"It must be summer," said Ken the driver, as the other afternoon I boarded his bus, down in the unburned lands. "You're sporting your colors."

He meant the Hawaiian shirt. For now that the Seattle is receding, we are approaching the temperatures that are Wrong, and so it is time to go to the Hawaiian shirts. Except I reviewed these shirts recently, and determined that an unacceptable number, they now feature holes, of one sort or another. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, it can really be a pest, sometimes. And there is nothing I can do. Because, unlike the Beatles, I am unschooled in fixing the holes where the rain gets in, and Paradise Surplus And Trading Post, where I would buy the authentic Hawaiian shirts, for $2-$5 each, it burned down. So I guess I will just have to go with the holes. And why not? I just spent the past several months wandering the land in the long black coat with the scorch marks from the electric wall heater. So, why not, summer holes, too? This, our motto: Holes R Us.

The long black coat story, it is deeply embarrassing. To begin, I am, as Mr. Zimmerman do say, the man in the long black coat. There are people, here, on this site, who know this. And that I have been, for some years. Don't remember how many. But it's been a lot. Since before the Columbine kids, for sure. Because when they shot up the school, I got grief for being part of the "black trenchcoat mafia." Which was nonsense. And that was: what? Twenty years ago?

The first long black coat, it came from Russia. They know how to make ankle-length wool coats, in that ice-cave. But that coat vanished, when the green lemon Datsun, it was stolen off the street. That car, it was always Wrong. "Those people did you a favor," my brother, who is dead, said, "stealing that car." Maybe so. But they didn't do me a favor. Stealing the coat. That was in the car. This one now, the second long black coat, it is from China. They can get a breeze in that nation, too. So, it's an acceptable substitute.

Now, I don't think I was wearing the long black coat, at any time, during the fire. Although I can't really be sure. I don't remember anything of what I was wearing, really. Except the fire boots. I might have been wearing a tutu. There in the fire. For all. I know.

But I was wearing the long black coat, I know that, some weeks after, after the maroonment, after the electricity had returned, but before the gas, when I was dependent, for any and all heat, on this mammoth ludicrous electric wall heater.

The PG&E guys, when they saw it, were amazed. They said it was at least 50 years old. And they hadn't encountered one like it, in eons. They described it as a relict from long before such as "tiered rates," from back when power was cheaper than penny candy. It puts out more heat than the sun, and, these days, costs more than nine Porsches, to run. As I learned when the first bill arrived. The sight of which more strained my cardiovascular system, than running up Mt. Shasta carrying a donkey under each arm. When I'd moved in here, I'd shoved a piano in front of the thing, because I knew it would bankrupt me, if ever I used it. So I didn't. Use it. Until the town burned down. And it was either that. Or go icicle.

So, each morning, in the powered-up days after the fire, I'd get up, switch the thing on, then don the long black coat, and stand with my back toward the heater, waiting, with the cats, for it to warm up to full Sol-power. One morning I'm doing this, and I detect some stench. It smelled like something in the walls was burning. Jiminy krismas, I thought. Isn't it enough, that the town burned down? But no. Now there's going to be some fire, in the walls? I wandered the house, sniffing things, sniffing worse than even Joe Biden. For a while the stench traveled with me. But then it dissipated. Until, in the dim bulb I have for a brain, I realized I had singed the coat. That is from where, came the burning smell. I stripped the thing off, and examined it. Now, it is true it is quite dark in this house, and I am mostly blind, but I gave it a good visual going-over, and could detect no Damage. "Another crisis," as my dead brother, he would do say," narrowly averted."

I thus felt free to relate this near-calamity to my fire companera. Who couldn't stop laughing. Which is only right and meet. Because we need all the laughs we can get. Here in the town burned down.

Then, maybe a month or so later, there must have been more light or something, or maybe there was a little pulse of brightened vision, because I noticed that, at the very bottom of the coat, on both sides of the slit down the middle, I had burned some fabric away.

It wasn't totally noticeable, because there was still some lighter black underneath, but it was without doubt completely wino, and I realized I had been wandering the land, in a burnt wino coat, for well over a month. The mortification, it was extreme. I confessed all to that same fire companera, and she asked if any children on the street had laughed and called me names, and I said no more than usual, and so she reassured me that probably no one had noticed. When she shortly thereafter came by, I modeled for her the burnt wino coat, and she reaffirmed that probably nobody had noticed, or would notice. That it was a burnt wino coat. But she could have been Lying.

It fills me with despair, that everywhere I go, people walking behind me, they think: "look, there goes a wino." I have no clue where I bought this coat, and the thought of trying to replace it, makes me want to just go lie down, and rock back and forth in a fugue state. There is anyway nowhere in this town to buy clothes, or to get them repaired, either. We do not have clothes, in Paradise. We have benzene. And we have a lot of shit burned down. But we do not have clothes.

