voted by supermajority of 2/3 to serve long range reconnaissance to determine if the rumors of the upheavals at the (former?) national capital are credible. if so, am expected to serve as emissary to any like minded players at the scene. if rumors unfounded, am to suss out the mood of the inhabs and serve as instigator with a mind on the accomplishments of manhattanville. am chosen for supposed prowess as both a diplomatic liaison and a provocateur, but regardless of the situation which awaits in arlingtonton, the honour of my election will likely result in my final glance back to the green and busy hives of the island nation’s backbone being the last glimpse i am to enjoy.

building our confidence in the rumours of arlingtonton is the late reduction of force being displayed across the rivers; the attacks on any craft attempting to cross the moat have subsided enough that our salvage trawlers are able to operate with impunity even in daylight.

some trade has been established with the villages of brkln, inhabitants of which – perhaps as fellow islanders – harbour their own share of animosity to the estabs who fled to their shores. nevertheless, passengers are not allowed to disembark on their iron beaches; all exchanges are made quickly by passing notes and goods with drifting rafts. through these channels, contact was made with some willing to smuggle inhabs across the east river and down the jersey shore.

contact could not be made on open water; rather a series of cables and webbing suspended from the W’msburg bridge is utilized to traverse the river on the underside of the skeleton of the bridge – the bed and tracks have been pulled up and put into service as shore barriers in the battery – and descend the eastern pier to be plucked from the water by a brklner as a though one was mere flotsam.

the webs are not a single network of uniform strands, but rather a piecemeal result of continual additions made by each passerby and smuggler. every hand ties on a new rope or cable, leaving an organically branched mass of knots and slippery loops, calling to mind and ancient maypole or aboriginal coup. suspending the runners above the e.river is not fabric, but a quilt.

hearing the drum of a wrench against the steel hull of a trawler, i tighten my flotation device (straps of velcro hold plastic sheets filled with foam to my trunk) and descend into the black water.

spirited through brkln in that peculiar mechanical conveyance of the mainland, the automobile, am informed that though the estab forces have lessened their focus on manhattanville – presume they have conceded its loss – it is still not safe for inhabs to travel through no.jersey. taken to a safe house in red hook where am introduced to patero and fellow escapees. do not exchange names

the danger of insurgency which the inhabs presents is taken very seriously by the inheritors of authority over the industrial yards of north jersey. their bulls and mercs constantly scour the wetlands and oil yards for anyone walking without a license; the result is that many a poor, politically innocent vagabond has been jailed or put to work. conversely, the lanes along the coast are rarely patrolled as no nation on the atlantic ocean has the economic power to sustain a naval force. thusly, we are taken over water, skirting the coast in a small fiberglass skiff, the deficiency of draft of which forces us to endure numerous bone-bruising collisions with the deck and to creep into the weeds of the intracoastal waterway when the waves become to violent.

after 3 nights in the wet bottom of the open craft, we arrive at the port of forked river. upon landing, armed men and women informs us that we are to pay for passage through their territory with a stint of labour on their blueberry fields. Watching our former coxswain take payment from the farmers for delivering to them some stout new hands, i ponder the speed and ferocity that may be held inside these weary and puddle-eyed berriers. these rusty old scatterguns are not the first to be pointed at me. i have a task to perform, however – a service to manhattanville – here will be plenty of battles in the weeks to come; i must choose them wisely, and this will not be one of them.

loaded into the bed of a red ford f-100, fed hot beverages and melon. first melon seen in 4 years.

drive west through the night. sleep on rubber mat in bed of truck; head rests on paper sack of brass casings. woken after sunrise, passing through timber gate.

upon arrival our captors relax their stern attitudes if not their guard. they speak almost apologetically of our detention in terms of our own protection. as we are passing through their communal network of berry ranches, we are afforded a degree of safety; in return they feel that we are obliged to toil a bit on their lands or in their compounds. we are free to refuse, but of course we will be expelled from the ranch and subjected to the uncertain horrors of the pine barrens beyond the perimeter. the other ‘guests’ are not content with this arrangement, but not one of them requests to be released from service.

the situation is not ideal, considering we do not know what, if any, dangers truly await us in the pines, but i commit to make the best of my stay by observing the skills of these farmers, hoping to acquire some knowledge which may be put to use in my home in manhattanville, should i ever return to that teeming beast.

