Morning Horse and I stood at the edge of the small clearing, invisible to the several people sitting around the fire, of course.

*That's him, Morning Horse.*

*Hunnh. Not much to look at, is he?*

He wasn't much to look at; just an old guy. Not that good-looking. I studied him; perhaps some detail might become important.

He was sitting on the top of a log that had been stripped of bark, smoothed and polished by the river, thrown up by high water, and bleached white gold by the sun.

Cushioned in the sand, the log lay within reaching distance of the fire. Light from the burning driftwood and the low sun reflected off the log and created a glow in the air around him.

The aging man ' James, that's his name; it's in the Book ' had thin white hair carelessly tied back in a ponytail. Although his kind face was rather round and he carried some weight, he looked poorly. His clothes were old and worn. Old and worn but clean. The bluejeans sported ragged cuffs ruggedly cut off at the bottoms with a knife. Numerous trips to the laundromat had created a lovely fringe of hanging white threads that hung over and around his shoes. The fabric atop his left thigh was nearly white in a few areas, held together mostly by memory. The knee of the right leg had opened and those same white threads, like a venetian blind missing slats, spanned the hole. It wasn't a hole worn by some industrious young skateboarder or farm kid bucking bales, it had been eroded by time and wear.

The forest green nylon jacket, faded like the jeans, looked as comfortable. I *looked through* and could see that it had been in the streambed for two years, then baked by the sun and tumbled by the wind for another. I thought it art. It looked insubstantial, ready to disintegrate at any moment, but still it cut the cold and foiled the rain.

The neck of his T-shirt stretched to hang sloppily and the ancient hem had given up, now looking somewhat like his pants cuffs. His belt fit him perfectly, tailored by long
wear. I knew that when he pulled it out to change into his other jeans, the belt lay twisted and bent like some moebius strip broken and lost on its way home. Like its
owner.

We can tell a great deal about a person by the shoes and hat. Jame's shoes were ragged K-Swiss from another era. I knew he had picked them up from Seeley Matt, a Salish girl who had stayed with him for a while ' there's a story there. The sneakers were glossy treated leather with the sides were pulling out of the rubber soles. At the ankles and toes the shiny white was gone and leather showed. They made me think of slippers.

His big black hat, the only unclean item of clothing, had been at one time a fine felt wide-brim low-crown cowboy hat. Now it lay low in the front and in the back, crouching. It took like it had been pulled down plenty by hand while wet. His eyes peered sharply from just under the rim. It was his only aspect that carried the taste of danger. The band had been soaked through so many times with sweat that the collected dust and dirt had a green sheen at odds with the remaining dusty black. There were two knife slits in the top.

I meued, *There is something about him, though. Can you see it, Morning Horse?*

*You are unique, Herschel. I don't possess your gifts, but I do not think there is enough ... oh ... I see.*

Indeed. I felt a moment of joy. This is the penultimate thing I BE for. I continued, *I told you. He's a bit worn down, but he's still got it.*

*There are other people around this fire who have more Light, Herschel.*

*Yeah, but they've never tasted the Cup.*

Our vessels approached. I could feel them coming up behind us.

*Our rides are here. I take the beardy-bottleman this time,* Morning Horse sent.

*I know. It's going to hurt, my friend.*

*I am aware of that. Count it as sacrificial offering,* he smiled.

*And that leaves me as his female consort, eh. 'Idaho',* I joked.

*You da ho. I da 'bo.*

We laughed like very old friends. We've been around a very long time. A very long time.

The two vessels, Nika and Slick, were only steps from the clearing when Morning Horse entered the man, Slick, and I entered the girl, Nika.

Nika and Slick emerged from the woods still laughing.

Slick Doney, Morning Horse's vessel, walked with a very careful step, with the grace a long-time drunk can develop. Painstaking. He wore a mid-thigh raincoat the color of calf scours, jeans, black Adidas. A tall scarecrow of a guy, Slick showed elbows and knees and angles and big hands.

'Hey!'� he shouted while still some distance from the fire, as is the convention. 'You guys got room there for an itinerant soul brother and a soul sister?'�

'Yeah. We have an extra suite,'� someone answered.

'Bring yer own soul,'� someone else added.

'And bring yer own bottle,'� another shouted.

Nika stumbled and slid on the river rock and sand, obviously drunken and not a graceful drunk. A woman of indeterminant age, maybe in her 30's; not particularly good looking, Monica Egren was called Nika on the street. Slightly round face and a mouth without much shape; eyes wandering occasionally without much conscious direction, but now and then stabbing out, driven by the need to read every face and gesture; driven by the need to survive. Good eyes. She listened closely. I could play her. She was a gracious host, really, soft and nearly as sweet as Mary Herself, just temporarily lost and misled. She might spend her entire life like this.

