I really didn't want to. I missed Sam and she missed me and when I talked to her on the phone from the A-frame in New Hampshire she let me know it, and anyway I figured it was time to be heading home. But I really didn't want to. Except for Sam, I've been asking myself what the hell I've got to go back to? A little cabin wouldn't be worth $30,000 on the market; an old truck; a family I don't even want to talk to. What's to stay there for? Now I'm back, I still feel that way, like there's no point to this.

Sam drug me over to Amos Pepperell's farm so I could see what the fuss was about. I've been there before. There's not much to it. He's got a house been there since God was a boy that's too big for him now he lives alone and he only bothers to open the kitchen, the living room, and one of the bedrooms. Come winter he closes off the bedroom so he doesn't have to heat it and sleeps on the couch in the living room next to the wood stove. He's got an electric pump in his well and plumbing and all that but the house is so old that next to the sink there's the original pump, the kind with a handle you have to push up and down until water comes out the spout. Still works, too. Damndest thing to have that handle on one side and a faucet on the other. I asked him why he didn't take it out. He said, "You never know." That's Amos. Them old guys, maybe it was living through the Depression but they're always prepared for anything. If Judgment Day came tomorrow, Amos would say, "Told ya," and you'd see that last night he'd laid out his blue suit to be taken up to Heaven in.

He took us down the slope to the river to show us where the road was going to go and I could see where it must of made sense to the engineers. The river bends out in a giant upside-down U to go around Bear Mountain, a bend that the road has to follow. The plans had them crossing the river back where it was narrow and then up ahead when it narrowed again so running it across Amos' slope would cut maybe ten miles off the trip like it was now, and straighten out that whole run.

Trouble was, like Sam said, it's a north slope and the sun doesn't get to it much in the winter so the snow and ice build up and take a long time to thaw come spring. Take all those trees out of there and all that water would just run off into the river, which could cause all kinds of problems downstream, but that wasn't what was worrying Sam.

"There's a major aquifer under here," she said, stomping her foot. "All that shit roads bring with them--specially road salt--will sink into the ground and wind up in the aquifer. People would be drinking poison."

To be honest, I thought she was going overboard there some. It didn't seem to me like this little patch could do all that. Of course, it wasn't just Amos' farm--they were going to do the same thing along a 20-mile stretch. Still, there's highways all over the place, have been for years so they must know how to deal with this since I ain't never heard of nobody dying from road salt in their water, and anyway the traffic ain't that heavy around here. It wasn't like we were down south of Augusta where they get commuters to Portland and Boston and lots of trucks and have traffic jams.

"We will," Sam said. "That's what this is about, dingo. They want the road so they can bring in more people. It's called urban sprawl. Remember when Augusta was this sleepy little city and Portland was the biggest thing around? Well, it's been creeping up the coast for twenty years and now Portland is just a suburb of Boston and Augusta's a suburb of Portland and pretty soon we'll be in the middle of a thousand-mile-long city. There'll be housing developments popping up all over the place and strip malls and before you know it, traffic jams every weekend instead of just in the summer. You wanna live like that?"

So that's what this was all about for her. She wasn't so worried about the water as she was about having to live next door to a Wal-Mart in five or ten years. As a matter of fact, I didn't blame her. As a matter of fact, no, I didn't want to live like that. Wilbur's already too big for me but I got a different solution.

"We could move," I said that night.

"What d'you mean, move?"

"I mean go away. Up north where you can still breathe. Canada maybe."

"Canada?" She looked like I'd said we ought to move to the moon. "What'd we wanna go to Canada for?"

"Get away from all this...urban sprawl you're talking about."

She got herself planted and I got ready for a blow. "You think we should run away."

"No, we could walk--" She scowled. I always know I'm in trouble with her when I can't make her laugh. "Look, there's nothing so wicked weird about it. People do it all the time--"

"Yeah," she said, "that's how the sprawl happens. It gets too crowded where they're at so they spread out. They eat up land, they eat up resources, and then they move on to the next patch and do the same thing. That's how cancer works, too." She leaned in. "I live here, I've lived here all my life. I like it the way it is. Right now the town can control how fast it grows. Once this road comes through and brings all these new people up here, it will lose control and in ten years my home will be gone. Evereything I know will be gone. Land values will go up and most of us who live here now won't be able to pay the taxes on our own damn places and we'll have to sell them and move somewhere's else because the new folks will be offering more than we can afford to refuse. Get it? I don't wanna be kicked out of my own home. It's happening all over but I'm not gonna let it happen here. I'm not moving."

And that, like they say, was that.

