I don't feel like talking tonight.

Came home and wandered upstairs where Jerry was putting up a Dead Man, he said.

What?

He nailed lengths of two-by-four together and made a tall T-shaped post. It now stands slim and long with arms out to support a tarp keeping the exposed upstairs room dry. With hard work, aggravation, and a new hammer, Jerry is carefully reassembling the house into a better space.

Why a Dead Man, I ask.

When you're on a job site, this does a job, but it's not a real man. They call it a Dead Man, he said.

Huh, Dead Men are so simple.

So, tonight a Dead Man holds the blue tarp up against a sky about to unload days of blinding rain too intense for the earth to drink in.

I could use a few Dead Men. One to keep me awake and alert when I doze at my desk at work at the computer at a meeting and on my feet.

I need a Dead Man to drive me home some days when I want to nap. I need a Dead Man to talk to, because my tone of voice as I address my dogs, my support group, scares them. The rock in the woods where I sit and make my small pleas to the dusk is certainly tired of my scratching voice. Glaciers heaved this stone to the surface, gouging it with a story and a history, and I'll drive it back.

Today is blunt and ugly against me, and I'll try again tomorrow for a better welcome.