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other like worms in a
compost heap. And somewhere far below, like large fish in deep
water, he saw the dead Mohawks who’d lived and died and been buried
here beside the river.
    The next thing he knew, he was naked on the
ground and Callie was naked on top of him and they were locked in a
dance that was timeless, a fusion of souls for a purpose that only
God could understand.
    When he woke up again, he was alone inside
her shelter. His limbs felt soft and feathery, like somebody had
turned down the gravity, and he was in danger of floating away. He
grabbed a tent-pole just in case he started to lift off. He felt
seriously jet-lagged, as if he’d been on an inter-planetary flight
and had lost his luggage and walked out of the terminal, not only
into a different time zone, but a different dimension.
    After a while, he crawled outside. The sky
was still light but the sun had disappeared behind the valley
ridge. Thunder to the south. He watched the subway trains pulsing
across the viaduct, sending the little people back home for a night
of television and torpid sleep before they returned to work for the
System.
    He heard voices off in the bushes. An
exchange of greetings, a few polite words at first, then questions
without answers, the bark of a command, an angry retort, a rising
crescendo of shouts, a snarl, a scream and then silence.
    He didn’t get up to see what it was all
about. Shit happens. Although naked as a bird, he felt safe here.
He was light, eternal and free. If something threatened him, he’d
just fly away.
    It was almost dark before Callie returned.
She threw down a stick the size of a baseball bat and went into the
river. As she passed him, he saw her palms glistening with
something red and luminescent.
    “Is that blood?” he asked.
    Crouched in the shallows, washing her hands,
she said over her shoulder, “Picking berries, I got juice all over
my hands.”
    “What was all that shouting?”
    “Some guy tried to pick from my bush. I
scared him off.”
    She came and sat near him. She took a bowl
from her milk crate and set it on the ground. From the pocket of
her dress she took a handful of red berries and dropped them into
the bowl. She nudged the bowl in his direction.
    “What kind of berries are these?”
    “Don’t know. I’m not good with names.”
    Stanley tried one. It was sweet and sour
with an aftertaste of iron. Not what you’d call a dessert berry,
but it seemed nutritious enough. He continued eating them,
reflecting that, aside from his breakfast fish, this was the only
other thing he’d had for food today.
    “You don’t want any?”
    “I ate some while I was picking.”
    A dull fire grew in Stanley’s belly where
the berries coagulated. His testicles felt heavy. A primal drumbeat
began in his lower spine. He looked down and saw he had another
erection. Good grief, what was going on? Despite his nakedness, he
saw no need to cover himself. Out here on the perimeter, we are
bone, ejaculate...
    The sky grew dark. The full moon came up.
Callie made a small fire.
    “Glass of port and a cigar?” she asked
him.
    “Are you kidding?”
    “I’m all out of Puerto Fino and Macanudos,”
she said, “but I have something just as good.”
    “Bring it on.” This was Stanley’s new motto.
If in doubt, try it out.
    “ Carpe diem , right?”
    She went into her shelter and came back with
a bottle of tequila and a hand-rolled cigarette. She’d taken off
her dress and donned a single necklace of small white cowrie shells
that looped around her breasts.
    She lit the cigarette. Stanley caught the
distinctive whiff of his old friend, ganja-man , whom he’d
come to know so well during his brief flirtation with depression
seven years ago. They’d remained casual acquaintances since then,
and although he never invited ganja-man home, now and again
he’d run into him at the party of an acquaintance and they’d have a
wonderful time together. Ganja-man always brought out the
rebel in him, and