The only good thing was that I had plenty of gas and a radio. I drove out of town, popped the top on the Driver, and started singing along with the radio. I rode through Taylor, through Tula, through Toccopola. I thought about all the decent people who were home asleep in their beds. I thought about all the lives and all the stories that were there, wonderful things, horrible things, heartbreaking things. I knew that I’d lost it and I was afraid I’d never get it back. At one time the muse would come and sit and shit on my shoulder like a pigeon and I had taken it for granted. I had thought it would always be there. Now I was just a cheap drunk, an ex-hack wearing Salvation Army shoes. I started hitting the Driver pretty hard. I smoked one cigarette after another. I ran over a polecat and had to smell it until I couldn’t smell anything else. The Driver even started tasting like it. I started getting a little sick at my stomach. I stopped on the side of the road and threw up. I remember a story a nurse had told me one time, about a black guy being brought into the emergency room where she worked, with a gunshot wound in the stomach. He was screaming and puking and slinging blood everywhere, and she was trying to hold him down on a table, and he leaned his head over and puked up a big chunk of sardine right in her pocket, a chunk she said was two inches long. I puked a little more.

I wiped my mouth and staggered back into my truck, with my eyes weepy and the bile rising in my throat. I rolled the windows down and hung my head out the window like a dog while I drove, gasping in great big gulps of the night air. The smell of the polecat faded a little and I was able to take another drink of the Driver to settle my stomach. I began to feel a little better. I thought I could make it back to town.

It was late when I got back up there. I drove around the square several times thinking about everything. I was pretty drunk. I saw a bunch of kids out there, standing around, yelling at people going by, talking trash to chicks, yahooing and being young. And I thought: You boys just don’t know. Never again will you have this time in your lives of carefree jubilation and you will only get your first piece once. Make it good. Run wild. Climb a mountain. Join a yacht club. Water-ski. Drink plenty of beer. Learn to play a musical instrument.