Freedom Camp

I woke a little before dawn. I usually do. Before I came to the camp, I still woke up early, but not always before the sun rose. I have more trouble sleeping here.

Maybe it’s the lack of beds.

The advantage of turning in earlier is that you can find a spot a little further from the drafts at the doorway. The disadvantage is that you have to crawl over everyone else to get out and pee.

Someone had stolen the shoes I wore yesterday. I’d left them by the doorway to dry a bit in the night air. I should have known better, and kept them at my side while I slept. The risk would not have been eliminated, but it would have been significantly reduced. It was one of those little moments that made me glad I’d been assigned to a camp in a more temperate area, rather than one that had colder mornings. There was no snow on the ground here, not ever, and I knew that if I could keep blood flowing through my toes until mid-morning, they’d warm up to be almost comfortable. I took off my wool socks and stuffed them in a jacket pocket, rather than wear them out on the ground. My feet would heal. I may never replace a good pair of socks. I’d be fine, really. Still, I’d had those shoes for almost a month. I’d grown to like them. It’s so hard to find them in my size.

I peed in one of the collection tanks, faint steam rising up from it in the morning air. About a dozen of us had worked for three months to collect the materials we needed to build it. The water would be distilled out and filtered for reuse. The rest would be mixed with other components to make fertilizer for the garden. I headed to the garden next, hoping that the early hour would mean there’d be some berries left I could grab for breakfast. I could probably find some glop at the commissary, enough to fuel me for a few hours, but even a handful of real fruit was a great joy, and an increasingly rare treat as the days grew shorter.

Mo was already at the blueberry bush. He sat with his legs folded under him on a small blanket, and smiled at my approach. One corner of the blanket had been folded over, and when I sat on the dirt next to him, he silently flipped the corner flat, revealing a generous pile of dark blue spheres, spiked crowns bristling from each one. “Yours, my friend.”

“You’re too kind,” I told him, and scooped about half the berries up in one paw. I ate them slowly, one at a time, as he bowed toward the burgeoning sunrise and recited his fajr.

I didn’t pace myself well. As slowly as I thought I ate, and as briefly as he prayed, my hand was empty well before he finished. I waited, watching the glow of dawn and listening to him speak a language I didn’t understand. I didn’t need to understand it. I didn’t even need to believe it. I just needed to sit quietly and watch the sun rise.

Mo represented only one of many faiths in the camps, but his was the first. Most Muslims were deported or arrested within a few months of the election under the new Anti-Terror acts. Mo was born here, which made him less suspicious, and converted in college, which made him far more suspicious. He would have been deported, but as this was his country of origin, there was nowhere to send him. After Brexit and Europe’s subsequent anti-immigration policies, many borders were closed to exiles. American-born Muslims who refused deportation to Islamic countries--usually because sharia law in such places made it even more dangerous for them--only had one alternative. Freedom Camps.

He settled back, a change in his posture and bearing telling me that he had finished, and eyed the remaining berries. “They are all yours. I have mine.”

“Didn’t want to be rude.” The berries were in my hand before I finished speaking, and in my mouth the next instant. I smiled at him through a chipmunked face. “Breakfast?”

He nodded, rolled up his blanket, and joined me for a walk to the commissary. “Something is different about you. New shoes?”

“Do you like them? They’re all the rage in the East Coast camps this season. I ordered mine right away, and they just arrived yesterday.” I gestured grandly at my bare feet. He chuckled. I had never seen him wear shoes. By now, his feet had surpassed leather for sheer toughness, and I wondered whether he would even notice walking on broken glass. I stepped gingerly, watching so I could avoid the more obvious rocks.

Our Freedom Camp was one of the oldest, meaning it had been hastily assembled without much planning, and no improvements had been made by anyone but the occupants. The sanitation was rudimentary and often needed repair, leading to our own development of the urine stills and composting toilets. They couldn’t handle the volume generated by all the occupants, but it was enough to offset the faulty facilities. A little. We spent a lot of time repairing things ourselves, knowing that in the time it would take for the official crews to take care of things, the camp would have been cleared by cholera or norovirus. Maybe that had been the plan.

Main Street, the broad central corridor which ran the length of the camp, was used primarily by the pseudo-military types who were in charge. They drove back and forth in old military trucks, proudly wearing bastardized uniforms and enforcing whatever new policy of abuse they had for the day. We called them camp counselors. Never to their faces. We avoided them mostly by avoiding Main Street.

Many of the real military abandoned their posts following the decrees after the election. At first, there were some court-martial trials and military prisons briefly filled with AWOLs, but it soon became clear that there weren’t enough personnel loyal to the new regime to maintain the practice. Rumors spread that ships full of naval crews and entire army battalions had either defected or found quiet places to establish small bases elsewhere in the world, retrieving their families if they could, and essentially becoming tiny nation-states. It was hard to tell how much was true. With the stranglehold on the media and Internet, even those outside the camps had to rely upon word-of-mouth for any unfiltered news of the world. Inside the camps, we only got coded messages from our families and friends outside, or reports from new campers.

The camp counselors we had were exactly the sort of people who should never be in charge. Picture people who thought a twenty-foot wall topped with razor wire and sporting sniper towers every quarter-mile along the Mexican border wasn’t enough. Even with a hundred-yard mine field buffer. Picture people who dress in bedsheets and tall, pointy hoods. Even worse, picture people who will blindly follow whoever is in charge, without ever asking, “is this right?” People who have never, not really, made a choice for themselves, instead allowing someone else to pour opinions and attitudes into their ear, and listen to whomever yells loudest, rather than to those making the most reasoned arguments. Then give them power over exactly the people they fear most. That’s why we avoided Main Street. We walked parallel to it, a few blocks to the south, where a careful eye could spot a few scrawled messages reading “Make America Hate Again.”

Most of the Habi-Pods were just shipping containers or old railroad cars. They had been arranged in rows with just enough space between for a crane truck to unload them. Later, that spacing allowed them to be stacked up to four high, with increasingly suspect stairways and ladders leading up from ground level. At first, there were cots, chairs, and some other rudimentary furniture. Later, as population in the camps rose more quickly than the supply line could satisfy, people started making furniture and hammocks out of whatever we could find. Those who got good at it developed a sort of cottage industry, working for trade, but it was difficult to hold on to anything long in the camps. Like my shoes. One of the later decrees was that personal property in the camps was limited to what each person carried with them. I couldn’t really claim that someone had stolen my shoes, because according to the rules of the camp, they weren’t my shoes. They weren’t anyone’s shoes. They were everyone’s shoes. The despot had reasoned that since many of us were essentially socialists, we could share whatever property was inside the camps.