She wore a loose jean jacket over a pale silky magenta shirt. The shirt and the laundry were distant friends, not having seen one another for a long time. The shirt over the top of her breasts and noticeable belly held collected dust and the debris of meals and handprints. Around her throat a salmon-gold bandana contrasted delightfully.

Young, her body, while not a hard-body, held good shape.

The campfire threw out a circle of dancing red and yellow light against the man-tall willows and on the underside of the tall cottonwoods of Jacob's Island, an overgrown sand and rock bar beside the University of Montana in Missoula.

Four veteran wanderers surrounded the fire in the rosy light of late afternoon.

College, a young man studying art at the U, sat on a big rock. Solid, not heavy, he emanated vitality. Thoughtlessly covered with a loose fitting cheap short-sleeved shirt, his upper torso seemed hungry. Bluejeans. The big new Merrill hiking shoes suggested that somewhere back in the world there was some money. He was comfortable in the present company. His wandering took place in the local forests and mountains, and in the world of vision and word.

Bollysol straddled an upturned 5-gallon highway paint can. Round is the primary charcteristic of Bollysol, not because he carried extra weight, but because his limbs had
a peculiar tubular quality. For instance, his forearms, extending from the elbows out of his cut-off sleeves, were nearly of the same diameter from the wrist up. His fingers did not taper. He looked strong and radiated a physical confidence that seemed nearly desperate. He moved slowly but one could easily surmise sudden speed.

Comfortable in the rocky sand, Leprechaun gave off an air of magic. Street magic. He was dressed in light green raingear. Even his shoes were green. He had a tall, pointed hat; green, of course. His long face, elongated by his straggly beard and framed by his long wavy hair, looked sad, although his voice boomed loud and joyous. When quiet he wrestled with inner demons, it showed in the air around him. He entertained on Higgins Avenue for money and had won renoun in town.

An air of celebration hung over the group-- happy as holiday picnickers. I have often thought that the simpler the appreciation, the deeper the joy.

'And I've got a new bottle,'� Slick exclaimed, hefting Jack Daniels upside down by his neck into the air. The firelight glinted off the glass ' Jack in glass, not plastic ' and the liquid seemed to ignite for a moment like the water of life. Then he unscrewed the lid and took enough to let the others know he was a veteran and to invite them to do likewise.

Nika didn't need any more, but she took the bottle and testified magna cum laude. She lost our balance, swinging the bottle over the rocks, but recovered with the sweetest of grins. Show biz.

I directed her just a nudge and we stumbled to the log. "Kin I sit by you?" she asked James.

He nodded slowly with no sign of hesitation, his big sad eyes registering the girl well, without sexual interest. He didn't probe.

Nika handed him the bottle as though it were her first born. And snuggled against his shoulder. He put his arm around her shoulders like a grandfather.

*He loves her,* I thought, *more than he knows.*

James took the bottle, tossed back a sharp slap of the stuff, and handed it to his left.

Nika beamed up at him and said, 'If you take care of me (and my friend) you can take me home.'�

And I thought she should have added, *You poor unhappy lion.* Can't help it. I see my former self in him.

I discovered during the course of the talk that 'College' did have a home. He had a home and parents and family, but the rest of this lively crew were like cats: where they slept was home.

Leprechaun slept under the bridge. He had built a tidy little camp in the shadows. The cops knew it, but didn't bother him.

BollySol lived in a motel gone to live-ins, sponsored by the VA.

The bottle went around.

Slick joined Nika and James on the log, sitting at the far end.

Times were good.

I like this. I like the partying. I like the word play and the singing and the joking. I like what happens among people when they are enjoying one another. There were
undercurrents of course, but I have no interest in the mundane drama of mortals.

A pipe came out and a story ' I like the stories best. Bollysol, the stovepipe man with a baseball cap and Cubs sweater cut off at the elbows said, "My brother, he's a big-shot real estate dude in California, he has this big boat and because mom insisted, he let me go with him out to Hawaii. Man, you can get stoned for free right off the beaches on Maui..."

A murmur of "Maui wowie" arose in worshipful tones from the circle.

Bollysol continued, "So I hung around while my brother did his business. Met the fucking original Kihe-Wahine and we partied with her brothers down on the beach. Built a fire and they put these shellfish over some seaweeds and they covered it all up with seaweed and sand and then we dug it up and ate 'em and man, that's how they eat in Heaven."

