Happy as a Clam is a pretty melancholy story about the relationship between a young guy who drives his troubled older coworker to work in exchange for breakfast. Prokesch slowly turns up the intensity as the relationships become more complicated:

Occasionally I’d hear a diesel engine pass from the street—either a semi driving to P-Town or a greedy oyster farmer headed to the flats early. She’d stop stirring the grits and open a slit in the blind and glance out at the road and sigh.                                                     

“Thank God it’s not him.”