I used to have to write compositions called that in school and I never knew what to say. But I know what you're going to say, you're going to say what Sam said. "Vacation? Vacation from what? You haven't worked in almost a year." Well, the answer is kind of hard to explain, and I know it don't make much sense, but a vacation from me, a vacation from Wilbur, and, I guess, too, a vacation from goddam civilization.

I went camping. At least, that's where I've been most of the time. I got some nice letters from people seemed to be worried about me, which I wasn't expecting, and a couple actually said "Don't quit", and that was nice, too. I suppose I should have said something but it all happened so fast I kind of forgot about this for awhile. Where should I start?

So Amos come over that night all duded up in his Sunday suit, which was a sight let me tell you. Amos Pepperell in a blue suit and a black tie looks like he's getting ready to crawl into his own casket. He didn't seem surprised to see me and didn't pay much attention to me neither, and the two of them went at it for awhile and Sam got all het up, steam coming out of her ears practically. They can't do that and what about all the road salt will get washed into the river in the spring and that slope is a watershed and we can't let them get away with this and it was pretty damn obvious what was going to be happening between her and me the next few months and that was not much of anything. I seen her go through this before and I know what it means is meetings and hours of work on her computer and then more meetings and going to everybody's house to tell them what's going on and then more meetings and phone calls and meetings and rallies and meetings. Now I know what she was doing all that time I guess I'm proud of her, but that's a different thing from being happy I don't ever see her while it's going on.

So when Steve come over that Sunday and said he had a fight with his old lady and he was heading out to his cabin on Eagle Lake for a couple weeks and did I want to come along, I said, "Damn straight" and I packed, just like that. Eagle Lake is up in the Allagash country, above Caribou, up by Edmundston, and it's so far out in the middle of nowheres it makes Wilbur look like Portland. Me and Steve used to go up there all the time but since he got hooked up and so did I, I guess, we didn't. It must be five, maybe six years since we were up there, and as soon as he asked me I knew that's what I wanted to do.

This is the part that's hard to explain. I mean, Wilbur's only got, what, maybe 6, 700 people in it? Not many. The sticks you'd probably call it. So what did I need to run away from? That's what Sam wanted to know when I told her I was going. I guess she thought it was her because she was getting all caught up in this thing with Amos but it wasn't that, least I don't think it was. It was something I've been feeling for awhile, ever since that business on the 4th of July. I've been restless kind of, itchy, like I should be going somewhere only I didn't know where. Some days I felt like i couldn't breathe, I was so sick of everybody and how they all knew my business--better than I did some of them, like Pete knew about what Sam had been doing--and I knew theirs, come to that, a lot of it shit I didn't really want to know and wished I didn't. When you've lived in the same small place all your life, there's one side of it that it's comfortable, like some old chair that knows your body better than you do and gives in all the right places, but then there's another side that it's boring as hell. You do the same things every day, see the same people, say the same damn stupid things--"Warm this week, ain't it?" "Yuh, warm enough. Hope it don't get too humid, that's worse than the heat." "See old Pie Miller's scarecrow he's got this year?" "Yuh, dressed him up like a banker, he's even got a briefcase." "Damn fool. Funny, though." "Yuh."--wear the same clothes, go to the same places. Sometimes you just need a change.

And there was something else, too. I grew up in these woods and I can remember when there was moose all over the place and the bears came by all the time. I used to know where every little spring come out of the ground that made every crick in town and where every squirrel nest was and every beaver dam and badger den and the valley you went to if you wanted to see eagles and which streams had otter and which orchards the deer liked to eat the apples out of. I used to go out in the woods and feel like I was the only living human on the face of the earth for a thousand miles in any direction, and even though I knew it wasn't true, it felt like that, you know? I used to park my little pup tent on some bare patch under a pine tree and not care if it got all sticky because it smelled good that way. At night I'd lay on my sleeping bag and look up at the stars and there were so many you couldn't count them. I don't remember ever hearing a truck trying to climb a hill or a plane or the sound of a highway or anything at all that was man-made, just birds and crickets and frogs and probably a raccoon nosing around in the scrub brush to see if maybe you threw something away that was good to eat.

Wilbur may not be so big to you but it's twice as big as it was when I was growing up and there's new houses stuck every which way so no matter where you go around here now there's one no further than a couple hundred yards away. Camp out nights now and you hear trucks and the highway, planes and somebody's tv playing real loud. Now, I got nothing against any of those things--they're good for what they are and they make life some bearable where it might not be--as long as you can get away from them, as long as you can get to a place once in a while that ain't all poisoned by noise and electric lights and chatter and junk and you can remind yourself how people are supposed to live.

Anyhow, that's what I felt like. I needed to get out and I went. That's all there was to it. Sorry if I worried you but sometimes you just got to get the hell out of town when the chance comes.

