THE BOOK in my hands: CHIEF JOSEPH COUNTRY: Land of the Nez Perce. I ordered it from the publisher during negotiations on the Duley Lake property, never imagining this would become the most important book I'd read. Gazing from a photograph taken soon after the Nez Perce war... those eyes I was looking for. My memory of this photograph is what'd told me Chief Joseph was the man who rode through me.

Emotions simmering, I held the book up beside the mirror, peering back and forth between the eyes in the 1877 photograph and the eyes in my head. Not precisely the same, but close enough that every nerve in my body ticked. I'd been paying so little attention to my face, except for shaving and that was about whiskers, I wasn't sure how much my entire look had changed. The last time I'd actually examined my eyes was soon after moving to the Castle, so stressed-out my eyes seemed like a stranger's. In the mirror now were eyes of a man I'd read much about the last few months, "Red Napoleon" they called him - pure bullshit. Ollokot was a warrior chief, and Looking Glass, Lean Elk. Joseph was a peace chief, with the most sacred responsibility during the war: keeping people organized and moving, keeping them alive. That soul-stirring dream could've been born of what I'd read. Or, the idea now snowballing and picking up fear - the dream condensed from experience. These eyes came with memories of what they'd seen, maybe even aspects much deeper?

A metallic TINK! jolted me from the bathroom to find Dunce lapping up port spewed from the stein he'd knocked over. I'd rescued him from the Watchtower after searching through books in the moving van, and cleaning up broken glass in the bathroom. Dunce looks massive, but packing him through agitation is the only ticket to true appreciation of 190 pounds of puppy. No way would he have walked over those snakes after fussing about them all night. Even riding down over them in my arms was too much. I should've done it before going to bed, or at least immediately after rising, should've spared him the emotional trauma. Dunce might've died up there before coming down on his own.

The book landed on damp sheets. I bent down and picked up the empty stein, distracted by Dunce's gift for comic body language. Legs fully splayed, he pursued with his tongue that part of the puddle hiding under the bed. Then he shifted to break dancing, left shoulder to the floor as he muzzled in under the bed sideways.... Juiciness faded from his lapping. He scrambled to his feet, and dangled his royal salmon at me, looking ready to bust out laughing.

I went down on my knees to wipe drooly purple smudges from marble, then stood back up and threw the wet washcloth back into the bathroom. I whipped out my wallet, slipped my driver license free. The adequate picture confirmed that not only the eyes were different, while tamping into me the realization: I could go insane doing what seemed natural-introspection, examination of every fiber of my being in the search for... as far as I knew I'd lost nothing, only gained. Relax. Let the Chief reveal himself. God that sounded easy.

Outside, Queenie and Jasper heard the door, converged on Dunce from opposite directions, and sniffed him muzzle to tail. The color of his tongue and bouquet of his breath tantalized them clear to Powerhouse, where Dunce blasted a bladderful all over the ladder and pearly stucco it leaned against. I wasn't comfortable leaving him on the loose out there, especially with half a bowl and a quarter stein of port in his belly. He might adventure through miles of new territory inhabited with everything from skunks to porcupines, to snakes.

For three days I toiled, busying my mind toward neutral. Nights in between flew me through dreamscapes beyond my imagination. Dreams are born in the vast subconscious. Perhaps the vastness gives off steam that condenses into dreams? Wild adventures animating my sleep implied that my subconscious had been expanded. Most of those dreams faded quickly, unlike the vivid panoramas of covered wagons. Prairie schooners rocking and rolling in the ruts, a river of settlers raising in me a flood of deep foreboding. And just as indelible, settlers' dogs bloodying Indians, bullwhips bloodying Indians. Hangman's nooses squeezing life from Indians. And something totally bizarre, a spotted fawn clambering up a steep slope behind it's mother-the fawn glanced back and somewhat bleated at me: "Heathen Dreamer".

By Friday night the moving van was empty except for load stabilizing bars, straps, and blankets. I had my library set up, and GAEA was all turned on. Blue sky and diamonds had ruled over a blustery north wind with chill in its teeth, and the six flywheels were at 28 % capacity even with what I was drawing from them.

