His face was no longer numb from the cold, and he was now aware of pain throbbing insistently in his temple. Clutching the sink for support, he rose to his feet and looked in the mirror. Just over his left ear, the gray hair was stiff and matted with blood. A streak of it had dried across his cheek, like war paint. He stared at his own reflection, at a face deeply etched by sixty-six years of hard winters and honest work and loneliness. His only companion was the cat, now meowing at his feet, not from affection but hunger. He loved the cat, and someday he would mourn her passing with tears and a solemn burial and nights of longing for the sound of her purring, but he was under no illusion that she loved him.

He removed his clothes, the frayed and blood-stained shirt, the urine-soaked jeans. He undressed with the same care he devoted to every other task in his life, leaving his clothes in a tidy heap on the toilet lid. He turned on the shower and stepped in without waiting for the water to warm up; the discomfort was only momentary scarcely worth a shiver in the context of his cold and uncomfortable life. He washed the blood out of his hair, the laceration stinging from the soap. He must have sliced his scalp open when he fell on the woodpile.

It would heal, as all his other cuts had. Warren Emerson was a walking testament to the durability of scar tissue.

The cat renewed her meowing as soon as he stepped out of the shower. It was a pitiful sound, despairing, and he could not listen to it without feeling guilty.

Still naked, he walked to the kitchen, opened a can of Little Friskies chicken bits, and spooned it into Mona’s cat bowl.

She gave a soft growl of pleasure and began to eat, no longer caring whether he came or went. Except for his skill with a can opener, he was extraneous to her existence.