with most manhattanvillagers having been raised on the island, our combined knowledge of the techniques of farming is second hand – taken from stories and books and video. the tools available here, though tarnished and scarred, are refined implements with calculated efficiency, manufactured someplace else in the world where the shape had to be described and plotted on someone’s desktop. manhattanville’s tools are fashioned from guardrails and fan blades; the designer/craftsman having in mind the results of the tool’s use before it is wrought. our tools may not be the cleanest or most precise, but the intimate knowledge of their manufacture and origin – the same hands cast and push the plow – engenders an effectiveness i see improbable to achieve with the tools at hand in this camp.

we manhattanvillagers know what it is to farm for the sake of feeding ourselves; there is a clear and direct connection from what we put into the soil and our own health. these pineys farm for trade; their livelihood still relies upon the land, but the connection to their own meals is clouded by commerce. having lived and farmed on the island for so long, we have lost the abstraction of ‘living off the land’ which had been built on this continent since the dawn of mercantilism.

moved into barracks for the day. 10 beds in shed. 2 wc. 6 windows punched in cinder block walls. can view small guardhouses(?) arranged around field.

two weeks on the farm – rather, on a network of farms – afforded me the opportunity to understand the infrastructure of the pineys’ society. the buildings and outhouses of each ranch is unique. there is usually an ancient wooden single-family farmhouse which is used for preparation of meals and delicate work such as clothes or electronics mending. a wooden barn commonly serves as a garage for vehicles and workshop for tools. barracks are newer additions; they are mostly cinderblock shells with floors of wooden planks and roofs of timber and aluminum or tin; they house the pineys, the newcomers, and the transients.

the perimeter is a mix of wooden stockade, stone and concrete rubble, and electrified (sometimes) steel fencing. beyond the perimeter of the ranches are a series of demountable outposts carried into place and held several feet above the ground. the post is a fragmented shell of sheets of varied substance which have been coated with a hardened polymer or resin. they are held aloft by either jointed metal legs which have been driven into the ground or by cords of braided scraps of wire and nylon.

the occupant of the outpost, or fort, is encapsulated by they shell and then hoisted into place amongst the branches of trees. he or she is outfitted with contoured plates of manufacture similar to the hull of the fort; where the portholes or hatches would appear in the hull, the body of the occupant plugs the gap. by this method, the fort becomes a partially mobile unit. whilst currently strapped or pinned to the trees and earth, respectively, one can imagine these units moving through the forest or skies, if there was a method of manipulating the motion of the legs or introducing a system of pulleys and blocks into the synthetic vines.

volunteer for fort duty

on my final night at the ranch – he third ranch on which i stayed – i was awarded the opportunity to serve as a sentry. clad in an armour of multiple contoured scales, i clamber into the fort and am lifted into the dark green canopy above the southeastern highway. i do not occupy the fort as much as i embrace it from the inside. once i enter its folds, i find there is little room for movement between my flesh and the surfaces and gears of the box. each motion of my person affects the configuration of the fort, and reorients its position in the sky. rather than stand guard within the fort, the fort itself is the guard. i realize now that the ranchers are not using the outposts to watch for any threats from the pines; they have devised this machine to serve as a threat. my job in this fort is not to watch; it is to act.

as my actions are going to be interpreted as actions of my artificial husk, i am curious about what is the intended impression. with the mechanism – myself – behind this facade being hidden, i presume that the viewer is to believe that the fort – the shell – itself is responsible for the movement – that it is sentient. who or what is in the pines, and why would they – or it – be convinced that this bristling mass of white shields and steel bars and nylon straps is alive? the vague references to the woods made by the pineys builds and aura of secrecy that shrouds their own system. what have they done to make this fort an object of fear? did they adopt the guise of a machine or creature which already instilled such an emotion? what is the source of this white shell, and how much is mimicry?

i do not stir the defensive rancor of the pineys by sharing my thoughts about the design of this contraption; they are playing their cards close to their chests in what must be a double bluff with the pinelands outside the perimeter. in appreciation for the sincerity with which i worked – rare amongst the usual transients – and for the exchange of ideas regarding methods of tool and land optimization, the pineys equip me with a pair of gauntlets and a light metal staff for my journey through the southern marshes to the ports which will afford me passage to the southern districts across the bay.

obligations to berriers fulfilled. leave via southwest highway. advised to move off road and camp south side at night. given hand drawn map of marsh trails to king pond – port of arlingtonton ferry.

