Always your friend,
Rudy
Dear Kevin: I said goodbye to the man and boy, went down a path, came to a country road and walked along it, hoping to meet someone who could direct me to a highway. After a few miles without seeing anyone, I sat on a log. The log rolled forward soon as I sat on it, and I fell on my back with my head bouncing off a rock. Loose log, I thought. I sat more carefully on the log next to it. This one rolled backward so fast that I fell on my face. “Couple of logs that don’t want to be sat on,” I said, laughing at such a ridiculous thought. I tore my handkerchief in half to dab the cuts on my head and lip, and started off again searching for a highway. A few minutes later Iheard bumping sounds behind me. When I looked back I didn’t see anything but a couple of logs and lots of loose twigs and stones off the road, but nothing moving. I continued walking and heard these same bumping sounds behind me. This time I turned around quickly and saw two logs bouncing along. They dropped to the ground the moment I saw them, and rolled off the road and made a dead stop at the side, as if they were just two ordinary logs that had been there since they were cut up from a fallen tree a while ago. “You two following me?” I said. The logs, each about two feet long and round and wide as a dinner plate, said nothing. “Sure,” I said, standing over them. “You’re only waiting to be hollowed out by termites for a chipmunk’s home. Because logs can’t talk just as they can’t walk, am I right?” Of course logs can’t talk, I thought. They can’t walk either.
I must have been seeing things. Maybe losing my marbles altogether from being without sleep so long. What I need is a long snooze, and I lay on the side of the road and rested my head on one of the logs. The log rolled away from me as I was dozing off, and my head hit the ground again. I got up and kicked the log, as my head really hurt from the banging. The log jumped up on one of its ends and hobbled around as if I had hurt it badly. Then it bumped into the woods. The other log stood on its end and jumped higher and higher till it got up to about half my size, when it swung at me with its top end but missed. It fell on its side, as if it had lost its footing from jumping so high and swinging at me so clumsily. Then it bumped into the woods after the first log. “Least I got rid of them.” I walked on. After a minute or so I heard bumping sounds from inside the woods next to the road. This time it was like two heavy objects bumping on broken branches and dried leaves instead of the bumping thumping sounds of logs on a packed-down road. “You logs in there still trailing me?” I said, feeling that since I couldn’t lose them, I better face them. Two plops, one after the other, were the next sounds I heard. These were probably the logs diving to the ground and pretending to be ordinary abandoned logs in the woods, though I couldn’t see them. “Well, come on out and say or do what you’ve in mind to. As I swear not to be rough again, if you won’t with me.” They bumped out of the woods onto the road. “Now why you following me?” I said, and they bounced up and down a few times, which made no sense to me. “Because you think I’m lost and want to lead me out?” They bounced up and down faster.