— I'm talking about the work you did for Klinger. I'm talking about what you found on Klinger's site out there McCandless, not your little grandstand play in Smackover they cleaned that up in Tennessee sixty vears ago, all your ranting about Genesis and evolution the whole…
— Cleared it up? and evolution disappeared from their textbooks for a whole generation going around like they'd all had lobotomies no no no, stupidity's a damned hard habit to break, something right here I just saw it… Papers, clippings, ashes spilled right and left in the table's litter, — damn! The bottle almost went over, — little taste of life in Georgia it's right here someplace…
— Your own mapping, diagrams, field notes all of it, two thous…
— Here, here read this while you're waiting… a pamphlet in ominous black, — the Survival Handbook, it's a little literature from Smackover, tells people like me what to do when people like you are snatched up to meet the Lord in Second Thessalonians for your space age picnic in the clouds while the rest of us are…
— Always get it wrong, don't you. It's First Thessalonians, four, seventeen and I'm not sitting here waiting for a little taste of Georgia, I'm waiting for you to…
— No no here it is, here it is listen. You think that circus in Tennessee straightened things out? Here's a judge in Georgia right now, listen to him. This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of abortions, permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning, and proliferation of crimes of all types what happened to pederasty, penis envy, peeping Toms, you think he's got business with the Bible? those bums in Samuel that pisseth against the wall by the morning light? that gang sitting on the wall in Isaiah drinking their own…
— Two thousand.
— their own piss and eating…
— Cash, two thousand cash… he tapped his breast pocket. — What are you making another of those things for, I just put that one out.
— That's why I'm making another one. You're still a little dense aren't you Lester, it's pretty damned obvious isn't it? You put that one out so I make another one, perfectly logical sequence isn't it? like Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic? All the facts staring you square in the face like they stared at those primates out there proclaiming the truth? choking on Genesis? A very fine line good God, I was wrong wasn't I, it's an abyss, it's the…
— Well what did you want! What did you expect out there, a handful of simple people brought up to believe in the…
— It's not a handful! You call half the country a handful? Almost half the damned people in this country, more than forty percent of them believe man was created eight or ten thousand years ago pretty much as he is today? they believe that? Two versions right there in the first two pages, have your choice. You get the animals first and then man around the sixth day, male and female created he them, or you get man from the dust and then the animals show up lined up like kids at summer camp to get their names and finally Miss America made from a spare rib. God dividing the light from the darkness, the water from the waters and making the firmament why not Pan Koo? why not China? The sleeping giant waking up in the dark smashes the void to make heaven and earth, his breath…
— His breath the winds, his voice the thunder, his sweat the rain and dew, one eye the sun and the other the moon and his fleas men and women I've heard it, I've heard it all McCandless I've heard it from you, you think I came up here to listen to it again? You think you're back in one of these broken down schools where you can rave and rant like this? bully and browbeat everybody in sight because that's what you do. Because you're smarter than anybody else aren't you, like this hero you've got in this rotten novel, this Frank Kinkead… He had the book in the yellow jacket again tossing over its pages five, twenty at a time, — he never picks his nose does he, he's too good for that isn't he. He's supposed to be you isn't he.
— Not supposed to be anybody, what do you think a novel…
— This part here? where he's proceeding on a sea of doubt?
That's pretty bad, proceeding on a sea of doubt that's pretty bad, you know that? And that part where he's trying to give his life a course of inevitability? where he wants to rescue his life from chance and deliver it to destiny? I wouldn't believe that, if I didn't know you I wouldn't believe anybody would talk like that, going around full of outrage because nobody's as smart as he is like those primates you were straightening out in Smackover, you know something? The preponderant IQ in America's around a hundred, you know that? you're going to tell them about Aegyptopithecus sitting around up in the Sahara eating fruit thirty million years ago? you're going to tell them they all come down from Australopithecus ten million years ago when they can't even pronounce Chemin-couvert? He waved off a fresh burst of smoke, — you ever wonder why people pull out on you? That part in here where this Frank Kinkead is telling Slyke he thinks his wife is going to pull out on him that's Irene, isn't it. You changed her name to Gwen but it's really Irene isn't it, it's you sitting there in the New Stanley bar talking about people who live as though life was reversible, about taking responsibility for the consequences of our own acts the same ranting, raving… the book snapped closed. — I'll give you five thousand dollars for the work you did for Klinger.
— Why waste your money. You know what he told them.
— We know what he told them. We want to know what you told him. He was a promoter trying to hustle up some heavy investment, you think he's going to say there's nothing on that mission site but thornbush?
— Why don't you go out there yourself, Lester… the glass came down empty, faltering in blind search for a place to rest. — Go out and look for yourself, you've got the mapping, you've got those high resolution photographs that's more than I had. All you need's the pocket magnifier and a hammer, they're right there under those papers take them, this old tent you've been stepping on take it with a broken down truck and a couple of boys from the mission and go look for yourself.
— It's all right here. Why should I go out there, it's all right here isn't it? can you find anything in this mess? You've saved every piece of trash you've ever come across… He caught the 36-1 lb. Crisco carton closer with the heel of a boot, — you know what's going on out there now? You can't get near that border. There isn't any border. There's nothing between the mission station and the Limpopo but the African National Congress running loose with Kalashnikovs and Katyusha rockets, a little PLO, Cubans, KGB posing as sanitary engineers and every trash mercenary you want, French, Portuguese, East Germans, Mossad agents, a little SWAPO spilling in and these South African Z Squads and the MRM keeping things destabilized till it's time for the showdown, go out there now you'll get your legs blown off before you walk ten feet. You saw what happened when they just picked you up for questioning, what you said happened. What you said happened McCandless, this time you wouldn't have to make it up. This time they'd make those Danakil up in the Afar who'll cut off your dingus for a prize for their girlfriends look like hell's kindergarten, don't you know what's going on out there?
— I don't know what's going on out there no, and I don't…
— All waiting for somebody to step in and draw the line, it's as good a place as any. You don't read the papers? Take your dirty tent and a couple of mission boys out in a broken down truck like those two that strayed off the mission station for water, they were lucky to get off with their throats cut, you didn't see that?