the southwest highway consists of a sand covered clearing as it passes the rancho di meo. several miles south of the point at which i enter the lane, the surface descends into groove cut into the earth. the sand clears, and the road bed is filled with what seems to be tiny shards of glass. the highway continues its descent until the ground level on each side is higher than the typical traveler’s head. the walls appear to be earthen, but they are not roughly facetted as would be expected were they hewn with a pick and shovel. rather, they are smooth, as though a slice of earth – several miles in length – has been removed in a single stroke. the surface is hardened; it can not be broken or scratched – at least not strikes from my light staff. it is at though clay has been pack’d and fired to the strength and rigidity of concrete, only without the texture.

the bottom of the channel becomes level at a point about fifteen feet below the edge of the earth above, and it retains a consistent width of the same dimension. from this point, one can not see anything on the surfaces above the channel walls; the trees on either side appear to have been removed, so that not even the tops of the tallest specimens can be glimpsed. in the direction in which i am heading, the channel appears to end in a point; the distance is so great that i am unable to see where – and if – the floor ascends to the level of the forest floor. i am assuming that the forest remains.

sunset finds me still within the channel with no end in site; the point at which i entered is now invisible, as well. as the space around me grows black as pitch, confident that there is no danger that i will somehow become lost, given the limited options afforded by the confines of the highway, i push towards my goal, feeling the wall with one hand whilst occasionally prodding the darkness before me with my light staff.

i am unable to judge the time as i finally become too weary for travel further; it seems that the pleiades have reached their zenith, but i am not certain, considering the distortion of the firmament caused by this forced perspective. i unhook my sleeping sheath from my pack and unfold the frame; i lock the frame into position and fasten the top of the sheath opening to the tubes. i slide into the sheath and unwrap a couple of apple-soy stix and uncork a flask of berrieswater from the rancho. after a few bites and swigs, i fall sleep among the crumbs.

awakened by a drumming that seems to vibrate my gear and my person but not the walls of the channel, i look in the sky to see it illuminated by a blood-orange strobe from an unseen source. nothing appears at either end of the channel, and i can see nothing peering over the edge of the walls. i have no choice but to watch the sky whilst i am rocked to sleep by the drums.

the morning comes quietly; when i crawl from the sheath i discover that it is covered with a thin layer of glass dust, as is the top of my pack and a half-eaten apple-soy stik, which will remain only half eaten. the dust shakes off easily; i secure my gear and walk towards the pinpoint horizon.

arrive at steel-ribboned gates of kind pond dockyards. inhabitants too occupied or too casual to react to newcomer. locate meal house to secure victuals and passage.

In the waiting room for the road-train to the Old Federal District, I enjoy the first cup of hot coffee since the few months immediately following the secession. whilst manhattanville has been cut off from most supplies from the continent and the rest of the world, Baltimor is flush with almost every comestible, fabric, spice, or product imaginable. now that the proximity of manhattanville to the upper bay has caused a cessation in all trade with the jersey docks, the overseas traffic, that small amount which remains, which is destined for the provinces and communities between the eastern coast and the appalachians, is now driven into the once abandoned docks and warehouses of the open port of Baltimor, sparking a late renaissance in this formerly desolate burgh.

I share a lunch counter in a lime concrete cube at the entrance to the road-train terminal with a dozen other travelers. they are here for a variety of reasons; some are heading to the greener and more pleasant climes of arlingtonton after having made a comfortable fortune off the million-plus newbies who continue to stream into the baltimor zone seeking housing or at least work, some are skilled laborers who have been priced out of the inflated baltmor market by the masses and are trying to get a head start on selling their efforts to the rebuilding of arlingtonton, some are hoping to acquire a contract for security on one of the road-train lines, some clearly have no intention of confessing why they need to escape baltimor.

perhaps i am one of the last category, as my business, the simple disruption of society and the sowing of the seeds of the manhattanville experiment onto the continent, is not one which should be openly expressed in this territory, but the folks in this town seem too concerned with industry and development to worry about any transgressions of the people who are passing through the trade zone. of all the cities which have fallen into decay and disrepair, baltimor is surprisingly the only one that has not only survived but has surpassed its former success. were i to stay, some feathers might be ruffled, but as long as my business is not bad for baltimor’s business, no one here asks any questions.

