Summer

Two old men, tenants of the night on the bench outside the bar, turn to talk of Patton.
A man walks past - thirtyish? -  wild on his phone. "So then he comes at me with a butcher knife..."
Out of the shadows, and under the streetlight, a fat-tailed raccoon emerges, pauses, looks around, and scuttles across my path, vanishing into the weedy depths of the abandoned yard.