taken where the river will. A peaceful moment.

In the dark they swerved off the freeway to the store for bungalow paint. Merilee plowed the aisles, selecting her barn reds to match her tangerines, and left Sam and the keeds to pay. When they caught up. Merilee and Stefan were across the street in front of the garden store, standing stranded in an island of bebop potted trees and exotic flora they had selected, waiting for Sam to arrive with the cash.

"Will you get in the car? both of you."

"Sure." Merilee hoisted a six-foot date-palm and-

"Just leave that there."

"Sure." If her husband didn't like dates, then as a proper wife she would not of course grow dates. Merilee and Stefan lifted instead a fig tree.

"And put that down, Merilee."

"In just six years we'll be able to grow our own-"

"But as for now, NO."

"You can't just say NO to me like that, Sam Bollo."

"Honey you spent every last cent we had at the paint store."

Oh. Girl growling and Stefan sad. Merilee a proper wife holding her tongue. Thinking, " If there's no money, then we'll have no fig trees. Our ancestors crossed the Donner and left Tulsa in their Conestoga wagons to escape just such old-fashioned logical connectors." And if Sam Bollo thought he was the hot shit who could deny her what she had always wanted just through some old cranky Philadelphia logic, then-

22. Now we are six revisited, part 2

Merilee. Lover. Sweetheart. I said I'd buy you a bicycle and I'm going to buy you a bicycle.

Friday, you said Friday. Today's Friday.

I told you. I don't get paid but every other Friday. But next week, I swear to God-

But you promised you promised you promised. Never to say no to nothing. The moon you said if I wanted it-

Merilee, honey, there are times when a man just can't give you all you want when you want it. His big jaw jutting.

Then what good are men? I was better off alone.

Maybe you were. I'll go back to the motel thing for you. If you want. I love you that much.

And you could walk out on me too.

That's your head talking, not mine, Merilee.

23. Conflict resolution

A day or so later when they were speaking again, Merilee and Sam agreed that it was civilization and cosas which had nearly done them in. Merilee's new thirty-five dollar stove didn't work and the dented refrigerator iced her vegetables. They decided to go to the mountains overnight to drop and scrub the common soul, and took the habachi and the keeds and Stefan with them. They were silent on the way up, both appalled at how close to the edge they had carelessly careened.

24. Bow and arrow

In silence, in beauty, in rosy nakedness the squaw sits easily by the chasm ledge and waits. Forever she has been gazing at the purple canyon wall opposite her and now she feels the moment of the mystery approaching. Her arms are heavy ropes holding to her a brown young brave, his electric hair bound by a vinyl red band. An arrow-bodied boy with a sweet thing not yet grown callous with age and hard use. He is astonished and shaking, his body shimmers in sweat.

BOTH MAN AND WOMAN, WE MUST FROM TIME TO TIME BE BOW TO SOMEONE ELSE'S ARROW. So the Master said. Growing up, Merilee understands, is feeding young braves and showing them miracles.

Alyosha lend us your sacred know how now. Teach us to make your children forget what has made them rigid. Teach us to make them first limp and fearless, then to raise them again with the new backbone and fiber and flexibility. Let us teach them to die and know death is not the worse there is.

As the moment approaches, the squaw slowly draws the young brave into her. Now the first sunlight comes, a blade of white cutting the canyon wall across the way. The brave shivers and the squaw feels a mighty breath growing in his chest, and then a first cracked warwhoop escapes him and goes bouncing and echoing down the chasm.

Right to whoop. They are not nothing, such miracles as we perform. We are not nobody, the masters and the artisans, the cooks and the gleaners, we who make something from nothing and give it away for free.

The squaw leans back and rests in a bed of oak leaves. Standing at the edge of the clearing are her own brave and the keeds. Golden now in the newly created sunlight, they are obviously knocked out by the beauty of all their Merilee has accomplished. They must think she is a well without bottom.

Though his smile says that young Stefan is OK now, she inquires anyway. Yes sister, he says. That was the first, you know. And so groovy. But now, in this dry world, the young brave needs to drink water, so Merilee gives to him her knowledge of where the car and the canteen are. Turn left at the split pine, and right at the stump. And maybe put on your trousers before you go down to the road.

on the seventh day She rested.

Merilee lazes alone, nibbling maybe an acrid acorn. Sam and Girl have dis-