The Priest and the Professor

A priest asks the scientist how he can prove the existence of love. “Well,” the scientist replies, “evidence. With evidence that leads to an assumption.”

“Many people have this assumption, am I correct?”

“You've noticed.”

“I have. But love itself cannot be proven. Not even by a scientist.”

“Especially not by a scientist. For example, when I look at my wife, I do not look at her with the eye of a scientist. I leave all of that in the lab. When you get down to it, you have to admit that being in love is a little magical. I know my wife loves me. There are these hints...these glances and changes in her voice—the way our eyes and hands can talk with one another. The first time we met I felt like I'd known her my whole life. This is just evidence. There are some things we can't explain that we know are true."

“And that," said the priest, deeply satisfied, "is the same way I know my God.”

"Well—"

"Because he winks at me.”

"Ok."

The scientist nods—acknowledging the connection.

“Yes. I am married to the Church,” the priest continues, rising with his voice and holding onto his collar. "This is my wedding band!”

“Oh god!" says the scientist and the priest nods—misunderstanding disgust for revelation. "Does it keep you much warm at night? Do you get lonely?"

“Very much so. And no.” says the priest.

“Let me tell you flat-out Father. Pussy is better." The priest leans back in his chair.

"Well, I suppose nobody can weigh two things in the same hand."

(That was a nice image—even the scientist, Professor Blankman, had to recognize that. Father Maloney, the priest, took great pleasure in the subtle shift of atmosphere and allowed the scientist a moment to think—he was finding his answers unsatisfying. Yet he was sure of them. What was happening here? he wondered.

1. Father Maloney baits Professor Blankman into equivocating the unequal, into holding dearly-held intuitions—one for earthly love, one for heavenly—up to the same light, weighed in the same hand.
2. Professor Blankman's tools feel dull, but they have only been misused. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. Perversion in the highest degree! As such God's hand would be empty. Hoodwinked. Father’s intellect: retreat back to faith when the intellect becomes a burden. Know you truly own something when you can throw it away, I suppose. Men of the spirit always equivocating, finding spirit where they can. All caged up—there's a draft.)

"You're right!" the scientist says. "I suppose you are absolutely right. Your analogy is balanced. You religious folks do this all too well. Balancing. You're lauded for your consternation and prudence on matters the people have arrived at already. You criticize with most vigor the things you don't understand. I suspect it's because your first allegiance is to your own organization. And what you have to offer? The law, the moral code of the cosmos and their penalties. Judge, jury, and executioner! To be a simple subject of a tyrant and work to change what you can with the tools you have—that's what I do. I know I am not powerful, but I know I am not powerless. Your boss created hell—

"And Heaven."

“Oh shut up!"

The priest crosses his legs patiently.

"You wouldn’t know your dick if it were sitting in your hand!”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. It is how religion wheedles into the mind of man and divorces it from reason—from thousands of years of collective work, our human inheritance devalued by your absurd medieval preoccupations. It's much bigger than you think, Father. Much bigger and made for a better use. You can build a tower to heaven by loving right here on earth. You...you abiogenic flagellant!" ”

“Nice.” The priest is reclining in his garb, finishing the last of a series of yawns.

“Thank you. Sorry. It’s just...I didn’t really like Sunday school.”

“No, that’s OK. I heard what you said, but Lord have mercy. I ask you your opinions on love and you get angry. Come to a Mass. It’s not so much as anything you said but families spending time together. It sounds to me like a scary world you’re living in. If you say I’m missing it, I say good.”

“Well, I don't believe you know what good actually means."

"I don't believe you know what good actually means," the priest replies.

"I don't believe you know what good actually means," the scientist replies.

"I don't believe you know what good actually means," the priest replies.

"I don't believe you know what good actually means," the scientist replies.

"I don't believe" they say simultaneously and erupted in an enormous laughter.

"Agree to disagree?"

"Of course. It was a good discourse."

"I'd shake your hand, but..."

"I forgive you."
"Oh, great."

They were tied and handcuffed to a support column in the basement parking lot of the Marriott Hotel in Dubai. Three men next to them had been dispatched by the throat by a man with a black mask. They lay slumped nearby. The man in the black mask was on a cellphone, soon to be God's witness. He would stand over the priest and the professor and explain their offenses to God in Arabic, a language they didn't speak or understand. It could have been worthwhile if they did.

