DONNIE WRITES FROM TEXAS

We are back up to 100 degrees.  There seems to be a creeping sense of death in the air.  The trees are already losing leaves, and the woods look gaunt and bare long before their usual time--it's like looking through a skeleton.  A wind sock on the back porch floats silently on the hot breezes, like a melancholy farewell wave.  Ten familiar, hungry deer come and go all through the days, hoping for our contributions.  Linda feeds them each day at 5:00 p.m., and if she is late the deer stand in the yard and stare at the house, detecting our movements within.  The cracks across our concrete driveway and floors are ever more pronounced.  Even the pipeline work, heavy industrial noises, seems muffled and distant, in a cloud of dust.  Silence and wind and cracks and dust--it all feels like a terrifying slow-motion dream, an atmospheric movie graveyard.