He was ecstatic to have upgraded his living situation. The room consisted of a large bed with a spoked brass headboard circa 1940's; a tiny bureau painted in faded green, peeling in places; and a six foot long formica-topped table, not a Victorian item, which he used as a desk and all-purpose storage surface. The faded wallpaper was gradually being covered with snapshots, notes, and pages and cartoons from magazines. The communal bathroom was down the hall.

At the other end of the hall was the wide, carpeted stairway complete with hand-carved, ornate, rose wood handrails, the kind kids love to slide down, kids of all ages. Five people could stand on a step together without crowding one another. When you reached the bottom of the stairway, on the ground floor, you could either continue on your present course through the doorway directly ahead to the sidewalk, or turn right through the swinging doors to the bar, a difficult choice best left to impulse.

The fire escape at the back of the building was covered with ice this time of year, of course, and functionally useless, the brunt of many jokes. The building itself had a magic, a time-transporting type magic; it exuded a feeling of a wild west atmosphere. You half expected to see a gun- totin' cowboy come walking down the hall, spurs jingling, hat tipped low on the forehead. One visitor had even remarked, after a few drinks, that this was the kind of place where he wouldn't be surprised to see a chair come flying out a window. There was an unescapable sensuousness, a graininess, an earthiness, that was not for everyone but was deeply appreciated by the boarder.

One of the first changes he made upon moving in was to turn the bed so that it faced the door. This time of year you get a strange breed passing through. One time only, which was all it took for him to rearrange the furniture, he had been awakened by an angry drunk banging on his door looking for his wayward girlfriend. There had not been any trouble after he opened the door wide enough for the man to inspect the interior, he was more hurt than crazed, and actually apologized.

However, he didn't like having to expose his home to a stranger's insistent scrutiny; this triggered the interior redecorating. The door was not that heavy to begin with; it was as old as the building; it could be broken down rather easily by a misinformed jealous cowboy. If the boarder were lucky enough to have a female visitor under the blankets with him at the time, it could be his last hurrah.

So, he set up an emergency protective system, top security was the issue, just in case. The bed now faced the door; the boarder slept with feet closest to it. Under the bed, within easy reach, was a twelve gauge pump, short barrel, like the kind cops use, loaded with a single slug. He had practiced once. Laying in bed he reached under; grabbed the shotgun; pumped it, unloaded for this rehearsal; and pretended to put one slug through the top of the door. He didn't necessarily want to kill anyone, but a slug shattering the door, traveling into the opposite wall and perhaps beyond should, he thought, discourage anyone, or at least give pause.

He had no television or radio, just his electric clock. Everything he owned fitted into one duffel bag. He had been traveling light; it seemed appropriate. The room lent an air of domesticity, a taste of middle class reassurance which helped to awaken and crystallize those parts of himself left on hold. He desperately needed this respite and sanctuary from the storm, more than he actually understood.

This turn of fortune was the result of being in the right place at the right time, the story of fortuitousness in Alaska. While in the bar one day, he had overheard some fishermen friends laughing about a job they obviously felt was beneath them. They were putting it down, although they spent most of their energy bumming drinks and cigarettes. He left with a bogus excuse and went directly to the restaurant they had mentioned.

The verbal exchange was brief and to the point. It went something like: "I hear you're looking for a dishwasher." Reply: "That's right. When can you start?" Answer: "Right now." His reasons for applying were simple: besides being chronically broke and living between a rock and a harder rock, it was where they kept the food. And, it paid the exorbitant room rent.

It was no problem talking the owner of the Alaskan into letting him rent by the month on spec; actually there was a bit of a problem but he was getting better at negotiating. He had been arrested once for disturbing the peace; not a big deal in itself but the circumstances surrounding the incident labeled him as a loose canon. He had been working hard to keep the lid on things but, one night, he went on a tour of the bars.

Starting at the Anchor Bar on the other side of the harbor and drinking his way from bar to bar down the main street, he did the same thing at each one, until told to leave. He'd find someone with whom he had a grievance or who had the reputation for screwing people over, buy that person a drink, and then proceed to tell him what he thought of him in no uncertain terms. He was fed-up and frustrated and angry; besides, these kind of people had always pissed him off. There had been no fights; he was that righteous. The story had gotten around by the next day, with notable embellishments; one of the dubious benefits of living in such a small town.

