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rolled into the bushes by the goose shed, hugging the mud, trying to stay low. Motion detector.
    The door banged open. Einstein Croft stood on the threshold, even uglier in his boxer shorts than he had been in a lumberjack shirt, though I’m sure part of my assessment came from the objectionable presence of the deer rifle in his hands.
    He swung the rifle around in a slow circle, sighting over the top of it. I pressed down into the dirt, scarcely breathing for fear the fog of my breath would give me away. My heart hammered at my chest wall and I stared at him, willing him to see me as nothing more than a shadow under his sparse shrubbery.
    A full minute passed and then the lights abruptly shut off the show. Now he was illuminated from within the house, and I saw the eagerness go out of him, the barrel of his gun drooping in disappointment. He’d been hoping to bag himself a repo man.
    I lay there for a full five minutes after he went back inside, willing my body to calm down. In this part of the country a lot of people own guns and I’d had a few of them pointed in my general direction, but most of the time it was just to scare me. This had been to shoot me. I thought of the nightmare, of the sensation of a rifle bullet hitting me in the back of the head, dropping me onto the forest floor. I desperately did not want that to happen in real life.
    After a moment my fear bled out and left me with anger. What did that idiot think he was doing? You don’t kill someone for repossessing your pickup truck! Forget the $250; this was personal now.
    I pondered my options. Home motion detectors were usually not very sensitive. If I moved slowly, chances were the lights wouldn’t pop on until I put the truck in gear. I mentally ticked off the seconds it had taken Einstein to come to full alert once the spotlights flared. What had seemed like mere moments now, on reflection, felt like maybe two minutes. If I couldn’t start a pickup and back it down the driveway in less time than that, I didn’t deserve to be a repo man.
    Once I decided to try it again, the same uneasiness settled over me—a dread-filled foreboding that I couldn’t shake off. What the heck was my problem?
    I was just snaking forward through the muddy snow when I felt a stabbing pain in my Achilles, like something biting me. I rolled over and there was the goose, its neck uncoiling as it delivered another attack on my leg. “Hey!” I whispered sharply. I was trying to avoid setting off the motion detectors and here was this dumb bird, well, goosing me.
    It hissed, parting its ridiculous lips and sticking its tongue out at me in what I was sure was some sort of insult. I pulled my legs away. “Stop it! That really hurts!” I commanded with all the authority of being from a superior species. I slithered another few feet and the goose launched itself into the air, flapping its wings.
    The night was flooded with the searing white glare from the spotlights. I flung up an arm and the goose wings pummeled me as hard as the biker from Cadillac. Where were its survival instincts? It should have been terrified of me; I eat geese!
    All right, the heck with this . I sprinted down the driveway, my shoes sliding and sending me down onto my butt. I heard the back door fly open again as I tripped and fell and rolled in the slush.
    â€œDoris!” Einstein yelled.
    I made it to the bottom of the driveway and paused. Of all the insults I’d suffered that night, having Albert Einstein call me Doris was the most surprising.
    â€œGet back in the shed, Doris, you stupid duck!” he raged.
    I felt my energy drain out of me as I trudged back to my truck. I’d been outsmarted by a man who named his goose Doris and thought it was a duck. I could not have been more depressed.
    By the time I got home the woodstove in my small living room was down to a few coals; I stirred them and threw in some pine. My dog Jake thumped his tail at me