“I did a lot of shopping a week or so ago. We’ve got plenty of rice and some horsemeat in the freezer. It’s only a couple of miles over to Sherwood.”

I took the water out to the goat. She buried her nose in the dented pot and didn’t come up till it was almost gone. Sam lay under the trees, staring up, smiling. I took the pot back for more water.

Carlotta took the bread out and set it up beside the Madonna to cool. Then she disappeared, said she was going out in the boat. I went into the little bathroom to piss but there was a rug over the toilet and a smell, so I took a quick walk in the woods.

Rennel went into town for fresh milk and salad dressing, which I’d forgotten when we drove out. He also brought a big cardboard box of canned milk. Sam came in and sat beneath the kitchen table. He’d decided to buy a Jeep station wagon with the marriage money and go homesteading. Rennel leaned his chair back against the Arabic Zodiac calendar and said there wasn’t any more land available for homesteading.

Sam shook his head. “There was some just a while ago in Nevada. There still is in Alaska, and the Yukon. Lichtenstein knows all about it.”

“Whatever became of him?”

“He’s out in the cabin right now. He’s honeymooning with his wife. He went back to New York just before we did and married this girl he went to high school with. She’s very pretty. Looks like a Byzantine princess. What I wanted to say is that I really long to live far away from cities and people. A very simple life in which I need no more than I can provide for myself. This goat house is perfect practice for building a cabin. It could just be one room the first year. Chink the walls with mud and plant a big garden. Set out a trap line and maybe shoot birds and things. A place with a little stream nearby. See, this is what the day would be like: I wake up before light and put on the kerosene lamp that sits on the table I made for myself. I start a fire in an old woodstove like the one in the cabin here. I brew up coffee and sit watching the sun come up through the windows. When it’s light I put out the lamp, go outdoors and chop wood, weed in the garden, and go look in my traps to see what’s for dinner. I come back for lunch and spend the afternoon painting and writing poetry. Go for a swim just before supper. Read late into the night by the kerosene lamp.”