Full House

Herb keeps an old face in every room of the house:

There’s an immigrant’s gate that lines the lot

And a garden planted by a woman in 1901.

The yard is small and rectangular.

Vines grow up the lattices.

The kitchen tells him to remember stories.

The living room teaches him how to tell them.

The porch is gray and even

With dust.

And even a neighbor joked that even

The wind stopped calling
Those green-framed screens

That oscillate between life and death.

Guilt stays in the bathroom below the stairs

And abstraction
Sits in a shuttered bedroom

With a face that’s dark as night.

And when the upstairs hallway floods with light

It’s for youth and distraction.

But the foyer he left just for her

Because it reminded him of birth and salvation.

He never goes there anymore—

A neighbor moved an armoire in the hallway

To shut it off.

But on Tuesday nights, when Herb sheds his gown
And shuffles out and into town

Down to Molly's Pub to down a few downers down by the water,
The whole house is turned around

And the pictures turn their faces
And blink
As the door turns into a shutter.

So they wait for him—holding
Smiles—until he comes home drunk,
Opens the door, and lays face-down
Before them on the floor.

He was just playing playing cards, he tells them.
Same old lies.
But they smile back now—every single face.

A Woman Talking about her Purse at a Cheap Restaurant

The waitresses’ teeth come. Face away. Back to conversations. When you feel that breeze. That is the rain. We're on the patio. I watch the couples. The temperaments changing. Friends and enemies. 

"I have many," she says, holding it up. A $600 purse. The man does not care about the purse. To each according to his. What is it? From each according to his will. No. To each according to his ability. That is not right. Anyhow, it does not work. See the hustle and bustle of the city. Bumping into a friend. Where are you going? Where are you going? To do my will: connecting trinkets below my ashy face. No. Wouldn't work. Have to be like animals sometimes I’m afraid. A fight it is. Don't let them say different. They might like it even. The shoves of arithmetic. The owl. How many strokes.

She says, again, how this one is in mint condition. He nods. Pleasant day. The rain’s coming. Yawn. Mouth, a pocket for the rain. Talking about her purses she is. Sell this one, she says, to buy another that matches my smart jacket, fur-laced boots, tights to walk in, black tights, with the garters' straps connecting the lacy black underthings. Cream and coffee like. Oh Christ. Let her have it! The free market makes her naughty. From each according to each! To cover your. Fight for you to have it, dear. And your purse. Dearest me. Purse your lips. 

Hunger

I have to be getting started. Right now.  8:27 p.m. (1:19 p.m. November 21, 2011: I was going to delete the period following the 'm' in 'p.m.' but realized it was good.  I am elsewhere now.) November 20, 2011.  I wiped my left eyebrow with my right hand.  Boy it’s hot in here.  I think this spaghetti will give me acne.  I just wiped my left eye with my left pointer finger.  I should take off my sweater.  I stripped last night.  Do you think I’m hot?  8:29 November 20, 2011.  Car engine starts outside.  I wipe my mouth with my left hand.  There’s nobody else home.  I should have said this earlier—just farted—but I’m listening to Eddie Vedder.  8:30 November 20, 2011: originally I didn’t—just farted—want to infect this writing with cultural associations.  Especially pop-culture ones.  I take another bite. (8:59 November 20, 2011: I deleted ‘ha,' and added 'actually,' right here): Actually I lied. I didn’t take a bite, but just looked at spaghetti then back at the computer.  I didn’t mean to lie, just did.  8:31 November 20, 2011.  My lower lip tastes really salty.  I have licked it 10-20 times.  It won’t go away.  I’m concerned.  

8:32 November 20, 2011.  I can’t seem to eat (9:01 November 20 2011: I’m deleting ‘to take a bite anymore’ and adding ‘to eat’, see? look up: it’s not there)  But I am hungry. I'll admit that I’m leaving a lot of things out: facts, emotions, things I see. What you’re reading—this "time thing"—was supposed to be like (8:40 November 20, 2011, now we’re in the editing stage. 9:03 November 20 2011: which, I realize, we already were, spatially speaking.) a diary or something.  Because 8:34 November 20, 2011 I want to be truly, truly honest.  But I’ve already told you that I lie. People have attempted this before...the constant recording of their thoughts. Some sort of pining for immortality. There is actually a man who writes in his diary every five minutes.  He’s somewhere in his forties, I think. Actually I don’t know how old he is, but he has like, millions of pages. 8:35 November 20, 2011. And nobody will ever read them (9:05 November 20, 2011: I’m changing ‘it’ to 'them' because that’s correct. "Nobody will ever read them." Right. 8:42: I deleted the word ‘all’ that was to come after the soon-to-be-deleted word ‘it’.  8:45. Burped and added the apostrophes to the aforementioned instance of the deleted word ‘all’. 9:07 November 20 2011: But you never saw ‘all’ at all, but there it was four times anyways) because they would take up your entire life.

