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you don’t want any more coffee. So I will finish this letter to you. Someone has put Hank Williams Junior on the jukebox, and I am feeling quite content. The coffee has given me enough of a charge that I want all my i’s to be dotted, this paper to be folded exactly into thirds before it gets put in the envelope.
    So. As I was saying, I saw lots of wonderful things—fields plowed in ways that were so neat and orderly, and farmhouses set back from the road, the kind that always make me think the occupants eat at tables with blue-and-white dishes, embroidered tablecloths, jelly glasses that are sparkling clean. Cows stood in pastures like chess pieces, rarely moving, seeming to contemplate some un-hysterical thing. I passed several houses in one town with quilts over the railings, out for an airing—quilting must be big, there. I was not thinking about much of anything, just driving and looking, driving and looking. When I ate dinner, there was a man sitting across from me reading a paperback that had a cover of a night sky. And it made me think about how I’ve always been so afraid of the dark, how I get a kind of claustrophobia when I am alone in the dark. I feel something surrounding me, kind of squeezing, and I wait for something awful to happen. It’s like hearing an evil mind thinking, and then the thoughts gain form and reach out toward you. And you are immobilized by your own too-strong desire to get away. My mouth gets dry, my heart beats so hard. I hate this about myself. I’m fifty years old and I still leave the hall light on when you’re out of town—as well as a light in every room downstairs. Looking at that book cover, I thought, Well, this is my time of discovery, this trip. This is my time to let new things happen, and to enter into fears in order to come out the other side. And so I bought a sleeping bag—not the kind you would have bought, I know; you would have researched sleeping bags and bought the most sensible one, and after you bought it you would have researched still, making sure you got the best price—whereas I simply went into a store and bought the one I thought was prettiest. And least complicated—my God, Martin, some of them seem like they ought to enter themselves in a talent contest. I drove until I came to a heavily wooded area, and then I pulled over to the side of the road and walked in a ways. The sun was setting—it was so quiet, no birds, no squirrels, nothing but the sound of my steps breaking twigs. It felt like On the Beach , like the world had died and I was the sole witness. I laid the sleeping bag out and got into it, and when the dark came, I was just petrified. I thought, this is how it happens. People go too far, they get foolish, and they get killed.
    Still, it seemed very, very important that I do this, that I confront this fear of the dark, access my woman warrior—don’t smile, Martin, it is in us all, we are just well-behaved, and for all of humankind men have reaped the benefits of the first woman who said for the very first time, “That’s all right. You can go first.” Anyway, I thought, if I can just stay alone one night, I won’t be afraid anymore.
    I stayed the whole night. And I must say it was the longest night of my life. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but there was no way I was going to have the kind of trust that would let me stop jumping at every breeze, every buzz of every mosquito (and there were many). When the sun came up, I burst into tears. Then I walked back to the car and got in and locked the doors and I drove to a gas station and washed up and put on deodorant and perfume and lipstick and a gold bracelet that was at the bottom of my purse. I guess it wasn’t exactly a vision quest. I guess it was just a woman trying not to be afraid of the dark, who still is.
    One thing I want to tell you about all this is that the fear I felt lying alone in the dark was close to the anxiety I feel when I wake up at home. That sense of