RAIN 05

RAIN 06

RAIN 07

RAIN 08

RAIN 09

RAIN 10

I have to go out in this shit.

The sound of it was there, a constant rhythm as I arose, constantly rhyming, as the mechanical chirping of steel-made birds through the small window opened above my bed. The drops in the puddles on the narrow flagging between the next building. The patter on shingles, the rattle on metal. The gurgle of water swirling down the guttering, spilling over clogged lips or dropping through the downspouts, streaming down from bad seams like drapery, billowing, water fell in sheets.

The tin of the roof was in constant staccato, unending gunshot, spilled ball-bearings bouncing on concrete, the rat-a-tat-tat of drummers announcing war.

A guy like me is not going to win on a day like today. It is just not bound to happen.

It was definitely raining; more to the point, pouring.

That was dangerous to me. Dangerous to me, don't you see? You'll see.

I woke and slowly made my moves to rise. Eventually I crossed the threshold into the main room. There was no point in rushing the urgency. I went to the window. The glass was dotted and streaked, the gravitational crying of water; it was impossible to read through. There was nothing to be done but hoist the sash.

Outside, the strip of lawn looked swampy where grass grew, a mud bog where it didn't. Over the curb, down and beyond, I could see the dark spreads of pavement. Mostly it gleamed, shimmering wet. But there were the flat dark spots of dry. The spots of course were not dry, they just looked that way because they weren't submerged. They glistened, the shimmer of stepping-stones across a creek; except, as far as I could see, it was nothing like a creek. The view was of salt flats flooded, emerging archipelagos of footpaths across seas an inch or so deep.

It was the type of day a guy like me would certainly be at home. My only source of mobility being the flat-bottomed sticks I stood on. Unless I had change to chase the bus, and then even so. Who in their right mind would want to go out in this slop? I ask. The answer is: no one!

Guys like us, we'd've stayed put. That would be an expectation. It was a deadly assessment, an opportunity surely not overlooked by my creditors.

The predators could hardly help but hone in and hound me. They'd find me at home and tear me apart. None of that didn't make sense. It wasn't the known hour of the mailman's daily trespass, that small violation where the carrier sticks things through a slot into your house. There would instead be the waiting that could last all day and still never end--it could rain all day and then the next. Or the loud pounding on the door could come at any second.

How could I possibly hope to explain myself to these people?

They wanted compensation for the sole fact that I'd managed to keep myself alive for yet another month. My pockets held only lint. I was behind on everything, way behind on some things. I had no idea what they might do. Other than the vague sense that they would bang on the door and be very scary.

I was trapped because I'd been so lazy. I'd assigned myself the task of typing up my manuscript, but I'd barely managed a dozen sheets over the many weeks. There was always something better to do. Which meant that the bulk of the manuscript existed only as such, no words to duplicate most of the fat spiral bound pages written in a rather water-soluble ink.

I'd wept over one section I'd reread: it was a pain in the ass to reconstruct the passage that'd so moved me. There'd been one bad beer spill, prompting personal legislation against any further occurrences. I made sure, eventually, my coffee mug didn't sit down with a wet ring.

As if there were no worries for me. The very weather itself was anathema to my thoughts, so anaemic would be my work, my words melting away even as I wrote them down. That would not be right.

There was nothing to be done but to go out and escape. To vanish into the grey, through the swinging sheets of pouring rain.

I knew there was no point in ever coming back. The best-case scenario for staying involved power-cuts and padlocks, boards across the doors into the cold dark rooms of the house. The bushes up front would be ignited in the dead of night, despite the rain. Satan's flares on a glazed stretch of roadway, the shattered cars exploding. Torrents of hot blood would storm down the chimneys, the red flood of it floating the furniture. Things would surely wind up with someone hitting me in the head. I settled on the admission that, among the rest, I'd be needing to pack a change of clothes as well.

I had a bag that was nearly waterproof--an old shoulder-slung messenger sack. While I was gathering up my toothbrush and razor I thought to grab a towel, and a bar of soap wrapped in a washcloth. A little while later, I discarded the towel in favor of a sweatshirt.

This left just the right room of room for the flat fatness of my manuscript. And loosen the belt for a little bit more expansion.

With force I forced an opened sheaf of blank paper down against the notebook. But there wasn't room for the thin pad of pages already typed. Keeping them anyway didn't seem to be a part of the vague non-plan that was suddenly steering my life. The evidence had to be disbursed, hidden away from my person.

