36) Perhaps I am waking up a bit, the bestial within me is weakening. It is a good and puzzling thing I do when I slow the vehicle down and, despite the fire, I drive back to the couple I threw insensate or worse in the grass. I have the urge to help. I must, of course, steal the vehicle, but I think I should help enough so that they do not suffer an ugly burn. I am afraid of fire above all else, so, Dr. Creep, if you are watching, you will learn a little of my selfless, charming side. Do I dare toy with heroism? I can't be a hero until I actually do something besides idle near the couple, as I am doing now. I feel a temptation to heroism, it is like a deep spiritual tickle, even though those words mean next to nothing, I mean, really. So, Doctor, here I am. There is fire now on both sides of the road. Yet I am out of the vehicle. I am standing close to the pair. I can see physical features and adornments specific to them. I actually sense their distinction, that they have lives to live, plenty of life left, assuming the best. Man, woman. He is wearing white trousers and a white shirt, open at the dirty collar. She is akimbo in a plaid skirt held together by a jeweled pin. They both have gray hair. Doctor, I feel the heroic urge rising. Flames leap to brush a few feet away. I must act soon. Doctor, now I see, I am worth saving. I have it in my power to step in and leave a clear impress on the fates of others. I can be a force for good. Oh, Doctor! How bright is this light!

The flames are closing upon the vehicle. The tires might begin burning, just as the shoes of my insensate couple in fact are. Can it be heroic to save the vehicle, and myself, alone? It is very hot. Heavy smoke makes it harder to see them. Something stronger than heroism is twisting in me. The usual: fear, pain, and my old friend, the terror of fire. Dr. Creep, I must escape now. You saw me poised to do a great thing, didn't you? Had you been standing somewhere near I would have saved them. Just to show you. It is a little your fault the pair now smolders. The best I can do is make sure they are deceased. Which I do with his and her stones.

It is getting dark. The dust and smoke rises behind me as I drive away. I cannot make out the place of the events of a few minutes ago. It is as good as gone. All just memories, now. I feel better. The vehicle is safe. I am safe. So something good did come of this. In the back seat is a fancy basket, but nearly everything contained has been eaten to wrappers. There is a little wine left, surprisingly. Malbec. Dark, brooding, inky. Like every night of my stupid life. Easy, easy.

I did not drive for long until the vehicle stopped running. I spent the night inside, tucked and curled around my luke warm core. I dreampt of a slaughter house. I was working there. I wielded a buzz saw in the manner expected. Cattle were reduced to smaller and smaller parts, all in a worthy effort to finally fit them into the tiny mouths of people. They were waiting in a long line down the road. I was the second step. The first was to end the life of the cow. My job was to take great hacking swats at the upended things. In my dream I slipped in the mess at my feet. My saw put an end to me.

I woke up in sickness. I had wretched down my front. I wiped the bile from my mouth. I looked through the windshield outside at the clouds. They faintly reflected fire or lights from a city over the hills. Cold weather was coming. The clouds were parted, open in places, drifting slowly, in any case. Two bright stars briefly shown like hateful eyes looking down on the filth of my life.

It will be dawn soon. Dr. Creep, where are you?

35) I do not like running. I am a thoughtless beast when I run. I am not a beast but a man forced to drift into bestial ways. I may resemble a beast. I shall take this up with the good Doctor. There is no one other to select me, to mark me with a sign, so that people, however reduced and repugnant themselves, know at a glance that my lumbering self, the heap parting the smoking grass, is like them in a small way: the running from errors or defects fate has thrown. But I fear it is only a dim somewhere, among a near-extinguished tribe badly in need of fresh soldiers, perhaps, where I might find a home. It is my own fault, yammering on about a home. Should I rid myself of so stupid an idea, then I might find peace, as I knew in the ice, when I was giving my life away in tiny degrees. Home is a place to finish all at once: I do not believe I can. Dr. Creep will not let me. Home is wandering, such as I'm meant to do. So why does home occur to me at all?