this openness has allowed a relaxation of travel since my departure from the pinelands. the traffic thorough the bays and canals is so great that rather than disguise my identity or hide within the false hull of a tug, crossing the bay and entering the chesapeake is a simple matter of finding a skipper and negotiating a deal to exchange goods and or work for passage. not much work needed to be done on the mechanized craft this season, so i was forced to give up my gauntlets; they will presumably be sold or traded to someone disembarking somewhere in the southern jersey swamps.

hook up w/ group w/ road-train passage paid by arling firms. steal steel insulated bottle for coffee. enter trailer; sleep to sounds of dreams related by hopeful migrants.

the road-train is scheduled to deposit my would-be crew at a work centre in the smithsonian foundation, which is one of the few institutions committed to maintaining the integrity – physically if not spiritually – of the remnants of the built environment of the Old Fed. i had sent notice to clive to deliver ahouston to me in the basement commissary of Smithson 8, or, if he was unable to escort ahouston, to find a reliable partisan to help him reach the campus.

unfortunately, clive had to move underground shortly after his arrival, so ahouston was left to make his own way through the district, resulting in tardiness to the extreme. i have not seen ah since the our days on the west coast, at a time when the united states still controlled los angeles county, so i do not know what to expect. the past few years have been exhilarating, but hard. my hands and face bear the scars of a thousand fights of fire in the streets and toil in the field though the winter nights. the weathering and abuse doubtlessly have made me unrecognizable to someone who had looked upon me in my virile youth. i assume the same will be the case with ahouston.

whilst taking lunch from a communal bowl of limas with the migrants to whom i was attached, ahouston appears in the commissary. i do not notice him enter, engaged as i am by hearing emotional pleas from young woman with whom i have taken up as of late as she confesses her inability to grasp the fact that the physical manifestation of passion has no right to convert social relationships into hindrances upon the revolutionary duties at hand. i am awoken from the tearful farewell by the roaring laughter of the migrants as they rib each other and kid about a dandy fellow who has appeared in the room.

in a whirlwind of quick and surefooted migrant and local workers – each built like a brick shithouse – a doughy fop stands uncertainly against the jamb of the door. it looks at though the years have been kind to ahouston; his form is full and the lack of grime upon his fine vestments are a conspicuous anomaly in the meal hall. my face flushes with slight embarrassment as the b’hoys from the road-train howl about my ‘fancy friend’ as i rise to meet him.

i inform ahouston that our – i don’t say ‘his’ – profile in this hall is too high and that we should remove ourselves before we share our identities or discuss anything of consequence. as we walk to the steps to the exit level, i notice that i am being watched through the glass wall which separates the commissary from the corridor – not by the authorities or counter revolutionaries, but by the weeping dark eyes of a young woman from the rocky wilds where north philadelphia once stood.

ahouston and i hike west and cross the river to the pentagon, where i have secured temporary lodgement. ahouston is put up in the apartment of a young black couple with two children – ah was excited to see ‘how they live’ – whilst i sleep out on the knoll, beneath a cherry canopy.

spend three days at arling. meet w/ partisans + exchange notes. ah tags along, seems more interested in aesthetics than in cause of change. discusses pantone colours with residents and congratulates them on ‘making something’ of the changes. treats the revolution as an finite quantity, not as constant action. inhabs could push perpetually for redefinition of conventions; ah encourages lethargy and return to a status quo. have not seen ah’s city, but mnhttnville did not make change so we could have new outfits; we made change to free us to make change.

upon hearing of ahouston’s plans to head west and seek a job that will afford him time to enjoy the sun and surf, i realize that the time has come to take my leave of him. my perception that ahouston had the makings of an agent of change was incorrect. he does not view the, yes, revolution in terms of change being inherently beneficial in and of itself; he seems to view it as a vehicle towards providing some opportunity for profit and excitement. when humanity is pitted against destructive and debilitative forces, it is vitalized by resistance. at the moment this pressure is relaxed, society is infected by lethargy and entropy.

for ah and those like him, civilization is the ability to sit and grow fat on a throne, dreaming up philosophies and arts. is the mark of civilization the ability to rephrase a rediscovery in a thousand different words or to paste the latest flavour of skin onto a home? admittedly, working for a living does not allow time for idle fantasies such as these; however, the theocracies of the midwest and the suicieties of asia arose from the thoughts of such idle men.

i fear that most of the insecure fucks who populate this sandy plain are acolytes of the same doctrine, if it deserves such a title, as ah. they are so afeared of uncertainty that they are automatically drawn to any semblance of routine – they build it where there is none. a case in point: ahouston was extolling the virtues of a housing development (of all things!), called broom, out in oklahoma someplace.