Amos wanted Professor Pete to help him figure out a way to beat the road but Pete, he didn't look too happy. "I was a history teacher," he said, "not political science. The one you need to talk to is Sam."

"Sam who?" I said.

"Sam," he said, staring at me. "You know. Sam. Your Sam."

"My Sam?"

"Sam LaFrenese. Isn't she your girlfriend?"

I must have looked as stupid as I felt. It wasn't that I didn't know who he was talking about, it was that I never thought of her as somebody a professor would think knew more than him. About anything. "Why Sam?" I said.

"You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"Sam's the one who stopped the tunnel the state was going to build through Bear Mountain."

"She did?" This was news to me.

He looked at me real funny. "Last year. You didn't know about that?"

"She was goin to a lot of meetin's, that's all I knew. Is that what they was about?"

"And she was on the committee that wrote the law that created the new solid waste district in Waldo County--"

"What?" Amos said because Pete had let his voice drop a little.

"The trash district," Pete yelled. "She wrote the law that made it."

"Sam?" I said. "My Sam?" I couldn't get over it. "My Sam did all that?"

"You two ought to talk once in while," Pete said, and shook his head at me all sad like somebody does when they see you messing up and there ain't nothing they can do about it. I kind of figured he was right, so when I left his place it was after 5 so I figured Sam would be home and I went over her place.

Sam's got this little cabin about half the size of mine, not that mine is anything to brag about. It ain't hardly bigger than your living room, probably, but she's got a little stove and sink in one corner that don't take up too much room and a john sort of tacked on to the other corner and a loft where she sleeps. She built it herself and it looks like it but she did a lot better job than Pete--at least it's tight in the winter and the wind don't whistle through it. She's got a big square woodstove right in the middle and just one little log will keep that sucker warm as toast all night as long as it ain't too far below freezing outside. And the walls is straight.

She just got home from work and hadn't even got changed yet when I walked in. She was all surprised, she wasn't expecting me, did I want some supper, all that. I said, "So you wrote that trash law?" and she said "What?" and I said, "That law that made up the county trash district, you wrote it?" and she said, "I was on the committee that wrote it, yeah. Why?" and I said, "How come you never told me that?" After Cyn, I guess I wasn't in too much of a mood to put up with another woman that meant something to me keeping secrets. She said, "I told you," and I said, "Like hell you did," and I was all set to get let her have it but then she said, "Sure I did, you remember, a couple years ago when I was working for Ginny, and you said you figured you'd just go on dumping your trash in the woods behind your cabin like you always have and I said you wouldn't be able to do that any more, you might go to jail, and you said what's this goddam state coming to. Remember?" And I did. I remembered saying that but I didn't remember her telling me she wrote that damn law, but I suppose she must have if she says she did. Sam don't lie about stuff like that. "Something wrong?" she says.

Well, I spent so much time getting myself worked up over this secret I thought she had that I guess I just wasn't willing to let go, so I was still feeling pretty grumpy and looking for something to be grumpy about, so I said, "Seems I'm the last one in town to know you're a expert on gettin the state to do what you want," and I swear to God she blushed. Her face got red as a July beet and she kind of looked down at the floor and she said, "Oh, I'm not an expert, I just helped out," and I said, "Yeah, well, that's not what Professor Pete says. He says you know more about it than he does."

"Really?" she said with a big smile, "Pete said that?"

And right then it dawned on me she really didn't know she was a expert. She didn't think of it that way, she just thought of it as something she'd been doing to help out, and I don't know what it was, was it the smile or the way she never even thought of taking credit for it or what it was, but all of a sudden I just wanted to scoop that woman up in my arms and dance around with her. So I did.

You know, you can spend a lot of time with somebody for a long while, years maybe, and if you don't pay attention you can find out you didn't really know them at all. There she'd been doing all that and I didn't know nothing about it because she was too shy to tell me and I was too all-fired selfish to ask. Sometimes life is a real kick in the ass, you know?

Well, it sure has been interesting around here the last week or so. I guess I should start with last Thursday, or maybe it was Friday, you know, when you don't work for a living no more, you kind of lose track of time because all the days start to look the same. You know--you do the same thing Friday that you did Saturday that you did last Wednesday that you'll do tomorrow and pretty soon there's nothing left to tell them apart. I never thought that about not working, that it would do that. I used to hear old retired guys complain about it but it never made no sense to me before. It always seemed like heaven to me to have no job you had to go to, no boss yelling at you to worker harder or faster, no feeling half-dead when you went home so tired you couldn't hardly lift your beer, and it's true that it's really nice not to have to worry about all that shit and have some energy left for when your girl comes over, but it's got its bad side, too, and losing track of time is a biggie. The days just sort of float by and then the week is gone and it's Sunday again and you think, "Jeez, that was quick." And then there's the days that never seem to end at all, they just go on and on and every one of them is just like the one before and the one after and you think, "Goddam, when is this gonna be over?" So I guess I get where they were coming from now that I'm sort of temporarily semi-retired for a while. You do get tired of it after a few weeks and you wish something would just, like, happen, you know? Break the monotony.

