I, Jack Swilling

Yesterday I was delirious, and the day before that, or several before that. Tonight, though, I seem to be aware of everything I’ve ever known . . . . It’s dark, double dark because of the mist that August steams from the Colorado. Yet I can see almost very place I’ve ever been . . .

All the men I liked are having drinks with me or yarning around campfires scattered from the Appalachians to the Pacific Coast. All the enemies I’ve fought are visible beyond the muxxles of guns or the points of knives . . . All of the women I’ve wigwamed with, including the two who demanded the law’s blessing, are either smiling or showing they wished they never met me . . . But I could never really belong to civilization, for once I hand helped to create it, I yearned for a place on which it hadn’t laid an ordering hand.