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If someone had told me that at the end of the world I would be reciting Moby Dick from memory to a guy like Joe, if someone had told me that what I would really feel was worth passing on to someone who might survive me were things about art, I would have thought them utterly insane and totally misreading who I was. But they would have been right.

A lot of why the arts became so all-important to me was tied up with the limitations of my situation, both real and imagined. I was cut off. Cut off physically and otherwise from friends, from life, from civilization, from all sorts of things. In the real world I was less than useless. I was a liability. In the imagination it was another story. As a carpenter, a farmer, even a dishwasher, I was a dead loss. But I could still move people deeply. I could still be an artist. That was what was gorgeous about the arts. That was what I had never understood about the arts before.

A baseball glove. How the hell did this get here? Pounding my fist in it. “Pitch it in, Pop. Chuck it in there. Wop wop wop. Sock sock sock.” It was an old, huge pancake mitt, no stringing between the fingers. Overstuffed with whatever they stuff them with. Impossible to move the fingers, no pocket. If you were good, maybe you could use it to knock down a few balls, but it certainly wasn’t designed to catch anything.

In junior high I used to dream that I was walking down the hall or sitting in class with that dumb baseball glove on. What a jerky thing. What the hell am I doing with a baseball glove? It alternated with dreams of being in school and finding out all of a sudden that I had no pants on.

“Wop wop, pitch it in, Pop. Wop wop wop, sock sock sock. Fuck ’em. There are worse things than having a baseball glove in class. At least I ain’t napalming babies.”

“Wop wop. No time for Italian jokes. No telling where Gentile might be.”

“Wop wop.” It was just like the glove Mike Levin had given me when I was five or six. “Wop wop Jew.”

“No time for Jew jokes either. They seem to have ways of finding out.” Mike Levin. He had a lot to do with things. He gave me my first chess set, the one I had learned to play with. The set that was still at the Barnstable house, if the Barnstable house was still there. He had an ESP thing with my mother. Whenever she was in a tight situation Mike would call up out of the blue and say, “OK, Jane, what is it?” According to her, he never missed. My mother loves ESP stuff. Can’t get enough of it. My father’s not so hot for it any more. I think he’s about had his fill. You would think everyone in our family would have.

So here it was, just before the heavyweight championship fight. Frazier vs. Ali. “OK, Pop, so who do you want to bop?” We had the machine, the father and son team he had dreamed about, he had worked on me with things like the match game. “Who do we bop? Who do we buzz? I’m supposed to go back to Caesar’s grave, huh? OK, ready when you are, Pop, I’m as much there as anywhere else. How about a little job on Maharishi and then Billy Graham? Those fuckers thought they had a touch of cosmic clout. They’re gonna shit their pants when they see our show.”

“Billy.”

“Who’s that?”

“Who do you think, Billy.”

“No.”

“Billy, who taught St. Vitus how to dance?”

“Mark.” Joe was tapping on my shoulder.

“What is it, Pops?”

“Mark, you’ve had a relapse!”

“Relapse, synapse, Pop. Snap crackle fizzle, Pop. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, Pops. Go find some higher ground. I’ll be fine. I came through this once. I’ll come through it again. Those fuckers want to fight, they don’t have the faintest idea who they’re fucking with.”

“Mark, OK, Mark, you’ve had a relapse. Listen to me. We’re going to have to take you back.”

“Back to my little room? Back to Dr. Dale?”

“Yes, Mark. But you’ll get out again just like you did before.”

“Have I hurt anyone? Am I dangerous to myself and others?”

“No, it’s just that you have to go back.”

“And after I get out again will I have to keep going