I *looked through* and could see that everyone in the circle except one of this happy crowd rode the Wheel. They would die and return. James would not. James had
waken, had taken a pass at the Eye of the Needle, made a wrong choice, and now was here, among the unborn. But, unlike the rest, he was no longer sealed.

I caught Morning Horse's eye and we meued, *Bollysol, he's our antagonist. Dark. Sealed, but unstable. Too bad, he has some gifts.*

Bollysol went on, "Well, we were whooping it up on the sand, and Chrissy, that's the little wahine, and I wandered over by the marina to surf one another and, heyyy, there's my brother's boat. I'd forgotten. We started up the slip heading for the bed in the cabin and at the other dock here comes these dudes. They didn't look like they were there for the fun. Chrissy and I slipped into the water quiet as otters and watched from under the dock. Those heavies were packing Hefties full of something. My brother helped them stow the stuff below. 'I'm gonna have some smoke when I get home', I told her.

"Coming home we were 'a bit off course,' I told my brother. I thought it was because of the wind and choppy sea. 'That's not home,' I said. He said shut-up or he'd drown me right then and there. He said he was skipper and a skipper is like a king and the boat is like his country. If he decided it was best to drown me and he said it was an accident, maritime law would rule it an accident. I shut up. We were about two miles out and I could see rocks along the shore because the waves were exploding into white foam in there.

"These guys, they weren't the same ones, came out not far from the rocks in this real low boat. Long and fast. A racing boat, I think. One look and I expected trouble so I grabbed my packsack ' has everything I own in it ' and slipped over the side. I started swimming away from them ... out to sea in this case.

"I doan know what happened. The low boat left in a hurry and then, before I could swim back, my brother's boat went off totally. Like lightning; there one moment, then a blinding flash, and it wasn't there. It didn't even leave a carcass burnin' out on the water. It was just gone.

"I figured the Coast Guard would be there soon, so I started swimming for those rocks, even though I figured I could be bashed up on the rocks with the heavy sea. But, hey man, where else was I gonna go? Back to Hawaii?"

"Didn't your packsack pull you down?" College asked.

"Nope. It buoyed me up. I kicked it in like a kickboard. Worked out I went shooting in between a couple of big rocks pushed by the waves, and the sea was quieter behind
'em. I did crack my shin on some other rock, though. Must have cracked it, it hurt so bad, and it hurt for a long time after. Hell, it still hurts! But I tell you what, I came out limping, but damned happy to be alive.

"And I brought 2.2 kilos of that Maui Wowie with me. That sealed package was like a block of wood. Made my bag float high. I figure it saved my life."

I meued to Morning Horse. *I could not see it. The story was seriously bent. Two or three missing bricks and some cocainized ex-con hothead 'importers' could explain a murder. I did see into Bollysol, though. Black as a bad egg.*

"I figure this grass can save your life, too, if you hold it down deep and think of Hawaii," Bollysol went on. "Over there the brothers call it 'wheelchair dope'. And I was in a wheelchair for a while. Enjoy."

The pipe and the bottle traveled the circle until the bottle went dry and Bollysol's big baggy went empty and the scrapings went up in smoke and the fire burned down.

College laid on cardboard beside the fire. The others went off into the night to their wickiups. Slick and Nika and James went and laid on the shore sand just above the wetline and slept by the river.

A couple of hours.

I returned my attention from the Choirs with a start when I heard a horrible sound like someone splitting green wood and knew that Bollysol had cracked Slick's skull with a
rounded river rock. Oh well, Slick was on the Wheel, and Morning Horse knew it would hurt.

James started to sit up and Bollysol kicked him hard right in the face. Made a wet sound and James went down. He was an old man, 75, and not really in shape or very strong.

He blubbered blood bubbles loudly with his face in the sand. Bollysol thought him of no account.

Nika made it to her feet, but Bollysol grabbed her before she could run and ripped off her denim jacket. Mad with lust.

I've often wondered why some men become beasts over something that any decent mortal will get plenty of in just one turn of the Wheel. I've seen it tens of times. And this man had killed Slick. It would be in the papers. Even in Missoula, Montana, a fine, robust, university town full of artists and lovers and writers and students and professors and party-people and sports and musicians and surrounded by an Eden of clean air and the river and mountains to climb, there are some people so sick they will destroy themselves and others.

Nika kicked and screamed and bit and scratched, and freed herself of everything except for one iron hand on her elbow the fingers of which were as big at the ends as at the knuckles.