Cordova is an easy-going town, or at least it was at the time of these events. People drinking in the Alaskan could retire upstairs to a room, drinks in hands, no problem or questions asked. The only rules were: no taking drinks outside, which occasionally got broken, of course; and, if you were to ask the bartender where so-and-so's room was, you wouldn't be told. The rationale was easy to grasp, protection; if a renter had wanted you to know his room number, you'd know.

The room became a social center, an annex where pot could be smoked. It is noteworthy to point out that, again at the time of these events, smoking marijuana was legal in Alaska; you could grow it for personal consumption, but not to sell, although this rule also occasionally got broken.

At first the boarder enjoyed the random unscheduled company. He needed the interaction although he would never admit it. But there were times when he wanted to be alone, to think and rehash, to delve into his personal memories and present experiences uninterupted. He compulsively analyzed the events of each day, comparing his social transactions to some rigid criterion of behavior, grilling himself as to whether or not he had measured up to standards he believed crucial in order to feel good about himself. It was an old set of rules composed in his youth, long before the 'Great Test' at which he had failed miserably, at least in his own eyes. He was caught in an undertow that threatened to drag him down to oblivion and worse; the best he could do was tread water.

Visitors would show at his door at all hours. On the weekends, the bar closed at four in the morning. Sometimes there'd be a knock immediately afterward. He didn't, or wouldn't, say no. As he would let the visitor into his sacred domain, he would look at himself in surprise, comparing and remembering how strong he used to be. So he convinced himself that he was just being stodgy and unsociable, wanting to lock himself away like a recluse to brood and wallow in yesterdays.

Each time the habit took a firmer hold. If only he could figure it out, he believed, then he would once again be free and the power he had taken for granted would return in force. It was a catch-22 type paradox; he even understood that, which only added to his confusion and doubt. He liked himself for how he believed himself to truly be, but learned to despise himself for not acting according to his convictions, and for letting others do him wrong with impunity, even in small petty ways, like violating his privacy.

Everything he had studied and learned from experience in the school of hard knocks informed him that it was an impossible situation. He understood that his only salvation and recourse was to forgo and forget, to drop as unwise and untenable a standard, a moral code, fashioned at a time when he was relatively inexperienced with Life. He was hung up on one thing and one thing only which he could not put his finger on. He could not decide because he didn't feel sure, and he didn't feel sure because he could not decide; and around and around he went. So he escaped from his dilemma into the natural realm.

There were three other full-time boarders in the hotel that winter. An older man who had lived there for years and was something of an icon; he was a well-known personality in the Sound and a hell of a tough fisherman. Of the other two, one was from Anchorage, a part-time stone mason and a full-time saxophone player. The other was a cowboy from Montana who could mechanic his way through any gauge of heavy earth moving equipment when he wasn't working his way through a bottle of whiskey. And the whiskey did flow that winter.

This ad-hoc community existed as an identity in the town. Other hotels had their full-time boarders as well. A person got to be known this way; small towns are quick to group people by associations of all kinds. That's how society is structured in areas where structure is at a premium. One must make it up on the fly and give it credence to help knit the fabric, as it were. This is the other side of cliquishness. That's where the war takes place. People come to Alaska for the freedom from such orderings and abstract structuring. That's the cause of the tension that gives the land its frontier feel. Coalescing, rebelling, crumbling, floating, moving, then restructuring, forming new allegiances, falling into definitions by roles, by actions, by denials and affirmations. This process takes place from the bottom up, so to speak, as opposed to walking into something pre-established, a predefined role, an imposition from the top down.

The relationships, the connections, are often pre-known to be temporary and tentative however intimately real they may end up being. This intimacy is a function of to what degree the individuals involved are able to be themselves in a self-contained present. A crew on a fishing boat forms one such kind of ad-hoc society. And more often than not, this strange community outlives the context which created it. When two people who have gambled and worked and shared and risked together meet, especially in another port town later on down the road, that mutual experience of having been on the edge comes to the fore. It brings to the field a life of its own. In this respect, relationships are more real than the people themselves. Hotel dwellers of a full-time nature form a similar society, regardless of size. But the edge here is the edge of survival. No one who calls a hotel his home wants to be reminded that there's a sign on the wall next to his door that reads, "Check Out Time: 12:00 Noon."

The boarder retired to his room while the party downstairs was still going strong. The music from the juke box and the noise and shouts from the cabin-fever crazies had no trouble filtering up the stairway and down the hall. He was sitting in his one and only chair finishing off a bottle of Turkey when there was a knock on the door. He hesitated. Maybe whoever will go away, he thought, he had had enough of people for one night.