a slackening of the tension is a weakening of progress; the schedule of the routine might be altered, but the same filthy burden is wrapped around the neck of humanity.

therefore, i separate from ahouston in saint louis, a city surprisingly untouched by time; the boutiques and diners appear much as they did when my lover and i passed through in the late 1990′s. it is not clear if any of the zombis who lurch though the streets are even aware that the nations which surround them are belligerently eyeing stlou’s access to the river.

ahouston presumably will find wealth and pleasure in the green fields of the west; meanwhile, i will travel north to canada or the lakes and seek a passage back east – to manhattanville.

clive will help ah to west. purchase passage on night skiff north towards duluth. spend waiting time on river brothel + enjoying chinese buffet.

the trip up the mississippi and to duluth, should take three (3) nights. we travel at night, without running lights, which is tedious and difficult; we are constantly running up against floating debris and fixed obstacles. the twisted metal and chain barriers are no surprise, but the number of corpses is unnerving. what lies ahead of us?

apart from the skipper and publius/3, there are three other passengers aboard the skiff. two of them are ranchboys from Dakota; they had guided a flotilla of manure scows down river to the refineries of baton rouge and are now traveling back to their estate. the third claims to be a tradesman, sent from the deserts of west Tennessee to negotiate a timber deal with the canada/lakes consortium.

i have suspicions about this ‘tradesman’; his woolen spats belie the notion of hailing from w tenn. his constant inquires as to whether i this is my first trip – my claim here is that i am a an appleman from phoenix who is to be schooled in the maritimes – suggest that he is doubtful of my own story. while it is natural to assume that the back story given by a traveler is false, to attempt to crack or expose it is the behaviour of an estab.

this invasive attitude by the tradesman is made more curious by the fact that i noticed an exchange between him and clive on the morning of our last day in stlou. ahouston insisted that we visit a hashish cafe after breakfast, not aware at the time that i intended to divorce myself from his company; here i saw clive arrive late, followed by the tradesman who situated himself at another table.

i find it strange that clive would continue to lead ahouston after we met. i had presumed that clive would join me or return to illinois. i wonder if clive intends on assisting ahouston at all. is there another reason why he chose to depart with him? is this tradesman here to monitor publius/3 whilst clive keeps tabs on ah? clive seemed quite defensive of ah o’er the last few days, claiming that the insurgents of the west are of a special breed and that the revolution can’t occur everywhere at once and that what might work for manhattanville is not always applicable to other situations. he reeks of the company man who tries to change things ‘from the inside’, oblivious to the fact that we are against any system that has an ‘inside’.

i have been aware that the tradesman has had several private conversations with the skipper and he has pulled aside each of the ranchboys more than once. i am certain that he is telling them lies about me – something that will turn them against me. or maybe he is telling them the truth; something that ah or clive revealed to him – ah, most likely. although, clive was talking to him. ah must have persuaded clive with those glorious phantasmata of life in the suburban tempe. those button-downs think that equalization is the point at which everyone has a fucking screened porch and plasma screen, not the point at which everyone realizes you don’t need them.

so when after the second day of travel, when we stop just south of rock island to forage, i abscond through the paddies and move to the west. hiding in an empty silo, i wait until sundown, when the skipper will take the skiff and those wretches up river. it figures that clive would turn out to be such a traitor as to send such hooligans after me. it doesn’t surprise me that ahouston is involved; many times in the years i knew him in los angeles, he sought to insert himself in various relationships, expediting their ruin. as i struggled with my work and suffered crippling blows from the administration and academy, he was always there to curse my darkness – but not to light a candle. the two of them, clive and ah make quite a pair. i hope they rot down there in the fucking valley. when i am sure it is safe to return to the open, i hike back to the river in darkness, hoping to find room on a barge or in steerage on any vessel headed north. as i arrive, however, i notice the familiar blue figure of the tradesman; he seems to have been waiting for my return! it is impossible to cross the toll bridge and he is surveying all the departing craft. clearly clive – ahouston – has paid this devil handsomely to tail me to end of my mission or my life. my hand has been forced, then, by the meddlesome ahouston, and my only recourse with the tradesman is to destroy him.