So I got my wish. Me and Professor Pete was out on the deck drinking beers, as per usual, when Amos Pepperell come storming up in his big old Ford pickup that sounds like a cement mixer because it's got a bent rod that Amos won't fix so long as the truck is still running. "When she quits," he says, "that'll be soon enough." Maybe he's got a point. That damn truck's been like that for more than two years now and it ain't broke down yet, though it does use one hell of a lot of oil. Some days is worse than others and when it's bad Amos comes whacketting down the road so loud you can hear him when he's still the other side of the mountain and if you look up you'll see this huge, black, oily cloud of smoke hanging over the tress he just passed by like something evil this way comes (I just read that. It's by this guy, Ray Bradbury, who's pretty good but I think I liked the title better than I liked the story, although he's got this one story, "Rain", which is scary as hell--at least, I think it was his story. I been reading so many sometimes I get confused as to who exactly wrote what or where I seen it or what book it's in, and then when I try to find it I don't even know where to start. Anyway, "Rain" is about nothing except what it would be like if we poisoned the earth so bad it all got into the water and turned the rain poison, too. In his story nobody ever walked in the rain because if you actually let some get on your skin it would kill you, so people stayed out of the rain and when they had to go out they wore these space-suit things to protect themselves. I think the scariest thing about it was thinking about how easy it would be to turn something as normal as rain into something deadly as a water moccasin so you couldn't just go out in it, you had to plan to go out in it and wear special clothes and all. It would be a whole different world, you know? Jesus, are we actually doing that? I think of all the smokestacks I seen, specially down toward Portland and then going into Boston and all that crap coming out of them, and that's just one little chunk of a real big country. We must have millions of those things. Sam was telling me about how Canada is suing us on account of what the poison we make down here did to their trees up there, and I know what she means. I went up on the Allagash a couple summers ago hunting and there was big stretches of the trees practically dead and when I asked somebody, was it blight or what? they said it was acid rain that was killing them. That acid gets into the air from power plants and then it mixes up with the clouds and when it rains the acid comes down with it and kills the trees, just like in the story except it ain't got to the point where it's killing people yet. I guess that's the only difference. That's what really scared me about that story--what he was talking about, it could really happen. It's not just something a writer made up.

Like I know if Steven King writes about huge spiders that can read what you're thinking and even put pictures in your head to make you think what it wants, that's kind of fun and spooky but it ain't real. I know I ain't ever going to be walking down the road to my cabin some night and run into one. But this Bradbury guy is different. Oh, maybe it won't happen now but it could happen ten years from now, or twenty, and when I finally get retired myself it'll turn out I can't play golf after all because the rain is all poisoned and you can't go out, and I don't know what any retired guy would do if they can't play golf. I was talking to Burt Titwell a while back and he was telling me that's what you have to do when you retire, you have to play golf, otherwise nobody will talk to you because they think you're stuck up and because if they can't talk to you about the golf game that day then they ain't got nothing to talk to you about at all. I just hope you don't have to wear those damn plaid pants when you do it. I'll wear my jeans but I wouldn't be caught dead wearing them ugly things. There's one pair I seen Ed Pickerel wearing when he was going to the country club down to Presque Isle that was exactly the same color as puke, and the rest I seen ain't much better. We don't have a golf course in Wilbur, and a good thing, too. I don't think I could stand going out every day all summer long knowing I could come around any old corner and have to deal with Ed Pickerel's pants right there in front of me. I seen them once and that was plenty. You couldn't put a golf course on these steep hills, anyway. Every time you hit the ball up the hill, it'd just roll right back down and you'd have to hit it again. A golf course in Wilbur would be terrible frustrating, I would think, although you wouldn't have to waste a lot of money building 18 tricky holes. One would be enough to keep everybody pretty busy.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Amos. But actually all that about the acid rain sort of fits because what old Amos was so fired up about was he just got this notice from the state that they're going to take his slope and put a highway on it. He said, "All them cars and trucks'll kill that river! And the salt in wintertime? They can't do that."

I said, "I suppose them taking your slope don't have nothing to do with this, you're just worried about the river."

And he look at me sharp and he said, "It sure as hell don't help. My slope, that's watershed land."