8:36 November 20 2011.  I just ate more spaghetti.

(8:47 November 20, 2011: I remember taking a bite of spaghetti. That was around ten minutes ago.  I’ve since changed rooms; my computer was dying.  Here comes my roommate Dan at 8:48 November 20, 2011.  He’s wearing a shirt from Fat Harry's, which is a bar, and I suppose he's just finished his shift. [A day later, at 1:24 November 21, 2011, I still do not know where he was coming from. I'm at the university library and I just coughed on a public keyboard without covering my mouth. Nobody saw.])  

But isn’t it sad, in a way, that the truest documentation we’ll ever have of a man’s life will never be read in its entirety? The Diary Guy wrote and wrote, nearly every minute of every day, emptying himself, trying so hard just to exist. And he does, I suppose. People are talking.  But (8:55 November 20, 2011: I’m about to move "to truly know him," which once followed "But" to 147 words from now, because I think it looks better that way, and you may have forgotten where you were, or lost track of time) to truly know him you’d have to become the story and the person who wrote it and make the decision soon.

2:21 a.m. April 22 2013

It's been 1 year, 5 months, 3 days, 5 hours and 54 minutes since this began. During that time my grammar has improved, but I've made some big mistakes. I was called unlovable by someone who wasn't even trying to hurt me. That's honest. And I moved to a new home. When I started this post, for example someone else lived here, and I was elsewhere, like you are now. I wonder if one year, five months, three days, six hours and forty-eight minutes ago someone was in this room, sleeping behind me—pacing or looking out the window. I don't know how the furniture was arranged (I keep my bed by a window that faces south) or if this was a bedroom at all. Maybe the house was empty. And maybe if I turn around you'll be here with all my things looking placid at the window and waiting for me to stop whatever I'm doing and gobble you up. Though it’s no coincidence, it's worth nothing that I'm hungry again. Starving actually. Mainly I wish I still had some of that spaghetti, and wish I hadn't let so much go to waste. 

3:33 a.m. April 22 2013.

Writing

I just woke from this wonderful dream where I finally gave up writing. It happened like this:

I had this big suitcase full of all my writing: all my scribblings, all my poems and luggage. It was bulky and awkward to carry, so I left it outside and went to dine in an Indian restaurant alone. It would be safe, I thought, by the curb.

The meal was fine and exotic. The busboy was Mexican—and I made a mental note to write that down. But when I came outside, all my notebooks and pens, all my stories, all my luggage was gone.

A homeless man motioned toward the street. “It was just...," he began—and then I saw the culprit. A younger, more-attractive man sprinting through the park, handling the bag as if it were weightless.

There was some good stuff in that bag too, including all fifty two of my favorite story's revisions, an idea for a new character—a perfect one, to be placed in some story or other—and the fourth start of my first novel. All gone.

So I went back to school. I took a cab and when we pulled up out front I realized I didn't have money to pay the fare. The driver turned around and said it was OK. After all, my bag had just been stolen. And in a motherly way, she opened the door such that it seemed to open on its own.

I thanked her and walked up under the stony arches of University, cutting through the bright-eyed, babbling freshman in the dark museum halls where colorful banners for bands and sea turtles and marine biology programs hung from the rafters. I wondered why I hadn't studied marine biology, or turtles, or bands. Everyone seemed so happy.

Then as if by miracle, there she was—walking right beside me. We were in the bookstore where we'd first met. I glanced to my side and thought to ask if she hated me yet, but she was smiling, exploring—babbling about literary theory and psychology—adding more and more books to a wheelbarrow-borne stack that nearly touched the ceiling. 

I couldn't afford to buy them, and of course neither could she. But she didn’t seem to mind. I just gazed at the books as she floated there, speaking in quiet little cycles that reminded me of silence produced by a stream. Then she turned to me, cheerily, and exclaimed, “Me and you in the bookstore!”