A saxophone began playing rifts and swings that seemed to the boarder to cover the spectrum of all possible sounds one could produce using such a device. His two favorite tools, as he thought of them, in the world were the piano and the saxophone. He let the stone mason with the

nimble fingers in.

He was drunker than two skunks, but he played better that way. He squatted on the rug and talked about his day. The crew he was working with were all local; they were improving the road that went out towards the bridge, fifty miles away. A referendum to build a road on the old rail bed, that began on the other side of the bridge, all the way to Tok Junction, connecting isolated Cordova to the rest of the world by road, had not been voted on as yet; it would be on the next ballot. But, the state was acting as though it had already been approved. Agendas go on in spite of people's wishes, nothing new about that.

He was complaining about his treatment at the hands of the other crewmen. It seemed they didn't much care for an outsider, as they considered anyone not from Cordova, working on the project. So he drank probably more than usual, and played his sax at all hours. They held a mutual respect for jazz, and for being an outsider. The boarder was a Cordova-ite, at least as far as he was concerned, but he despised insider- outsider games and attitudes.

They shared the bourbon, and the stone mason played, and they talked, about places they had been and life in general. They talked art, and music, and architecture, and the beauty of stone. The mason had a wife in Anchorage, but he had to go elsewhere to find work. His union had turned him on to the Cordova road job; they needed a mason to work on the many stream overpasses between town and the bridge. The pay was good; but time away from his wife was not so good.

Together, they got drunker; the noise from below was dying down noticeably. The mason asked the boarder why he had turned his bed to face the door. He explained. After which, the mason asked to see the shotgun, the shotgun that once belonged to a police department in California.

The boarder knew quite well that bourbon and firearms are not a good combination, but he believed himself to be sufficiently in control. He picked it up from its place beneath his bed. There was one slug in it, not in the chamber. But before he would turn it over to anyone, he insisted on clearing it as a matter of course.

Sitting in his chair, he placed the butt of the stock on the floor, holding the barrel, which aimed towards the ceiling within six inches or so from his head, with his left hand. He pushed the small eject button beneath the trigger housing that was expressly intended for the purpose pf clearing. Police riot guns work a little differently than civilian types. You can hold the trigger down and pump continuously without having to release it between shots. Apparently, that's what he did, for the next instant the loudest sound known to man exploded in the tiny room.

They both froze, and sobered considerably as well as instantly. The fire alarm in the hall went off. The mason whispered, "that was really loud," his eyes wide. The boarder's first reaction was to look up at the ceiling where the slug entered. He half expected to see blood dripping down. All he could think of was that maybe he killed or seriously injured someone. The mason said that he thought it might be a good idea if he left. The boarder nodded agreement.

He sat alone, holding the insubordinate noise maker tightly in his hand as though to squelch any further random acts of lawlessness. The door opened; he looked up with a start; it was the owner. They stared at one another; the boarder said nothing; what could be said? He was obviously drunk; he was sitting at the far corner in his only chair; a partial bottle of bourbon layed on the floor in front of him; and he was holding a twelve- gauge pump in his left hand, stock on the floor, barrel straight up. It was not exactly a Hallmark Moment.

The owner, who's apartment closet the slug had entered, lodging in an eight inch oak beam, it was later discovered, saw how intensely disturbed his boarder was. He said calmly, "No more parties in here." He then closed the door to go quiet the fire alarm.

The boarder was told later by him that the reason he didn't tell him to leave was because he could see how affected he had been. The story went around town like wildfire. Everyone believed he had done it on purpose. He tried to refute this allegation; but they wanted to believe otherwise. So, after a time, he accepted the notoriety, but sold the shotgun a few days later. Bad juju, he told his mason friend, bad juju. This didn't stop late night activity however; but it had certainly affected the boarder. He became more assertive about propriety and let it be known henceforth just who's home it was. He had to answer to someone, and thus, his visitors had to answer to him. The idea of being on the street in the middle of winter in Cordova, Alaska was a sufficient incentive to keep a tighter rap on things. The fact that he might have killed someone, himself included, stopped bothering him sooner than the major inconvenience of being on the street.

How 'out there' am I, he asked himself, after things had cooled down somewhat, and people had stopped calling him 'shotgun man.' I don't have a reference anymore to gauge what 'out there' means, was the only reply. If his former life had been iambic pentameter, he thought, then now was surely free verse.