Time I spent with the birds soothed my mind in ways I can't explain. They had the most freedom they'd ever known, and maybe their joy of freedom nourished me. They adjusted to their new digs by flying themselves silly, all but Pops, the black-capped lory. Since Marilyn died he wouldn't talk, hardly ever whistled, and almost never flew. When not sleeping, or eating, he'd just stand on his perch rocking back and forth, lifting one foot, then the other.

I expected Nolan back Saturday, hoping he'd be gone until Sunday. Contradictions warring inside had me feeling too twisted to face anybody - at the same time I was anxious to see Nolan's reaction to my face. He wasn't one for much eye contact, but I expected him to notice my new look right off. None of the locals I'd met during construction had stopped by and that was as mysterious as it was relieving. However, knowing they might show up any time kept me edgy. The few cars and big husky ranch rigs I'd seen roll by on the main road had fed my neurosis.

Friday night after supper I shut the dogs in with the birds, locked the place up, and headed down to the lake. The breeze tickled bunch grass and sage into muttering at me most of the way. I took it easy, playing the gentler northern slope over to the mouth of a shallow inlet fringed with a sand strand. Strange anticipation of something incredible about to happen had my senses honed. I kept catching myself holding my breath, standing there gazing at the water... beginning to feel the life all around.

Anticipation elevated into resonance through my core, enticing me to step in. Sunshine smiling for days on the lake had really warmed the shallows. From that inlet I set out toward deeper water, slogging along for minutes before getting knee-deep. Red mistiness of the sun's petering rays had lifted from the old schoolhouse to climb up the Titan ribs, energizing their lichens like a black light. Scolding mallards jumped from the water and onto the wing as more distant ones simply paddled away. Nearby coot played Jesus sprinters, running on water and flapping their wings until flight speed tucked up their legs.

I angled toward the island in the southern half of the lake, up to my waist in colder strata. Thoughts of making it to the island without swimming sank halfway there in a channel dropping my shoulders into the waves. What little weeds I'd hit were patches of short grassy moss such as in this channel, where the bottom felt softly firm under my sneakers. I turned to face GAEA, and backed up until waves stroked my chin.

Chill soaked in as peace with a vitalizing influence. Sunset's rose ambience hovered over water seething with roosting banter of ducks; from southern reaches boomed the trombone-like ko-hoh of trumpeter swan, hills beyond that yipping and laughing with coyotes; wings whistled up above as ducks flocked in from grain fields to the north, and the pppssssshhhhh of touchdown were watery whispers all around. A squadron of pintail came over the island, right at me, wings cupped down and whistling. Pppssssshhhhh fanned nearby. Moments later a dozen ducks elevated half out of the water, flapping their wings toward a roosting tuck. All their feather fluffing and tail wagging merged into awareness of a strange floating head a little too close-the pintails paddled up more distance, coalescing into a bubbling unit bound for the inlet.

The lake's cold heart reaching for my bones also stirred visceral feelings of belonging, even an elusive spirit of finally being home. Rippling water, ducks, swan and coyote, rose sky, petrified Titan bones, moldering schoolhouse, GAEA spinning her turbine blades like a spaceship just landed...all a tapestry of élan vital encompassing even concrete and steel, wood and stone and I felt integral, a thread connected after years of disconnect. Home? Blessed with a holy gift? Let it soak in... a baptismal complication. I felt empowered, enriched. People might wonder about my new look, ask questions; or maybe no one would notice - would that be worse than answering questions?

Acceptance sparkled in me. Gratitude reached clear to my marrow, driven by enthusiasm over our future. Another soul quake, similar to revelations of Lew and the Trans, Tina - but this was not external. After wallowing for days in neurosis and pathetic reactions I didn't feel weak anymore, cleansed of any ideas about hiding.

After a while I no longer felt cold. Hardly felt anything at all except gratitude, and élan vital, increasingly aware of my surroundings. The lake connected me to a million heartbeats. Every sight, sound, smell, lick of water and flow of air was a flood of meaning in a continuum where my consciousness drifted upstream in time until the moment seemed an echo....

A loon's wild laughing tremolo anchored me to the moment, and the cold. I heard a distant vehicle, looked back at a car turning onto my road. Dulled by twilight, the car's headlights swept over me before pointing toward GAEA. A mid-sized white station wagon with tawny sides rounding the bluff to head away from me, paralleling the first inlet-it made me aware of the new sharpness of my vision. I saw... Woody? The world's most spectacular genuine "woody", a car Whizzer built himself into in certain ways. This car I saw set my heart pounding!