It is tempting to describe this boneheadedness as a fire wound. "Yep. Big-ass flame shot out, set me on fire. I was burning, for sure. But then I picked me up a shovel, and started beating myself about the ass and legs. Put the thing right out. Sum'bitch didn't try that again. Fire of '18, it was. Big 'un."

But no. I cannot tell a Lie. I stayed all that time, in the fire. And the fire, it didn't burn me. But, later, I set myself. On fire.

And so that is the story. Sort of. Of the long black coat. It leaves out some of the parts. Like the hurricane breeze. And the soft cotton dress. And the heart. And the no word of goodbye. Because really. We need. Now. To move on.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JuLKtz_EH8]

Because now, as we are getting into the season of the Heat, we, I mean I, don't have to worry, any more, about wandering the land, a wino, in the burnt long black coat. We, I mean I, can instead, be a wino, in the burnt, Hawaiian shirts.

Because, I am, like, the Wandering Jew. Except. Instead. I am, The Wandering Burned.

And I don't need to worry about, any of it, really, anyway. Except, when I talk, to the likes, of you. Because: let's face it: we're all, up here, and anyway, and totally, pretty much: burned.

A lot of the prices, there at the burned to the goddam ground Paradise Surplus, they were from a time tunnel. Not just on the Hawaiian shirts. Like that monkey lamp, there in the picture. That was $2. It is my primary reading light, when I am reading the print. Except when there is a fire: then, there is the reading with the flashlight. Sometimes even for a couple months after the power comes back. Because I, sometimes, Forgot. That a person could have. Power.

Because you didn't get power. There for some of the months. In Paradise.

The monkey doesn't look like he does in that picture, not any more. Because I have cats. The monkey lives atop a little stand. And sometimes one of the cats wants to be on the stand. And sometimes another of the cats, he also, wants to be on the stand. And there is not sufficient room, there on the stand, for two cats. And so the monkey, he goes over the side. And, from time to time, in so going, one or more of his arms, breaks off.

This is called damage. When you have cats, or even are just a regular human, you became acquainted, with damage. It's just inevitable. We were all about damage here, even before the fire. But, after the fire, for a while, I was kinda fixated on it. I remember, I think this was still during the maroonment, Peter Berkow telling me Calvin Daley had stayed in the fire, as had I, hosemanning and such. And I said: "Does he know he's damaged?" I didn't want Calvin to think it would be all shiny happy people. Even if he is a drummer.

But then I felt like that guy in the true-life documentary film Three Days Of The Condor. Where Robert Redford, he finishes lunch, and then goes back to his CIA spy nest, where he discovers that, in his absence, everyone was shot dead by the mailman. So he calls the special number he was long ago provided, to call if one day everyone gets shot by the mailman, and he reaches the guy at spook central, the guy in the wheelchair, The Major, who immediately goes to the code, and keeps asking Redford, in the monotone: "Are you damaged?" Redford doesn't know what he's talking about. Then he at last understands: The Major is inquiring if he, Redford, personally, is spouting any blood, from any holes. No, Redford says. No, I am not damaged.

My fire companera, she didn't like the damage word. She thought it peculiar. Also, imprecise. She encouraged me to go elsewhere, in the words. So I did. And eventually settled on burned. Accurate. I think. And says it all.

Some of the damages—though not any of the fire ones, really—you can repair with the special bonding glue from Ace. That is how we reattach the arms to the monkey. I have become something of an expert, in monkey arm surgery. So long as I have this glue. It is a special magic glue—not even Bezos knows about it. But then the town burned down, and although Ace, it did not burn down, it Hamletted for many months, as to whether it would reopen. So the monkey just stood there. In silent glum. A double amputee. It is true I had some of this glue in the house. But a Problem with this glue is that, pursuant to some Law, I'm not sure which one, but one that is surely an annoyment, whenever the ambient temperature falls below, like, 60 degrees, the glue solidifies, worse than ice-nine, becomes perfectly useless, and will not uncongeal, no matter how many blowtorches you aim its way, no matter how many curse words you scream at it at top volume.

But Ace has reopened now, and so I can go there, and get the magic glue, and then we can have the monkey arm surgery. Also, if the fire had come in here, I bet that glue would have uncongealed quick enough. But it didn't. Which means I can stop the complaining now.

But why would I do that? It would not be American. To not complain. So let the complaints go forth, and unto a new generation. As JFK did say. Before Oliver Stone. Shot him in the head. And blew. His brains out.