I tried to return her toothy grin, but as I scanned the books she’d chosen I was stunned to find that I’d read every single one. I wanted to know if she remembered that it was I who first introduced her to John Irving, and if she knew that all his books were the same. I wanted to know why she’d never read Tolstoy, Melville or Dostoyevsky—and if she intended to read War and Peace, Moby-Dick, and The Brothers Karamazov, or just buy them.

And I wanted to point out that she should have said “’You and I in the bookstore’ not ‘Me and you,'" and moreover admonish her for lying—(I couldn't be ‘in the bookstore’, as she’d claimed, because I was obviously in my bed, dreaming). But then I stopped. 

Because I was in my bed dreaming. And really I'm most intrigued by the things I can't control.  

When Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

It’s January 1st, 1999. The Euro is established. A month later the U.S. Senate acquits Bill Clinton of impeachment charges. Then Star Wars Episode I, Napster, the Columbine High School massacre—and in an article entitled “Fragmented Future,” Darcy DiNucci states that, “The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear…”

That was fourteen years ago, and I don’t remember anything called Web 2.0. What I do remember are static web browsers, the screech of the dialup modem, mom yelling from the kitchen about the busy phone line, sister screaming from her bedroom about the computer, Hotmail, and AIM chat rooms — certainly not the Post-Internet suggested by DiNucci.

So what was she seeing that I wasn’t? When she said, “The web we know now… is only an embryo of the Web to come,” did anybody stop to ask what she meant? Is the Internet of today even knit from the same fabric as that of 1999? Perhaps, but it takes benchmarks to notice the change. Here was my wake-up call: Chick-Fil-A.

Perennially targeted by LGBT advocacy groups for their stance on gay marriage, their endorsement of the "Biblical definition of the family unit," and heaping contributions toward ultra-conservative lobbyist groups, the conservative corporation now finds itself in hot water for creating a Facebook profile (a 14-year old girl named Abby Farle) and using it (her) to defend the CEO's decidedly old-fashioned beliefs. Abby Farle, the would-be Chick-Fil-A defender, ended her posts exclusively with “Derrr!” or "John 3:16” and was finally exposed for being non-existent after a lengthy battle on the company’s own FB page when a visitor adroitly pointed out that Abby had joined the social network only a day prior, and that her profile picture was drawn from a website that supplies publicly licensed stock photos for commercial use. 

Shortly thereafter, little redheaded Abby Farle fell silent.

What caught my attention wasn't that we have another example of corporate dishonesty, but just how depressingly fickle this entire story is. What’s more concerning than the fact that Chick-Fil-A (a quick-service chicken restaurant) is opposed to gay marriage is that we care that a quick-service chicken restaurant is opposed to gay marriage. Sure: they’re a 4 billion dollar (and growing) corporation, but they’re not shaping public policy...Are they?  

[1] (Following the 2008 recession, many formerly middle-of-the-road Americans acknowledged that corporations had huge incentive and opportunity to lie [and likely were] or listened to conservative talk radio.) [2]  (It's worth noting that the Tea Party [a loosely affiliated group of anti-immigration, anti-spending, anti-tax, anti-Obama, anti-government patriots] is not a political movement, an apolitical movement, or, really, anything at all. Evidence suggests that The Tea Party did not come to prominence from an organic, grass roots movement comprised of dissatisfied citizens. Instead, it was created by the Koch family as a means to launder and disperse politician-bound funds and lobby for tax breaks for the rich. The Koch brothers' namesake, Koch Industries, is the second-largest private company in the United Stated. It's referred to as The Biggest Company You've Never Heard Of. And that's the rub. 

With its roots in the golden age of oil—the time of the American tycoon—The Biggest Company You've Never Heard Of hasn't lost a step. Though the cultural sea change of the 60's and 70's may have been more impassioned than planned, the masses could no longer be ignored by their representatives; sweeping environmental reforms passed into law, the Environmental Protection Agency was founded. Teetering on the edge of revolution, the Government could not abide such wide-spread public disillusionment. A challenge with overt force could signal to moderates that the government had ceded its right to alter and/or define a free society, thereby absolving the contract from which their authority was derived. Many had already seen that moment pass, but not moderate Americans. So Koch-like corporations took a hit in the form of government regulation. 

With annual revenue in the hundreds of billions, Still enjoying the profits from a century-old stranglehold on the American tobacco market, and annual revenue in the hundreds of billions, Koch nevertheless found itself suffering from 'heavy' taxation. After Ron Paul's disastrous defeat in 2008 it was clear that tax breaks for the mega wealthy was not going to change. In order to maintain its market position and increase its God-slapping revenue in the face of regulation and economic downturn, Koch had to evolve, diversify. 

