John, August 23, 1995 It is summer evening, quiet, and even more flesh is gone from his skeletal frame. We sit on the concrete porch out back with the crazies, drink wine, talk some, but mostly sit in silence. All of us --- John, the crazies, and I, the only healthy one --- are tuned to the same chord: the soft West wind pushing dark clouds up against the mountains in the East, a flash of heat lightning, the glow of cigarettes all around, and crickets singing. He and I talk of the first time he met her, how she electrifies the room when she enters, and he asks how my Italian is coming along. It's fine, and so is she, though traveling now. For the first time I exchange names with some of the crazies. Earl, chain-smoking, left leg bouncing incessantly, asks, glowering, if I am the one who made him return the coke to the machine at Sandy's service station back in '64. The tension eases and he talks of acid, weed, glue, of the state hospital and the slammer, and his dream (it was only orange sunshine, he said) of waking up again, a child in his father's house. Yet more casually he speaks of the time travellers, who, with knobby heads and spindly legs, walk on walls like spiders, and asks if I had seen them too. Caroline, the pudgy one in the bathrobe and enormous Mickey Mouse slippers, the only one who smiles, sits down next to Earl, bums a cigarette and smokes, her back to him, though touching once. Earl smiles, and Caroline too. An occasional word from one of us, or a request for a cigarette or a light. Then silence, and the same chord: the soft West wind pushing dark clouds up against the mountains in the East, an occasional flash of heat lightning, the glow of cigarettes all around, and crickets singing. It is day. The miracle of the Earth turning, the sun rising.