Here in the burned, the stores are less like trauma wards now. People are more keeping their shit together. Rather than it dribbling out all over. Still, it is not, yet, all shiny happy people. Up here. There remain, yea verily, certain Problems. Like: the lines.

Lines present special problems. For the burned. Because, the day of the fire, it was all about lines. All of the people, tens of thousands of them: into the car, away from the fire, and into the lines. The lines of other cars. The traffic. Trafficking nowhere. Cars: immobile: stretching on: unmoving: forever: for all time. As the fire, it crisped it crackled and it flared, it fired and it flourished and it all over alled, it all and everyed, it was all there is was and shall be: dance! Kali! dance! and it's fervid, and it's furious, and it's real close behind you now—mad! triumphant! exultant!—and then, now, it's all around you; all you are, is in fire. And: still: there you are: stalled: traffic: stretching on: unmoving: forever: and: for all time. Even, as, now, and all around you, there is fire: nothing: but: fire. Mad! Triumphant! Exultant! And maybe then, your tires melt. And maybe then, you get out of the car, out of the line, and you run. And maybe then, your shoes melt. And maybe then, you get out of the car, and out of the line, and you run, and your shoes melt, and then maybe you: melt. You: melt. And you are in the hospital. And it's four, five months, later. And no one even knows you're there. In the hospital. You're just another burned. Who didn't die. And, therefore, you're not tallied anywhere. You're not even a number. Because the only burned, that they're counting, the official burned-counters, are the dead. And so. If you burned. In the line. But didn't die. You don't count. Not to anybody. Except to those who personally know you. You are no one. You are nothing. You are just another, unknown, burned. Burned, in the line.

And, if you're not in the hospital, burned, you're down in the town, burned, the new town, the Chico town, where, burned, for you it is now, again, all about lines: FEMA lines, SBA lines, DMV lines, insurance lines, shelter lines, everywhere lines; every day, in every way, you are herded, burned, into lines; and, meanwhile, there are lines, you burned, in the traffic, in the Chico; it is a new town, not your town, you don't know the town, you don't know how to get around, and everywhere you try to go, you burned, there are lines, lines of traffic, lines in the stores, lines where they claim they're trying to help you; except, they want you to be in lines; and that is no help, you burned; no help at all; and every time you, burned, go into a tube, there are Chico people there, Chico people unburned, and they are complaining about you, saying you have ruined their town, you have brought lines, and you have brought crime; and, like, it's really too bad, that your town burned down, but, like, we really don't want you here; because you bring lines, you bring crime, you inconvenience us; like, it takes us another five minutes to get to Trader Joe's!; you are really disturbing our wa; and so, like, when will you leave; like, can it be real soon; like, pretty much, already?

And so then you are in the line, there at the Paradise Save Mart, and it's not much of a line, because there isn't much of any people there, because there isn't much of any people in the town, because the town, it is all burned down, but you just can't be there, can't be in the line, it is a line!, it is like the other lines, it brings all the other lines, it brings them back, in the lines is the fire!, and you just can't be there; but it's going to be all okay, because all the other people there, in the line, in the Save Mart, they are all burned, they are all burned, too; and the burned, they are all corded into one another; and so the other people, there in the line, they sense, they Know, that, right now, you just cannot, cannot take, the line, not any line!, it is like the other lines!, please make the lines stop!, the lines, they are fire, all, fire; and so they move aside, the people ahead, and they let you go through, because you, in this moment, are suffering, worse than they; and I can't tell you how many times, I have seen this happen, been a part of this, when it happened, because we, we, all, we, all, we all, all are burned, and we will not have, we will not have: lines.

You may have sixty items in your cart, and I may have three, but if you are burning, in the line, worse than me: You. Will. Go. First.

Because. We will never. Again. Be. All. Lined. Up.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-R4XKuI7rA]

Or maybe you vomit on the floor in the Holiday Marker. Not because you're drunk, or fucked up on drugs, or undergoing chemo. But because you're burned. And so sometimes that happens. It just does. And nobody of the store, says a word, to you. Except to concern, that you can be okay. But another burned woman, she comes round the corner, and she sees the vomit: and she cannot deal. She runs out of the store. She is in distress. But yet another burned woman, burned woman three, she is parked outside, there in her truck. She sees the second woman, in breakdown, flee. And says: "Come over here! Look at my puppy!" And that happens. And the distressed second woman, she is calmed. Because: we get to have that. We get to have, something like that. In the burned. We get to have. Grace. Serendipity. God's love. Dark matter. Dark energy. Magic. Desire. Name it. As you will.