We weren’t socialists. Most of us were dyed-in-the-wool capitalists. There were quite a few former small business owners who had voted for him who had ended up in the camps. They had thought he would be a better choice for them than his political opponent, because he espoused business growth in his campaign. After election, he quickly made several changes which made it obvious that he was only interested in growth of major corporations and heavy industry. Large companies consumed smaller companies, or drove them into the ground. Electric and hybrid vehicles were declared illegal, ostensibly to encourage development of American petroleum resources. National Parks were opened for drilling and mining under the argument that to ignore those resources would be wasteful. Global warming escalated. The small business owners, and any others who opposed the draconian edicts, were given the choice to leave the country or enter the camps. Those who could left. Those who couldn’t afford it, or whose political exile papers were denied by other countries, ended up in camps.

I wasn’t given the choice. I protested the new regime. I wasn’t a leader; I wasn’t an activist. They were rounded up before me. But as the louder voices were silenced, smaller voices like mine became harder to ignore. Soon after the election, the major news networks were threatened with sanctions if they stepped outside the new socio-moral guidelines. Later, specially-appointed Monitors were assigned to each media outlet to ensure that all material was approved before broadcast. That was around the same time that similar censors--call a spade a spade--began trolling the internet with bots and filters designed to eradicate messages which ran counter to the despot or his policies. There had been foreshadowing during his campaign, when he called for the termination of journalists and even judges who spoke against him. At the time, he had claimed that conservative outlets should fully support him, as he was the duly-chosen candidate of his party, and that conservatives speaking against him should follow the party line or be silent. Liberal voices were dealt with more simply, as a petulant child might: he called them names and said they were lying, then yelled until they shook their heads and gave up. After the election and Monitors, he claimed that any dissenting voices weren’t properly supportive of him, and thus un-American. If they were not American, they should leave.

Or go to the camps.

The only problem with attaining total media control across the country was that it was only one country. Media personnel who left the country and continued reporting their views--or worse yet, the facts of what happened here--were beyond his purview. The world was full of places happy to tell others how badly things were going in America. Some felt we were getting comeuppance. A few may have seen us as a dire warning against tacitly choosing totalitarianism. I made some public observations online comparing the media control to that enjoyed by the leaders of China and North Korea, where the populace was fed only what the government allowed them to believe. I had made other dissenting views, but I guess they had already culled the loudest voices, and mine was heard in the relative silence. I was collected from my home, which was seized by the government, along with any possessions I wasn’t carrying, and taken to a Freedom Camp. There was no trial. When I asked, I was told that it was held in my absence. I asked about my right to face my accusers. They told me that I had supplied all evidence against me myself when I posted it online, that I had been found guilty of seditious and inflammatory speech, and that I could say whatever I wanted in the Freedom Camp. That’s why it was called a Freedom Camp. I was free to do as I liked within its confines. I asked if I would be free to have contact with the outside world. One of them struck me with the butt of his rifle. When I woke up, I was laying in the dirt inside the fence. Naked. They had taken what few personal items I’d managed to collect before they took me from my home. Apparently, they were also free to do whatever they liked.

The commissary was a quonset hut, a long, semi-cylindrical building with large overhead doors at each end and harshly buzzing lights high above the concrete floor. Mo and I got in line, received our trays, and found a pair of seats in an acoustic irregularity we had discovered. Large television screens at both ends of the hall continually broadcast messages from the despot and his advisers. Reminders of how we were expected to behave, reports on new policies outside the walls, news of dubious factual value. Our spot was in a small pocket where the broadcast was almost silent. It was our favorite place to sit in the commissary.

Supplies for the camps, including food, are mostly the cast-offs of the outside world. Meat that didn’t quite meet the standards, produce that had gone a bit soft, three-day-old bread. Sometimes, we’d get lucky and positively identify the contents of our meals. More often, it was the formless stew we called Glop. It made the gardening efforts that much more appreciated. In a few rare cases, people managed to bring in some livestock and maintained tiny breeding populations. They were jealously guarded, and it was always easy to find volunteers to help care for and raise the animals, because helping in any food production effort inside the camps was the best way to gain yourself a share of the yield. Any food you could recognize was a rare luxury.

After we returned our trays, we headed toward Zeke and Margarita’s place. They kept a small herd of goats by the east border of the camp. I helped tend the herd. Mo was trying his hand at making cheese. A sudden pain in my foot sent me hopping a few steps, and I doubled back to collect the framing nail whose head had driven its edge into my heel. I carefully nudged Mo down a shoulder-width gap between shipping containers, and crouched near the far end. He leaned casually against one of the containers, blocking view of me from that side, while I scratched “Make America Hate Again” into the brightly painted metal under a large hashtag mark. “Some day, they will catch you doing that,” he warned, his voice casual.

“They’ve already caught me.” I stood and followed him out of the gap. “Good thing, too. I’m a dangerous man.”

“Full of dangerous ideas.”

“Like freedom of the press.”

“There is no press here.”

“Freedom of speech, then.”

“And religion?”

“Yup. Wacky stuff like that.” I chose not to linger on that topic. He had been here longer than me, and was wary of showing any signs of faith in front of the counselors, knowing that they’d shout “terrorism,” and he’d get disappeared to an even darker hole.

“Truly revolutionary ideas.”

“Me and Tommy J, buddy.”

We bumped fists, knowing it would piss off some of the counselors. Here, that gesture wasn’t just a greeting. It was a reminder of a time when the word Freedom still meant something, as recently as the former presidency. A man the despot actively sought to discredit, defame, and unseat throughout his terms. The henchmen who served the despot remembered, and minor accidents commonly befell those who showed support of the former president, or either of the despot’s greatest opponents during his election bid.

There was a subtle irony there.

The election should have been closer. The despot had gained support from many people who were so upset that their candidate didn’t do better in the primaries that they switched parties. Mistakes made by party personnel were blamed on the other candidate. Many people who had thus voted for the despot were now in the camps with the rest of us. Maybe they just weren’t “real American” enough.

Others had fled, seeking asylum elsewhere. Short-sighted anger, like that shown by the despot, had cost us everything, not just an election.

Many had hoped that we’d only have to put up with him for four years, eight tops, but the changes he wrought even before launching weapons against supposed enemies will have ramifications for generations. That was before he instituted martial law and suspended further elections. Congressional opposition was handled as he had handled detractors to his campaign: with abuse, harsh criticism, and tirades. Whenever possible, he would find ways to push them out of office entirely. His favorite line was an old catch phrase: “you’re fired!” Several were in camps. More, we suspected, were just… gone.

A whining, petulant, bully of a man-child had been elected to the most powerful office in the free world, and still there were people who seemed surprised when his presidency continued just as his candidacy had. Healthcare decisions were made by appointed committees, carefully governed by insurers, and individuals could not choose their care options. LGBT communities were forced into actual, physical communities much like the Freedom Camps, but where many suspected they were subjected to reeducation and chemical treatments to “cure” them. Corporations were given limitless power, and individuals were robbed of their rights. Anyone who spoke out against his atrocities were exiled or locked up because they were inciting unrest, or acting in a seditious or treasonous manner.

We put a bully in office, and he took everyone’s lunch money.

