The COVID pandemic is one certainty that has mortally wounded Steve Osborne s world. A lesser certainty is recalled in the bewildered timbre of a car-accident survivor: On Christmas Eve, Osborne said goodbye to his few employees, locked the door to his shop, stepped into his car and drove off toward home, overworked and dehydrated. He doesn t remember the rest, the car was totaled, and he was saved by the chest-punch airbag, which caused even more pain and damage to his body, which at the moment is reduced to an old-man s shuffle about his Desert Son, the store he owns in the foothills of Tucson.