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and especially on Walter the need to be disciplined in their message, to stick to the facts about overpopulation, to stake out the biggest possible tent. But without the draw of name-brand acts such as Richard might have provided, the events mostly attracted the already persuaded fringe, the sort of discontents who hit the streets in ski masks to riot against the WTO. Every time Walter took the stage, he was cheered for his Whitmanville meltdown and his intemperate blog entries, but as soon as he spoke of being smart and letting the facts argue for themselves, the crowds went quiet or started chanting the more incendiary words of his that they preferred—“Cancer on the planet!” “Fuck the pope!” In Seattle, where the mood was especially ugly, he left the stage to scattered booing. He was better received in the Midwest and South, particularly in the college towns, but the crowds were also much smaller. By the time he and Lalitha reached Athens, Georgia, he was having a hard time getting up in the morning. He was worn out by the road and oppressed by the thought that the country’s ugly rage was no more than an amplified echo of his own anger, and that he’d let his personal grudge against Richard cheat Free Space out of a broader fan base, and that he was spending money of Joey’s that would better have been given to Planned Parenthood. If it hadn’t been for Lalitha, who was doing most of the driving and all of the enthusiasm-providing, he might have abandoned the tour and just gone birdwatching.

“I know you’re discouraged,” Lalitha said while driving out of Athens. “But we’re definitely getting the issue on the radar. The free weeklies all print our talking points verbatim in their previews for us. The bloggers and the online reviews all talk about overpopulation. One day, there hasn’t been any public talk about it since the seventies. Then suddenly, the next day, there’s talk. The idea is suddenly out there in the world. New ideas always take hold on the fringes. Just because it’s not always pretty, you shouldn’t be discouraged.”

“I saved a hundred square miles in West Virginia,” he said. “Even more than that in Colombia. That was good work, with real results. Why didn’t I keep doing it?”

“Because you knew it’s not enough. The only thing that’s really going to save us is to get people to change the way they think.”

He looked at his girlfriend, her firm hands on the steering wheel, her bright eyes on the road, and thought he might burst with his desire to be like her; with gratitude that she didn’t mind that he was himself instead. “My problem is I don’t like people enough,” he said. “I don’t really believe they can change.”

“You do so like people. I’ve never seen you be mean to one. You can’t stop smiling when you talk to people.”

“I wasn’t smiling in Whitmanville.”

“Actually, you were. Even there. That was part of the weirdness of it.”

There weren’t many birds to watch in the dog days anyway. Once territory had been claimed and breeding accomplished, it was to no small bird’s advantage to make itself conspicuous. Walter took morning walks in refuges and parks that he knew were still full of life, but the overgrown weeds and heavily leafed trees stood motionless in the summer humidity, like houses locked against him, like couples who had eyes for nobody but themselves. The northern hemisphere was soaking up the sun’s energy, plant life silently converting it to food for animals, the burring and whining of insects the only sonic by-product. This was the time of payoff for the neotropical migrants, these were the days that needed to be seized. Walter envied them for having a job to do, and he wondered if he was becoming depressed because this was the first summer in forty years he hadn’t had to work.

The national Free Space battle of the bands was scheduled to happen on the last weekend in August and, unfortunately, in West Virginia. The state was uncentrally located and hard to reach by public transportation, but by the time Walter had proposed changing the location, on his blog, his fans were already excited about traveling