You pry yourself away from this scoundrel's dream to stumble to the bathroom. Wow, you feel plowed, like somebody bruised your gin before they bottled it. What is that smell? It is like your dream is chasing you! Didn't you dream about smoke and now here it is all smoky in real life? Wow, some coincidence. Maybe you should go back to bed and dream something else into reality, like the name of a racehorse or the great lyrics of some sort of pop hit to make it onto a TV show soundtrack. Something with handclaps. Something with the crackling sound of roofs on fire. The sound of a lady howling in the background. Holy Apes! There is a fire next door. You had better save your vinyl, that stuff warps 112 Farenheit. But that howling lady, that is probably Gert from 16 B. You throw open the screen door in your jockstrap. Nevermind if people will want to know why you passed out in a jock strap, size fourteen high-top shoes and a mustard yellow headband--you have to get the lady from next door out of the tinderbox shanty she lives in. Maybe those pretty votive candles she sets next to the curtains in front of the propane tank weren't a good decorating idea, but they made a nice homemade shrine. You dive through the window and roll along the floor in a series of somersaults keeping an eye out for fuzzy-slippered feet with rolled down stockings at the ankle. Your eyes tear up in the smoke but you carry on. There she is, kitty cat clutched in her arms, crawling towards you. You put the double-chicken-wing on her and drag her out the door. By now the other coots of Shanty Town are out looting from each other in the confusion. Everybody has a conscience, though, and by nightfall all of the broken-down hibachis and spare tires and warped sheets of plywood will have been passed back to their rightful yards, because this is Shanty Town and Shanty Town takes care of its own and Nevermind the damn fire department, they are just cops in funnier uniforms, a bucket brigade from the river will do just fine and then we'll save the embers and put the coffee on to boil and somebody will get on the four-wheeler to get over to the Citgo for some schnapps and we'll have a blowout patching things up and it will be back to good times, buddy, let's get ourselves a nice sunburn on our bellies since we woke up shirtless, it looks like a hot one today and we'll crank out some tunes and get ourselves straightened out just fine. Thank the lord the grass is already brown because there's gonna be a lot of trucks parked on the neighbors' lawns for this Shanty Town Block Party in honor of you, The Hero! THE END