Which I took to mean he wasn't any too thrilled about losing his slope and he was getting his arguments ready. Amos is a sly old fox and he's had a run-in or two with the state before and most of the time he's won, but this was a highway, not some tax bill he could bull his way out of. "Amos," I said, "this is too big. You can't fight city hall on something this big."

"Not by myself, I can't," he says. "That's why I come to see Pete." And when he said that I saw Pete go white as a ghost. I figure he knew where this was going to and he'd rather be back facing the bear. I didn't blame him.

I munched around over to Pete's again today but even though the nights have cooled off, the days are just as hot, so we didn't do nothing today, either, just sat around on the deck and drank beer and talked. I asked him about that "pig-sticking" thing because it was on my mind and he said--let me see if I can get this straight--that it comes from Afghanistan by way of India. See, the Afghans were terrific riders and fierce fighters and they sort of put them both into this game where they'd chase a wild pig on horseback and the first one to stick him with his lance won the game. He said their pigs weren't nothing like the ones we get bacon off of but these huge, nasty things with big sharp tusks and a lousy attitude that would go after a tiger if they had to, and maybe win. The horses would get gored sometimes, and sometimes the riders would get killed. "This was no game for small boys," he said. Then the Indian Rajahs (he made me look up all these words and he dug out his books of maps and showed me where everything was, so if it sounds like I got smart all of a sudden, I didn't, I'm just telling you what he told me), they thought the game was wicked cool and they brought it back to India and then the British came and they saw the Rajahs doing it and they called it "pig-sticking". India's practically--well, not practically, it is right next door to Afghanistan, which he said the British invaded right after they invaded India, only in Afghanistan they got their asses whupped bad--the Afghan tribes, not even a real army, wiped out a whole British army (they had more than one I guess, at least Pete talked like they did; they called this one the Elephant Army, or something like that) when it tried to retreat from Kabul along the Khyber Pass. It was a massacre, Pete said. There was pictures of the mountains in the books and they looked mean, all cliffs and canyons and sharp rocks and hardly any trees or grass, they make the Rockies look like little hills you might take a stroll up one Sunday afternoon, and I started thinking--We got soldiers there? In the middle of that?

Pete says, "Where'd you think they were?" and I said I didn't know but I didn't think it looked like that. No wonder they can't find that Binladden guy. Christ, it would take three armies to find him up there, and they better know the territory or they're going to get lost, too. When I was in the Army we went on maneuvers in the mountains once, in Kentucky. We didn't exactly get lost but we didn't exactly always know where we was, either, and those mountains wasn't half as bad as the ones in the books. Hell, you could lose a aircraft carrier up there.

Anyway, back to the pig-sticking. I asked him what about the sweat and he said he thought it was because when the Afghans got finished sticking all their lances in the boar, it was so covered with blood it looked like it was sweating the stuff right through its skin. I think that one's pretty far-fetched, and I said maybe they didn't really come from the same place but was two sayings that got sort of bunched up together, which might explain why it didn't make no sense, but he looked at me funny so I guess I was way off base there. Then when I checked in here I see Tamara left a comment, and she says--well, hell, why don't I let you read it for yourself?

I'm not sure about this but I think the phrase,"sweating like a stuck pig", may be refuring to when you take a whole pig and "stick" it on a spit to cook it over a open fire. (I think they actually used to use sharpened sticks) As it heats up it starts to sizzle or "sweat". Although I've heard this same saying many times living in Alabama, where it gets real hot, and is humid most of the time, I never really thought about the meaning until today. Then it just came to me.

Now that makes a lot more sense to me than Pete's long history story, and cooking was something Ma would have known about for sure, so I think Tamara's story is better but Pete's sure was interesting. I learned a lot this afternoon from that one stupid little question, even if the answer was wrong. Them Afghans sound like tough cookies, and I hope we ain't bit off more than we can chew over there (which is another of Ma's sayings but I know what that one means).

I came home and then Sam came by and I told her all about the Afghans and the pig-sticking and the mountains and everything and she looked at me at first like I was something from outer space because she ain't never heard me talk about stuff like that before, and so then I said I wanted to take a history course in the fall because I never knew there was such wicked cool stuff in it and her eyes got even bigger so I said I was thinking of maybe being a history teacher someday, and she just about fell on the floor. She dropped into a chair and she stared at me like she was wondering was I maybe been replaced by my evil twin like on one of her soaps, and I tried to keep a straight face but I could only do it so long and when I finally laughed at the way she was looking at me, she rose up and flung the seat cushion at my head, which I was just a little late ducking out of the way of.

