One of the good things I can say about him is that he never got mad when I told him to his face he was nuts. He just laughed and said it was an interesting proposition—and that his duty to teach me to survive didn’t include policing my opinions.

In all mis smoke and noise and stream-of-consciousness rambling tonight, it occurs to me for the first time that maybe my old man was right after all.

Maybe he had a feeling I’d wind up in a place like this, hunted, trapped, my survival depending on the credibility of a lie.

These eyes in the sky keep coming back. And the picture of a burning mountain. I try to shrug them aside, but another image comes, uninvited, unwelcome …

A closeup of the moon…

Hey, I’m not illiterate. Though my life depends on seeming as if I am. Like Bogart said to Bacall, I been to college and I can read a book. It’s just that I adapt real good. And right now I’ve got to adapt to being Chuck Magun.

Chuck. Yeah. Cut this memory crap and think about Chuck. Reinforce Chuck.

Chuck looks a lot like I used to look, naturally. I couldn’t change that. He’s a big guy with shoulders and everything heaped up six three or so. He looks mean. He lifts weights every day and runs a few miles along the riverfront.

He’s got an old Harley torn apart in his living room, and either a country western station or the TV is on all the time.

Chuck drinks in local bars, curses at all the right bad plays when football is on, and enjoys tearing up a patch of back road with his dirt bike, time to time. When he races he uses a lot of profanity, but he never loses his temper.

He reads motorcycle racing magazines and maintenance manuals with a guilty, hungry nervousness. He can’t scan more than six or eight sentences without suddenly looking up with a shy grin on his face, as if he expected to be kidded, or maybe killed.