Fire. It is fast. My burnt meat's smoke mixes with that of the weeds. It fills my nostrils, and is just behind. Faster animals pass. I follow them, and the givens of wind and lay of the land, to safety. No siren sounds here. Fire may burn for days and no notice is taken, I suspect. Few trees, fewer buildings, no one cares.
As I blunder though the freshvine, watch the alarm birds bank, I see a break ahead. An automobile runs through it. Good lord, a highway. I rush ahead. Silent road. I hug the brush. Lads bound by as the fire follows at my back. A vehicle appears, a solid box of a car. It meant to skirt the flames, which are now at the berm of the shoulder. God bless the lads who mounted the road just then. The vehicle swerved to avoid them but hit them just the same. For me, o.k. The occupants are out cold, maybe dead. I throw them to the grass. I take their place. I can do this. I watched my little host back in Ushuaia operate such a machine. Among other occasions. I've got the thing running down the road.

34) The bird has yielded a pitiful few mouthfuls of meat. The carcass is in blood-spotted disarray, with parts scattered as though by a witch doctor casting a very evil spell. I meant the bird no ill will. I am merely hungry. Weakness feeds on weakness.

I must start a fire. I have my matches and a world of tinder. I hope a day will come when I do more than nurse an injury in the morning, walk briefly to my next mistake in the afternoon; Thence to run and cower the evening away, and finish with a night of fitful sleep in a damn narrow I hope no other animal wants. I will do more with my days, starting tomorrow. But for now I must keep my fire going and... burn my meat. Quite burned. It is not hard to start a fire or keep it going. It is the putting out where real skill is needed. From confinement in a circle of stones, my fire leapt to tall brush. It was swept along by wind enough. Alarm birds, that is what I shall call them, inclusive of the one I burnt, dart from hundreds of concealments on my bit of playa. (Stupid dogs found only two.) Fire has no brain, but it makes a great one of the many who carry the stories and fear of it within them. It is in me. I am afraid of fire the way other people are afraid of god. Above all else. So please excuse my limited tries at stopping it. What little stomping around I did, yes, I'll admit, was for show, so that the good Doctor will not think less of me than he may already. I must be into negative numbers. The fire leaps into the trees and, too, begins grazing the hillside. Who can guess where it might stop. Purely rhetorical mutterance.
It is evening nearly, so begins the running portion of my day.

33) The good Doctor left me with a tidy pile of supplemental provisions. He gave me matches. Perhaps I will cook, should I come across a thing made palatable by such a process. A fire to warm me is also on my list. I am not bothered by the dark but I can feel cold. He gave me a pocket knife, one which includes a screwdriver and a bottle opener. First too little, now too much! Should I encounter a screw anytime soon I am too close to hostile locals. And all the bottles I've seen have already been opened and are empty but for a bit of rainwater and plaques of living filth. Some forms of life have no ambition. He's also included a salve for minor cuts and sunburn. I'm gunshot, for god's sake. Skin cancer? Even if a tumor should flourish on my forehead today it will be days beyond my ability to count before I succumb, an eventuality Dr. Creep would not permit in any case. Another jacket, to replace the one left behind at the pool, rounds out his gifts.
Still no map. Though I most likely could not make much use of it, for that I would have to know where I am; nevertheless, it would be a new way to view the monotony of a world of hillock, valley, scrub, playa, hillock, etc.

I stuff my new objects into my backpack. I try to stand. Not bad. The bandage is wet. I've another one on my back. The bullet must have passed clean through. More good news.
I step outside into the sunlight. There I see a sign attached to the wall of the hovel. Framing a foreign message are two illustrations, one of ducks on the wing and the other of a hunter taking aim at them. But what really gets my attention is that the sign in held in place... by screws. Just then birds burst from hiding into the air. Two guns fire, one right after the other. Birds fall from the sky. One bird, just a bit alive, takes an odd bounce, under its own power, into the roots of a wind-felled tree. Shouting, then. I duck back inside. Dogs, how I hate more than one dog at a time, bound headlong into the field. One easily recovers its prey. The other whines and frets. It runs an erratic pattern. More shouting. More whining. No luck. I cower as the hunters come into view and join in the search. They, too, stay wide of the roots. Birds are so small, let's forget that one and go elsewhere, 'ahora', I know the hunters are clucking to each other. They move on, but not before the dog that could not find its master's kill stops, perhaps drawn by the stink of my wound or of my grey flesh generally, or my heart, now pounding, and peers into the dark of the hovel. It stands and stares my way. I press so hard into the rear of the hovel that I can hear the boards strain. The hunter calls his animal. But it will not stand down. The man nears and yells again. Still it points my way. He kicks the dog hard. Now it runs. And runs. I feel regret that I cannot merely reveal myself to show that the dog was right. But I would only invite more holes in my hide. Better a dog kicked than me. I've always felt that way even as the distinction is oft times razor thin. Off the group goes. The shooting will be better in the next field. 'Si'.