But you know, I was part-way serious. I mean, I took history in high school--I had to, they made me, they made everybody take it--but it was all about kings and wars and who traded what with who and stuff and it was boring as hell. Now if some teacher in one of them classes had told me about the Afghans riding around sticking pigs with their lances, I would have paid attention. It got me thinking, and I wonder if there ain't a lot more cool shit like that in history that they never told us about in high school, and if there is, maybe I'll take a history course after all. Worst that can happen is it'll be the same dumb crap I had before, and who knows, maybe I'll get it this time. Anyway, it would make Sam look at me like I was maybe worth something, you know, mentally. She says I'm a nice guy and kind to animals and good to her and all that junk but she ain't never had much respect for my smarts, not that I can blame her. I never thought I was smart either, but I'm what Ma used to say was the curious type, I like to know what's going on, and anyway, how smart do you have to be to read about guys on horses sticking wild boars with their spears for fun? That's the kind of history I could get behind, and I sure would like to surprise Sam with something she don't expect. And not like i did today.

See, after I picked up the cushion, she says, "So now you finished screwin around, tell me the important stuff. What did Professor Pete say about your writing?" and damn if it didn't dawn on my thick head that I clean forgot to ask him about it.

Man, has it been hot! Even up here on the mountain where it's usually cool as a Sadie Hawkins kiss we been boiling. You have to understand, we don't get this kind of humidity up here but once every ten years or so and we ain't used to it. Everybody's walking around soaked and snappy, and all anybody can talk about is, "When'll it break? When'll it break?" Even the nights have been so heavy you couldn't hardly take a breath. No wind, not even a breeze, and just as hot under the trees as out in the sun, at least that's how it felt. No wonder Texans and Floridans are crazy--they have to put up with this shit all the time! It just fries your brain, and it turns your muscles all limp like spaghetti. I ain't been able to sleep at all til last night when it finally got cool after the sun went down and a breeze come down from Canada--the only time I can remember being happy about Canadian wind, which usually it comes dead in the middle of winter and as if it ain't cold enough, freezes icicles on top of the icicles you already got and bites right through your winter coat like Callie's doberman that time I didn't know he was out. Amos always used to complain that you never got a cold Canada wind when you wanted one, in a heat spell when it would do you some damn good, but we got one now, and Thank You, Montreal!

I tried to write once or twice but it was like an oven in the cabin, and I had both fans on me but it didn't help that much, I was still sweating like a stuck pig, which, what does that mean, anyway? Ma always used to say it and when I asked her what it meant, she'd say, "I hope you never have to find out," which was no help. I never seen a pig sweat, stuck or otherwise, and for that matter what does "sticking a pig" mean? Like, stick it with a knife? What would anybody want to do that for? Just piss the pig off is all it would do, and they can be mean little bastards. I ought to ask Pete, he knows a lot of stuff like that.  Anyway, I didn't write nothing because I couldn't think about nothing except how hot I was, and I was so tired from not being able to sleep that my eyes was all gunked up, what sweat does to them, I guess.

I went over to Pete's again this weekend, we're almost done over there, but to tell you the truth, neither one of us felt like doing anything at 98-goddam-wet-degrees-in-the-shade or whatever the hell it was, that he cracked a couple brews from his fridge and we just sat out on his deck (he's got a deck, which is solid as a rock because he didn't build it) under the tree in his adirondacks and watched the hawks circling over Mt. Katahdin and talked about anything that come to mind. He's one smart cookie, Professor Pete, got degrees up the ass and can tell you how King Ludwig of Bivarea banished his mistress for picking briars out of the riding master's britches if you're just dying to know about it. He's got books everywhere in his place, and he seems like he's actually read the damn things. All of them. Which would take me the rest of my life and I still wouldn't finish them. I noticed that Faulkner book I was telling you about, As I Lay Dying is the name of it, and when he found out I liked it, he loaned me a couple more he said he thought I'd like. One's by some woman with a weird name, like a man's, that he says is about a girl and a deaf-mute, and I said, "It ain't dirty, is it?" but he took to coughing right then and didn't answer me. The other one is another Faulkner, and it's called Light in August, but I think I may save that one for sometime in November because light in August is what we got way too much of at the moment, and I don't really need no more.

Pete's a good egg even if he is the worst damn carpenter I ever seen. He's real laid back and easy-going and really, for a teacher he don't talk all that much unless you ask him to. He thinks a lot and it makes him a little funny, you know? It's like he's always looking over your head at the mountain and then past the mountain at something you can't see. Every once in a while out of a clear blue sky he'll suddenly start talking about genetically-altered food or the Civil War or how Shakespear made up half the words he used in his plays, which I never knew he did that. Talking to Pete is like watching a variety show on tv--you never know where it's going to go next but chances are it won't have nothing at all to do with whatever was just on.

