It was with some regret that I hurried away.  Maybe I should have hung around and been a witness for the police or ambulance or whoever showed up, but I felt somehow guilty and had a vague but strong feeling that if I were there when official people started showing up they’d throw me in jail.  I don’t know why they would have thrown me in jail, but I doubted anyone would give me a medal.  Or if they did, it wouldn’t have been any good kind of medal, but some stupid aluminum replica.

So I hurried into the woods and bushwhacked my way toward destiny.

An hour or two later the sun had set completely.  I reasoned that I was by now far enough away from the scene of the accident, and enough time had elapsed, that I no longer had anything to fear, so I decided to find the first sign of civilization I could and make my way from there to my cousin’s house.  I was confident I was still close enough to my cousin that she could find me and pick me up wherever I was.

As I struggled to find my way out of the woods I became ferociously single-minded.   Gone were all thoughts of Insights, of manuscripts, of my wrecked car, of Elmo’s tragic death, of the time me and Ellie had had sex in the bathroom at that Mexican restaurant off Kenmore Square.  I had only one purpose, and that was getting out of those dark woods alive.

Eventually I stumbled across a dirt road that led to a paved street that led me into a little town, where I was able to call my cousin Kathy from an all-purpose gas station / general store / post office / barber shop / software retailer.

"Yeah?" she said when she picked up the phone.

"Kathy?"

"This is Cathy."

"Cathy?  God, and all these years I thought it was Kathy."

"It’s Cathy.  Who’s this?"

"It’s your cousin."

"You lock yourself outta the cabin again?"

"I sure did, Kath."

"Cath."

"Sorry.

"Where are you?"

"Some little general store in this little town... I don’t know.  I just came out of the woods and here I was."

"What were you doing—never mind, I don’t want to know.  Are you in the Slumberjack General Store?"

"I have no idea."

"Does the guy behind the counter look like he just stepped outta the cast of Deliverance?"

"Sh! Jesus, yes."

"You’re at Slumberjack’s.  I’ll be there in a few.  See ya."

The man behind the counter addressed me the minute I hung up the phone, with a voice full of phlegm and gravel.

"Don’t guess I seen you before," he said.

"Don’t guess you have," I said.  I made my way toward the door.

"Ain’t from around here, are ya?"

"Sort of. Not really.  My grandfather’s got this cabin, and I stay there once in a while, but I’m not actually from here, technically, if that’s what you mean.  I live in Boston, not really Boston.  Revere actually, but you know, when you really get down to it, I was actually born and raised in Michigan, so I guess really I’m from Michigan.  Although I went to school in Pittsburgh..."

"You some kinda idjit?"

I froze in my tracks.  Not literally: it wasn’t that cold.  But I stopped walking and stood still, in that order.  Did he know about the manuscript?   Was it possible he knew about the Second Insight?

"I am," I said.  "Are you?"

He looked at me in silence for a moment, then asked if I’d like some candy.   I thanked him and took a Bit-o-Honey from the candy rack.

He shook his head. "Idjits always gotta have that Bit-o-Honey," he said, and he laughed.  I laughed with him, although I wasn’t sure what we were laughing at.  My laughter got him laughing even more, and that just made me laugh more myself, and we chuckled for a few minutes before he took a rifle out from behind the counter and told me to get out of his store and that if I ever set foot within a mile of Ledyard Hollow again he’d blast my sorry idjit ass so full of lead I’d die of lead poisoning before I had a chance to die of multiple gunshot wounds.  He put it more succinctly than that, but I don’t remember his exact words.

I walked along the shoulder of the road until Cathy came along and picked me up.   I told her everything that had happened as we drove back to the cabin.  Her eyes lit up when I started talking about Elmo and the First Insight, but she didn’t say anything.  She let me keep talking.  She was a good listener. She just shook her head and laughed when I told her about Slumberjack.  "That old fuddy-duddy! He hardly ever actually pulls the trigger," she said.

When we finally got to the cabin she said she wanted to talk, so she followed me in and I mixed each of us a good strong Suffering Bastard.

"I hope you don’t mind," I apologized, "I’m out of little Chinese umbrellas."

"No problem," she said, "I keep a few extras in my purse."

I lit a fire and we sipped our Suffering Bastards and watched the crackling flames in peace for a moment, and I could tell Cathy was composing her thoughts.  I didn’t mind: it was the first chance I’d had in a long time just to relax.  Finally she looked up at me and spoke.

"There’s something I need to tell you," she said.  "But first, I think you should put out the fire.  I mean, it’s a wooden house.  If you really want fires you should install a fireplace."

I got the fire extinguisher and sprayed out the fire.  It killed the mood, as far as I was concerned, but she seemed more comfortable, and that was the important thing.

"I know about the manuscript," she said.  "And I’ve seen the Second Insight."

"So you’re an idiot?" I asked, in a kind of humorous way, sort of making light of this serious thing but in a way that let her know I took it seriously.

"Yes," she said, smiling in such a way as to let me know that she, too, was being serious in a cavalier vein.  "Yes, I’m an idiot.  But that’s just the beginning.  The Second Insight tells us how to look at history, how to understand the last two thousand years for what they’ve been."

I leaned forward.  "What have they been?" I asked.