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Prose Nocturnes: Summer Hire
Fourth day of the job (Thursday, June 19th, 1975), I fell (or, finding out more properly, was pushed) down a high, steep slope, losing my hardhat, safety vest, tool belt, and the elevation rod, only to land in what appeared to be a huge (and hugest I had seen) patch of poison ivy. As the other crewmembers looked down at me, the foreman shouted: "We make a sacrifice every summer of some seasonal hire not from around here---you will not be found any time soon," as the poison ivy, which was something other and more sinister than common poison ivy, began to devour me, agonizingly slow, and not yet done.