I zipped up my jacket to reduce drag, and fell into a frenzied crawl, stroking and kicking!

Fingers hitting bottom got me up and slogging. And at last I broke into a run, winded and showering water over grass and sage. The car was at GAEA, out of sight - I believed it was Woody! The slamming of a car door slowed me to a walk. I'd burned emotion for years, coming to terms with... I'd given Whizzer up. But if anyone could cheat death!

I hugged close to the talus slope, angling around the north end of the Titan's hand, stealth taking over all but my breathing. Pounding of a fist against a cathedral door ceased.

Clang clang clang of an aluminum ladder being extended came next, seeming to arouse a lot of crickets. I stalked below the northeast tower, blades swishing the turbine into a purr high above. My eagle eyes were dark-adjusted so it didn't matter that none of the exterior lights were on. I made it up to the road, and saw...Woody, parked beside the moving van. The person setting the ladder up against the northeast dome...my heart sunk on the fear it was Nolan. Body size was right. He was the only one who knew where my bedroom was. The bottom sill of the lowest windows are set at seven feet. The person pulled a flashlight from their back pocket, and took to the ladder. Nolan has no swagger, but Whizzer sure does! Prickly heat crackled through my shrunken skin for a bizarre sensation that my every body hair was being tugged. My bones were ice, and I was sweating, watching him switch on the flashlight and shine it through the window, angled down. I closed in, drawing a deep shaky breath. "Still the voyeur!" I shouted.

Whizzer's head snapped around and a stab with his right hand kept him from falling along with the flashlight. "Lude! What're you doin' sneakin' around?"

"Who's sneakin' around?"

Swagger minimized, he descended the ladder.

Emotions blazed through my freezing body.

We stood facing each other through a clumsy distance. I'd never seen him with a full beard. His hair was long. He looked at the palms of his hands before sniffing them. "You got dogs here?"

Losing control of my jaw, I squeezed out in tremolo: "Three of 'em. Big dogs."

"Well they pissed all over the fuckin' ladder. And God it's great seein' you!" We lunged into embrace. He wiped his hands on my back. "You're sopping wet. And you're shivering like a vibrator."

"Went for a swim," I said, and it effectively pushed him away for any study of my face the light would allow.

"Are you okay?"

I chattered, "I'm hypothermic."

He glanced toward the ladder, spotted the flashlight, picked it up and made sure it worked by blasting me in the eyes. "Why the hell you swimming now?"

My lack of a reasonable answer scared me into trying to smooth it over with, "I'm Baptist." I felt the pocket of my jacket, felt the other one, my pants pockets. "We got a problem."

"We've got a lot of problems," he said, still assaulting my eyes with the flashlight.

"Lost keys."

"Oooo, that's clever as swimming in all your clothes on a raw night." He reached around and felt my butt. "Shit, you even soaked your wallet."

"I really... we're locked out."

He hit my eyes again. "Let's hop in Woody and figure this out with some heat."

Stumbling after him, I searched every pocket for keys that were probably in the lake. Two extra sets were in a kitchen drawer.

Whizzer opened the passenger door. I slumped in, shivering wildly. He slammed the door, and next thing I knew, he was keying the ignition - Woody started first crank. Whizzer maxed the heater.

I palmed the dashboard vents, clenching my teeth to keep them from chattering. Woody had lots of heat in him. Whizzer re-energized the dome light, eyes shouting concern over my sanity. I uttered, "Where's Beth?"

"Kidnapped. I won't talk about her now. How're we gettin' inside? We don't get you warm and dry and liquored up, you're gonna get sick. Too much is goin' on for you not to be in top form. Tuesday changed the whole world."

How could he know? was my first thought, followed by a flurry orbiting the idea of what happened at the mine affecting a much greater area than I'd thought and that's why so few people were getting around. Hardly any traffic had been on the main road. No school buses.

His eyes implied they were seeing through mine, into whirling thoughts. His "Shall I kick in a door?" took so long to penetrate and get me thinking in that direction it kicked my diaphragm into spasms - I'd never felt colder in my life, or more emotionally aflame! "If we... heave against... Powerhouse door. Knock off... tracks."