Thanksgiving was coming up. The Cordova House always had a huge spread for this occasion. It was intended for those who didn't have families in town to share it with, but the whole community was welcome. The bar would be open until six. It was definitely something to look forward to. No place else the boarder had ever lived did this kind of thing. It spoke well for the town, and for the owner of the Co-Ho as well.

A few days before, when the weather was agreeable, he and a couple of nutcases drove fifty miles east out the gravel road, the only road, to its dramatic conclusion, 'The Million Dollar Bridge,' under which the Copper River ran in force past a glacier on the far east side about a thousand yards to the north.

The river continuously saws grooves into the glacier's pock-marked cliff face, hundreds of feet high. Intermittently, from the undercut action, gravity and critical surface pressures, icebergs of all sizes and shapes slog off with shearing cracks and spectacular splashes.

They took weapons and plenty of booze and spent most of the day drinking and raising a hell of a lot of racket, firing into cracks in the glacier's face attempting to help it calve into the river.

A few unpredictable times they were rewarded in this effort. Mountains of ice having the mass of several skyscrapers popped thunderously from the cleaved and damaged face to slowly slide into the swift current. This consequence generated tsunami waves. The high pitched ringing sound, like a zillion metal locusts, froze them still with its enveloping intensity, and for the briefest of instants they could see the river itself stop, then recoil to pile up at the base of the glacier revealing half the river's muddy bottom. After a pause, the spring-loaded forces of compression would release the water, playing out Newton's law of action- reaction, to send an awesomely powerful lateral wave cascading towards where they stood on the opposite bank. It was never enough to reach them, but it seemed like it might; and it easily would have had it not been for the equally powerful Copper running at cross purposes. Each occurrence spawned the same paralyzing impact and the unmistakable impression of being in the presence of powers mythological, forces that gave birth to beliefs in spirits at the dawn of Man. Demandingly, it drew them inextricably into its world in the immediate present.

They imagined these extravaganzas to be caused by their expert marksmanship, they were diamond cutters, to be sure; but, if the truth be known, the din of crazies in the wild was most likely the perpetrating catalyst.

Towards the end of the day, they drove onto the bridge stopping near the center, the road went only a half mile or so farther. From that height, a good hundred feet, they threw large rocks trying to hit fast traveling icebergs carried by the river below.

These were mindless games, and a way to spend time and release tension, but what mainly drew him to these pastimes was the bizarre, alien, primitive surroundings where he could forget the world of society, and his own world as well. He was living outside the lines; Nature, at least, had not disowned him.

Returning to town, the boarder was scrunched between the other two outcasts sharing the remains of a bottle of Turkey in the front seat of a borrowed pick-up truck doing seventy on the gravel road. There were no laws out here, no police, just brown bears and birds. The wetlands of the Copper River Delta extend sixty or so miles east to west where it meets the Pacific. A vast assortment of birds called it home; trumpeter swans shared space with geese and ducks of all species; and beavers were in plentiful evidence at the many jagged streams, capillaries of the Earth, tendrils of the Copper, zig-zagging through the lush landscape, beaver homesteads giving a sense of rough-edged order and directed intelligence in an otherwise haphazard world.

They spotted a full rack moose heading in the same direction as they, trotting on the roadway, and gave chase. The moose displayed amazing speed, rhythmic and not at all ungainly, for a half mile or so before adroitly slicing into the frozen brush to the left, dark chocolate brown against a light dusting of hard snow and sandy brown, wispy marsh grass.

At this time of year you can walk on the ice-hardened marsh; the sea meets it at the sand flats several miles away to the south; to the north, the ice-topped Eyak branch of the Chugach Mountain Range runs almost parallel to the road. Between the Range and the road are miles of alder, salmon-berry bushes and dense scrub growth criss-crossed with jungle roads one-car wide; ideal for exploratory excursions by those who's tastes run to the rugged and offbeat.

Ron S. was still going off about the moose chase a mile after the fact, repeating the chorus line one last time, you could tell. He was losing interest and he just figured he'd said it. Meticulously, he stuffed one of his deerhorn pipes while finishing up his rant.

"Lighten up, Ron. He was only doin' thirty. There were no moose actually hurt in the filming of this movie. It wasn't Bullwinkle, Ron, your bud; if it was, I'd a run 'im down. He's screwing up Rocky's career, holding 'im back. It's no good, Ron, Rocky's gotta reach out for stardom, be his own squirrel, make something of himself. That fucking moose, he doesn't get it; he's gotta step out of Rocky's way. be a real moose about it."

