More stones today, more logs as well. Work is steady, if boring. I have to keep my mind on the task at hand, at the intricacies of it, or I remember the long scope. How many men died today defending me? How many men for each swing? For each step?

I began one of the books today. You’ll be happy to hear, Adam, that David’s father had a copy of Frost’s North of Boston, which is, I am told, a hard found thing. I wasn’t shocked in the slightest to find it. We are, I hope, past the point of coincidence. Some things, I believe, can be manipulated to happen, though not by Charles Duval. The wall between us is still up, but there are hints. My reaction to finding North of Boston was resignation to fact, not shock. Of course it was there.

I skip around in books of poetry, this is a habit of mine. I’m drawn to certain titles, you know. Blueberries was the poem I read today. It seemed a fitting thing to me, being as I’ve been foraging for berries myself, and how correct I was! The family, the Lorens, I’m glad they’re not here, friendly as they seem, for there’d be no berries left for me! I’ll get to that level of mastery before long, if everything works out. I’ve set up traps around the camp and some have caught already. Out here there are so few people the rabbits haven’t learned to be cunning yet, so I had coney last night. This morning it was berries, and tonight I have a stew of trout and coral mushrooms boiling over the fire.

I’m reminded of a great many things, sitting here writing by the firelight. I’ve sat on a great many logs around a great many fires, each one accompanied by someone else, and tonight is no different. To my left the dog sits on his haunches, and to my right Feltheart sits on his side, both near to the fire as me. Above us the pine canopy is open and the stars shine down in a great big circle, cloudless and open. These are the same stars I shared with an old friend of mine, Louise, in Tulle. We sat on the same log, our arms nearly touching, feeling the warmth of each other’s company. Her father had died the year before. It was sudden. Greener pastures, they said, all of them. I don’t know if I ever saw her get over it. I didn’t know her before then, when her father was alive, but I could tell.

She kept her head above water with company and an endless parade of boys, all of whom went away in the end. People get like that when they’ve lost someone; they try to fill the hole. As I understand it she had been that way since before he died, but I wasn’t there to see it. They weren’t bad men. There were never more than a few weeks between them. I was there all the time. We tried but left it alone after the second run around. Sometimes it doesn’t work. I wonder if she’s alive somewhere, out in the forests, hiding with her mother. A part of me knows she’s too restless for that. I suppose I’ll never know.

Fires bring memories out of me. It’s not an uncommon thing, I imagine. Sometimes you need to forget, and sometimes there’s a fire.