I let hours pass before I venture out. I will recover the injured bird neither the hunters nor their dogs could. The painkillers are wearing off. I must clutch my gut as I walk. At the roots I find the bird, panting and broken. Its wings hang as limp as empty sails. I have a pocket knife.... I shall keep the rest to myself.

32) Dr. Creep was gone before I could manage more than a nuanced groan in pursuit of his shadow. I would like him to one day stay, to sit with me after he has cleaned me up from a worldly bruising. He has no bedside manner through which it is said healing can often be accelerated. Not to give me a chance to thank him, but to leave me muttering the inventory of his helpful deeds to only myself, this I do not care for. To be alone is to be alone. But to be alone with the great Doctor just beyond my arms to hold, surely that is to be very alone. We could talk about many things. Why he cares for me. Why he does not say to me more than command words. Why he gives me things. Why I dream crap. Why I am pummeled, run from, stared at. Why people perish or disappear when I am around them. I could sound like a child bursting with joyful curiosity but for questions which follow upon my misery and solitude, crushing to the souls of children, if I understand them. Which I do not: Why is the sky blue? Is the moon looking at me? Why is mommy crying? Will you sleep under my bed so that I know the scraping and the dull shove from beneath the mattress is you? I do not know children. Yet I must have once been one. I remember little things, just. I remember fabric brushing across my face. Mother in a summer dress? I remember birds flocking above a public dump. Being given a rolled newspaper to swat flies that lit upon warm siding of a red house. Children love tasks. I remember mowing the lawn before fierce hail fell, a voice yelling at me to hurry. Daddy? Maybe. Enticing. Tempting. Useless. Like collecting postage stamps or minerals in tiny display boxes. A cold show, to be sure.

Minutes later I found I could sit up in my dim surroundings of rough board and tar roof. I am not brave but unique. So what. Perhaps I need to be provocative. If I willfully put myself in harms way can I force Dr. Creep come to my side? A good question. Finally.

31) Everything is starving here. Starved fox course starving rabbits. The clouds are rainless wisps. Dry leaves rattle along empty stream beds. Can anything here survive another day? Do living things here consume just enough to be able to search for just enough tomorrow? Repugnant to live in perpetual want.
I did not remain at the pool long enough to understand those people, and they were certainly well fed, but I know they too have ugly, repetitive hungers. Staying clean, maintaining their girth, replacing bullets expended through the crosshairs. I am beginning to hate this place I have just begun to cross. And everything in it.

The awful night passed. It is dawn and I am alive. My wound has been cleaned and dressed. I am groggy, dull with analgesics, but I see a shadow pass across the threshold: Dr. Creep. Blessed Dr. Creep.

30) The water felt good. Today I thought I had finally drawn the better hand, that is until the pool splashers reversed their course. Out of the house they stormed, angry, wide-eyed, throaty, and well armed with a common go-to weapon: the machete. One small man had a rifle. Nothing to explain. Time to run. I grab my clothes poolside, but leave Dr. Creep's gift of the weather-proof coat. I had only my backpack to conceal my shame. I ran faster than them all. Fear and shouting seemed to tire these once proud people. Down a hill side, across playa and vine, one by one they lost their breath. Only the small man with the gun was able to follow. Running pell-mell ended me in the pocket of a steep rock fall. Panting, I turned to face my pursuer. I didn't need to wait long. The brush parted and there he was, the small pock-marked soul. It was his leveled gun that held my interest. He began by stammering very loudly in that same unknowable tongue. His tactic was as poor as my own, which was nothing more than a pointless effort to blend into the stones. He gestures with the rifle for me to walk back the way we came. I am taken prisoner. I cooperate and advance, yet, though under duress, I offer my hand in friendship. An angel passes. The small man takes a quiet step back, there is a hitch in his breath, his eyes roll off of me. His knees buckle and he falls to the ground. I've done nothing, but he falls to the ground. This is one custom too many, my first thought. But this is more real, my second thought. And as he falls the gun discharges. I stand over him for long seconds. I must have been in shock, for suddenly my belly is aflame. I've been shot.

