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"Nobody smiles anymore."

"Excuse me?"

"Have you noticed? Nobody smiles anymore." Mike adjusted himself in the tiny postal Jeep, setting his back against the passenger-side door as he sat on the floor beside Dog so no one would see him in the September early morning light. "Remember when we were growing up how you were taught that when you walked down the street and you met a stranger, that you smiled or said hello?" He sighed, staring at the plethora of mail and packages in the back as if it were a weight he could no longer bear. "People don't do that anymore."

Mike Thurman, my late wife's cousin, was in a bad mood, but that didn't mean he didn't have a point.

Mike had been having a tough month, so I tried to distract him just a bit, thinking of something to say while surveying the interior of the utility vehicle. "So, why do they call this model Jeep DJs?"

He grunted, swiping off his Seattle Mariners ball cap and rubbing his shaved head, then reaching over and scruffing the fur behind sleeping Dog's ear. "Dispatch Jeep."

"Oh."

"Also, they're two-wheel drive-smart for Wyoming, right?"

"Was she driving one of these?"

"No, there's no way you could fit...