We should have seen it coming.

Mission Log 3

Mission Log, Day 61

There are many important examples of the interactions between the primary bipedal species and the numerous animal species of the planet; few exhibit the level of ceremony and ritual as that of the annual Poultry Sacrifice.

Harvest festivals are common among agrarian societies, and the Poultry Sacrifice seems to be a carryover of an earlier stage in the development of the bipeds’ civilization, when scarcity was more common. It hearkens back to another, rather counter-intuitive, commonality among more primitive peoples: sacrificing something dear to ensure its later availability. Presenting grain at the altar of a grain god in hopes of a bountiful harvest, for example. When these sacrifices involve animals, or even people, the sacrificial individual is often given a high standing and exemplary treatment, to emphasize or even heighten the value of the sacrifice.

In the example of the Poultry Sacrifice, size is an important consideration. Bipeds will often compete with each other in their food distribution centers for a prized specimen of the avian in question, and even reserve a sacrificial subject with the merchant weeks in advance. The sacrifice is a family event, with some members of biped extended clans traveling great distances; the size of the gatherings often results in multiple sacrifices.

Curiously, sacrificial events when the avian begins the proceedings alive are incredibly rare, even unknown. Instead, this large species of avian is killed, deflocked, gutted, and in many cases frozen well in advance of the ceremony.

The purpose of the ceremony itself is perplexing. If it involved the ritualistic slaughter of the avian, then it would be natural to assume that, like the example of grain sacrifices cited above, the intended goal would be to entreaty some higher power for a bounteous hunt, or otherwise successful procurement of edible supplies in the coming winter months. Instead, the ceremony seems to be an attempt to restore life to the avian; perhaps this is the goal, with the belief that by restoring life to the avian, even symbolically, the bipeds will be restored to health, or guaranteed bounty in a perceived future life or afterlife.

First, the avian is cleaned, and in recent years, an additional step has become popular: to soak the avian’s body in a saline solution to symbolize a return to the seas where life first evolved on this planet. Thus the sacrificial specimen is cleansed, renewed, and the bipeds are vicariously renewed with it. When removed from the saline bath, it is rubbed with fragrant herbs, spices, and oils, much as the bipeds themselves are known to douse themselves with fragrant oils and floral extracts.

Second comes the ceremonial feeding, wherein the avian is hand-fed great quantities of bread, fruit, vegetables, and nuts, all of which are symbolic of life and food in general across several biped cultures. I find this step especially puzzling, as even I, a stranger to this world, can tell that they are feeding the wrong end of the creature. I have yet to determine the ceremonial significance of this oversight.

Third, the avian is placed in a great incubator, or ceremonial womb, in which it is heated for several hours, and treated to frequent re-applications of the same oils and herbs used after the bathing. Many biped families choose a different method for this stage, using a smaller incubator filled with oils to save them the trouble of re-applying them manually. They claim this method is superior, but the number of biped dwellings which fall victim to fires related to these devices suggest that whatever higher power they seek to please with the ceremony may not be convinced of the sincerity of their efforts.

Finally, when the flesh of the avian has darkened and become aromatic, it is removed from the incubator and devoured by all those present, to infuse their own bodies with the symbolic life they have striven to instill in the avian. This is commonly followed by a couple hours of quiet meditation for each biped, sometimes while listening to the broadcast of bloodless gladiatorial combat which I shall explain later.

The Cutting

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Mission Log 2

Mission log, day 47

I believe there is a higher predator on this planet. Very advanced, and possibly undetectable. The primary bipedal species seem to be aware of it, but I am not sure whether it is a conscious awareness, or merely a general sense of imminent mortal danger. Until recently, I had believed the bipeds were dominant, because their works are the most common, but I have since concluded that many of their efforts--especially the tall buildings of metal and artificial aggregate stone, and the blockier metal conveyances--are in fact defensive efforts against this higher predator. Is it possible that the pressure of predation has elevated a minor species to relative dominance through forced technological development and social bonding?

Naturally, with a creature imperceptible to the naked eye and which remains undetected by any of my devices scanning across all known frequencies of the electromagnetic, visual, and auditory spectra, it is extremely difficult to collect any information on this terrifying new species. I felt that I might have to forego efforts to catalog this beast until I remembered how I first detected it, and remembered the words of one of our own great thinkers: If you wish to know the size of the stone, watch the ripples. After all, I did not learn of the predator by finding any direct evidence of the creature itself, but by observing its impact upon the environment.

Throughout my visit, I have watched the bipeds engage in a variety of activities, and have carefully documented and analyzed many of them. One of these activities continued to baffle me. Individually, in pairs, or in larger groups, I had seen them running, without any discernable reason. They were not hunting prey, or pursuing potential mates, and until recently, I could not fathom why they would so frequently be in such a rush. The only conclusion that made sense was that they were attempting to evade some unknown attacker. I had seen them engage in this behavior in a variety of costumes and weather conditions, and in many cases there could be no other rational explanation. These attacks must have come at random times, without opportunity to prepare, for I frequently saw them running with their pair-bonded quadrupeds, or with their own spawn in wheeled carts; surely, no responsible being would willingly subject their young to the danger of a higher predator which they seem unable to even detect. The likelihood that they would endanger their quadruped, prized for its organic deposits, is even more remote.

As I considered this hypothesis, several previous observations began to make more sense. The thick walls on their largest buildings, high fences in apparently peaceful residential areas, and the unusually large vehicles used by many individuals for even the shortest trips (often, but not always, the bipeds traveling in this manner appear to be physically ill-equipped to survive a chase on foot). Bipeds who travel mainly by the curious open-air two-wheeled carts, powered by their own bodies, have a distinct mechanical advantage over the runners. They may not be able to traverse the same variety of terrain, but the speed potential is certainly higher. However, they also sacrifice maneuverability in tight quarters.

I have not determined why only some of the bipeds are hunted, though I suspect that they carry a protein or other factor critical to the health of the higher predator, and whose presence is immediately detectable to that predator, so that it only needs to chase those bipeds which would provide this rare benefit. The bipeds themselves seem as incapable as I am of detecting the predators directly, at least on a conscious level. Clearly, some instinct drives them to evade capture, and they will occasionally glance behind them, as if they know that something is there, even if they cannot perceive it. I have seen many, though not all, of the running bipeds checking devices on their arms or wrists, and some wear devices with aural outputs plugged directly into their auditory organs; these may be part of some sort of warning system, but if that is the case, then why wouldn’t all of the threatened bipeds be so equipped?

Whatever this predator is, one thing is clear: it completely devours all of its prey. I have yet to find any remains of these kills, which I had hoped would at least provide tooth or claw marks so that I might begin to develop a better hypothesis on the size and nature of this invisible threat.