thanks to the estabs sicced on me by ahouston and all his fundamentalist fucks, there is little chance i will see my island home any time in the near future. they have persued me across iowa since the night i fled the crew of the skiff at rock island, where the w tenn tradesman doubtlessly had alerted the local estabs to my presence after escaping my assault at the river bank, where with my light staff i struck the back the tradesman’s neck, knocking him to the ground, the position from which he received numerous blows to the head, face, and neck from a 30-inch logchain before it was realized that the man being savaged was not the same tradesman from the stlou-duluth skiff, which is not to say that he is not fair game in this contest, for it is more likely than not that he is a lackey of those forces which ahouston has turned on me…since that moment, or rather immediately after releasing the lackey’s corpse for a float down the river, as a warning to those who entertain the idea of following, life has been a feverish race, punctuated with sharp violence, across the plains, where i have been forced to lay down any overhauled bumpkins who have made the mistake of standing between me and my deliverance, whether it be a power blue chevrolet or a box of pecan rolls, which marks me with regret at each instance, as they are merely slavishly following instructions from their estab wardens, even though, however, those of us in manhattanville were able to awaken ourselves, so perhaps i should have no sympathy with these automata whom i leave in the oil-stained dirt and upon the chipped linoleum tiles at each fuel pump and kwik-e-mart if they fail to muster the mental fortitude or technical ingenuity to shield their minds and crania from the brain waves of the omnipresent estabs…as my lightning staff shatters the cheek bone of a white-sweatered casher who attempted to wrest from me a carton of cultured soy on the sidewalk before the door of a co-op in ft.dodge, i recognize that the guilt for this unnecessary bloodshed lays upon the creatures who have the knowledge and the ability yet also the refusal to warn their drones that they are at war and a hostile knight is riding through their midst, for i don’t want to hurt anyone and would like to see the doors before me swing wide, but the estabs have conspired to abuse their hive as fodder, as refuse cast against me like a fusillade of meat and polyester, so as long as they come, i continue carve through them, burning a path to the missouri with my rod, where i scale the walls into the relatively safe space of sioux city, the portal betwixt the midwest and dakota…i leave behind the estabs and their armies, and cross the river into the hardscrabble solitude of the badlands.

the badlands afford some relief; my pursuers have no authority to follow me through dakota…at best they can hire some bounty hunters from this region, and most of those local mercenaries would love to get their claws into a genuine manattanvillager…most of them are aged and weak, however, veterans from the united states final war against pan arabia…breaking them should prove no problem, but it as i am transgressing no laws in dakota, it would be prudent to stay in plain site, in the towns, where none will make a move against me…i seek a companion for providing escort services, and enter a sapp bros outside vermillion, where i find a pair of fetching lasses fueling the tank of a nipponese motor vehicle…at the sandwich counter i confront one of them and offer payment for a ride and possibly more…while negotiating the other appears and takes her friend by the arm to lead her out; i follow to the vehicle and insinuate myself into the open door, at which point the cockblocker screams at me..now i realize that she is a clone or pod sent by the pineys, alerting the hunters to my presence, i break my lightning staff across her shoulder; she collapses and i push the other aside so that i may take over operation of the vehicle; we crash over the curbs and medians to enter the highway, and the lass screams and demands that she be let out of the car..i remind her that she agreed to take me as far as rapid city and also i am not stopping now that the manhunters have located me and golems from the hosts of the midwest are loose in dakota…we travel the autobahn for hours without stopping…this lass wastes her time weeping, though she is not the one to be hurt in this fiasco..i have been led from my home with the hope of seeing grand new experiments in life and society across the continent, but instead i find only regression and craven opportunism, people like ahouston see only a chance to wipe the slate clean so that people will have the need to consume more products, to ahouston revolution is about changing to any lifestyle which requires purchasing a new outfit, and yet here i am in the badlands risking my life to inform these blind fucks about what we have accomplished in manhattanville, but i am met with only ire and violence from the inhabs and spurned by the ladies i cross, these barbaric simpletons don’t deserve the likes on manhattanville, and this world is not worth living in without it..lunch counter in winner: angry man tells me of wood runners (take lumber across the border from canada), if i cross the northern dakota border, will find a stop in ashley, where passage north might be bargained. agree to head to pierre, wait in motor lodge on n.side for word about travel to border…find specified lodge and secure room, offer to let vermillion lass stay as well, she declines and takes her vehicle..hide fragment of lightning staff in radiator whilst will head for town square in search for black russians or bbq tempeh.

pierre