There were two German police dogs playing around the frog people. The dogs were not wearing black rubber suits and I did not see any suits lying on the beach for them. Perhaps their suits were behind a rock.

A frog man was floating on his back in the surf, eating a slice of watermelon. He swirled and eddied with the tide.

A lot of their equipment was leaning against a large theatre-like rock that would have given Prometheus a run for his money. There were some yellow oxygen tanks lying next to the rock. They looked like flowers.

The frog people changed into a half-circle and then two of them ran into the sea and turned back to throw pieces of watermelon at the others and two of them started wrestling on the shore in the sand and the dogs were barking around them.

The girls were very pretty in their poured-on black rubber suits and gentle clowning hats. Eating watermelon, they sparkled like jewels in the crown of California.

The Post Offices of Eastern Oregon

Driving along in Eastern Oregon: autumn and the guns in the back seat and the shells in the jockey box or glove compartment, whatever you elect to call it.

I was just another kid going deer hunting in this land of mountains. We had come a long way, leaving before it was dark. Then all night.

Now the sun was shining inside the car, hot like an insect, a bee or something, trapped and buzzing against the windshield.

I was very sleepy and asking Uncle Jarv, who was stuffed beside me in the front seat, about the country and the animals. I looked over at Uncle Jarv. He was driving and the steering wheel was awkwardly close in front of him. He weighed well over two hundred pounds. The car was barely enough room for him.

There in the half-light of sleep was Uncle Jarv, some Copenhagen in his mouth. It was always there. People used to like Copenhagen. There were signs all around telling you to buy some. You don’t see those signs any more.

Uncle Jarv had once been a locally famous high school athlete and later on, a legendary honky-tonker. He once had four hotel rooms at the same time and a bottle of whiskey in each room, but they had all left him. He had grown older.

Uncle Jarv lived quietly, reflectively now, reading Western novels and listening to opera on the radio every Saturday morning. He always had some Copenhagen in his mouth. The four hotel rooms and the four bottles of whiskey had vanished. Copenhagen had become his fate and his eternal condition.

I was just another kid pleasantly thinking about the two boxes of 30:30 shells in the jockey box. ‘Are there any mountain lions?’ I asked.

‘You mean cougars?’ Uncle Jarv said.

‘Yeah, cougars.’