Mission log

Mission log, day 38

Life on this planet seems to be dominated by two species, with both exhibiting a startling diversity in body shape, body size, skin coloration, and hair color/length/texture/coverage. One of the two species is bipedal, and tends to wear clothing, especially when outside the home. The style, color, material, and amount of this clothing is widely variable, though I have been unable to discern a pattern, as individual members of the species often show a great difference in opinion on what clothing is appropriate for a location, situation, or even current weather.

The second primary species is quadrupedal, and generally relies on a dense coat of hair covering its entire body for protection from the elements, and for whatever social paradigms which demand that the bipeds wear clothing.  A select few of the quadrupeds have been observed wearing simple garments, but these individuals seem generally displeased, and I have concluded that they are experiencing some sort of public shaming ritual as a punishment. Nearly all of the quadrupeds wear a single ornament around the throat; the material, color, and decoration of this item shows nearly as much variation as that of the bipeds’ clothing, and displays a small collection of bright metal chips.  Current assumption is that this throat band is a distinction of rank; further study is required to determine whether it signifies rank among the quadrupeds, or to show superiority of all quadrupeds over that of the bipeds.  When quadrupeds are seen in public with bipeds, they are almost always joined by a strap leading from this throat band to the biped’s hand, probably to indicate some form of pair-bonding.

It is by observing these pairings in public that I have discovered a most astonishing behavior linking the two species, in a symbiosis which is unique in my experience.  The quadrupeds generate small deposits of organic material once or twice a day.  The bipeds, in turn, collect these deposits in polymer pouches.  This behavior leads me to believe that the organic material must be highly valued, because it is collected as soon as the quadrupeds create them, and the pouches are usually sealed immediately, perhaps to preserve freshness.  On several occasions, I have followed the biped/quadruped pairings over several degrees of their sun’s course through the sky, and observed that after collection, these pouches are carried for the remainder of their foray, sometimes suspended from the strap which marks the pair-bonding.  Sometimes, the pouches are deposited in collection devices supplied by the Municipal Authority.  I believe that this a form of taxation, levied to defray costs of several stations I’ve seen to dispense the polymer pouches for deposit collection.

Clearly, the value of these deposits must be great, but I have failed in my attempts to capitalize on this knowledge.  In rare cases, I have seen bipeds ignoring the leavings of their quadrupedal companions.  These must be individuals of great wealth and power, who have no need for the bounty of their pair-bonded quadrupeds.  In such cases, I have taken it upon myself to collect the deposits myself, hoping to trade them for local currency.  Every seven days, a gathering of vendors congregates in the heart of the community to sell fruiting bodies and edible roots of several plant species, muscle tissue from less valuable quadrupeds and bipeds, ovum with crunchy shells, and baked comestibles.  I believed this would be an excellent opportunity to both experience the trade system of these people, and learn more of the value of quadruped deposits.  I secured a table and piled it high with a collection I had made over the past week, but was unable to make a single sale.  In fact, I observed most of the bipeds contorting their facial features and moving away from my wares, although in a curious twist, the quadrupeds showed some interest.  Perhaps the samples I had collected had lost their vital freshness.

There is another possible explanation for my commercial failure.  The color, consistency, texture, odor, and size of the deposits is nearly as diverse as that of the quadrupeds who leave them.  I confess that I only tested the flavor of one sample, and was so displeased that I have made no further comparisons of that sensory experience.  Perhaps the samples I had collected for sale did not display enough variety, as did the plant and animal matter of other vendors, or maybe additional processing is required before the product is commercially viable.

68

One year ago today, I crossed the border into Maine, the state where Mom was born, on her 67th birthday. I was about two weeks from the end of my thru-hike, and I started the day in high spirits, even though the four friends who'd been hiking with me since Vermont had decided the previous evening to part ways with me for a few days.

This year, I'm working on getting my manuscript published.  I've written a book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, what led me to the trail in the first place, and why I took Mom's ashes with me.  Agents have been queried; now it's a matter of waiting for a favorable response, and constantly agonizing over whether my work is good enough to impress anyone.

Let's find out. Below is an excerpt from the manuscript, a single chapter from late in the trail. There are a couple references to earlier chapters, but I think it still stands alone well enough to be readable.  Why this chapter, instead of one more inspiring, uplifting, or funny? Because this chapter covers that day, one year ago, when I brought Mom home.  Happy Birthday, Mom.

Alone Again

          My friends left me.  The hike from Pinkham Notch had been harder on them than I’d realized, and during the night at Imp Shelter, they decided to stop at a hostel the next day.  I passed the hostel before noon, and was certain that they wouldn’t catch up with me by the time I reached Rangeley, our next planned resupply town.  They had tried to convince me to join them, plying me with the promise of beds, showers, laundry, and good food, but they lost me when they revealed their plan to slackpack for a day or so to conserve energy.  Slackpacking is when you hike with only a daypack, and a shuttle either drops you off at the start, or picks you up for the return, and you generally spend both nights at the same place.  Many hostels along the AT offer this service for free, even supplying the daypacks, because it encourages hikers to stay a second night and spend more money.  My decision wasn’t motivated by thrift, but conviction.  That wasn’t how I wanted to hike the trail.  I had never slackpacked, yellow blazed, or taken shortcuts, and I wasn’t going to start less than three hundred miles from the end.  It wasn’t my idea of thru-hiking.  I saw the hostel, gave the signs advertising baked goods and cold drinks no more than a passing thought after three meals from Simon and Irene, and kept hiking.  My friends had slept in, knowing they didn’t have far to go that day.  Doyi’s toes were in bad shape, and Ginko was getting crabby and short-tempered.  We all needed a rest, but I didn’t allow myself a break.  It required some rough climbing and difficult terrain, but that night I was rewarded with white lady’s slippers on the side trail to the Gentian Pond Shelter, which was oriented to provide a stunning view of the sunset over the valley below, and a few steps from the shelter I could hear where the pond drained into a waterfall that worked its way down to the valley.

          I left at five the next morning, June 23, my 106^th day on the trail, and what would have been my mom’s sixty-seventh birthday.  That was the day I entered Maine, the state where she’d been born, and where we would finish our 2,185.3 mile hike together, a dream we’d both had for decades, but only I would see completed.  The weather was beautiful, and I was filled with hope for the day, my eyes damp with all the importance I had heaped upon it.  As soon as I realized, days earlier, that I would cross the border on her birthday, I felt it would be auspicious.

          It was miserable.

          I’d had Gentian Pond and the shelter to myself for hours, and fell asleep by seven, excited at the prospect of nine and a half solid hours of sleep, but two section hikers I’d met and forgotten arrived at eight, making lots of noise, and tried to maintain a conversation that didn’t interest me.  I didn’t get to sleep again until well after nine.  My energy level was low throughout Mom’s birthday, and the trail was very rough.  In the south, I’d estimated my arrival times based upon a walking speed of three miles an hour, and I often arrived earlier than I’d expected.  In Maine, I would estimate arrivals based upon a speed of two miles an hour, and I was later than I’d hoped every single day.  Maine was brutal, and I was never sure whether it was because it was brutal all on its own, or because I got there after hiking almost two thousand miles in under four months.  The hiking machine was rapidly losing steam.