I can hear the others, drawn by the report, catching up. I have to run some more. Around the rockfall, deeper into the woods I go, bleeding through the dirty, wadded clothes I press against the hole in my gut. It was late afternoon. I was getting colder. I paused to put on my bloody clothes, and in taking the time for this I found I was very near a ruin, a shed or small barn overgrown with freshvine, etc. There is a threshold but no door. Inside it is already dusk. I do not feel well. I lay on the wooden floor among the leaves, spiders, and creatures I'll encounter only in total darkness. I might die tonight.
Dr. Creep...please....

29) Voices carry on the wind. I hear laughter. Give me a moment. I thought I was alone. Damn, I was reflecting just fine. Though, it is true, Dr. Creep, my sole companion, has been silent for days, and the world, a mumbling show. But now I hear laughter. And a machine. Over a rise I see a valley with vineyards, and beyond, a big house. So maybe I want to descend the rocks and hide among the stock. To eat fruit hanging. To be with souls. Yes, I do. All my errant yesterdays I bind with vine.
A tractor works rows away. On hands and knees, I crawl toward the house. For laughter's sake. (This from one who cannot remember laughing.)

Steam rises from a swimming pool. People in hot water. I could be there, warm and washing. They do not see me until I step upon a rose colored patio. Shouting. Panicked splashing. They scramble away. So much for new friends. I am not discouraged. I removed my garments, more like peeling, and into the water I dive. I do not like to see myself without clothes. My suturing is an ugly violet. I do not look at anything but the pool plaster opposite my stroke.

28) There is a leafy plant here. Its fresh shoots are coiled to a point. About it, elements belonging to the same roots, unfurl in a typical solar array. Plants love the sun. Nothing new. But a new shoot, coiled to a point, when feasted upon by snails and other rasping toothed bugs from the outermost curl in, will then present a series of holes across itself, like a child's snipped snowflake or linked paper dolls. In this case the creation is a hole. I call this plant 'memory plant'.
I rack my brain and all I find are holes. So does the world teach me.

27) There is much to be learned from the birds. They do not weep, to begin with. They need no cheering up. They know North when born. They eat their bugs alive. They have no conscience. My deficit was all of the above. This morning's hunt had failed and had estranged me from hunger. So it was that I had only to resume my journey North when the birds, surely the freest, even if only among short lived things, came to my rescue. A first bird hovered above a water and dove in to catch a tiny fish. Other birds came out of the shrubs to steal the fish from the first. One bird after another had it for a moment. Some get nothing, of course, but in bits was the tiny fish torn, scattered, and consumed. Now, the bird which had caught the fish left the conjugating mayhem at the start. It went back to fishing, truly as a solitary hunter. It caught a second fish, larger than the first. And now it is beak deep in flopping, warm entrails.
My happiness is that I need only to find my place in this procession. The natural world of the animal gives blunt clues to a more elegant ratio of violence to meal. I can learn. My broken lad in the cave will be set upon by smaller beasts. They will pick and choose amongst themselves who gets what. All will eat. Flesh will scatter. Others will come to take the pieces lost behind rocks or pasted to the cave's walls. Beetles will emerge from the dirt to partake. Lastly, the lowest of the low will move in on a nod and a wink.
I feel better. My atrocity finds a natural wheel. I am like the first bird. Always.
I toss the handful of beetles away. I am hungry again.

26) The land fell silent. It may already have been, but I only noticed it as I dragged my animal back to the cave. Seems there was no wind. What it was I heard this morning sounded like wind. I will never know. I would like to go back in time and pay greater attention to the wind that may have been, and to so many other things that, through diversion or obsession or the interference of others, have passed by me too quickly.
Concentrate: Awful place. I am dragging a dead thing. I shall call it a 'lad'. My little dead lad.
Arriving at my cave, I turn to butchering. I need a knife. Now is as good a time as any to make an inventory of the contents of my backpack. What has the good Dr. Creep packed for me? Hoho. Some socks. Woolie shirts. And medicine bottles filled not with energizing, healing, or pain pills, but with small white pebbles and gray and black flecked gravel. Lord. What a let down. Deeper in the bag I find jerky, dried roots, pamphlets to museums in the North. There is a slim picture book on the bird nests of Bali. Damn strange, Dr. Creep.... All the way to the bottom of the pack is nothing and its relatives, useless and rubbish. Why did you not give me a knife? How am I supposed to quarter this stupid lad or any other thing? (Among other questions.) Calm. Think back to the comfort of your Antarctic crevasse. Peace. Calm. It was working. I came around. Okay. I need a sharp-edged stone. None sharp enough. I need a sharp stick. The pelt was too tough, like boot leather. Then I'll use my teeth. The lad began bleeding. I do not think it was dead, after all. It bled for long minutes. I stood away from the thing and wept.