Stepping into the kitchen, I poked my head back into one of the cabinets, finding where the wood of it was hammered against the wall. Part of the cheap backing board was split, an old split layered in many years of paints. A royal loyal split. I fed the finished pages into the slot, where they would rest safe and secure, held in the secret darkness of the margin between cheap warped panel and even older plaster.

The remaining consideration was the typewriter itself. Its procreative abilities were at the heart of my matter, after all. Size, fortunately, was not an issue. It was a little portable, a nearly fetal Olivetti I'd acquired in a way that didn't reflect entirely favorably upon me. But it did come with a hardshell case that dispelled all that old garbage.

I improvised a shoulder strap for it with an old belt and some twine, but wearing it felt mediæval. The tug of it like being cleaved in two, on the bias, by some big dude with a broadsword. It didn't take much convincing to discard the case as too clumsy and heavy. The tiny typer, detached, wrapped up inside a garbage bag, fit perfectly into a small knapsack.

I knew nothing like a slicker was in the house, but it seemed there was a battered umbrella somewhere. Hanging from a hook like a shattered, dying bat. Or on the floor of a closet; in the moment of discovery it would exactly resemble a famous broken-winged fossil. None of the analogies came into play because I was unable to locate it.

I stepped out on the sideporch, standing back from the spray. I stood there waiting until eventually the rain did let up some. Then I was off, fast.

As I ran, I thought I could hear boots sloshing through puddles behind me. But I couldn't be bothered the delay of looking behind. It was more important to continue. I crossed the parking lot, then got sucked into the long grey tunnel of sidewalk.

Pretty quickly I cut off the main drag when the rain turned to a torrent. The side streets were old residential, a towering canopy of trees rising improbably from the small green strips between sidewalk and curb--immense, constricted root systems buckling the both. I still needed to go in the perpendicular direction of the wide road, which was why I'd gone where I'd gone. The side streets intersected an alley parallel to the big road. It was even more protected from the rain. Back lot trees let gone gigantic. The alley was even more disrupted by the ground's surges. I made my way carefully along the buckling slabs, old cobbles like the popping-up headstones of tiny ghouls rising from the earth.

There was a one-truck loading dock at the back of some little business on the big strip. A square of corrugated roof hung off the building, offering a rudiment of shelter. I stopped there long enough to make sure none of my stuff was getting too wet. My old pack was doing a good job of keeping everything pretty darn dry. I didn't stay any longer than that though. The shelter wasn't tempting because it was so temporary a thought. Whereas . . . in contemporary life, this kind of crappy rain could go on for days.

There was no notion entertained at all, nothing about curling up for sleep in such a shitty situation. Which would be the situation of waiting around for the rain to let up. Foolish for me--why stay when a good friend of mine lived about six blocks away?

That was my destination. He'd been one to share my space, but'd left way back before the creditors first began. I showed up on his doorstep and he could hardly deny me. Everything was like running through one big long fucking tunnel.

To get to his apartment, you had to go off to the side of the building, and then descend a damp cement staircase. The bottom of that led into this subterranean run, a corridor of similarly damp cement but more in play for dimly lit claustrophobia. Somewhere along there one of the nasty doors set in the walls opened to a further twining before reaching his door, the woundlike opening to his basement apartment.

I was let in out of the rain.

It was like a dead-end of the passageway, faked into little rooms. Narrow little rooms. I banged my hip on the kitchen table then barked my shin on the coffee table. The couch had to be against the wall, otherwise it would've blocked passage. At the far end, the closest thing to a real perpendicular wall defined the further bedroom and bathroom. The bathroom, I learned in time, was always damp, serving as a sort of sink, I suppose, for the rest of the otherwise dry apartment.

I didn't doubt that the creditors would figure things out, come hunting up my friends. But I figured I could milk a couple days before they quit being dumb.

In the short script version: I showed up at a good friend's doorstep, and was let in. But after two days of typing, I got kicked out. I typed unrelentingly, hour after hours. I heard people stomping upstairs, but that had no bearing on me. But the constant clatter of the keys whenever he was home turned my friend against me. I was given to the next morning, so I typed the last night away, slowing down as the light of morning arose. My friend drank his coffee giving me bitter looks as I finished up my typing. Then he went to work and I was left to go away.