But what surprised the hell out of me was when he mentioned his girlfriend. I never had the slightest idea he had one, and I thought everybody knew everything about everybody else around here. She lives down in Portland, a good piece away from here, hour, hour and a half anyway, and he only sees her every couple weeks. I said, "That ain't much," and he said, "It's enough." I said, "Don't you want to live with her?", which was prying something awful, I know, only everything about the way he said it, he sounded sad. He just shook his head and then later, right in the middle of telling me about the French Revolution and how the nobles maybe deserved what they got since they'd been stealing the people blind for generations, he said, "She has a hard time with me. I write a lot and she complains I don't spend any time with her. It's better this way. When I'm with her, I'm really with her." So I asked him what he writes, and he said, "Stories," but when I asked if I could read a couple he said no, not just yet, maybe later on, so I told him I was a writer, too, at least I was taking this class, and he looked at me all shocked. "You?" he says, like somebody just told him they saw a flying porcupine doing wheelies over the barn. "Yeah," I said, "what's wrong with that?" "Nothing," he says, and he looks at me all different. "Good for you," he says. "What are you writing?" So I told him, and he's going to read some of it. He's got one of them little laptops smaller than a briefcase, and he said he was going to fire it up and read it later.

Maybe he's reading it now, you think? I hope he don't mind me talking about him. Nobody's got mad yet--nobody that knows about it, anyway--but there's a first time for everything.

OK, so Steve came over here and he showed me all this neat stuff about HTML and what a template is and how to put in pictures and links to other websites and colors and all kinds of stuff. We played with the computer all afternoon and most of tonight til he went home and I had a goddam blast! I mean, it was fun. We went all over the place and he showed me what other people's sites look like and we went to a lot of other blogs--Jesus, there's a bunch of them--and I actually had a good time doing all that. I put links to the sites of the rest of the class over there on the sidebar under the calendar. The print is kind of tiny. I tried to make it bigger but the formula Steve gave me didn't work. I must have done something wrong because he says it don't take much--one little comma or something that ain't where it's supposed to be and you won't get nothing. But I'll figure it out. See, HTML is what they call this computer language that makes everything show up on the screen (don't ask me how, that's as far as I got) and all's it is is formulas, like algebra in high school, only different. If you know the right formulas you can do anything--well, anyway you can do a lot. Like I can put pictures up now and links to other sites and change the color of the letters or how big they are. It's pretty neat. I'm practically a geek now! Though to tell you the truth, I ain't too sure at the moment why I'd want to do any of that stuff but I suppose it will come in handy one of these days for something.

Steve's a good guy to help me like this, but he's like that. I seen him once jump into the rapids on the Wilbur's--well, we call them rapids because there's this section with a whole bunch of rocks and it's about as fast as the Wilbur's ever gets, though it ain't but shoulder deep even in the middle. Anyway, he jumped right into the river because he seen a cat hung up on a rock out in the middle. Well, it was early spring, the water was pretty high and moving some even for that stretch and it was cold, I mean, not, you know, below freezing or anything, but cold just the same. I said, "The hell with it. Leave it there. It's a cat, for chrissakes--if it can get out there, it can get back." But Steve, he could see that was one wet, cold, scared cat and he couldn't just walk away from it so he jumps right in and wades out to the middle and the water's pushing him around so bad I finally took my jacket off and went downstream because I figured he was going to lose his footing and then I'd have to wade right in there after him before he went over the little falls downriver where the electric dam is, and then we'd both be freezing our asses off and the cat probably wouldn't be no better off than it was before Steve got all stupid over it.

But I give him credit, he kept his feet all the way out to where the cat was--a big black thing with a long-hair coat all matted down. That one was one damn wet cat. So he got there and he braced himself against another rock and he reached out to grab it and the damn thing was so scared it hissed and scratched him all over his face so I could see the blood way over on the shore, and then it took off, hopping from one rock to another until it could jump on shore on the opposite bank, then it took off into the woods, and Steve is just watching it go while he hangs onto this rock and the water's trying to push him down to the falls and blood is running all down his face. I don't bet he was too happy about it.

So he finally wades back to shore and climbs out all dripping wet and freezing and he scowls at me and he says, "Don't say nothing, not one goddam word, you hear me?" and I said, "I wasn't going to," and he says, "Yes, you were," all pissed off, but I really wasn't going to, you know, I was too busy trying not to laugh in his face. That wouldn't have been nice but he looked funny as hell and I had all I could do not to let her rip but i didn't, I stayed serious and didn't even crack a smile and I was proud of myself for doing it because even though it wasn't the brightest thing in the world he ever done, it came out of a good heart and you gotta like that about a guy.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the class. So they're over there on the sidebar and you can click them if you want and see what they're up to but I'll be honest with you, I looked and it ain't much. They only got a few entries apiece, and it seems like they been doing it about a month or so, most of them.