I stood apart for a long time, staring at my crime. Hunger or no, this was awkward. I am not use to things dying slowly, and in silence. The lad cooled so that the ticks on its body began to drop away and wander the cave floor looking for a new home. I gathered Dr. Creep's gifts, and, with a handful of beetles, I left this mess forever. North.

25) Hunger does not reach me but by indirect paths. I might sleep two days then get up for water only to find myself weak and dizzy from the exertion. Hunger. I might walk and walk and walk, then notice an odd drift of my thoughts toward the sweet and fleshy, have memories of hot fat dripping down my chin, or a desire to chew something other than willow bark, my usual choice. Hunger. In a pinch I might hide out in the well stocked pantry of a house, waiting for the occupants to leave. Could take hours. Food all around. Hunger. Of this latter path to hunger, I dreampt it. Last night. I find myself in said pantry. I think the occupants have left. And when I step out with my pockets heavy with their trivial possessions, and now with noodles, canned beans, and peaches, spilling out my coat front, I am confronted by a young boy, trembling, in the hands of which is a big gun. The boy shoots me dead, right though the food. Oh, dreams, dreams. I am full of death.
So it was this morning. I woke up in my deep, restful cave to wind howling outside. It sounded like a pack of dogs. Panicked, I raised my head too quickly and collided with the ceiling that had tapered to a silty hollow, essentially my bed, at the back of the cave. I touched the hurt and saw blood. Immediately I thought of meat. I was hungry. In so savage a land one can easily hearken back, with the help of stories, to humanity's coarse and brutal beginnings, a time when they lived full time in caves. All about me were beetles, some wriggling upon their backs, others crushed to yellow paste. I must have had a restless night. But I was not in the mood for beetle. I wanted meat.
I left my pack tucked away and set out to kill the first loping thing I could catch. I have no stealth. My large, poorly maintained frame makes for noise in the step and for labored breathing. No, I would have to depend on the stupidity of my prey. I followed the trail out. It was morning. Sunny. Bent grass made little cracking sounds righting itself as the dew fled. Listen to me! I am a hunter, not a naturalist. Ahead, (where else?) I spied a creature. It was alone, nibbling. Kind of a little thing. Hairy, mostly neck. I crashed forward as quietly as I could. At twenty feet, it raised its head. One look at me and it just dropped dead! Well, I assume. It fell over, so I quickly closed the distance and stomped upon its tough body until I was satisfied I had been coarse and brutal enough. Still, I feel certain that it had died with but one look at me.
What kind of hunter am I?

24) Let's see. Where the hell might I be? Can't figure. I must find a place to spend the night. The stars are a big disappointment. Light for the moth, light for the armadillo, light for the opossum, the mara, the british...but none for me. I am tired of stumbling or feeling my way. My hands are bleeding. Knees punctured. This dark land is all angles, blades and points. Must lay down. Alone, lost, black, blank crap underfoot, don't I deserve to be safe?

23) Night was falling. Soon I would get an eyeful of stars, with hope, bright enough to sojourn by. I use words I never knew I knew. I blurt them to myself and rejoice. Such small pleasures are all the pleasures I expect of this world. Dr. Creep has no special hold on our shared tongue. He rarely speaks words of multiple syllables. You, stop, go, up, move, shut up. Such is his vocabulary, at least to me. To others he strings and braids difficult notions together. But to me.., it cannot be that I am closer to a dog, merely that I need no more precise explication. He is my doctor, not my Webster. No need to explain fire, just run from it. And dogs die in fire all the time. QED.

I am becoming confounded by this strange countryside. Usually I give a thing a name less stressful than itself. Heavily thorned brush becomes 'Freshvine'. It is an ankle-shredding, thigh-ripping impediment to my progress, yet as 'freshvine' it opens me up to new experiences, not only to qualities of pain I've never felt before, but as well to a search for ways around it. Straight lines are unacceptable for the true traveler. Another example might be the 'British', a name I gave for an exceptionally ferocious, bird destroying beast skulking off to my right. The British people have an affinity for bird destruction, but they are poised and controlled as they go about it. Hence, my british companion leaps through tall freshvine a few feet away.
This countryside will require many names.
I shall call those trees over there 'Flag Trees'. Of course, that is their true name. Just to prove my point.