It wasn’t clear that I was getting anywhere but at least I was working on my tan. All I was wearing were my Jesus boots, the same bathing suit I’d owned for twenty-five years, and an increasingly surly expression. “I don’t understand the purpose of the exercise,” I said to the cat, who sat on the large wooden spool that served as a table. The cat said nothing. She didn’t understand the exercise either. She didn’t even understand why we’d come to Texas. “If I keep reading these morbid, stultifyingly dull coroner’s reports,” I said, “I’m going to jump in the river and drown.” The cat stared at me, then gazed out at the river. Her placid, agreeable expression seemed to indicate that she thought it might not be such a bad idea. “We don’t really consider it a river,” I said. “Around here folks call it a crick. Big Foot Wallace Crick, to be precise.