Whizzer switched on the headlights, obliquely illuminating half of the Powerhouse. "That one?"

"Yeah." It was the roll-up door.

Woody accelerated toward the Powerhouse, veered right, and stopped. Whizzer hit reverse - before I could protest, Woody butt-slammed the door, blowing both sides out of their tracks. "We're in." He pulled Woody clear of the doorway, hit park, killed the engine, then leaned toward me. Light streaming down accented every crease and hollow, making his face look wasted. Riveting me with his eyes, in a deep monotone he asked, "Lude. You mind if I die here?"

His blurry face cleared somewhat as two warm seams split my cheeks. All I could shake out: "I love you...."

I'd forgotten to turn on the Jacuzzi heater, so we were sitting on towels in the sauna, nursing steins. The port was luscious comfort, another 1963 Grahams, soft fire embracing a hulking fruity body. Of the whole case of assorted Vintage Port he'd brought, this Grahams was the only one he was willing to drink "...without a decent breathing". I'd deflected his attempts to get me to take a toke of sugar. He finally said he wouldn't smoke alone, and dropped the subject. Besides parrying over getting stoned, we'd exchanged few words since my "I love you". He'd been busy retrieving, decanting and dispensing port while I shed my wet clothes and got the sauna baking. He did call me a tarnished nun. And now we were glancing at each other, taking on a port glow. I was beating the shakes, bones thawing, jaw stilled. I suckled more soft fire, let it sashay over my tongue before finally coming out with:

"How did you know what happened Tuesday?" His face was less hurtful in the ambient lighting. His full beard, I expected it concealed painful sights. His body was shedding flesh, but he didn't look all that bad considering he'd been infected with HIV for at least a dozen years of hard living. Through his eyes I saw wheels in his head pick up speed over my question. He assumed his trademark look of innocent scamp.

"I thought your eyes were blue," he said, suddenly into studying my face. "Sapphire blue."

"They were."

"Did you get contacts?"

"No."

"Well they're dark brown now, chocolaty. And that's not all. You got a different look about you. Not gettin' vain as your wife are we, having plastic surgery?"

"No surgery. And Shelley came that way."

He sucked up some port, not taking his eyes off mine. "Aaahhhhh." He sighed showily before saying, "Tell me what happened Tuesday."

"The whole world changed, remember?"

He ratcheted up the innocence in his scamp look. "But I want your take on it. What'd it do to you, change your eyes?"

"I was at ground zero."

There went the faux innocence. I really had him now, and I'm sure he knew I thought so. Feigning a look of waiting to be blown away, he said, "I keep wondering what Reed would say about all this."

A superb parry. His wits were sharp as ever and he was hiding something huge, blush of gloat all over him. I couldn't take time to dig it out - I had to unload and there was no better person to spill to. We'd already seen the unlimited together, more than once, so I expected him to believe me. "You know that old sodium sulfate mine back toward town?"

"Yeah, what's that little lake called?"

"Penley. I used to work there."

"I always thought of you as more of a whiner than a miner."

"Well I whined and mined there, winter of '75, while you were lifeguarding in Hawaii. Most miserable job I ever had. Do you know anything about the operation?"

"Yeah, it folded."

We drained our steins. He slipped out for the pitcher beside the door.

"The bottom of that lake is packed with sodium sulfate crystals," I said as he poured. "Amazing cylinders, like a whole forest of crystalline tree trunks down in the mud. Millions could be made out of 'em if not for these tiny pockets of mud trapped inside."

He closed the door behind him, handed my stein back, and sat down to raise his eyebrows and give me a get-to-the-point look.

"The day I moved in here, Cosmic Tuesday if you will, I rode my bike down to the mine for some nostalgia. Queenie and Jasper were with me. Shit, I need to let 'em out, they -"

"Lude! Goddamn it, what happened?"

