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She read it and wasn’t as hard on it as I was, but she didn’t think I was out of line.

All sorts of memories about Vincent came flooding back. From Swarthmore, the trip to North Carolina, Boston, the farm. I got madder and madder. It felt good. I could get mad without going mad. I wasn’t going to say that Vincent wasn’t full of shit out of fear that people might put it down to jealousy. Fuck that shit. That’s how people end up in nut houses.

My immigration physical was the next day. “They’ve never seen such health.” I was worried some about the questions about ever having been in a mental hospital. I hadn’t really figured out how to handle that one. I’d probably tell the truth, what the hell. If they were going to give me shit about it, that was their problem. It was a side issue not really worth thinking about. If I could get myself out of a nut house as quick as I had, I could certainly deal with the Immigration Department.

On to the laundromat. Load up the machines, feed the machines quarters. Make it all clean. A fresh start. By-by old dirt and good riddance. While the machines did their thing, Kathy and I went over to the Marine Inn. The waitress who had given me the Mu tea wasn’t there. How nice it was to eat a meal and not have it be the last supper over and over again. I had a steak sandwich just to be tough, on whole-wheat bread just to be healthy. Kathy had one too. We laughed about our sinfulness and agreed the steak sandwich tasted pretty good. We went back and put the clothes in the dryers and went and had a beer. That felt good, too. We had another.

While we were folding clothes, Joe and Mary came in. They had had it with the Powell River area and were about to head for the interior. Land was too expensive here. The De Soto had demised and they’d bought a Microbus. Debts were building up and Joe couldn’t get enough work. They were moving on.

They asked us to come to dinner. We were delighted. We hadn’t figured out where we were going to stay and they showed up at just the right time and solved everything.

“There’s this guy with us who’s a big fan of your father’s and is dying to meet you. I hope that won’t be too big a pain in the ass.”

“No,” I said, “I should be used to that by now.” They gave us a map to their house, the third house they had had in the same number of months.

See how well God takes care of everything? Just one foot in front of the other and everything goes fine. Food, a place to stay, a warm, nice evening with Joe and Mary. What could be better?

We diddled around some more, returning the books, picking out a few to take back up with us, getting a few things we needed at the hardware store. The groceries we figured we’d do the next day, after my physical.

After we had done all the chores we were going to do and since we had all those nice clean clothes, I decided I’d spend seventy-five cents on a shower. It was a sideline of the people who ran the laundromat. They lived above it, and considering the unlimited hot water they had, and all the tourists who camped or came in boats, it made a lot of sense.

So, one foot in front of the other, I walked up the stairs to their front door and rang the bell. It always felt a little strange coming into a strange family’s living room and asking to take a shower. This time they seemed flustered. Maybe they had been in the middle of a family argument or something, maybe they were having an early dinner. Anyway, they seemed to be looking at me funny. Maybe they had heard about the hippie who went nuts. Maybe I looked really dirty. Maybe it was the beer on my breath.

“Wait right here. I’ll get some new soap.” He—their son, I figured—was talking very fast. “We’ve been having some trouble with the shower. The water doesn’t shut off completely. There might be some change in the temperature. My mother’s running the washing machine.” A mile a minute this guy was going. “I hope everything will be all right.”

“Relax, relax, everything’s just fine.”

FILTHY HIPPIE. “What a perfect place to grow a plague.” I was thinking in the shower about my own