"Screw you, Brucey. That fuckin' squirrel oughta be shot, skinned and hung out to dry. He'd still be stacking nuts for a livin' if it hadn't been for Bullwinkle gettin' 'im a T.V. contract," Ron said, sounding quite serious and knowledgeable, in fact.

"Listen, Ron, Rocky woulda made it on his own; the cream always rises to the top. Bullwinkle's just another talking moose; but Rocky, he can fly, he's got personality, he's got more personality than you do, Ron."

"At least I HAVE a personality. I don't know why you're takin' Rocky's side, you got a lot more in common with Bullwinkle. You even sound like 'im, the same nose, you look the same. Only major difference is, he's got brains."

"You're talkin' to me about brains and you think Bullwinkle really exists. He's a cartoon, Ron, he's just a fuckin' cartoon, make-believe, like you."

"What about Rocky?"

"He's real, Ron. They made a cartoon character out of a real squirrel, Ron, a real talkin' squirrel. Rocky was on the Tonight show. Don't you shamans talk to squirrels,..., and trees and chunks o' wood, and...."

"Telepathy, telepathic communications, we conviverate, I sense their thoughts and feelings. I can do that with all flora and fauna,..., exceptin' YOU."

The man in the middle had been listening, drinking it in. He was soaring on thermals without a net. The personal character and thespian abilities of two of our finer cultural icons, pretenders to the throne, were under severe scrutiny by two soothsayers spouting sooth. The passionate state of mind of righteous true-believers salted the cab with acrid enthusiasm. They were in the zone; he leaned into it.

"Let me hold that bottle for ya,' Bruce," he said helpfully, relieving the driver of the bourbon's burden. "Some day this whole stretch of road will be houses and stores, from the bridge all the way to the airport. There'll be desalinization and sewage plants, generator farms, radio stations, motels, hotels, bed and breakfast places, campgrounds, a golf course and more bars. The road will be punched through all the way to Tok; and people like us will be run out. That's the way of society.

"First the frontier types come into an area, like in the 20's and 30's. Then, when things start to settle in, when a town is born with rules and regulations, ordinances, those folks move on, replaced by a rough but structure-needing crowd. They police themselves, I mean, the community is self-policing. Then, when things get really civilized, smoother and the wild is subdued and beaten back, a much softer, totally-dependent-on- structure crowd moves in. The rough-edged people intimidate them and violate their sense of civil manners, so the new folks hire police because they don't know how to or are afraid to step up to do their own policing; it's not in them to do.

"The rougher types get pushed out or move on, some refuse to leave and become pariahs in the very town they helped civilize. They find it harder to do business, become resentful, angry and bitter, and eventually blow somebody away. Progress."

"Maybe we'll be dead by then; I hope so, there's not many more places left to go. These people think they can own the Earth. That's the main problem with their mind-sets. The Earth is something that's outside of their reality. They move to an area because of the way it is but they bring their heads with them and change it to fit the ways that are familiar to them. How stupid; they miss the whole fucking point of why they moved there in the first place.

"We're passing through, is all. I just wish Brucey woulda passed another way," Ron said evenly, gazing intently through the windshield.

"All you can own is yourself, Ron," Bruce said, easily shifting into that overdone solemnity familiar to drunks; it hovered on the edge of acceptance. With Bruce, you could never tell; he had no respect for thought as representing anything beyond itself.

The truck's heater blasted directly at the middle man's feet; there was no music, all they had was the truck's AM radio, and they were out of range. The only sounds were the ancient engine and the tires clawing over the gravel surface, spitting stones in all directions, ricocheting off the bottom of the truck. The truck had its own music, rhythmically orchestrating its creaks and squeaks, telling its story. This symphony was not unlike that of an old wooden boat slithering through a strong sea. They were undulating down the road, a metal-scaled beast with a heart of stone.

The sun was closing shop for the day, ovalling sideways on the horizon. A haze of thin cloud cover radiated rose petal pink through the spectrum to vermilion. Their long sunny spell was about to come to a screeching halt, it seemed. Driving almost directly into its southern set, the approaching woods marking the edge of the airport's property were cast in running shadows stretching across the roadway, trapped in the truck's dim headlights.

He was enjoying the ambience, especially the ravings of the headcases on either side of him. He was in the middle of a heated debate on the floor of the United Nations; the fate of the world hung in the balance.