The Save Mart has self check-out machines, and pretty much at all times the burned are either shouting at them, or weeping before them. Because, when you are burned, with these, these machines, you cannot Deal. I myself used to be such a wizard with these machines, that people would invite me to go shopping with them, just so that I could breeze their purchases, through these machines. With these machines, I was expert. Took, even, pride, in that. Did I. But, now, now that I am burned, I have "lost the ring." As Mr. Zimmerman do say. Now, generally, when I go to the Save Mart, and I approach these machines, a store employee is dispatched at once, to stand watch over me, as I attempt to grapple with the machine, so as to, with kindness, intervene, and convince the machine to Behave, so as to prevent my shouting at top volume, or dissolving into soulevaporated tears.

I could abjure the machines, and stand in a line for a human, but I do not do lines, I never have, not in person, or in automobiles, which is one of the reasons I will not do cities; and, after the fire, just one person ahead of me, that is too many, that is a Line; and so if there is an open brain-dead machine, I will go there; even though i Hate these machines, because they are a way to try to squeeze the human workers out of the stores; I know that, and I wish all these machines were ripped out by the roots; but I don't get many of my wishes; if I did, the town would not be burned down; and if wishes, they were horses, we would ride these horses, flat out, and at top speed, out to where the fire started, and we would put the fire out, put the goddam bastard out, before it Burned. Anything.

Unlike almost everybody else, I was not in any lines, in the fire; I stayed, in the fire; where there were, no lines; just fire; I had at all times, room to move; that is what I need, at all times, in my life, room to move; though the fire didn't afford me a hell of a lot of room to move, in Real; I was too many hours pretty damn cramped; flares and embers and shoots and whatnot; and goddam towering bullshit Mordor walls of flame; but in another sense it was like it wasn't all that interested in burning me, it was more like: okay, bitch, all your life you've been fascinated with Gomorrah, well, here you go, you can be like the wife of Lot, but this time we won't turn you to salt, you get to look behind you, and survive, but good luck, you poor stupid dumbshit dipshit bastard, trying to tell the others what left behind you; and there were, several times, when, several people, did invite me, to get into their cars, to get out of it all, the fire; but the cars, they were in lines, or would soon be, in lines; and I have never done lines; and also I do not like to be in a car, when I am not driving; and if you have ever been passenger, in a car with Steve Moore, at the wheel, as I have, as he screeched at 80 mph at all times, into the Feather River Canyon, you would not want to get in somebody else's car either. Even. If. There. Was a Fire. And anyway, it's not like I escaped the mind-melt, of those who were in the lines, in the fire, because though I just stood there, "standing my ground," the fire, it moved in lines, towering wild Mordor lines, all around me, from every direction, in every diretion, for twelve fucking hours, so that the fire lawyer, he tells me, I might as well have been five years a LRRP, in Vietnam; and so what I want to know, now, is: can I collect veteran's benefits; because: you know: I think: I'd like to fucking retire, if that's all the same, to you.

Also, choices. Choosing, this can be hard, for the burned. Probably there is something about this, in the literature. But I don't care. I care only for what Is Real. Like, the woman, really frustrated, really torn, immobile; couldn't decide. Because there were two piles of sweatshirts. Some kind of "Paradise Ridge Strong" sort of thing. There was dark blue, and there was light blue. But she just couldn't decide.

Finally, she whirls around, displays them to me.

"Help me," she says. "I don't know what to do."

I considered a bit, then nodded at the dark blue. "Thank you," she said. I told her she was welcome. She went with what I said. Though who am I, to say? I hope I chose right. It's the best you can do. Try. To do.

In the Save Mart a while back a woman's voice came over the store speaker saying there would imminently be a fire alarm. She assured everyone it would only be an alarm. Just a test. Not a real fire. And so everyone should remain calm. Maintain.

Right. Sure. We would all do that.

About a minute later, the alarm sounded. It wasn't really loud. Wasn't really disturbing. And we all had been warned. But I was standing there before the freezer section, and a woman, a couple cases down, when the alarm hit, she dropped to the floor what she was pulling from the case, and put her fist to her mouth.

The alarm still sounding, I said to her: "It's okay. It's okay."

But, I felt: a deep, dark, black, wrong: liar. Like: Yossarian. Telling: Snowden. His guts with flak blasted clear through his body, it was okay, could be made all okay, with just the words: the words: the lying words: "There; there. There; there."

Alarm over, the woman thought about putting the dropped frozen package in her cart, but then she returned it to the freezer case. Then she laid her forehead, for a time, against the cold, of the case.

After a bit, she pulled back, looked at me, and smiled.

"Yes," she said. "It's okay. It's okay. It really is."

And then: we both: we both: laughed.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6eJaM4FVuI]