who pushes books for a slave's wages? me.

cough it up, moses

Middle of procure a new revelator, selected the tousle-hair; Divination don’t adhere to no laws of grooming.

Bed-head never predict a thing his whole life, except that Ma gonna tell him make breakfast himself, if he want it that bad. He was right about that one.

Fair bit more than I ever, said the Preacher. And I’m a man of god.

Sound like word from another source, said muddy-foot Sam.

Rough-eye occupant in the street, shove a bit and step on bed-head’s toes. Make you come across funny, Bed-head spit out.

Hear how he take to it, after not more than a waft of position, said Beeftea. He step up and draw dirty mark where he stop with steel-toe plate shining through his boot.

Circle tightening around Bed-head. All three nod out this is a good thing. Boy make us fat where we havn’t been in long time.

Sight better than Muddy-foot’s forked stick, half-submerged in his back pocket, which only found water which was already apparent, all three agree.

He like a luminous stone in our hand, said Beeftea.

Bed-head thinking about nervous perspirate, come out with a prediction: Beeftea got a thing for the Preacher.

Hell you say, Muddy-foot exclaim, I never knew you all were that way.

Beeftea weren’t making words just hard up a bit with noises in his throat.

The Preacher making notes for declarate against unrighteous types of prophecy on cream-stained band inside his hat brim, straighten up quick.

Why you amn’t denying, said the Preacher. He eye on Beeftea a bit.

Beeftea find his voice, work out: This not something the boy know. I vouch he lie.

Muddy-foot careful with his tongue. But you ain’t deny yet.

We never, said the Preacher.

Scratch-filled space lay thick on them. Beeftea look like he don’t wait his mouth, but he do anyway.

You say yourself he a luminesce… like a paint contain a phosphor, said Muddy-foot.

Beeftea growing redder in cheek and neck, sputtering back into silence.

Cough it up, moses, said Bed-head, but Beeftea just choke louder.

All three pay attention with steady stare to bed-head, like he got some ability they feared. Wish they reverse what they done, now bed-head take to power.

Of three, two regret much, one goggle-eye at sort of news town havn’t had in more than a year.

People crowd in to look at rumple-hair boy. Weren’t no chance of going back now.

Whole town hear what Bed-head said.

-made a list

-at the library three times today in search of potter number six. one library twice, the other once.
-found the buses growing crowded with the advent of the semester.
-generally wasted time.
-put in an order for Sheep
-vaguely pursued writing
-found myself frustrated
-read, in no particular order, fragments from ulysses, kostelanetz, delaney
-felt inferior
-assumed the rain/weather was a result of/associated with my mood
-wondered if certain past friends knew i was alive
-hoped B would get off work soon
-wandered, swamplike

Terror

it is 3 am. we are sleeping in a small two-man tent.

something large and heavy collides with our tent and seems to fall on it, thrashing briefly before getting off.

we awake screaming.

there is no interval between waking, assessing our situation, and screaming--rather, in one fluid moment we wake to screams, and later realized that we were the ones screaming.

the confusion at our tent appearing to collapse on us, while simultaneously being skewed off the ground and shaken violently, completely disorients us.

after the tiny moment in which this all happened, we huddled in the center of the tent, trying to understand what had happened and searching for our flashlight.

we could not find the flashlight.

we were mortally terrified.

we had no idea what was outside the tent, and whether it was still there or had left.

one of our friends in a tent nearby called out and asked if we were ok.

we got out of the tent, joined by several other people who we had woken with our screams, and examined the tent.

there was a hole big enough to stick your foot through in the lower left hand side of the tent.

the pole had been pulled apart.

two tent stakes had been pulled completely up.

an elastic bungee cord that secured the rain cover on the tent had been ripped completely off.

we speculated that a deer had run into our tent.

we gathered our things and abandoned our tent.

we left abruptly in the mizzling rain, driving through the tree shadowed roads home.

later that day, we retrieved our tent from some friends who had brought it home with them.

they told us that several other people in the campground had had things stolen from their cars, one of which was parked near our tent outside the parking lot on the grass.

we now believe that a person who had been stealing from the car either slipped on the wet grass or tripped on our tent pole and fell on our tent.

this does nothing to relieve the terror we felt upon waking up screaming.

The Night&Day Book