Unsure what to do during my final mounds of minutes, I decided again it was best not to keep the typed pages of my manuscript on my person. In case my creditors caught me. My so-called friend lived in a dump. I'd meant to mention the fact to him, but'd gone quiet thinking about how it was like the spoon calling the knife dull. The panels of drywall met in gaps at the corners. They hadn't even been nailed down properly, much less taped.

I slipped the folded sheets into the safekeeping of the oblivion behind the walls. Then I carted the rest of my stuff away on me, out the door, on beyond.

I turned and stumbled down a crumbling street; the buildings soon and suddenly ceased, and then the pavement actually did crumble, spraying into an apron of weed-pocked gravel. Right before the vegetation took total control, there stood a section of guardrail, a staunch thick steel beam officially dead-ending the street. It was a sturdy barricade, bolted to a backing flank of I-beams. These girder supports were sunk deep in postholes of set cement. The grey metal of the rail was pocked, damaged but staying ruggedly solid, looking about as beaten about as the moon. Which just kept right on hovering out there in space, captured but a spacious distance away.

Beyond the guardrail was a quick depression and brambles, heaps of them overgrown as the ground gave way, pillows of raw wilderness cushioning the pit below. Perhaps there was enough for shelter from the gathering rain.

When the rain wasn't active, it was said to be gathering. As though garnering reinforcements for a battle already won.

What light the battered moon allowed was being sheathed over, diminished as if by fast moving cataracts. My eyes, of course, had nothing to do with the effect--it was fresh clouds thickening the overlay. Between the barricade of buildings and the darkness inherent in depth, I mainly felt my way down into the wilderness.

I didn't wander too long or far afield, finding fairly quickly a sort of cave in the vast vegetation. I figured it to be a bunch of vines and bushes grown thick over the roof beam of a tree that'd long toppled but never fully fallen, having years back gotten snagged on the way down. My hypothesis would have to go unproven until morning--once inside there was near total darkness, just the scraggly slightly lighter hole of the opening, which itself was pretty damn dark. All I really cared about was that inside it was incredibly dry--much drier than I'd expected.

There wasn't any other thing to do but go to sleep. But though my body was worn and tired, sleep never comes to me with a simple switch. At best I'm like a left-on flashlight, waiting for the batteries to drain. I lay there, eyes open for the bare difference, listening to the patter of the rain fattening out of the mist. There began a steady drumming above that was oddly incongruous with the sounds all around, but the ready thudding of its repetition helped ease me down into another day.

It was well into that day--late morning--when I awoke. The sun, somewhere, was getting close to the top of the sky. There was that sort of light, even though the sky was dark with a punishing rain. Surprisingly, I was still rather dry, as was my small pile of belongings. I did have the benefit of a lack of any real wind to prevent the water from falling straight down.

As well, I soon enough noted, my postulation about the not fully fallen tree was basically correct, though the bough was more a sapling's. Though there were tons of woven branches and vines up there, what actually kept me dry was a full sheet of plywood inserted above and halfway across the limb, shoved into the weave which held it in place and then had incorporated it. The board was warped with exposure, but in curves that shed the water even better.

Down below I was just as dry, as though on a platform--within arm's reach the ground had gone to mud with the wet. Underneath the blankets of decaying vegetation was a twin mat of wood. This floor was surprisingly undecayed, given the matching years implied by the entwined ceiling. I got off the plywood just enough to lift a corner--as far as I could see, in a shallow, scraped pit, a sort of boxsprings of set stones kept the bed from the ground's rot.

I was, it struck, in another animal's den. A carefully, or creatively, constructed one. I beat down the rising hackles because of course, obviously, the past inhabitor had abandoned the place some seasons ago, and none had reclaimed it. There was a little bit of trash, but it was ancient and clogged way back in the surrounding brush. In one spot were a few small clots of light-colored stuff like a paper product that nature was returning to pulp. I could see a site of enough shards of light blue-green glass to suggest a smashed jug of cheap wine. Something somewhat shiny hinting at a wad of aluminum foil blackened by fire, then rained on for years.

