I froze. What if I weren't hallucinating--what if I were dead?  Maybe when I drove off the road and smashed into that cow, maybe I'd really smashed my head through the windshield and died.  Maybe everything since then had been part of my afterlife.

But that would mean there were cows in my afterlife.  And rain.  And crazy disappearing hippies and little swarms of cherubs. It was probably all just a big hallucination after all.

"An hallucination," someone said. I figured it was my inner voice again, so I ignored it.  I didn't want to encourage it.  I didn't want to hear myself calling me bub again, or telling me what an idiot I was.

"It's an hallucination," the voice continued.   I stopped walking.  "Words beginning with unstressed vowel sounds take the article an rather than a."

The voice had come out of the fog beside the road.  It was a woman's voice, smooth and mellifluous, like chocolate, or honey, or any other liquid that's rich and flowing without being watery.

"Who's that?" I said.

"Just a benevolent grammarian," came the reply.  For a moment I glimpsed a dark, broad form in the fog.

"There's no such thing," I said. "If you're so benevolent, get out of that fog where I can see you."

I heard a low chuckling sound, then:  "Don't you mean, 'Get out of that fog to where I can see you?' Or did you mean to use 'where I can see you' as a prepositional--"

"I'm ignoring you!" I shouted, and I resumed walking. "You're another goddam hallucination, and I'm ignoring you!"

The chuckling faded behind me as I walked on.

I couldn't see the car from the road, of course, but I could see the blinking orange light from the hazards pulsing on and off through the fog.  I made my way down the hill carefully and plodded through the mud toward my car.  From about twenty yards off I finally saw the car itself, its hazards blinking stupidly, hopelessly, intermittently illuminating a crowd of several dozen cows with an eerie orange glow.

"Hate to break up the party, girls," I said, "but I've got to get into my car."

They obviously hadn't seen me coming. They all turned quickly and stared back at me with terror and surprise.

"Haven't you done enough damage?" One bellowed.

"Murderer!" Wailed another.

I was as startled by the vehemence of their accusations as I was to hear them speak, but I wasn't about to waste time arguing with an angry mob of cows.

"It was an accident!" I roared. Most of the beasts stood bunched around the car, but I noticed several slinking off into the fog. There was a tightening in my gut. They were coming for me, spreading into a wing formation to entrap me. I had to think fast.

"Don't fuck with me," I said.

I heard a couple of snickers, and the soft, heavy plodding of hooves in mud around me--but I could see nothing through the fog. I spoke sternly and directly to the nearest of the visible bovines, a big heifer standing between me and the car.  She was the one who'd asked if I hadn't already done enough damage.

"Tell your friends I don't want any trouble," I said.  I tried to sound like Dirty Harry, but it's hard to sound like Dirty Harry when you know you're outnumbered and your situation is hopeless and you don't have a forty-four in your holster...   harder still when you don't even have a holster.  "You tell 'em I just want to get into my car and get back on my way."

The cow said nothing.  Thunder sounded from a hundred miles away, low and rolling.   There was the sound of moisture dripping lazily from leaves.  There was the sound of my hazards blinking.  There was the sound of a truck on a distant highway.   And barely perceptible above those gentle sounds, the furtive movements of the fog-enshrouded cows positioning themselves around me.  The cow in front of me took a few slow steps in my direction.

"I'm quick," I said, spreading my feet to shoulder width and balancing on the balls of my feet.  I had once been taught that this was the "ready" position. I couldn't remember where I had learned it, but I didn't care.  I'd take all the readiness I could get.  "I'm quick," I said, "and I won't hesitate to kill if I have to."

"You've already made that clear," the cow said sadly.  It took the sand right out of me.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Just call off your goons and I'll be on my way."

"My what?"

"Your goons.  All those cows out there in the fog trying to surround me.   Like I said, I don't want any trouble.  This was a terrible Tragedy, but we've all got to move on.  Let's not start something that once it gets started we have no way of stopping and it spins wildly out of control and becomes a great Juggernaut of Destruction that consumes us all in its fiery furor."

The cow just stared at me, mouth agape.  "Man," she finally said, "who does your dialogue?"

"I don't want to hear another word about my dialogue!" I snapped.   "I just want to get in my car, find this Deirdre, and get to Ensenada.   Now kindly step out of my way!"

The cow was frozen, her eyes wide. There was a murmuring in the fog.

"What do you want with Deirdre?" asked the cow.

"For your information, I happen to be an Idiot. And in the past twelve hours I've already learned the first Three Insights from the Ensenada Manuscript, and Deirdre's going to teach me the Fourth, which will allow me to harness the Universal Energy and get to Esnenada without any gas money, so I can hook up with Los Idiotos and learn the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and, yes, even the Tenth Insight. So once again, kindly step out of my way!"

There was an ironic gleam in the heifer's eyes as she stepped aside for me. I was acutely aware of that gleam, because I didn't let my eyes leave hers as I walked toward the car. There was something taunting about her look.  The other cows moved away from the car.

"I'm glad you think it's so funny," I said. "Think what you want. At least I won't end up between a couple of buns on some snot-faced little kid's plate."

Her smile only broadened. I think it was a smile--it was hard to tell. She was a cow. "You haven't got the first idea where to look for Deirdre, do you?"

"I don't need to know," I said, feeling my away around the car so as not to lose eye contact as I made my way toward the door.  There were stirrings from within the fog...  if I had a Spidey-sense, it would have been tingling.  (Of course, I had probably caught a cold by now, so it might just have been chills.)  "The Universal Energy got me this far, it'll get me to Deirdre."

The cow nodded with an air of bemusement.  "You don't give the universal energy enough credit," she said. "It already brought you to her."

Suddenly I understood.  "It's you," I exclaimed.   "Deirdre!"

The cow mooed heartily, and muffled moos resounded from the fog.  "No," she said.  "I'm Margaret. That's Deirdre." She nodded her head to the left. I followed the direction of her big ole snout... and saw the lifeless carcass of the cow I'd run into.

I felt tears welling up in my eyes, right where they usually well up. "My God..." I stammered, "My God... I killed the only one who could have helped me!   I'm screwed!"

"No," Margaret said with gentle menace, "you're fucked."