          The day I entered Maine, it took me almost twelve hours to go a little under fifteen miles.  One of those miles was Mahoosuc Notch, a section of trail described by my guidebook as the “most difficult or fun mile of the AT,” a jumbled maze of boulders I’d actually been looking forward to navigating, thinking that as a rock climber, I’d have a distinct advantage.  Before we stopped at Imp Shelter, we had planned on hiking through Mahoosuc early in the morning, when we were fresh, and helping each other through as a group.  I arrived at Mahoosuc in the afternoon, already tired, accompanied accidentally by Pack and Big Hungry.  Pack had a barely-noticeable lisp, and had already hiked the Pacific Crest Trail.  Big Hungry was a fourteen pound rat terrier he’d adopted from a shelter just before starting the AT.  She was so small that she didn’t carry a pack, as many trail dogs do, but spry enough that she had less trouble navigating Mahoosuc than Pack and I.  In one spot, she darted out of the way just as Pack fell on his way over a sedan-sized boulder and landed on his backpack where Big Hungry had been just a moment earlier.  I proudly congratulated myself internally, knowing that my skill and experience as a rock climber would easily get me over the obstacle, and moments later fell at exactly the same place after my foot slipped off exactly the same edge that had failed him.  I dropped six feet with windmill arms and wheelbarrow-handle legs before landing so hard on my right ass cheek that I was certain I’d be limping for the rest of the trip.  It took a minute or two before I could even stand up straight, and I was later surprised to see that I wasn’t purple halfway down my thigh.  I’ve never bruised easily off-trail, and I’d always assumed that it was thanks to a high-protein diet, but the jar of peanut butter I ate every four or five days didn’t seem enough to protect me after that fall.

          It took over an hour to get through Mahoosuc Notch, and the physical difficulty in passing it was only one factor; it’s not a well-blazed section, and Pack and I often had different ideas about where the trail went.  Sometimes neither of us knew, and it wasn’t until one of us found a new blaze and yelled to the other that we both got back on track.  I tore a new hole in one of my shoes, and then painfully drove the exposed toe onto the jagged edge of a chunk of granite on the north end of the notch, after I’d thought the worst was over.  By then, any excitement I’d had about Mahoosuc Notch had evaporated with my high hopes for Mom’s birthday, and the last shreds of my good mood from my final day in New Hampshire.

          Two hours later, I arrived at Speck Pond Shelter and creaked slowly to the floor.  I changed shoes and busied myself sweeping the shelter and arranging my bunk, then took what I needed to stock up on water from the spring, but returned with only enough to get me through the evening.  The blackflies in the area were fierce, and I only found relief from them by wearing my entire rain shell, because they easily bit through everything else I had.  I put on my other pair of socks, because the camp shoes Liz had mailed to me in Delaware Water Gap were made of a mesh material that provided easy access to my feet, and I constantly brushed my hands against each other and my face to keep the blood-sucking bastards off of my flesh.  One of them snuck in under my watch band and bit me on the wrist.  When blackflies bite you, you almost never feel it.  Blackflies carry an anticoagulant in their saliva; the first indication of a bite is pinprick marks on your flesh that bleed like open wounds.  Later, those pinpricks itch like crazy.  I realized I’d been bitten under my watch because when my sleeve pulled back, I saw a bright smear of blood on the cuff of my yellow rain jacket.  I spent most of my evening swearing and miserable, on the brink of tears.  Happy birthday, Mom.

          I stayed at Hall Mountain the next night, and felt a bit better because I’d eaten a filling dinner at Speck Pond, did a better job of hydrating, and to my boundless delight, Hall Mountain wasn’t clotted with fucking blackflies.  I still had one problem: because we’d stopped at Imp instead of Rattling River three nights earlier, I was no longer sure I had enough food to get me to Rangeley.  I’d planned on cooking a large dinner for my friends to celebrate entering our very last state, but we parted ways before that happened, so I knew I had enough dinners—I just didn’t have enough hiking food for the days between the dinners.  I was working out that math early in the afternoon when I stepped out onto B Hill Road, and as I looked for traffic, a van pulled up and stopped beside me.  Even before the gravel stopped crunching, Doyi leaned out of the passenger window, and a moment later the sliding door opened to reveal Socs, Ginko, and Catch Me.  They had gone from one hostel to another, and invited me to join them, but I was still adamant about not slackpacking.  Then they asked if there was anything else I needed, explaining that they were on their way into town for a resupply when they chanced upon me popping out of the woods.  “Actually, yeah—could you spare a couple granola bars, or a Snickers?  I have almost enough food to get to Rangeley, but I’d feel a lot better with two or three more snacks.”

          Doyi couldn’t reach his pack, but Ginko, Socs, and Catch Me immediately started handing me food, and I soon had more than I’d need—in fact, I had enough that I had two extra snacks that day as I finished my hike, and I would be hard pressed to decide whether the extra food or seeing my friends did more to boost my morale that afternoon.  Whichever it was, when I reached Hall Mountain Shelter at the end of my 107^th day on the trail, I was in such a good mood that I left my pack in the shelter and practically jogged up the mountainside behind it to an overlook—several days after I’d started giving the finger to “viewpoint” signs along the trail.  Socs had taken over my planning duties for the rest of the group, and she assured me that I’d see them again in Rangeley in two days.

The Furious Primate Speaks

"Oh my gosh!!  Did you see that?  That was SO GREAT, you guys!  Totally hilarious!  Seriously, did you see that?"

"Of course I saw it, I'm standing right here, looking at you."

"Yeah yeah yeah, but did you see that?  I was just sitting here, right?  Right here, up on this step, and then--are you watching?  Are you listening to this?--then, when I picked up my feet, I TOTALLY slid on my butt down to this step, and it caught me COMPLETELY by surprise!  I was all, 'whoa, BOOM!'  HA!!  Honestly, it spooked me a little at first, but really, it was so much fun!"

"Yeah, I know, dude.  I was here the whole time, remember?  I'm the one who put you on the stair, and you ran into my leg when you slid down here.  How could I miss that?"

"Oh, it's really too bad you missed that.  Had to be there, I guess!  Hahaha!  Hooooboy, good times, man!  Good times!"

"You're not even listening to me, are you?"

"Right on my butt!!  Boom!  Pow!  Keister-rama!  HA!  Good thing I wear diapers, amiright??  Plenty of padding back there!  Matter of fact, there might be a little extra padding right now, knowhutimean?  Big breakfast this morning!  HA!!  Get it?  I mean I pooped!"

"Do I even need to be here for this?  I get the feeling this conversation only has one side."

"Nonononono!  Wait, man, wait!  This is good stuff!  You should hear this!  Stay right there, ok?  Ok?  Ok!  Haha, remember that time I slid on my butt down the stairs?"

"You mean that time twenty seconds ago, right before you told me this story?"

