little pop top bottle of juice, and smoked a cigarette, going over what needed to be done in my brain.

By lunch I had finished with the roofing. I walked around the trailer, staring at it. I hadn't done roofing in almost five years, but the basic knowledge was there. I'd even filled a burlap bag full of rocks, tied it to a rope, and ran it up and down the chimney to clean it out. I remembered to cap the roof off with a strip of sheet metal the entire length, place the vent shrouds, and do the caulking.

Tarless roofing.

After I ate a quick lunch of sandwiches I cleared out the tool shed, bagging up the non-biodegradable debris and moving the rest of the it to the biodegradable pile I was slowly building. The wheelbarrow helped, but I still ran out of breath three times, taking the time to smoke a cigarette and wait for the burning in my chest to ease up.

Once that was done I put all the tools away. Onto the peg boards, onto the shelves, into the drawers. I replaced several of the boards on the walls, two on the floor, and ran power line to the new breaker box.

It was dark when I had finished digging the post hole, erecting the 4x4, and mounting the breaker box. When I snapped the breaker on the light in the shed came on. The next breaker I kicked I heard the radio I'd set on the shelf come on. I flipped the last four and used the meter to check the voltage and amperage.

Stable.

I sighed in relief. Wiring had been Tony's specialty. I'd seen that boy rewire a Tomahawk missile warhead while doing maintenance on it. If it hadn't been Tony, it had been Paul Foster.

I sat on the tailgate of the truck and smoked a cigarette, staring at the trailer in the moonlight. The roof looked out of place against the aluminum siding that was covered with moss and water stains and rust stains. Windows were broken and needed replaced.

I sighed and got up, grabbing a big hundred foot extension cord and walking around out back. I plugged it in to the outdoor sockets I'd wired onto the 4x4 below the outside breaker box, then spooled the extension cord to the trailer and hucked it through the broken window. I walked back around, grabbing the broom and the tool belt out of the shed, and went back inside after stopping by the truck to grab a droplight.

I started in the front room, carefully pulling the wood panelling at first. Once I realized how brittle it was, how crystalized the backing was, I just started yanking them out, pitching them out the back door into a pile.

If I slept, I'd dream of Pru.

I worked until my eyes were bleary and my hands were shaking, until my muscles felt like rubber. I brought my sleeping bag and pillow into the house, laid on the bare plywood floor from where I'd torn up the carpet, and went to sleep.

And dreamed of Pru, screaming my name, shrieking for me to save her, in the barracks on Alfenwehr.