Drip...drip...drip...

This is the beat of the long night ahead; this is the darkness of cold air and even colder water. My family is sequestered off with a space heater in a bedroom. Our other space heater maintains the bathroom. As for me, I am alone, say for the 45-minute countdown of my Google Assistant, a night laid out cycling the stovetop heat on every hour, hammering back against the icy night with my framed barricade of Hefty bags. These hours are lonesome.

I am the night watch.

A pair of pliers is at the ready for that brazen attempt to stop the fomenting cascade wrought by the frozen hot water line. I hold on to the hope that I will be relieved in the morning's light by...Gary. And yet, it is the Eve of Christmas.

Yes, a MacBook Pro's metallic case is elegant, but if I were to lick it, I reckon my only recourse would be a Bear Grylls maneuver. My fingers cut through the biting air.

I am cold.

I can go most places with a hoodie, a pair of shorts and my sandals. Memphis is not a coat town. When I ventured to the North, I had to purchase a coat in Ketchikan, Alaska on the night of Christmas Eve '12. Southern society is short duration; being uncomfortable for a moment is trivial. We pop out of the car to the store. When one looks down at the clock and sees a window of 12 hours of endurance, the stout can falter. A winter sunrise comes far too late in the morning. That blessed 7 AM seems another world away as I watch the door's glass frames turn to ice.

I have a mug of butter coffee at my side, butter that is on the cusp of clumping together in that once warmly inviting, now cooly calculating cup.

I am tired.

The residual waves of last night's slumber beneath the kitchen table remain. Dodging the clouds bellowed by me as I constantly move falters. Unlike my night at Cherbourg, I cannot pong between the 3 km boat docks and the train station to stay warm in this living room.

The alternative of merely laying on the floor next to a space heater is a hammock, a book, beneath the Caribbean sun.

Drip...drip...drip...