He deadpanned, "Bugs Bunny is the only true American, him and Daffy Duck. I saw a movie with both of them in it once; man, that was cool, a classic. Daffy really got into his character. Bugs, he's more of a method actor. I think Daffy actually carried Bugs, just by pure enthusiasm. However, Bugs is more refined, polished. I mean,..., he's like David Niven or Cary Grant. I mean, what does he do for a living? Nothing. Long white candles burning all the time, plenty of carrots to eat, always lazin' around, and he seems so well traveled, you know; he's got this uptown kind o' attitude, this pinache."

"Fuck Bugs Bunny and his fucking pinache. What's up Doc? I'd like to see that pig, what's his name? I'd like to see that pig blow his ass away and hang 'im out to dry. He pisses me off, that arrogant prick. He's no good, I tell ya,' no fucking good. Bruce probably saw him on the Tonight show during one of his psychotic breakouts. Huh, Daffy."

Bruce took a pull on the bottle, passed it to the middle man, and began to slowly swerve the truck from one side of the gravel road to the other, putting the wheels right on the edge of the shoulders, stones scattering; four foot deep gullies lined both sides. He always leaned forward when driving, back off the seat, huge hands resting together at the top of the steering wheel. The road was three cars wide at this stretch.

He screamed, "Rabbits, everywhere, all over the road, thousands, millions, leaping, running, jumping, leaping, jumping, Ahhhhhhhhh!"

Ron continued, unabashed, addressing the man in the middle, "I'm jumping too, I've had it with this asshole." With that, he opened his door. As Bruce veered left an empty beer bottle rolled across the cluttered floor to fall to a shattering death on the road. Ron was leaning way out, supporting his weight by the loose fitting handle, his left hand rested on his lap tightly clutched the pipe as though to counterbalance.

Bruce straightened the wheels to drive down the center, doing sixty. "Get your ass in here," he yelled, "You're not gettin' away with that pot."

Ron slammed the door shut, grumbled something into his chin about turning Bruce in for littering, and coolly lit the pipe. He took a hit, then passed it to Bruce.

They drove on quietly, taking in the scenery, passing the pipe around. The sun had just about pulled the lid over. Thoughts meandered and coiled, intertwined and fanned out through the tight cab like ridges on moving sand dunes, forming and dissolving away; none demanding attention.

Some, however, showed an affinity for the middle man; so he inspected their contents. Images flew out like blackbirds from King Cole's pie; he was awash with textures and colors, some solid, others, ephemeral and wistful like a whirligig on a warm fall day.

His life as a college teacher, a life that now seemed to belong to someone else entirely; a clean shaven hob-nobber in three piece suits, cufflinks and weightless shoes; a patron of museums and art exhibits; an active player on the scene; a big city dude; all far behind him now.

Had he escaped or just dropped out? Was all this, the life he was living now, merely an interlude, a learning sabbatical, a break in continuity? Would he resurface one day to return to that fabricated world where he felt guilty about being himself, too intense for his own good?

Was the sophistication he had cultivated merely a tool, a medium of commerce and communications, an art form, through and by which people can achieve their ends and enhance their capacity to appreciate; or, is it something that actually permeates our being, becoming an insuperable part of us, deep down to the marrow of our identities? What do we do when we realize that our sense of self is based on a fortified set of abstractions, on make-believe codes of conduct and ideas perceived to be real? Are the challenges poor compensation for the madness of painful self-consciousness and the nervous energy of rush-hour traffic?

Was he hiding out, running from pretensions and phony civility, mean selfishness masked by smiling faces? Was that the survival strategy he had failed to take to heart? Was that why he had turned out to be such a lousy capitalist? Did he no longer desire to do battle with injustice and lies, to express his truth in the midst of paranoia and cynicism? Would his absence from the fray be missed? Did anybody care?

Ron began to twang a Joplin tune in his loud raspy voice; edited, of course, he couldn't or maybe wasn't able to do anything straight. "Oh Lord, won't you buy me, a big-titted gal; my friends all drive coke whores, I don't need no cow; worked HARRRDLY all my life time, be damned if I'll bow; Oh Lord, won't ya' buy me, a biggg-tit-tid-galll." He began again, this time the other two joined in. Bruce drove faster.

After a few rough renditions with each singing his own version, Bruce stilled the air with his booming voice, "Let's stop at the Powder House, see what's special, I could eat a moose,..., or a rabbit. Maybe they got squirrel soup today. Rocky the Flying Squirrel soup, three bucks a bowl. What a dill!"

They all laughed the laughter of collaborators realizing they were alive. Squeezed together, they raced headlong into the embracing darkness.