"A Frame of Dust" is some poetry Emily wrote. There's only a couple poems there, though, because she's real picky and she don't think the others are good enough. There's a couple I liked better that she wrote for the class, but she says they're "not ready." Oh, yeah, I should tell you her name ain't "Emily", it's Merilee, but we call her Emily because she likes it. She's got this thing about some female poet named Emily that Sam likes, too, Emily Dickerson. It sounds familiar, I think I must have read some of her stuff in high school but I don't remember any of it. In fact, the only poem I remember, and it ain't really a poem, only part of one, is from some English guy, or, no, he was Irish, that's right, an Irish guy, and he wrote "Don't go gently into that long night, rage, rage against the dying of the light." I knew what he meant right away. He was talking about dying, my teacher said, but I said he was talking about living and I still think that even though she gave me a D for being stubborn about it. I thought he was saying that you ought to live life as hard as you can, not just sit back and let it go by like it was somebody else's business, but Mrs LaJoie said it was about fighting for life in the "last few precious moments before death" and I said that was stupid because what good was it gonna to do you then? and she give me a D. I remember everything about that clear as anything because it was practically the only time in all the time I was in high school that I was really sure I was right. I could feel it, you know? Anyway, I thought I could.

But I was telling you about the class, wasn't I?

The other poet is Julie and her site is called "midnight blue" because she says she writes the stuff in the middle of the night when she can't sleep. There's a lot of nights I can't sleep, too, but I don't write poetry about it. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Ma used to say that, especially whenever I thought Cyn did something really dumb, and it just means different people like different things and there's nothing wrong with that. There's lots worse things than writing poetry, even if most of the time I can't think what they are. Hers is real weird, although sometimes I get it, or anyway I get a little bit of it. Like she's got this one poem on there that's about pirates coming to get her, or some shit, I didn't really like it until the last line where she says,

"i could not watch my death unfold
so casually mistaken."

I got that part, alright. Nobody wants to die over somebody's stupid mistake. And she's got another one she done for the class and there's part of it next to her picture on the website and my god is she a doll! I mean, she's really beautiful. But anyway, the part I mean is like, well, here it is.

"i came within a cloud and never left it.
it surrounds me now.
i see dimly, as if through the leaves of trees."

OK, so what the hell does she mean about coming in a cloud? That don't make no sense at all, nobody can be in a cloud. They can be in a fog and that's what she says she meant, sort of, but different. I just can't see it. But the last line there, I know just what she means, like when you're hunting and something moves in front of you but you can't tell what it is because the leaves are in the way. She means she feels that way about her life and brother, I know just how that feels. I always feel like that, more or less. But the one I like best is the one about the cats. I got that one all the way through.

Then there's Rachel's blog. She named it "Poor Girl" probably because that's how she thinks of herself. But I shouldn't get down on her, she's just a kid. And I gotta give her credit, she ain't really whining about her parents as bad as she does in the class, in fact she ain't even mentioned her mom yet, which surprised me some since it's really her mom that gets after her. Her mom and dad are divorced, and I guess she's living with him for the summer, I don't know. Anyway, she just talks about stuff mostly but there's one on there that's about, you know, sex and stuff, and my eyes bugged right out of my head on that one. Two, actually. One of them's how she feels about it and the other one's this sex-story that, well, I hate to tell her because I don't think she meant it that way, but it's more funny than sexy.

The last one is the guy I was telling you about that wanted us to be surprised. Well, I was. I don't get it, though some of it is funny. I think he meant it to be but I ain't sure. Anyway, he's got this thing about Egypt and he's pretending to be some god or something. His site looks really good though, he must know some stuff about this HTML business. Maybe I can get him to teach me some of it. His name is Jack and he comes from Texas, so maybe that explains how weird his site is. They're all wicked whacked down there--no offense, Tamara, I'm sure you're OK, but Kinky says, "There's a lot of wide open spaces in Texas. Between people's ears." And from what he writes and the Texans I've knew, I gotta say I think he's probably right.

Jesus it's late. I went from writing nothing to a goddam flood, didn't I? Maybe it was because I felt a lot better when I seen they didn't none of them do no more than me the last couple weeks, in fact I wrote more than all of them put together so I guess I ain't doing as bad as I thought I was. Anyway, you can go check them out, it'll make them happy and there ain't no harm in it. You might even like some of it, just because I don't. Don't go by me, I don't know nothing, that's been proved over and over.