The rain, having exhausted sleep, lent itself to my staying put. The light inside, the many filtered daylight, was adequate to see by, though it was that very glistening-green of wet foliage. I flipped my notebook open to its mark, scrolled in a clean sheet, then started typing away at more of my task. Over the course of pages and hours, I continued marveling at how the patter of keystrokes and rain drops so perfectly matched. Then the rain stopped, and the typing sounded incredibly loud, which seemed like a bad idea even once I'd quit and stepped outside. Like beating drums announcing the location of a hidden mansion.

I looked around, and what I saw in the day was mostly distressing. While it was reassuring to see that the den I'd stumbled upon so easily in the dark was well camouflaged in the light, that didn't alter the fact that I'd somehow wound up in what was known as The Crater.

Though I knew of it--and had viewed photos--I'd never seen it directly. I'd never had any reason to traverse that blighted section before, the city's shitty surround. But as I looked around from where I stood, that had to be where I stood. At the bottom of the crater. The road I'd walked down was no different from a dozen others that rimmed the pit with guardrails poking up like the spikes of one big dog collar.

It was exactly like standing in the bottom of a big fucking meteor crater--over years, filled up with brambles.

It'd originally been a natural lake of longstanding. The history as I'd learned turned it into a reservoir for the city as it expanded and surrounded the lake. Real estate concerns eventually capped the inflow and the outflow--rainfall kept the level high enough to cope with the consumption.

Though the area was never a formal park, the land surrounding the lake contained lawns and walks. There is a famous, locally, photograph, of a sidewalk vendor on the lakewalk selling someone some sort of meat-and-bread combination. The water in the background seems to be sprouting huge exotic aquatic flowers. A closer look shows the shabbiness of floating trash--the wrappers and remnants of such strolling lunches.

This wasn't a park, it was a major source of the city's drinking water, and people just kept filling it up with their trash. Proving humans the only animal that willfully soils its own nest.

There were some Great Epidemics, decimating ones, the stagnant polluted drinking-source kind, which quickly set the city to trenching out some way to periodically drain and clean out the reservoir. They backfilled with a line of 60" pipe, except they didn't have that sort of pipe back then so the slightly vaulted passage to the river was built of mortar and raw stone.

And then there was the door, at which things got hazy in my mind. Either its seal leaked or they hadn't factored in water pressure in trying to get the damn door open so they had to blast it or the draining had been successful but then there'd been a drought or a geologic fissure had cracked the bottom of the lake.

At any rate, despite all that effort, within five years the whole scheme was rendered obsolete when the city switched to aquifiers up north, a long aqueduct run up to tap the huge pristine lakes in the elevations beyond the city. Maybe pipe-manufacturing had improved, or people had relearned a lesson in basic hygiene.

The city lake was left dry and abandoned, too expensive to fill in and develop. Fortunately there was already an established dump outside the city, though for awhile the place was known as Appliance Park. In honor of the large stuff people would just roll on down in there before the city became a pioneer in offering anything-goes junk pick-up a time or two per annum. Otherwise, the place had been let go wild and to utter ruin.

Though these days the residential area at the northern end had gone sky-rocket, no doubt aided by the buffer of a park created just some several years ago for just such speculation. This park contained a pond created in replica homage to the original. The old lake, so to speak, to scale. It was one of those historically done sort of things these days.

Most of the deeper steeper remained totally overgrown, but in a stunted bad way. The Crater was a place to crawl off to, a place to go fuck or a place to die; or a place to wind up fucked, fucked-up, and dead. It was said that in the steamy season, the decaying stench of the undiscovered corpses rose up like a fog, rendering the surrounding streets nearly untenable. I wasn't much anticipating any further stay down there. I was ready to make a move.

My initial concern, naturally, was how to dispose of my most recent work. I took the typed pages, shuffled as one, and creased the lot horizontally. I fanned myself as I tried to think, struggling for a solution. Then the obvious struck. First I would have to lift the plywood floor, so I packed my machine in its bag, which I then set on the bare ground as a pedestal to keep my sack safe from the damp.

I raised the sheet of wood slowly, trying to keep intact as much of the covering of detritus as possible. It was like opening a long closed trapdoor, and had I not had the corner peek earlier I might've pretended the anticipation that I might have discovered the door to the old drainage tunnel. A nonsensical fantasy, of course--plywood wasn't invented until well into the next century.