"HA!  You know what it reminds me of?  Guess what it reminds me of.  I'll tell you what it reminds me of!  Remember this morning, when we were hammering, and I got that hammer you told me to put down, but I hammered with it anyway?  It was this hammer right here!  I hammered like this!"

"No, you've got to turn it around.  You can't hammer with the claw side.  Here, like this."

"Yeahyeahyeah, I got this.  Back off, chief!  So I was hammering, right, like this?"

"Over here, please, not on the stairs."

"Sure, whatever, over here, yeah.  So I was hammering like this, and then the nail got out of the hole, and went all kerpowww!! and went over there, and then it bounced down the stairs!  Remember that?  It bounced all the way down the stairs!  HA!  That was great!!  CLASSIC me, amiright?"

"Uh-huh, sure, you bet.  Listen, we're all done for the day, and your dad has to give me a ride home now.  Do you want to go with us, or stay here with your mom?"

"Say what??  Cracker, please!  I know you chumps!  You're going somewhere fun, I am IN, dude!  LET'S ROLL!!"

"Okey-doke.  Let's get your coat.  Arms in here.  No, other arm goes there.  Good.  Here, have a seat, I'll get your shoes on.  Say good-bye to your mom."

"Later, baby!  We're off to really wild and exciting things!  Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it later!  After you post bail for us.  HAHAHA!!  Man, I kill me!  Post bail!  Oh, that is rich!  You should be writing this down.  Off we go!"

"Got both your arms in there?  No, the arms stay in those straps."

"HEY!!  Where are you going??  You've gotta go, too!  You can't just strap me in here and LEAVE!"

"Relax!  I'm sitting up front.  Let me finish buckling you in, and I'll get in up there, and then we can go, ok?  Your dad's already got the engine running.  Just give me a sec, all right?"

"Yeah, ok.  If you say so.  Hey, are you guys tired?  I'm not.  No, sirree.  Not remotely tired, uh-uh.  I'm so awake, I think I'll sing for a little bit.  Can I get a key?  No?  Ok, I'll do it myself.  Ahem.  This is the song of not sleeping!  I sing it because I'm awake!  This is the song of not....  snnxxxxxxxx..."

I got to spend a lot of time with my nephew in January while helping my brother with some home improvement projects.  He (my nephew, not my brother) has a habit of telling you long, detailed stories about That Funny Thing That Just Happened even if you were right there to witness it.  However, at the time his vocabulary was mostly vowel clusters and grunting, so we rarely had any idea what he was saying unless we could interpret his hand gestures.  I believe the account above is fairly accurate.

The Hole

"Hey, man, whyntchoo come over here this weekend?"  Jimmy's voice weren't never somethin' you'd hear comin' outta one of them opry singers, but it only got worse when he'd been drinking, and I could tell by the way some of his words were crawlin' on top of one another in their hurry to get out of his mouth that it was already a four-beer kinda night.

"Cause I got all manner of things I gotta get done with over here," I told him, and I made sure I said it loud enough that the missus'd hear it, too, on account of she's the only one who's sure that all those manner of things had to get done now, instead of in a month or two, when I'm good and ready, probably.  I heard her sayin' something in the kitchen that sounded a little like "You damn right, you do," but I didn't really catch it, because by then I was whispering back to the phone, because if Jimmy had some way to get me out of the house anytime soon, I was damn sure gonna take that chance.  "Why, what's goin' on?  You need help pulling out your ol' truck's engine again?  'Cause I can go down to Hartnell's tomorrow and borrow his winch, you just say the word!"

"No, man, no, I ain't working on the truck this weekend."  I heard him take three or four swallows of his beer, and the sound of it made me think that was a pretty good idea, but the phone cord wasn't gonna get me to the kitchen, and the missus wasn't gonna get a beer out to me, so that was shot.  "I got something to show you."

"Well, what is it, Jimmy?"   I was still whispering, because she was making all kinds of noise out there, and I figured she wouldn't hear none of what I had to say unless I wanted her to hear it.  "I'd sure as hell like to get over there and have a beer or two with you, but unless I got a real good reason, there ain't no way I can do it without patching the porch roof, clearing the drain in the kitchen sink, and cutting down that old elm tree first!"

"I got summinta show you," he said, in what I'm sure he thought was a conspiratorial whisper, if he knew what a conspiratorial whisper was, "that you ain't gonna believe.  Ain't nobody gonna believe this shit."

Now, you need to know that Jimmy getting drunk is about as rare as skeeters in a swamp, but maybe you already guessed that by now, and that's ok, too.  And maybe you also guessed that drunks saying "you ain't gonna believe this shit," or "hey, watch this," or even "whatchoo mean I pissed myself?" also isn't that rare, or p'raps you just know it from experience.  What that word-a-day calendar at work would call empirical.  But either way, it still don't matter none, because there's Jimmy talkin' big, and then there's Jimmy well and truly impressed by something, and this was the second one, and I know, because I known Jimmy since we was both in diapers.  Not much gets Jimmy that excited, even more excited than when the July issue of Hot Rods comes out, with all the pictures of them pretty ladies with silly shoes layin' on the cars, the one time of year he calls it Hot Bods instead, and gets to gigglin', but I could tell he was plenty wound up about whatever it was this time, so what else could I do?  I said real loud, so the missus'd hear it again, "Well, shit, Jimmy, of course she'd let me come help you with your truck. Hell, without it you can't get to work, and then how you gonna git you any food?"  I heard her say something that sounded like "You mean beer, you lazy turd," but I didn't care none, because I knew I was clear to see whatever had Jimmy all excited.

Since it was Friday night when he called, I figured by "this weekend," he meant "tomorrow morning," so as soon as I'd had some breakfast and put the dog on his line, I stuck my toolbox in the bed of the truck, mainly for appearance's sake, in case the missus was watchin', and I drove over to Jimmy's place.  His daddy had owned the biggest piece of land in three counties, and it was actually spread across those three counties, so the taxes on it was a mess and a half, I tell you truly, but back in '78 or '79 he sold a big old chunk of it to the mining company, and what he had left, and gave to Jimmy in his will, was still the biggest damn piece of continuous property in those three counties.  Jimmy and me spent just about all the time we could wandering around up in there, but to tell you the God's honest, once we found that prime fishing spot near the eastern edge, we just about stopped our wandering altogether and started building a little camp out there.  Naturally, I figured whatever he had to show me was up that way, and I was glad I always kept a pole in the truck, because I figured we could get a little fishing in after he showed me whatever it was he was wanting to show me, but when I got to Jimmy's, he was already out on the porch, ready to go, and he didn't have no fishing gear with him.  "Where's your pole, Jimmy?" I asked him, and he just shakes his head and waves at me, like he couldn't decide which gesture fit the occasion best, and he comes running around to my truck and jumps in the other door before I could even get my door open.

