Obviously satisfied with my answer he folded the peice of toxic waste neatly and placed it with the others in his drawer then shut it. The haze of a million noxious fumes hovered for a moment over the empty space then scattered like a million roaches to the far corners of the room.

Truly, living with the man was like living in a cess pit.

Then again, since that Chevy 98 pick-me-up ploughed into our house and burnt it down last summer that’s just about where we lived. A beaten up old trailer home parked a few yards from North I49 with more wildlife growing inside it than on the scrub and mudland outside.

“So why’d you put it back in there?” I ask. Stupid question really, why does a man do anything?

“Experiment,” he said. “Gonna make us rich.”