He’s kept alone. If others have seen him or his fire, they haven’t tried to approach. He’s letting hair and beard grow, wearing a dungaree shirt and trousers Bodine liberated for him from the laundry of the John E. Badass. But he likes to spend whole days naked, ants crawling up his legs, butterflies lighting on his shoulders, watching the life on the mountain, getting to know shrikes and capercaillie, badgers and marmots. Any number of directions he ought to be moving in, but he’d rather stay right here for now. Everyplace he’s been, Cuxhaven, Berlin, Nice, Zürich, must be watched now. He could still make a try at finding Springer, or Blodgett Waxwing. Why does he have this obsession with getting papers? What th’ fuck are papers, anyhow? He could try one of the Baltic ports, wait around for Frau Gnahb to put in, and get over to that Denmark or that Sweden. DPs, offices burned, records lost forever—papers might not mean so much in Europe… waitaminute, so much as where, Slothrop? Huh? America? Shit. C’mon—

Yup, still thinking there’s a way to get back. He’s been changing, sure, changing, plucking the albatross of self now and then, idly, half-conscious as picking his nose—but the one ghost-feather his fingers always brush by is America. Poor asshole, he can’t let her go. She’s whispered love me too often to him in his sleep, vamped insatiably his waking attention with come-hitherings, incredible promises. One day—he can see a day—he might be able finally to say sorry, sure and leave her… but not just yet. One more try, one more chance, one more deal, one more transfer to a hopeful line. Maybe it’s just pride. What if there’s no place for him in her stable any more? If she has turned him out, she’ll never explain. Her “stallions” have no rights. She is immune to their small, stupid questions. She is exactly the Amazon Bitch your fantasies have called her to be.

Then there’s Jamf, the coupling of “Jamf” and “I” in the primal dream. Who can he go to with it? it will not bear that much looking into, will it? If he gets too close, there will be revenge. They might warn him first, They might not.

Omens grow clearer, more specific. He watches flights of birds and patterns in the ashes of his fire, he reads the guts of trout he’s caught and cleaned, scraps of lost paper, graffiti on the broken walls where facing has been shot away to reveal the brick underneath—broken in specific shapes that may also be read….