My father died while I was digging at the Old Capitol.

My mother sent me a plane ticket to fly home. Brenda stayed in Tallahassee with the boys.

I flew home for the funeral and flew back.

I was sad because my father had never seen me sober. I'd been sober a year.

I have now lived longer than he did.

He never drew social security.

He left my mother provided for.

When Brenda went into the field, my mother called and offered to help me take care of the boys in Delray Beach while Brenda was in the Big Cypress.

Why not? I could draw unemployment, and look for a job, in Delray Beach.

Brenda and I had reached our peak in archeology.

Temporary jobs, with no benefits.

Frequent separation, as she went into the field one season and I went in the field the next.

So we closed the house in Tallahassee and the boys and I drove down to Delray Beach in the Cocoa Van, with our work clothes and school clothes, my job-applying clothes, Owen and my bicycles, and the $6 typewriter Brenda bought me at Surplus Sales in Tallahassee with no cover over the keys. A Royal 440.

We looked like Okies going to California in the Dust Bowl.

Owen enrolled in public kindergarten and rode his bike to school and back.

I had enough money from my unemployment to put Balder in day school, put gas in the car, to go to job interviews with, pitch in on the food, and buy coffee, out on my rounds. Brenda's check took care of the rent on the house in Tallahassee, the utilities, which we weren't using, and some of the bills.

We had sold the Peugeot 404 to a man who owned one, and collected them, for parts, and bought a Dodge four-door sedan painted baby-shit brown, for $200.

The main oil seal leaked, and it took four quarts of recycled motor oil per tank of gas.

The Cocoa Van.

We stopped at every rest stop on the way down to gas up, add oil, buy coffee, void urine, and throw away the empty coffee cups and Vichy water bottles.

When I quit drinking I became a Vichy water abuser.

Broke as a haint, and drinking Vichy water.

The natives of Oxford, Mississippi, called William Faulkner Count No 'Count.

An artist is not without honor, save in his own home town.

Faulkner put on airs.

Q: Didn't you used to drink Artesia mineral water? From Texas?

A: Perrier had a motto, À Votre Santé. Artesia had a motto, Au Revior, Perrier.

I had a cloisonné pin I wore on my Greek fisherman cap.

Q: Maybe you just looked goofy.

A: Could be. Usually I wore a Kurt Schwitters centennial merz pin.