James, his lip split and his face bloody below his flattened nose, staggered to his feet and grabbed Bollysol by his shoulder and tried to reason with him.

Tried to reason with him? This lovely, foolish old man who by some miracle had maintained his belief in humanity through all that he had seen and done, tried to reason
with a man who might as well have been possessed by grizzly in killing fever.

Still locked onto the struggling girl's elbow, Bollysol bent and picked up a rock ' not a two-hander like he killed Slick with, but a fist-sized piece of river-worn argillite. Basement rock. And bashed James alongside the head.

Nika broke away that moment.

James, who should have been out by now, did the heroic thing.

That's the reason we came.

All his life James had avoided confrontation. It can be survival on the street in the big city, and not a bad idea in Missoula. He was a peace-maker. A healer, although with little of his intended talent left. He was a mediator. He should have been an ambassador between the Love Who Walks and the mortals. He would have had a wonderful time of it. But because he erred at the Eye of the Needle, he learned to doubt himself, he learned to lose himself, he learned to mistrust his impulses. He waited and waited. A walking catatonic. He lost everything, pretty much. Except for a glow that few of us can see.

Instead of the easy thing ' passing out ' he held on to his consciousness like a lichen on a rock.

Nika took off across the sand and rocks. Very bad footing. The rocks grated and rotated. The sand slipped and piled up at the rear of her tread. Her mind was going no no no no ... Bad visualizations. She knew the end would be bad and she was projecting it, fulfilling her own predictions.

Bollysol spun and launched out.

And James kicked Bollysol's left boot across and behind his right calf. Bollysol went down.

Nika made it to the path which was packed harder and started to run like wild.

I pulled up and out and let her go. She wouldn't go to the police. She'd go to the Poverello and someone else would call the police. Later she would have a dream in
which she and I would have a marvelous teaching session. Then she would forget the dream.

I moved back to see Bollysol beating on Jame's head with a rock large enough. James had been dead a while and his freed spirit sat up in his body confused by the violence
around him.

Morning Horse glanced at me and I knew he had watched it all. We all have the talent of detachment, but I could see Morning Horse revulsion.

I approached Jame's dazed spirit.

*Heyyy,* Morning Horse meued in a comforting voice. *You did a good thing back there, James.*

*The girl? Did she escape? Is she OK?* James asked.

*She's fine, James. She'll make it to the Pov. Winded, that's all.*

*What's wrong with me?* the old guy meued, just like he was already inside the Gates. *I don't hurt any more.*

*Put down that heavy weight,* Morning Horse meued. *You are a caryatid no more. No more pain. You served your time.*

*Who are you?*

*I am Morning Horse. A Bitterroot Salish. I came Across with a Charlo a long time ago.*

And I told him, *I am Herschel, the Angel of Dusk.*

James looked up at me, terrified. *The Dark Angel? Am I..?*

I didn't let him finish. *No! I didn't say that. Quit listening for that.* I stopped him in his tracks. This is an important moment, just after death. One must keep the Crosser calm. The Astral Plane is a sudden place and words can cause irreversible change.

*I am the Angel of Dusk because I smuggle people into Heaven. I go in the Back Gate.*

*He's not terribly popular in Heaven,* Morning Horse smiled. *There are some in Heaven so pure your eyes will burn for a while. It's part of the price. Most are the
Forgiven who never went back to sin. They are blessedly bright. There are some scruffy folks who just wouldn't give up; who lived and loved although they were sure losers. They come in through the Back Gate, carried by this,* and he indicated me, *scruffy, smudgy, irrepressible Saint and Angel of Dusk. Those spirits are in white.*

*Your case,* I said to James, *is like those. You fell a long ways, but you refused to sink beneath the waves.*

*I guess figured it out,* James said. *I was still being tempted, although I knew I had already fallen. So I reckoned that there was a greater distance to fall. I tried. I tried...* His voice grew small. *... I failed and I failed, over and over. Guilt begets guilt, you know. The weight grew onerous. My Karma was spinning the wrong way. I gave up ...*

*Not quite,* Morning Horse meued. *Why did you trip Bollysol? You knew he'd kill you.*

*Well,* James looked up, *that young girl...*

*Yeah,* I meued. *That's why "I" am here.*

And when I heard the resonance, the monumentality of the 'I'� coming through myself I realized that the Big Kahuna was with us. That's the ultimate reason I BE.

Then it was just Herschel again.

*No greater love,* Morning horse meued.

James was looking better. He saw my smile. And I said unto him, *That's the rule, James. No greater love...*

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