Still unable to sleep, I listen to Fleegle snore. He sounds like a train struggling up a steep grade with a freight load of fat Labradors. I nudge him with my foot under the covers. “Straighten out your neck and maybe that freight you’re pulling won’t be so heavy.”
“Is the soothing rhythm of my snores not lulling you to sleep? I’m out like a light when you snore,” Fleegle says sleepily. “I love pizza, but I love it even more because it makes you snore and I know exactly where you are without even looking.”
“Pizza gives me far out dreams.”
“When I can’t sleep I don’t bother trying.”
“I know, you go outside and hunt opossums.”
“That’s not me, that’s Buck from across the street. No one has found out yet about the hole he dug under his fence. He’s a little obsessed with opossums. Did you know he takes his kills inside his house through his dog door?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I prefer chasing flies to chasing rodents.”
“What about squirrels? They’re part of the rodent family and you chase them.”
“They don’t count. They’re too cute to be rodents.”
“That’s not what you say when you make them mad and they try to poop on your head from up in the trees.”
I feel the bed move as he gets up. “Now I can’t sleep. I wish flies flew at night. Will you turn the light on and wake them up?”
I shrug. “Might as well.”
The bamboo outside the bedroom window rustles even though there isn’t any wind.
“There goes Buck, hunting,” Fleegle says. “Poor opossums.”
I snap on the light. “Poor flies.”
But then is strikes me. “How does Buck get into the yard past the fence?”
“Beats me.”
Raud Kennedy 