All right! Here it is! One chapter from the last quarter of my book. I am pleased to report that the writing is coming along well--my word count for November is at 24059. The total word count for this book is at 84745. However, let's bear in mind (please please please) that this is a first draft, and not all of these words will necessarily make the final cut. In that spirit, if you read it, please leave me a comment! And no need to be gentle. I want to know what works, but also what does not work--and why. If you like to read, you totally have enough expertise to offer suggestions and advice, so fire away!

Thanks guys.

P.S. this may or may not tell you some things about me you may or may not have known. I may or may not confirm or deny anything(s).

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4:16

“When you have completed 95 percent of your journey, you are halfway there.”

--old Japanese saying

There's only so much you can do when you know that in ten minutes' time, you will be arrested.

I lit a joint.

I was laying on my back in the grass. My mind was as blank as the blue sky. Rather, it's not that I didn't have any thoughts, but that I simply watched them pass, maybe remarking on their shape like they were clouds (that one's a caterpillar!), but without forming any lasting attachments to them. The sky seemed as deep above me as the earth felt below me, and I was the weighty center of the sphere, impossibly small and painfully aware of it.

If my mind could have been persuaded to produce a written proof that it was conscious at the time—an epitaph of the moment, if you will—it might have been rather like this:

dirt in my hair

smoke floating up to the clouds

silent in the blue sky

But my mind said no such thing. In a state of irrevocable acceptance, I felt no fear or worry. Just waited for Caramba to lumber up the hill and find me lounging there in the grass so green from all the rain that spring. I could hear the cops and dogs coming closer, but I couldn't see them yet. damn dimly behind that sound, I could hear I-25 breathing heavy on the afternoon. Evidently, that was to be the last road I'd hitch for a while.

The thought hit me with a little smack of sadness. You get used to the road. The routine is almost never routine: wake, hitch or walk, find food, find shelter and ways of acquiring them. I'd started out driving, and thinking it the one and only noble way to get around the big wide country, but time taught me different. Sometimes there's nothing like a walk. No pastime or prayer, no antidote or anecdote.

I wished then for one more road, but knew I wouldn't get it today. I sighed a cloud of smoke.

A big, furry drug dog—unaccompanied--burst through the grass. She stopped and sat down, looking at me laying there. Her tail wagged slow—just catching on to the great joke of me. She came to lick my face, then lay down beside me.

“Hey old pup!” I laughed and gave her my best old-movie-gangster, I says, “Dey'll have us bote for sure, now. You betta run while ya still can!”

But the dog paid no mind and laid her head down with a heavy sigh. Her brown eyes rolled up to look at mine; one old wise soul to another, and just as tired.

“You're right. You're right of course,” I said. I rolled up onto my elbow and shared a little smoke with the dog. Don't tell me you think a drug dog wouldn't enjoy a little smoke now and then.

Humming “I Fought the Law,” I dibbled a few little holes in the soft earth and dug in all my pockets for any overlooked seeds. I found 16—my all time lucky number. I smoothed dirt over the seeds. I thought that was what Maria would have done. But I tried not to think of her. I buried my roach next to the seeds.

The other dogs and men were closer now. I considered giving myself up. But, imagining myself standing up in the grass with my hands outstretched, it was also easy to imagine those trigger happy feds shooting first and asking questions later. Perhaps it was best to just let them come to me now. They'd already come so far—across two time zones, a dozen states, as many roads as they had veins in their bodies, and through as many towns as seeds I'd planted on the way. They could come just a little further.

My bag was empty now. I'd lost all the things I'd started out with. My books, my extra clothes. Well, what had they been anyway? I tossed the bag into the bushes. And at that moment, I felt so free that I laughed. And I laughed until tears ran from the corners of my eyes and back into my hair. The dog licked my temples.

I did not try to imagine the future any further than a few moments ahead, when they would catch me. How would I react? Would I bravely stand to face them and give them a speech that would move Shakespeare? Tell them we were really all brothers anyway? I could grovel, weep even. Or I could still try to make a run for it. Lead them farther west, farther from Maria, and who knows?! I might lead them for days, months, years...

A trick of the wind blew all the sound of the feds away, and parted the grass. It was an invitation. A life of roads and constant movement. Plotting like a pawn who plans one day to be Queen, anticipating my opponent's next move before I made my own. I could skip the country too, find Maria abroad, or even just find my own place. I could work on the hemp farms in Canada. I raised my dirty hand and looked at the palm, as though some answer might be written among the lines. Instead, all the creases and lines became roads on a map, and I wondered where they led to. But the rest of my body made no motion to grab hold of any of these thoughts. They passed, like clouds, and mingled with my smoke. I declined the invitation, and though the sound of the dogs told me the feds were less than one hundred yards away, I drew another deep breath of the free air and stared at the sky again, as though trying to memorize its face.

Then, I fell asleep.