Seven cooks steak and onions. We share a meal and a six pack of Bud tall boys. Seven's dog Baby is quiet as a mouse, only reacts to other people and dogs, of which there are none here.

It's just Seven and Tex and me now, and Baby. And our two cars. That's it. That's the caravan. That's the fruit of Ramon's poor leadership and asinine direction. And Ned's ambivalence. And my determination to do whatever the fuck I wanna do with my money and my time and my 5 billion ton car that I'm lugging around the country in.

The night is hot. The river tempts. But Montana Power is just up the road, a huge machine scooping up piles of coal for burning 24 hours a day. There's gotta be some waste from all that, and my guess is it goes in the river. A breeze whispers through the trees. Yes, there are trees here. Don't ask me what kind. Deciduous anyway, there leaves rustling lightly beneath the whoosh and roar of the freeway to my left and the river to my right.

It's Bozeman tomorrow to see Maggie again. I'm half hoping to hook her up with Tex or Seven. She's such a nice girl and so very lovely. But as we've been friends since childhood and long ago done our one experimental romp in the sack, I know she doesn't want me. Hell, I'm a man, and she's beautiful, so of course I would take her if she asked. But she's a woman, and she knows better. She's holding out for Mr. Right, or at least the next handsome dude candidate or one-night stand that she ain't had before.

There are flies on my screen, buggin me as bugs are wont to do. I can reach out and touch the flies. They are somehow stunned or dulled by the backlit LCD screen.

I should sleep now. Bon soir.

Crashed last night in some dirt and weed lot so-called park wedged between an unknown river and the freeway. Awoke this morning to a blurred Daguerreotype vision of an old west town and the noise of increased traffic flow on the freeway. Pity the commuters as I squat in the trees for a vagrant toilet.

Looking up I spy a plaque on a stone in the weeds. I approach it incredulously, thinking, "what significance could there possibly be to this place?" It reads:

Townsite of Coulson
Custer County
Montana Territory
1877-82

"Born by the river, killed by the railroad, giving to Billings her best citizens, to Boot Hill her residue, and to the Yellowstone her memories." I turn from the lonely monument to look at the beige waters flowing by. But of course, the Yellowstone River. Suddenly this place has a name, an identity, a history it didn't have a minute ago. I look at the dirt and detritus with new eyes. I look at Duke and IFSM. They are parked on Main St. in Coulson. A commercial jetliner crashes over the cliffs across the river, booms overhead and is gone. Coulson. What would they think if they could have seen their future? Smack in the flight line, discarded by the side of the highway, rusted out barrels and crap by the riverside. Urban beauty and a river runs through it.

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Last update April 1, 2004