Albert Camus is dead on the passenger-side floor; he’s stiff as a stuffed fox. I grab my cane and get out of the truck. The hood is crumpled. The front bumper has become a part of the thick and noble oak tree—almost like an accessory maybe, a tree belt. Part of me knows that this is it for me. I live at the end of a dirt road. I picked this property because no one is ever around. No neighbors. No passing traffic—the connecting road is three miles from my driveway, and I have not walked more than a half mile or so in one stretch since the series of surgeries that put this Humpty Dumpty back together again. I do not own a telephone—land or cell. No computer or Internet. This is my Walden, the closest I’ll ever get to being Henry David Thoreau. I have no friends. No one would ever visit. I have to drive to my handyman’s home whenever I need him.