"Forget fishing, man, you gotta see this thing I found," he says, like he's all outta breath, and that's when I started wondering if he'd been asleep at all that night, or even the night before, because that was just about as scared as I'd ever seen him be.

He started telling me where to go, and we drove most of the way there, and eventually I realized that Jimmy'd kept on explorin' his land even after I stopped going with him, and just a little after I put that together, I realized that I didn't recognize anything no more, and that's how I knew just how very far away we were from anything we'd seen up there when we was boys.  The driving was pretty slow, on account of it weren't really roads we was driving on, and there was lots of rocks, and downed trees, and big ol' holes and whatnot, and we'd been going maybe half an hour when Jimmy says, "stop right here," and jumps out his door while we was still rolling.

It took me a moment or two longer to get my truck situated so I was pretty sure it wouldn't go nowhere while we was gone, on account of the parking brake isn't really what it once was, and probably isn't what it should be no more, but that's ok, because I keep a couple big pieces of cinder block in the back to chuck under the rear wheel and keep it from going anywhere.  By the time I had them in place, Jimmy was already off through the trees along something that was really only a trail in the sense that he'd been there once or maybe twice before, and he stopped just long enough to turn and look at me and say, "come on, man, you ain't gonna believe this!"  I was just about ready to to lob one of those cinder block chunks over near him and tell him to settle his ass down when I remembered how scared he'd looked while we was driving, and thought better of it.

After maybe twenty minutes of walking through the woods with Jimmy muttering ahead of me and not answering a single damn question, far as I could hear, I started seeing some weird things.  It was real subtle at first, and I wasn't rightly sure of any of it until we was walking back out again a little later, and paying more attention, but it started with all the grass laying down, and pointing in the same direction, and it was the same direction we was walking.  Then I noticed there weren't any dead leaves on the ground here, and it was the time of year when they was starting to fall, too, and you could plainly tell they were already coming off the trees here, but damned if I could tell where they'd got to.

It got real obvious when we got to the clearing, and I saw how all the trees that had fallen to make that clearing were all laying down so's they was pointing toward the middle of it, and the clear spot they left made a damn near perfect circle.  I was gaping about at all of that when I walked plumb into Jimmy's back, on account of he'd stopped all of a sudden, and I hadn't even noticed, since I was still looking at the trees.  "There was more of 'em last week," he said, and I was about to ask more of what when he says, "The trees that fell down keep moving in," and this time I didn't bother waiting before I spoke up.

"Moving in where??"

Jimmy pointed to the middle of the clearing and says, "In there."

"What, to the middle?"

"Yup," he says, and I noticed some scraped-up spots in the grass behind a few of the trees, which also seemed a mite odd.

"Then where the hell are they now, if there was more of them before, and now there ain't?" I asked him.

"I got no earthly idea," he says, and I got a little idea of what was scarin' him so bad.

"Watch this," he says, and for the first time I realized he's been holding a beer bottle the whole time, and of course it's empty, because what kind of friend would invite you over and only bring one beer with him?  Then he takes the bottle by the neck, and without even much wind up, he tosses it into the air, and I swear to you, the longer that sucker was in the air, the faster it went, and I ain't never seen such a thing before in my life.  He barely tossed it at all, and Jimmy can really throw when he wants, but this was real gentle-like, and that bottle shot through the air like it had engines on it, straight to the middle of the clearing, then shot down and just plumb disappeared.

We both just stood there for a minute or two, starin' at where the bottle shoulda been but weren't, and finally I said, "Let me try that."

And of course Jimmy says, "That was my last bottle."

"Whatchoo mean, your last bottle??  Where'd the rest of them go?"  And he sorta looks at me the same way the dog does when he knows you just found he done pissed somewhere he shouldn't've, and points to the middle of the clearing and shrugs.

"Man, I don't know where they went.  That's what I'm trying to tell you."

"Well, let's go git 'em," I said, and he grabs my arm and pushes back away from the middle like that was the worst idea he'd ever heard.

"Listen!  Listen!" he says, and the way he said was really more like a hiss, like maybe he was afraid of who else was gonna hear us listening way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, but I listened all the same, and I really couldn't tell you that I heard very much, because I didn't.

"Listen to what, Jimmy?  There ain't nothin out here."

"Yeah," he says, "I know!  But there should be!"  He grabbed both my arms real tight and says, "You seen the geese flyin over the last coupla weeks?"  I nodded, 'cause I had.  "You see 'em here?" I looked up and didn't see much of anything, which was weird, because it was pretty cloudy over at my place, and I don't live too far from Jimmy, but there was nothing at all in the air above that clearing but clear blue sky.

"Nope," I said, and by then I had to admit it was rather peculiar.  "What did you mean about those trees?"

"They moved, man.  First time I was out here and saw 'em, there was a big old oak trunk laying over there," and without turning to look at it, he pointed almost at the dead center of that clearing.  "About a week later, I got out here again, and it had moved, and two weeks after that was yesterday, and it was just plain gone by then, and that's when I went back and called you."

"Moved how?"

"I don't know how!!  Same as them bottles, I guess!"

"Hang on, Jimmy, I want to try something."  I looked around us for a little bit until I finally found a stick small enough for me to break off a bigger limb, but big enough that it hadn't disappeared like all the leaves I hadn't seen, and I lobbed it up in the air, and damn if it didn't disappear just like Jimmy's bottles.  Then I got to thinking about it, and said, "ok, now let's try something else," and we went back to the truck and got my fishing pole and the little tackle box I keep in there.  That one isn't as big as the one I take when I know I'm going fishing, but it has a couple of my favorite lures, on account of it's the box that's always in my truck, so I know I've always got the good stuff if the mood to drop a line strikes when I don't have my full kit available.

We went back to where Jimmy had thrown his bottle, and I had him hold the pole while I dug around in the tackle box for something I didn't much mind losing.  I was just about to stick an old lead weight on the line when I saw Jimmy staring at it, and I realized the line wasn't hanging down from the pole the way you though it ought to, but was hanging at a bit of an angle, pointing towards that funny spot where things disappeared.  I looked up at Jimmy, and he looked back at me, and then we both looked out at that spot, and then we both looked anywhere else.  He got real interested in the trees between us and the truck, and I got real busy with that lead sinker.  When I got it all set, with a bright red bobber for good measure, I gave it a real gentle cast, because by then I didn't figure it'd take too much, and I was right.  That sinker shot straight towards that funny little spot where all the tree trunks and sticks and grass was pointing, and was like to disappear, but Jimmy and I've been fishing almost as long as we've known each other, and as I've already told you, that's been a good while, so I was able to stop the line spinning out before the sinker disappeared altogether.

