Page 30 - The Myth and the Moment

Morning

Ah, there’s the gate. Trip back must have taken an hour. Not much
gas left. Whoa! The dog! I’m not opening that gate again, no way!
That means leaving the truck outside. Damned if I do, and dog meat
if I don’t. What did Hodges say: he’s not going to be reachable by
phone. Time for a little pragmatism. What is to be feared in this
situation, Nate? Getting in trouble. Such as? Either losing my pay-
check tomorrow or having my throat ripped out right now. Put it that
way, and the choice is clear. Wait. Maybe I can keep the money and
my life. Yeah. Park in the driveway, right against the gate with the gas
cap against the chain-link, so nobody can mess with that. Lock up the
truck with nothing in the cab. Done. Now throw all the equipment
over the fence. Brush. Hose. Plastic bottles. Testing kit. Tool box.
Crash!
Well, nothing breakable in there. And here, dear dog, are the keys:
now you can guard it all. I have discharged my duty; if anyone gets in,
it ain’t my fault! Hodges, you owe me three hours at time-and-a-half.
Back to my own milieu now. Final proofread. Seventeen
paragraphs. Should I worry about that number? Would anyone be
concerned about its significance? Like all the mathemagical concern
over the Great Pyramid. Better to have some meaningless prime
number than, say, a square or a cube. But wait: seventeen is the what?
(1-2-3-5-7-11-13—um, yeah,—17) eighth prime: that must be
significant! And off they’ll go, looking for octal patterns everywhere
else. Maybe I should end with a disclaimer that the form of the
document is totally arbitrary, as is the number of words, the size of
the letters, and the orientation of the site. No ciphers used, no
acrostics formed, no subtext. Wouldn’t Omar Khayyam be disgusted
at what the Sufis did to his quatrains, or Koheleth at the pious twist
appended to Ecclesiastes? Well, that’s out of my control. The past is
always raw material to the present: let the future beware! The burrito
stand. Yes.
“Give me an iced tea.”
I’ll get something decent to eat later. Why not call it what it is: ice
water impregnated with powdered tea flavor? A probable lesser of
certain evils.
“Forty-nine cents.”
Coins. Coins.
“Here’s two quarters.”

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