only we haven’t read it in the papers yet. I’m sure some major experiments start like that, from what people said they’d experienced, and maybe just one person. Have any scientists been eavesdropping on your conversations, Julie?” and she said no. “Daddy’s only kidding you,” Margo said and he said “I am, somewhat, but I’m not discounting — making little of what she said. We might have a great budding scientist in our midst and one principally interested in the differences between deep rest and light sleep and the benefits and limits of each,” and Julie said “I don’t want to be a scientist. I want to be a poet, do you think that’s a good thing to be?” and he said “Poetry? Fits your wistfulness and sensitivity. And what could be better doing and more beneficial to everyone? So sure, if it comes to you, become one — meet my daughter the poet — though you’ll have to do other things for a living, like marrying a doctor or best-selling author — only kidding. And you don’t marry for a living; you do it out of love, like poetry, because someone’s been called to you, right? In fact, for our driving pleasure today do one in your head now and recite it to us, I’d love hearing it,” and she said “I’ll try, I’ve never made up one in a car,” and he said “Take a few minutes, make it a special one,” and turned the radio on. A reverend, or preacher or Christian healer, anyway, obvious by the snake-oily voice and every other sentence with the word “Christ” in it or reference to Him — He’ll move things, stand by Him, He’s with us, believe in His ways and words and your luck and fortune, spiritual and otherwise, will rise, as He did — that it was, oh, lost the train there too and anyway not interested in what he was thinking about this hustler, “Come my little pretty,” pulling the girl’s pants down, they used to joke as kids, “and let me put “Christ” in you,” for that’s what he sounds like, asking for dough now in that universal reverend-rabbi-probably-imam voice, since he’s never heard one, the whole thing for dough — money and sex, and don’t forget power, so like just about everyone else when they have the chance and no different than selling soda and cars on TV, right? though being a man of God — but what’s he going on about? — this might be the one decent preacher of them all, just as to my kids most times or let’s say lots I’m the best daddy that ever lived, and moved the dial up the band and back — wait, do those two con nect? some other time, but what do they all do, go to a special religious speech school to talk that way? how can people fall for it? or maybe it’s just if enough do it’s worth the air time — and all he could find was another preacher or healer, must be the area they’re driving through and also the scarcity of stations or low or short frequencies of them if that’s the word, and then some hillybilly music as one of his professors said it, another fake, for though corrected by students with their laughs — he was German — he said it that semester a half-dozen times more—20th Century Intellectual History, Part One, maybe his favorite college course overall, though Two, and he never looked forward to a course more, was a dud, forgets why, maybe became a strain to make out his speech in that huge lecture hall and also got tired of his crowd-pleasing ways, and dropped it—“Love will get you down,” singer was singing, “but love will get you up too, so risk it, for life’s” something, incomprehensible, followed by a plucking instrument and backup caterwauls from a group. Double entendre? Why not, simple enough, and nobody’s got gonads like these guys, and just another kind of preaching for dough, no? and turned it off. “Daddy, I liked that,” Margo said, “you finally had something good,” and he said “So okay, listen to it on your own radio at home with your door closed and the sound low,” and she said “We won’t get it, we’ll be too far away and the program will be off,” and he said “So what can I say? Rough. No, that wasn’t nice, I’m sorry,” and she said “It’s all right, at least you admitted it. But if I can’t listen to the music, there’s nothing to do, so we have to stop,” and he said “I’m not going to ask this, for if I do you’ll say yes even if the real answer’s no, but do you have to go to the bathroom? — be honest,” and she said “Not yet,” and he said “Then if a rest stop doesn’t come up soon, we’ll stop,” and she said “What’s that mean?” and he said “If there’s one in the next two to three miles, or make that three to four or even five, but no more than that — the odometer here says 22-0-8-7 point 6, so we’ll say anything past 0-9-3, no, 9–2, which is less than five miles but I want to be fair and take in the half-mile or so we’ve done since I started talking about the rules of how we’ll stop. In fact why don’t I set the trip odometer,” and he did, “this even littler mile measurer thing here for car trips and when it hits 4–0, to be really fair, for we’ve gone about a mile since I first started up about all this, then the first rest stop that comes after that number will be the one we stop at, okay?” and she said “I don’t understand, you make it too complicated,” and Julie said “I have a poem. It’s not one of the same ones I’ve said to you before and it’s not good because I didn’t take long in making it up, but here goes. ‘The radio’s playing and went off. My daddy was saying and then became grorph.’” “Grorph?” Margo said and Julie said “For gruff. ‘The music was swaying and then got lost.’ That didn’t happen but I didn’t want another rhyme with ‘off.’ And I first had ‘and then like sounds got lost,’ but then thought it sounded better without it. ‘Night isn’t near and the stars aren’t out yet. But I see clear. I see clear. For passing the time in a car, poetry’s the best bet.’ The end.” “God, that’s something,” he said. “Even down to the contractions and the repeat line and that throwaway ‘lost’ for ‘off,’ and rhyming ‘best bet’ with ‘yet’? Why’d you say it wasn’t good?” and Margo said “May I say something?” and Julie said “I know you hated it,” and Margo said “No, it was fantastic. Recite it again though, I want to hear it whole,” and Julie leaned over, he saw in the rearview, and kissed Margo’s shoulder and said “You’re so nice,” and Margo shut her eyes as if touched and he thought “That’s what I love to see, almost nothing better, more than their looking up with that look at me, wouldn’t it have been great to have had an older brother to worship or a younger one I loved who worshiped me,” and said “I wish I had a pen around to jot the poem down,” and Julie said “Down and around, whole and though. Jot the dots. The pen and the…the…” “Men,” Margo said and she said “Doesn’t fit with what I’m thinking. I got it. ‘Pen in my own den, when I’ll write this down, all words all around, till then say it again and again.’ Den is my room, you see; I’ll remember it by then,” and he said “Good also, sweetheart, and do write them down, espe daily the first one, but second one if you can do it too, when we get home or at the rest stop where I’ll borrow or buy a pencil or pen. I want to read them to Mommy on the phone tonight and also keep copies of them to show later on what a wonderful poet you were even back when,” and she said “When’s that?” and he said “When you were a kid, now; for I’m talking about for when you get older,” and she said “Maybe you can help me type them on your machine — I have so many I can even make a book of them and Margo can draw the cover,” and he said “And Mommy can do the music — okay, will do or I’ll even type them myself.” They drove. She recited the first poem whole. Margo said if Julie didn’t mind she had some very small criticism; she didn’t like that “‘best bet’—it sounds like something you buy in the supermarket,” and then to him she was starving even more than before, couldn’t they take the next exit and go somewhere on that road and then back on? — they must have gone more than four miles and they wouldn’t lose, by going off and back on, more than a few minutes, and he remembered the bagels he’d bought for the trip early that morning and slapped his forehead and said “Stupid Dada, I have bagels, plain and sesame, from Bagel Cottage in New York, anyone interested?” and Margo said “Plain, me,” and he pulled the bag out from under his seat, “Oh lucky bag,” he said, “saved the day, made a girl happy,” passed a plain back, Margo split it and gave Julie a piece and they ate. Then they played together and by themselves. Then what happened happened.