What follows is how Corporation killed Democracy, like Paper beating Rock. 

Because their money funds the killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans every year (many of them middle-of-the-road Americans who now comprise the Tea Party) the Koch brothers knew that they could not personally lead a tax revolt [it would take lots of work, and it might seem insensitive]. So, under cover of darkness, disguised as average Americans, they created  the Tea Party. None of this made any sense. Fox News was first on the scene, then it all made sense, for it is the world of words that creates the world of things, so it matters very little what the words mean (or what the chicken is made of). Defined by its volatile opposition to nearly everything and offering nothing in return, the Tea Party and its creation story serve as an  example of how tens of millions of dollars and the Word of mass media can make the unreal real, and create chicken-or-the-egg causality dilemmas, appropriately, out of thin air.)

What else could cause this commercial behemoth to resort to such childish techniques? Is this what DiNucci was talking about?

FB and Twitter may be ushering us toward an unexpected conclusion: that objective truth never existed, and only a lack of alternative viewpoints could create the illusion that there was one. It’s not that people are more apt to mislead—that we’re an especially rabid generation of liars—but that there are just far more voices for the truth to contend with.

Even the article that broke the Chik-Fil-A story seems strangely suspect. Published on Gizmodo.com under the title “Did Chick-fil-A Pretend to Be a Teenage Girl on Facebook?” the story’s hard evidence consisted of no more than a screenshot. And whoever took the screenshot (presumably someone from Gizmodo or one of the belligerents) had only one friend on their FB chat—and, at any given time, who only has one friend online? Was this a case of a fake person exposing another fake person? Is this Web 2.0?

Maybe it doesn’t matter—when a chicken company cares about public opinion enough to create fake [3] (Arranging these words in this order is, for some reason, not troubling.) advocates to support an ideology that’s unrelated to their product (i.e. lie, which isn’t very Christian) something is wrong—and it’s not just Chick-Fil-A. It’s us.

If social media has come to serve as the hammer and anvil of truth and transparency (see Wikileaks, Tahrir Square, Syria) and our voices are to be the liberalizing agent, what’s to be done when a conservative voice like S. Truett Cathy (Chick-Fil-A CEO) starts chirping? Mr. Cathy doesn’t appear to be affecting my life, so why can’t an asshole be an asshole in peace?

While a democratic society provides a somewhat-perfect nest for social media, let’s not forget that society and democracy are only somewhat perfect. They are only as good as we are—and the same applies to even the most public and most inclusive forums on the Internet.

FB seems rather in-line with the everyone-matters, everyone-has-a-voice, everyone-gets-a-fair-shot underpinning of the middle-of-the-road American psyche, and maybe that's what makes it so addicting. There’s a face I can control; there I’m always smiling; there I am, before X,Y, or Z bankrupt, left, or forgot me; there’s my idealized life. I’m still skinny, married, tan. So has FB made for us the illusion of a second life?  

Is this 2.0? Is it real? If this internal/external, personal/communal relationship doesn’t constitute a second life—or if having one isn't that important—why was Abby Farle conjured up in the first place? What could she hope to accomplish? And what are we to do with our dead friends who (now) never really die? Should FB bury its dead?

As we grow with FB, our enthusiasm dwindles. Of late, a cynical (albeit more addicted) lethargy toward the social network seems to be prevailing. Maybe this is due to the realization that corporations have also embarked on their own second lives—following us through the wormhole. Or maybe it's the widening, (probably) unsubstantiated fears that Facebook will allow local, state, or federal government agencies to access our online identities, messages, and secrets—which (presumably) would point to offline identities, our interpersonal relationships, and our geographic locations.

I wonder if these possibilities strike anyone else as so completely ironic that the irony is itself difficult to discern. Despite the volumes of our lives we put on FB, there’s no life within it. Even the mildly devoted user must know that they will never truly meet someone on the Internet. Is it not obvious that the Internet seems to present us, really, with more of a social buffer than a conduit? I wonder. 

And it's getting bigger every day. It expands, and its growth appears increasingly organic. In many ways, it is. So, perhaps we need to acknowledge that this new mode of communication may actually alter what it means to “meet” someone (in the same way that KFC [the vanguard of chicken producing conspirators] altered our understanding of “meat”[4] {Life, nature, God, and science} by genetically modifying their birds.

