Robert looked at William in consternation.

“The house you paid for and waited for is gone. You had it for a day. Why are you smiling?”

William laughed and looked at Robert.

“Are you kidding? I spent a day on the porch and went to sleep in a room exactly like the one I slept in when my Grandpa was alive.”

“You’re strange, ” Robert said. “But I understand.”

William flipped the retrieved nail in his fingers.

They stood in the carbon and ashes of what was the front porch. Even the creosote soaked railroad ties that served as steps were reduced to ashes. Behind them long strips of galvanized steel lay twisted and burned on the ground. Concrete pylons poked out from the burned remnants.

Both of them looked out across the cotton field and watched the dragonflies against the sunset.

“Sometimes a day is a lifetime,” William whispered into the baked air of the Delta.

.