The last book I wrote before I got on with IBM was called PLUM NELLY.

PLUM NELLY. No publisher, no job, no money, no prospects. Beaten. And what beat you, he thought? "Nothing," he said aloud. "I went out too far." End book, end series, spring to easel, begin next book. New book, different book. One book, same old book.

Plumb out of the county and nearly out of the state.

I ended PLUM NELLY having a grand mal seizure walking on the beach.

Some holocaust survivors, playing Canasta and listening to the Golden Oldies station on the revetment, came down to water's edge to stare at me.

They didn't help me because I had what looked like a swastika tattooed on my shoulder.

It wasn't a swastika, it was an X with a diamond around it, differentially faded.

But you know how suggestible holocaust survivors are.

I dug sand in my ear.

I frothed at the mouth.

I tried to hide my tattoo.

IBM needed experienced professional writers, who could be productive right away, writing user manuals for programs designed to run on the IBM PC.

I was hired as a temp for 90 days, extended for 90 days, then hired permanent.

I was an Associate Information Developer.

My starting salary was $28,000 a year. In 1982.

Brenda made $35,000 a year.

Our combined salaries were a decent income, for 1982.

We bought an Asahi Pentax camera with a zoom telephoto lens, a secondhand yellow fiberglass canoe, and I built a fence around the house to keep the dog in and the Black Experience Citizens out.

The black experience citizens aggravated my dog, littered, throwing fast food wrappers and drink cups in our yard, and stole the mangos off our tree, coming into the yard and throwing sticks up into the tree to knock the ripe mangos off the branches, but not picking up the ones that had fallen to the ground, as they might be overripe.

"Don't give me none of that side shit."

They did not consider this stealing.

A mango belonged to the people, the tribe, any property a mango tree was on was not private property, it was, by virtue of having a mango tree on it, the commons.

Also, when Owen and Balder were in school, and Brenda and I were out at work, someone, I don't know who, broke into our house and stole things.

I can't blame that on black people.

It could have been Haitians.

When Hoke Moseley rescued the Haitians, who were held as virtual slaves, in Immokalee, in The Way We Die Now, he gave them some cash and told them to go to Delray Beach, where a Catholic mission would help them.

It's where Hoke would have sent them, but I always thought it was a private joke between me and Charles Willeford.

I always thought he was making fun of me for living in Haitian Capital. Or for what was happening to Haitian Capital. For me having to watch my old home town turn into Haitian Capital, before my eyes.

"New York is the capital of Puerto Rico, Miami is the capital of Cuba, and Delray Beach is the capital of Haiti."

You shouldn't talk bad about Haitians when you have a swastika tattooed on your shoulder.

Or black experience citizens.

Or holocaust survivors.

Kerouac used to shout at Allen Ginsberg, "Hitler should have finished the job."

He was a horrible right-winger. A monster.

I think Ginsberg felt sorry for him.

Maybe he had survivor's guilt, because he made it and Kerouac didn't.

Maybe he was magnanimous.

What do I know about anybody else's motives? I don't even know what my own motives are.