Among the setting of stones beneath--the box springs or floor joists--was a pair of fat but thin stones set in the barest definition of a pile. One on the other. I lifted the upper and saw that the top of the bottom one was clearly the light color of absolute dryness, bearing not a single dark splotch to indicate dampness. Such a safe slot, I slipped the folded sheets between the two, making the paper the meat of a rock sandwich. It was one of those rare instances where rock covers paper, hidden then under wood.

That task accomplished, I set to restoring the disguising blanket of rot, spreading the thin layer of humus, the crumbling leafy matter caught about halfway on its natural travel back to dirt. It was rather like making a bed, brushing the sheet of wrinkles while smoothing the blanket, feathering the edges to hide the shape of the mattress underneath.

When I was satisfied all looked undisturbed, returned to the state in which I'd discovered it, I went about the remainder of my leave-taking business. Finally I'd gotten all my stuff collected and shoulder-slung, and began sort of slinking my way away from the borrowed shelter. Facing inward, away from the wall, I kept edging around The Crater's bottom rim. My back was covered by my hands, held behind and guiding me along a track of vine-covered bedrock. Then I drew a damn big splinter.

I gazed at the affected hand with disbelief. The shard of wood was several inches long, but despite the enormous pain only the very tip of it was lodged in my flesh. It jutted out of my palm between my thumb and forefinger, waggling almost obscenely on its pivot, looking for all the world as though I was evolving a new appendage.

The splinter was easily and cleanly removed; the ragged little hole it left bled freely but briefly, cleansing the wound and lessening any concern of future infection. I pinched the skin around it and squeezed out some extra drops of blood. Then I dipped my hand into the rainwater pooled in the saucer of a large leaf. After my ministrations, I could scarcely make out any trace of the puncture.

I was still holding the splinter in my uninjured hand--I turned my attention to it. My confusion escalated: it made no sense, the sight of it was out of place. I hadn't been handling old lumber but running my hand across green vegetation. I turned around and began gingerly pulling aside this thicket of living growth, like parting layers of curtains to reach a window. What I found instead of a window was a door. After a perplexed moment, I understood just exactly which door I'd uncovered.

Curiosity got the better of me, interrupting the incipient urge to flight. I began pushing the undergrowth aside, separating the stringy leafiness covering the door. I did this, of course, gingerly, keeping my hands from further harm. At length I'd loosened enough vegetation to examine the door.

It seemed thick and huge in the sense that it was apparently hewn from a single piece of wood, dating from a time when the forests still held trees of such size and age to accomplish this. The sight surprised me because I would've guessed that the decimation of the woodlands would have occurred centuries before the door's fabrication.

Some mysteries simply cannot be unraveled. Maybe the door was recycled from some decrepit castle across the ocean. I still was no clearer on the lake's fate, though I could rule out the door's destruction. It was perfectly intact. There was a sticky blackness, a patina sort of scraped across the wood in parts. Maybe it was the vestige of a creosote sort of water-proofing; or, more modern, the initial gelatinous sheen of inescapable decay.

Whatever, no way would I touch it directly. I was grateful my splinter came such sap-free. Stabbing out from the vines, there was a contraption of metal anchored in the bedrock above the door, with arms that looked like they once attached to the door itself, some sort of mechanical invention that maybe enabled them to open it against the water pressure. But the whole of it was corroded to sticks and branches like a dead tree. A large iron handle, pitted with age, was bolted to the board, though otherwise there was no bolt: the doorway was built in at an angle enough for gravity to keep the slab shut of its own weight.

It wasn't so heavy that I couldn't get it to swing a good halfway open before it snagged on some branches, started dragging then got stuck in the dirt. There was no way to resist--I ventured on in.

Initially, the drainage tunnel looked like it was collapsing. Rocks from the walls, loosed from mortar, littered the floor. But as I stepped further in I saw that was just a first impression--the whole of it tunneled sturdily onward. I wasn't much intent on venturing further down into the waiting darkness, but then the cloud-cover must have lifted significantly and the angle was just right. Raw beams of relatively direct sunlight, though still filtered, well illuminated the way past my shadow.

I took several tentative steps, nothing untoward happened, so courage kept me going. After a few minutes I became aware of an interesting phenomena: as the light from behind diminished in intensity, my eyes adjusted accordingly, seamlessly to the increasing darkness, making it seem as though the available light was remaining the same. Though about five minutes further down, the effect was overwhelmed and I began wondering when I should turn back.