Maybe, in 1999, everyone knew that the web was going to change—and maybe when Darcy DiNucci said “Web,” she really meant us, our human condition. Or maybe she was just more prophetic than she intended. [5] (Otherwise known as luck.)  Either way, what “Fragmented Future” reminded me to do was look back and remember how things were just a very short time ago, and then to ask whether this instrument—with its capacity for beauty and creativity, complete good and evil—is the signal or the noise of human progress. 

Go smell a flower.

Fire

I never got to go camping as a child. I never went on hikes. I wasn’t a Boy Scout, and I wasn’t made aware of any great spirit. I never connected with nature—or, at least, what I now consider ‘nature’ to be. I thought of autumn trees and rolling hills. Eagles. Nature was a place that was somehow quiet on its very own. If you go to the woods, don't build a fire. Sit still; you are responsible for very little; you are free.

I grew up in a small town on Route 1 in the south of Louisiana, where there were no forests or hardwood trees—just bayous and rivers and lakes and reeds. There was no firm ground from which to transcend. "The Outdoors" was not a destination, but a great obstacle that spanned the space between other things that mattered. The rivers moved one way, the bayous swayed by anything. Even when we drove north, to Mississippi and the woods, we went hunting and there was always the gun.

With each passing year what I came to relish was the absence of activity, the absence of human machination. I wanted to connect with something greater than myself. Once, as I was driving above the swamp on a long, raised bridge, my car ran out of gas. There was no way to turn around. It was then that I realized I was looking for something that was scattered all around me, but I would have to run away from everyone I knew in order to find it. I had been rejecting it all my life by sitting still, offending nobody but myself. Because out there, wrapped and waiting, was my life. 

I guess I’m making up for all that now. I am alone in the woods, and I am perfectly happy. It’s winter in Tennessee. The Appalachian Trail sits about two miles distant across the valley on a vertebras ridge. I’ve laid out a few boughs. I have a small tent. I brought a few books along, but none of them have caught.

The fire has reached its peak, and the snow melts in a widening circle. There's a half-foot of powder out amongst the hibernating trunks. It fills the thickets of rhododendron and the holes left behind fallen trees. I have a nice fire going. A nice fire, and I have nothing to worry about. Bears are afraid of the fire. The cool, blue center of the flame. If I can keep it going I will sleep below this black bowl and the snowline. I should save the kindling for later—but it’s nice to be warm. I throw the last of the sticks into the fire, switch sides, and warm my back. 

Maybe nature (as an abstract concept) cannot be defined. Maybe it's just what you decide it to be. After all, what is natural? And what is unnatural? What would an African tribesman living in a mud hut say to me if I asked him, "Do you like nature?" Distinctions like that are absurd. I cannot speak for anyone else, but for me one thing is certain: a man in the woods is natural and good.

A branch cracks behind me. Snow compresses and squeals in the woods. I turn and see that the fire is out. The coals are settled into a small pile and the logs above them are deep and black and unburning like two arms straining against an invisible weight.

 I paw for something to throw on the fire, but find only Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I kick the consumed logs aside, tear out several folios of paper, and throw them over the embers. They smolder a moment and then ignite. My eyes search the woods for the source of a voice. One of the half-consumed logs is cocked back in my arm when two silvery orbs come determinedly forward.

“Hey!” I yell. “Hey!” I cry out, swinging my arm.

“Hey.” The flat brim of a hat, the gleam of cufflinks, and a golden badge emerge from some pines. It's a park ranger. "Sorry to bother you," he says and points to the disappearing leaves. "I saw the fire." 

“Oh. OK."

He stands business-like, boots on the edge of the unmelted snow. "You’ve got the Louisiana plates? The Saturn?" I nod and he begins prodding with a flashlight, smiling up to his bushy eyebrows. “Well, you left your lights on.” 

"Shit."

"Hope your battery isn't dead." He shines the moon-white light over my face, noticing the tent, the torn book cover and scattered pages, and my arm, cocked back with a black log. He freezes. “Everything OK?”

"Oh." I drop my arm quickly. "Sorry."

“I scared you." 

“I thought you were a bear."

"They're sleeping," he says, motioning around. He clicks off his flashlight. The black dome lowers like a curtain and he steps toward me through the middle of a withering fire. "It’s people you have to be worried about in the woods.”