"Ho Lee Shit," says Jimmy, and I had to agree, because we was too far away to see the sinker for sure, but that bright red bobber looked like it was hovering a few inches off the ground a good forty yards away from us, not quite to where the bottles went, and my pole was already bending a little bit.  "Can you reel it in?" he asked, and under normal circumstances, I woulda yelled at him, because of course I'd be able to reel it in, but today was not turning out to be any manner of normal, so I just stayed quiet and started turning the handle, and it was a good deal harder than I'd expected it to be.  Four, maybe five years ago, Jimmy and me were fishing out on Coons Cap Lake, and hooked a bass that must have been some kind of monster, because we was fighting it enough to make the whole damn boat rock, and eventually lost it when he snapped our 40-pound line.  I only had a little piece of lead and a plastic bobber on the line that day in the clearing, and had to work damn near as much.  I thought I'd get it, too, but I forgot that sometimes that particular reel can be a little tricky, and when I went to rest without holding the reel handle, it spun back out on me, and by the time I caught it again, it was past that first cast, and when I tried to reel it back in, the line gave up and that little red bobber disappeared just slick as shit through a goose.  Jimmy looked after it for a long time, and then he said, "We need something faster," and started back towards the truck.

I grabbed up all my stuff, and he explained on the way, and by that afternoon we were back and better prepared, and we had Hartnell's winch, too, and you can bet your life we didn't tell Hartnell why we wanted it, neither.  We also had Frank's boy's paintball gun and a whole fresh bucket of paintballs, because when Jimmy told me why he thought we needed something faster, that was the best idea either of us had.

First thing we did was crank up the pressure on that little paintball gun just as high as it would go, and loaded up a hopper full of balls, and took turns shooting them at different angles.  We found that if we shot them at about a right-angle to the line between us and what Jimmy was now calling the G Spot, on account of it was a total mystery and it took him years to find it, they arced a little on the way in, but they still disappeared all the same.  I think he was hoping they'd circle around a couple times first, like turds in a toilet, but whatever was pulling them in was just too much stronger than Frank's boy's paintball gun.  That made us start thinking about how we could shoot them faster, but real bullets are too hard to see, and we didn't figure anything else would get anything moving faster than that paintball gun, except maybe a potato gun, and we was too excited to bother going to build one just yet.

It took both of us together almost an hour, but we got Hartnell's winch out to the very edge of the clearing and tied it to the biggest tree we could find, and got one of Jimmy's tow straps to make a loop we could tie to the hook at the end of the cable.  Then we both hemmed and hawed and tried to act busy with little details like knots and our shoes before we finally got around to who was going to go first.  "You found it, it's on your land, so if you want to go..." I started, and then Jimmy waves his hands and says no, that's ok, it's no big deal to him if I want to go take a closer look, and I admit, I wasn't too crazy about the idea, but I could tell Jimmy was even less excited, now that the moment was here, so I stepped into the loop, and Jimmy manned the winch.

I was maybe ten yards past where we had stood when Jimmy threw the bottle and I cast the line when I could really start to feel it all over.  My arms felt really heavy, but they weren't pointing at the ground so much as the ground a few feet in front of me.  My head was pounding like I'd been hanging upside down for a couple hours, and the tow strap was cutting into my gut pretty bad.  Jimmy yelled at me that I was about out of cable, and it sounded like he was talking real slow, and in the ocean, and that's when I realized blood was rushing in my ears, and my eyes felt like they was gonna pop right outta my head.  I tried to give Jimmy the high sign to pull me back in, but my arms were so heavy I could barely move them.  I noticed everything was starting to look a little gray, and I wondered if maybe I was gonna black out when that strap tugged at my middle again, and I could feel Jimmy pulling me back.

The weird thing was, by the time I was all the way back to the winch, I was feeling a little better, but things were still a little gray, and that's when Jimmy asked me what took me so long out there.  "What the hell you mean, Jimmy?  I walked out, I walked back, and thanks for helping me, but trust me, that field is no place to dawdle.  I got out just as quick as I could!"  And he says, "It's half-past seven.  You been out there over an hour and a half."  And that's when I realized it wasn't my vision going dark, it was the sky.  "Jimmy," I said, "what the hell is in this field?"

I had an idea about how to find out, but the next day was Sunday, and the library was closed, so we spent most of the day sitting at the edge of the field, drinking beers and throwing the bottles into the sky, then watching them disappear into Jimmy's G Spot, which got a lot more fun to say the more beers we had.  Monday morning I rushed through everything at work, watching the clock the whole time, until my lunch break came, and I tore into the library like I was on fire.  I asked them all manner of questions, and was late getting back to work, but when I saw Jimmy that night, I had some new ideas.

"There's this place called Tunguska," I told him, and he said that was a funny name for a place, and I said, "so's Jimmy's G Spot," and he allowed that was right, and asked me what about Tunguska?  "A long time ago, something happened there that nobody's ever been able to explain.  A whole mess of trees were knocked down, and it kinds looked like a bomb went off, but nothing was burnt."  He nodded, already seeing some similarity.  "But some people think it was something called a microsingularity, passing through the Earth."  I wasn't too good with that word at first, but I'd practiced saying it all afternoon, so it'd sound better when I told Jimmy about it, and I think the effort was worthwhile. It rolls off your tongue, or right through your Tunguska, if you prefer.

"What the hell's that?" he asked, which is exactly what I'd wanted him to ask, and pretty much what I'd asked the librarian who'd been helping me over my lunch break.

"You ever heard of a black hole?"

"Isn't that one of them bars out by the interstate?"

"Yeah, I think it might be, but this one's different.  It's these things out in space that have so much gravity, that they pull in everything around them, even light, and that's why they call them black holes."

"How do they go and pull in light?"

I waved at him, like he was being silly and I didn't have the time to explain it, but the truth is, I wasn't real clear on that part myself.  "Don't worry about that.  They just do, ok?"  I kept going, so he wouldn't get a chance to ask me something else I didn't know yet.  "And the other name for a black hole is a singularity.  So the thing that went through Tunguska was a little bitty baby one."

"So they got a G Spot there, too?"

"No, see, people think it just passed through the planet on its way somewheres else, and Tunguska is where it went through.  It didn't stick around to make trees and beer bottles disappear."

"Then why we talking about Tunguska, if they don't have a spot that make their beer bottles disappear?"

"Because I got to thinking, what if the microsingularity didn't just pass on by, but stuck around for a while?  What then?"  I was pretty proud of that word by now, and very pleased I'd gotten another chance to use it.  Jimmy nodded, and I could see he was getting it now, too.

"Then you'd have a spot that made trees and beer bottles disappear."

"Yeah, you would."

"Whatchoo think we oughta do now?" he asked.

"I tell you one thing for sure, buddy--I ain't never paying the trashman again."

I had an idea a few years ago for a story about two boys whose grandfather discovered a black hole in the back yard, because I thought a neat Grandpa Trick would be making things disappear by tossing them into the black hole behind the shed.  It was only on the night I sat down to finally write it, with a yokel and his drunken friend replacing the boys and their grandpa, that I realized it was probably inspired somehow by a book I read as a kid called Singularity, except those boys were at the other end of a black hole, and trash from some alien race kept showing up in their shed.  Oops.  Apologies to William Sleator.