The boys drive off in a jalopy to my left, and the police to my right. I am expecting both to return soon with trouble. I am anxious about that. I can be whupt or arrested.

A blonde in a roadster passes by, left to right, and I call to her. I pick up a huge surfboard and hurry to where she has stopped. I figure she must, for I am in danger. She does. I sit down in the passenger seat, and nevermore is the surfboard a participant.

She immediately turns onto a hidden road winding down to our left. Opening up in the dell is the prettiest scene, a pond and an escarpment like a mushroom; it's the illustration for a child's storybook.

In the house, I amble along through the rooms. The blonde has spoken not a word to me. I see children rambling through a sunken den of sorts, and I continue on.

Pause at a door. There are two men in there, I'm guessing, although both have yet to rise this day. They are different ages; maybe the father and brother of the blonde.

There are strangers everywhere, although the family isn't large, neither is the house but it has narrow passages. I should introduce myself, I suppose, but nobody pays the slightest attention to me.

Scoob is here with me, and there are puppies, too, who cavort and bark, but the barks are subdued, like whispers.

[Two events in waketime history may account for these scenes. One is when I skipped out of Ft Polk, 1969, and spent the first night, after being shaken down by the Leesville city police in Lousiana, across the border and was immediately on awakening accosted by the cops from nearby Jasper, who took identifying numbers and drove off "to check" and meanwhile I expect at anytime the MPs to come across that bridge over the Sabine I had just crossed in the night.

The second was when my brother Joey took me to the house over in Dodd City, a little burg east of Flatlandia, to meet with and perhaps take a young lady somewhere. She invited us in, and Joey wisely declined, and I went in to sit in a circle with strangers. Nobody introduced anybody.

This circle was brought to mind recently by Joey's recalling what I had told him about the conversation I overheard. It was hilarious, now that I remember it. Two old guys are talking trade. One says to the other,

"Lem, how'd you swap that 'ere five five Chevy for my Pontiac ?"

And Lem squints at him, growls:

"Just like you didn't have nuthin'."]