Brenda and I were sweethearts.

We had anthropology classes together, we studied in the library in the evenings together, in the area of the library where the anthropology books were stacked, we went on a summer dig together, in Panacea. That's where we fell in love. Clearing brush, shoveling dirt. You can tell a lot about a person on a dig. It's like training camp for the NFL, two-a-days, it's like basic training, bivouac, the obstacle course.

In my case it was like Harry Andrews riding Sean Connery in The Hill. It was like a military stockade. That was the second summer on the mound, the summer of the mutiny.

The first summer, everything went like clockwork.

Then, in the fall, our major professor, whom we called the principal investigator (PI), hired a new second in command, or executive officer (XO), to run his program for him.

This person was something of a martinet, who seemed more concerned with giving orders than with doing things right, or learning how to do things better. His management style clashed with the casual, laid-back approach the tightly-knit crew were used to.

We practically ran ourselves. We were a laid-back, but tightly-knit crew.

We had esprit de corps. Our morale was high.

During the school year, we went on weekend field trips to the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, to the Firetower site, a Santa Rosa-Swift Creek midden, to dig. We camped out, and bathed at the campground in Newport, across Highway 98 from the refuge.

So this is a PI novel.

Actually, PI stands for post-inaccrochable: what you write when you can't sell what you write.

All my books are PI novels. And my theme is vocation and career in conflict. How do you do the best work you are capable of when the world is hostile or indifferent to your best?

You've got the XO sleeping in a camper trailer with the PI, like some kind of a brownnose, instead of on the ground, with the crew.

He didn't earn his badge, with the crew, he was brought in, from outside, and imposed on the crew.

The second summer on the mound, the PI rented a beach cottage out on Alligator Point.

There was a men's bay area, with bunk beds in it, a women's bay area, with bunk beds in it, and the PI and XO slept in the main room, which was cooler, owing to window screens and cross ventilation and ocean breezes.

There was no air-conditioning.

Things like making breakfast, fixing sandwiches for lunch, and loading the trucks, for the trip to the site, were tense, instead of joyful. Instead of joking and camaraderie there was tension, hands-on supervision, orders given, about simple tasks the crew knew how to do without being told. A certain reserve, not to say resistance, not to say sullen disobedience, insubordination through manner, began to assert itself, to rise up, naturally, like the rising gorge in a nausea patient, or someone who needed to vomit.

The PI was going to go to Germany, to a scientific congress, to deliver a paper, and then tour Europe, in the middle of the dig, and the XO was being groomed to run things in his absence. For the duration of the dig.

The crew were not cooperating. The crew were recalcitrant.

The PI started leaving the XO at the site with the crew by himself all day, whereas previously, the two of them had gone off in the bossman Land Rover to have coffee with the deputy sheriffs and lady realtors and talk about the loneliness of being a shit.

Hell, the crew could run themselves. They'd done it the summer before.

Now that the XO was at the site with the crew all day he felt the need to establish his authority once and for all, to assert his dominance, over the crew, and he decided to select one member of the crew, the largest one, me, and get in his face. To stay on him like white on rice. To see what he was made of.

There could be little incidents, the suspense, gradually building up. The turn of the screw. Me sharpening my shovel every morning with a file and grinning at the XO like Ty Cobb in the dugout sharpening his spikes and grinning at the second baseman on the opposite team.

One day I was shovel-shaving on the mound and the XO got on me about not making enough progress, not going fast enough, not moving enough dirt. I was being careful. Meticulous. And, I was moving a lot of dirt.

I was like John Henry competing with the mechanical pile driver. Instead of pacing myself, I overdid it, and got tired. I got fatigued, and made a mistake. My shovel bit into the dirt and cut a big divot in the level I was planing down, like a carpenter with a plane.

The XO got on me.

"God damn it," he said, "Look what you have done. You bit into the dirt. You're standing wrong. You are standing downhill, shoveling up. You should be standing uphill, shoveling down. Turn around and do it right."

I did as I was told.

He went off to supervise someone else.

Gradually, I shifted around to the more natural, the more comfortable position.

I didn't do it on purpose. I did it unconsciously. Muscle memory caused me to find a position that was more comfortable to me. Down, shoveling up. Rather than up, shoveling down.

My shovel bit into the dirt again.

The XO was walking up when it happened.

"God damn it," he said, 'look what you have done. Are you defying me? I told you to stand up, and shovel down, and here you are, standing down, and shoveling up. You will God damn do as I say."

I regarded him in the hot sun.

I thought about disemboweling him with my shovel.

I thought about going in right over the pubic bone, guiding the shovel with my left hand, my right hand providing the power stroke, going up, to just under the sternum, twisting, what's the spirit of the bayonet, men, to kill.

I picture his guts spilling out and steaming in the hot sand, the look of incredulity on his face. Shocked dismay.

"No, sir, I reckon I won't," I said, and walked off the mound for an unscheduled Dixie cup of water.

Our water breaks were rigidly scheduled under his watch.

Taking an unscheduled water break was itself a contumacious act.