I kept going, still curious--I could call it quits anytime I wanted. The brief consideration of possibly using the tunnel as a camp for a day or two was defeated as it took on more the qualities of a cave. The darkness wasn't enough of a deterrent--it was that constant chill seeping into my bones. I was okay for now, but I could feel how that would become unbearable within the hour.

I was making up my mind to go back, when it started to seem as if it was getting dimly lighter up ahead. It certainly had to be some sort of trick being played on my eyes, but then it became undeniable that some sort of muted glow awaited me. If I kept going, that is, and so I did. I kept going and the light kept growing. Especially towards the end, when the lay of the tunnel took a steeper dip. The angle wasn't huge and it was easily walked, but it did more quickly plunge the tunnel into water.

The water came lapping little wavelets where it kissed the rock, stretching out flat a bit before it swallowed the tunnel. Not much past that point was a portal, beyond which daylight tried to penetrate the murky water. The river water smelled really bad all at once, like a puddle of potpourri of every nastiness dumped from its banks.

The light that made its way on in was the weirdest I'd ever seen. Ambient, underwater light. It was like a bright day in a room with the curtains drawn, where the curtains are nearly sheers made of mud-smeared moss.

After I tired of the view I was thinking to leave, but then the light seemed like enough. I had to type uphill, and at an angle, to catch it at its best. It was not a comfortable position, but I sat stoically to task. After a couple pages, it didn't matter. I was sitting on edge anyway because the echoing of the striking keys had started to sound a lot like boots smacking down a stone concourse. I stopped completely, then fiddled around with the typing enough to determine that I was just hearing things, that my ears were making things up.

That got me to thinking--that the typing might echo all the way out the tunnel. That it would be an easy prank to simply shut and somehow secure the door. That or just storm on down to get me. I was a dumb animal in its dumb burrow, deserving to die for being too dumb to dig an escape route. I'd have to attempt a swim through the nasty water and hope I had the breath to last to the light. No doubt I'd wind up jettisoning the typewriter. And even if I did reach safety, the notebook would be dripping ink, erased.

And then most of all I again considered the light--if the sun was that bright, what the hell was I doing underground? Maybe the rain was going to be fully interrupted for a few hours. I could be drying out, watching the mildew brush off my clothing like dandruff. The page was done enough, so I started gathering my stuff together. As I was doing that, it was like a flipped switch. The light just failed. I wasn't left totally blind, but still, it wasn't a good sign.

About halfway back I came upon a section of the tunnel where a couple stones had fallen from their settings. Underneath and behind, the typed pages helped wedge one rock long enough for me to use another loose one to smack it firmly back in place.

I lost time doing that; by the time I got out the door, my surroundings looked nothing but sinister. The sky above said I had maybe ten minutes to climb my ass out of there and find some other cover. I might make it if I hurried.

It was one of those rare days when the sun actually shone. The rays of that crazy orb really did hit the ground. But that didn't mean it wasn't raining. There would be a wind-born sort of mist, and then the stuff would just tear down, the tears dancing off the pavement in full sunshine. It was a sure sign, I'd heard since birth, that the devil was beating his wife.

Whatever it was he was doing to the old bitch meant me sort of skulking along awning to awning. I made my way up the street in this awkward fashion until the buildings yielded to a bank of brush. The area had been well in my eye along the approach. It was insane, seeing this sun-dappled greenery through the grey of a driving rain.

I'd already decided to detour into this hillside park, so I didn't have to dodge, just hurry a bit. A cloudlet shifted a bit and the pavement around me was painfully bright. I made my move. I saw where the sidewalk let out on a way up the hill in stairs.

The steps were rock, chiseled geometrically and set into place, a practice abandoned ages back. Old steps, they were worn wet and dry. Some areas seemed to be permanently sheltered, at least from the current spasmodic rain. These spots were still slippery from the wear of footfall, polished by so many shoes. But the steps were worse wet, green-slick like stones along the line of the tide. I walked gingerly up the hill, balancing my weight.

Towards the top, as the grade lessened, the steps gradually dissolved into the poured concrete of the walkways. There was the main trunk, so modern as to be patched with asphalt, but it limbed off smaller trailers which were still stone slabs limned with dirt.

I'd turned off on such a lonesome-looking side path when the rain hit, when the random rain returned for a bit. But surprisingly, I was along the dry wideness of the only canopy of elms in the entire country that hadn't died from that ancient blight. As I scuffed my feet, my shoes raised dust.

