The trailer park Buddy and Marlene picked out was tidy and floral like the middle class neighborhood Marlene grew up in. Buddy grew up in a trailer park that was wilder and damper than the one he moved his new family into. He looked back on his first home with nostalgia and disgust. He remembered a boggy thicket of kudzo and wild children trying to sell dead snakes and the smell of hot rubber and gasoline.

The garden gnomes and weed-free sidewalk triggered relief. He was afraid of living like a cockroach. A steep hill separated the trailer park from the highway. The incline was too sharp for a lawn mower. The grass grew long and silky, like witch's hair.