"I was kicking around in a pile of crushed crystal up in the holding basin. The dogs started freaking out, down at the lake. I climbed from the basin and saw... fireflies. Out over deepest water here's a swarm bright as welding arcs, spinning into kind of a loose funnel before going down underwater. Lew and his Glacier Park encounter screamed in my head as I watched this bluish glow pulsate out in the lake. The water started heaving. Out comes a crystal the size of a locomotive, rising straight up, powered and steered by fireflies. A thud shook everything like an earthquake. Waves of distortion poured from under the crystal, and vaporized my body. But I was still there, a speck of consciousness in this bizarre crackle of white noise and alternating brightness and darkness. It was like somebody turning the lights on and off, faster and faster, until everything turned cold, silent gray. Against the gray backdrop there were smooth pulses of frigid blue separated by chatters of warming brightness, everything peppered with occasional flashes of burning red. But the dominant theme was gray cold with a super high-speed flicker, like how a TV screen blinks to fast to discern. Well, the gray eventually started separating into light and dark. I picked up a sense of time from the red flashes. There was a final stretch of blue, and I saw... like colored feathers blowing around under a strobe. And my body was a sparkling skeleton. Every sparkle seemed to add a molecule of bone. I felt back in my head... watching meat and organs starting to dull the sparkle of my bones, and I heard a galloping horse. The first clear and stable thing I saw was Chief Joseph sitting on an Appaloosa. He gave the horse a kick and rode through me."

Rare as could be, Whizzer was at a loss for words - even all pretense was blown from his look. He smacked his lips. I sipped port. He said, "Lude. Totally awesome."

"Knocked me out. The dogs brought me back around, down in the holding basin. They were terrified, anxious to get the hell away from.... So we made it back here, and shared two bottles of port I'd been saving for a special occasion. Dunce too, the mastiff. Ever since I've been stressed-out royal, haunted by outlandish dreams. These're Chief Joseph's eyes, and they came with dreams... at least." Pouring sweat, Whizzer just sat shaking his head, wheels in his head spinning so fast it looked like his eyes might spin. I stood up and said, "I'm melting."

He said, "A hit of sugar...."

He'd brought all four quarts, pure resin glands from the last harvest of bud at the Castle. The stuff had started out loose and airy, its color a cross between table sugar and pale honey. Years of gravity had sunk it down into a firm cake, whatever oxygen trapped in the jars kicking the color toward amber. I hadn't broken any of the seals since he'd stashed them in his safe, so the stuff was still dynamite, about a million hashish highs in those four jars. He'd opened one Monday and spooned out enough to fill the same damn Sominex bottle he'd had since high school - a priceless relic that'd lived in his safe right where he put it before he took Beth to Belize. The bottle was now half full. The jars were stashed in the chest freezer....

Three high-pressure sodium yard lights cast a warm glow over Queenie, Jasper and Dunce running circles around themselves and around Whizzer. We were outside on the flagstones between the Main dome and the Observatory, having snuck the dogs out without disturbing the birds. Whizzer hadn't really maneuvered me into sugaring up after I spilled my guts, I'd volunteered just to make him feel better. The stuff didn't puff me up with paranoia like I'd feared. I felt relieved, philosophical, warm right down to the port in my belly. Spilling to Whizzer was like lifting a boulder from my head. And now it was his turn - he was sitting on something I considered it his duty to share. I didn't mind not rushing things, feeling so blessed that he was alive! Besides Gaea, or my first wife, there were no people I'd ever known that I'd rather be with again. Even the dogs seemed to think he was the next best thing to Nolan.

Anxious to hear about what changed the world, I was pretty sure from Whizzer's reaction it had nothing to do with the mine. His weakness for hyperbole meant changing the world... it could be so many things. I even started wondering if he thought what he had clunked too much of anticlimax after my story.

"Sit," he said. Queenie and Jasper obeyed, next to each other and right in front of Whizzer. Dunce was over by the Powerhouse, looking for the ladder. "Great dogs, reflection of their master."

I said, "Down." Like show dogs with an attitude, Queenie and Jasper stretched low.

"I'm thinking about afterlife implications, and your witnessing of ages going by. We'll never have time to say all the things we need to say about this."

Right then I began sensitizing to his remarks about dying.

"And," he continued, "you really don't know what else happened Tuesday, eh?"

"I'm depending on you to fill me in."

"Four airliners were hijacked simultaneously. Two crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers. One nailed the Pentagon. Both towers collapsed, killing thousands. It's transcendent terrorism. Missiles full of innocent people. Death knell for freedom, birth of perpetual war."