With no reason not to stop, I did when I came across a bench. It was old and stone and backless--a single slab, almost funereal--so I straddled it, then unpacked my typewriter, which I set before me on the stone. I felt like I was about to engage in some sort of Meso-american ritual, the scribe humping the rock. Under my leafy umbrella, I had nothing but plenty of time to work. I opened my pack and went to it.

The sound of the keys striking paper was echoed by the pitter of drops on the leaves above, the canopy of noise all around. I was lost for a long while, and didn't return until I caught a shift in the surrounding sounds--the rain seemed to threaten to abate.

I sat there, shifting my weight back and forth as I considered where to stash my finished sheets. That was when I noticed that the bench was incrementally rocking along with me. I got off and went to my knees, peering underneath. The underside of the bench had twin chiselings, so that the seat actually slid down the post of the legs. Only one side was loose enough to really move, but on it I managed to lift it enough to slide some sheets folded a few times up into the cavity, where it stayed when once again stone kissed stone. If anything, the paper acted as a shim--the bench no longer wobbled.

Even with the bench trick I had several more pages to dispose of. I sat there and stared around, absently but with purpose. I didn't know what I was looking for, until I saw the wounded tree. Looking up, I was amazed at how healthy the tree appeared--down at my level was a deep tear, a large limb lost long ago, the loss never healed over. The heartwood was rotting and a goodly section of the lower trunk looked to be hollow.

I'd of course just decided to walk over and check it out when I first started hearing the different sounds. At first I thought someone was lightly and erratically clapping, but that didn't make sense. Especially since the sounds seem to be approaching from a number of directions. It was in front of me and behind me, and from the thickets on either side. The noise was imitation of rainfall; I wondered for a moment if somehow an absolute deluge had begun in a ring around me. And through the rougher underbrush there came a sound like hail.

This was footfall, not rainfall--I walked that realization right over to the scarred tree. Judging from the shrinking snare, I had no clear avenue of escape. And if I was caught, I didn't want the notebook in my possession.

The whole of my pack fit well up inside the tree. Once I'd shoved it up as far as it would go, the straps seemed to snag on something, holding it suspended out of any but the most persistent view. As backup I found a sound stick and wedged it up into the rot itself, a brace beneath the bag.

Then I went back to the bench to figure out what to do with my typewriter. I could think of nothing but to grab it and flee fitfully down the tunnel of elms. My flight was futile. I was accosted then assaulted. It was a body's blur to me. I had the head-on-the-path view watching as the thrown typewriter hit the flagging at a weak angle, bouncing away like a tossed corpse, a body dropped from far above. I heard the words stupid machine!

Then, like cinema, the last look of staring up into the brightness of the exposed sun--which broke through with a bit of blue as I lay there under all that dripping green--dissolving through that until resolving into the endless white of hospital corridors. For that was where I figured I was. It wasn't some glowy afterlife: it was the charity wing, lit by florescent fixtures that gave off the buzz of giant insects.

I never really ascertained the nature of my injuries. I had no idea how many days vanished until they tapered off on the narcotics. At that point I was in full-body pain, though I had only bandages, not casts. I overheard nurses remarking on the fact that I hadn't died.

I played mute, not even answering my name. It would've been foolish to give out that sort of information while still bed-bound. As more days passed and my recovery became certain, I was led to understand that without identifying myself, they would have no choice but to remand me to the psychological unit while notifying law enforcement.

It was probably leaving too much of a clue, but I eventually caved in and named my so-called friend, even going so far as to aid the billing office with his proper address. No phone, I shrugged. And with that I was allowed to leave.

Once back out in the rain, I had no choice but to go revisit the scene of the crime. My bag remained exactly where I'd stuffed it, looking none the worse for the storage. I did a splendid job of securing the original extra pages back up inside.

But back up by the path, all I could find were small bits of broken typewriter, the fragments left behind from other clean-ups. Some of the individual keys--the internal striking kind--lay scattered and scuffed into the turf, looking for all the world like keys to improbably buried treasures. Some of the tensile springs lay rolled around like wizened up old worms. There was no denying I was typerless. There was just about enough left to assemble maybe a little jumpy toy, at best. I had to rethink things immediately. I couldn't perform my task without such a machine. It was a familiar game, suddenly changed.

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