Point and Shoot, Florida (YU)--Heap almost forgot to write about digging at Shadows-on-the-Teche.

That's because in the other book he was typing up, HEAP, he had just written about digging at Shadows-on-the-Teche, in New Iberia.

Heap was writing a book called I REMEMBER YEATS

Heap got a job digging at Shadows-on-the-Teche, a summer dig. He was the crew chief. The crew were two high school kids, who would go back to school, in New Orleans, in the fall. The Shadows was in New Iberia.

Then Heap would stay on an extra month, back in the lab, in New Orleans, to help the bossman analyze artifacts and write his site report.

The bossman proposed to pay Heap the same amount he paid the crew members while they were in the field and pay him all three paychecks the last month. So Heap made more than the crew members, he just wouldn't get the money until the last month of the dig.

Whatever.

This was the first job Heap had taken since he started writing.

He would get the crew started, repair to the attic of The Shadows, where he had made himself a little writing studio, and write until lunchtime. Then he'd go down and eat with the bossman and the crew.

In the afternoons, he did the same thing. He got them started, went upstairs, and wrote.

When they came to the bottom of a level, or came upon a feature, Heap would come down and plot and photograph the squares, shoot elevations. Then he'd go back upstairs.

He kept field notes in the log book, so he could reconstruct what they'd done, in the site report.

At the end of the day, the crew would put up the tools and wash artifacts and Heap would head out for the trailer, on his bicycle.

They lived in a trailer out by Spanish Lake. Spanish Lake Trailer Park.

Heap was the cook.

He'd give the bossman a list and the bossman would shop for groceries once a week in the car.

In the mornings, Heap would get up and fix shirred eggs, side meat, grits, toast, and coffee. He'd leave for the site on his bicycle and the crew would wash the dishes and make sandwiches for lunch. Heap would drink coffee in a diner until the crew arrived, when he'd go over to the site and start work.

On the way home, on his bicycle, Heap would stop at the supermarket and get two tall six-packs of beer, which he would drink, while he cooked, and after supper.

The crew ate well.

Heap was a good cook.

They ate a lot of fresh seafood, but also turkey, ham, roast beef, roast pork, leg of lamb, deer meat, and lots of stews and chowders. That is, he cooked roasts, hams, whole turkeys.

This weekend, in Maine, Country Man Dan bought Owen some moose steaks.

He said they were good, cooked over an open fire.

I bet they were. Owen and Balder are good cooks.

At the start of the dig, Heap told the bossman he was a writer, and he was going to write. He wouldn't try to hide it.

He'd do his crew chief duties, conscientiously, but when he wasn't needed, down at the squares, he wasn't going to hang around, and pretend to be busy, he was going to go upstairs, and write.

The bossman understood.

That was okay with the bossman.

Just as not getting paid a crew chief's wages until the last month of the dig was okay with Heap.

The last month of the dig, the National Trust for Historic Preservation told Heap to go home, with the high school kids, and told the bossman to analyze his own artifacts and write his own site report. So Heap got paid a high school kids wages after all. And worked two months instead of three.

The bossman was sorry. But what could he do? The National Trust didn't like Heap writing in the attic instead of looking busy. It made them look bad. It made them look wasteful and inattentive. It made them look like poor administrators.

An example had to be made.

They also didn't pay the bossman his last month's salary until he delivered a satisfactory site report. I don't know if he ever got paid or not. I think he depended on Heap to write the report and had no idea what they'd done.

Heap learned something from this.

If you write on the job, be discreet. Don't flaunt it. Don't confront the company. Then they'll have to do something.

Dissemble. Use guile. Pretend to be working on company work.

You don't have to work.

But you have to pretend.

You have to playact.

Then they have a hold over you and everybody's happy.

You can do nothing until the cows come home, but you can't do your own work on company time. It makes the company look bad.

Do you masturbate?

Well go behind the chemical etch machine with the Playboy magazine and jack off.

My fellowship ran out and we moved to the mountains to live poor and write. We would live with Jack Neff, Karol, and young John Neff, in Laurel Cottage, at Penland School of Handicrafts. I would write, Jack would make pots, Brenda and Karol would have babies and look for jobs on the local economy with benefits like health insurance.

When I went around and told my anthropology professors that I was going to be a writer, one of them said, "Good for you." He was going to leave academia and go into public archeology, becoming state archeologist in West Virginia, or Arkansas, or some state with a good program, which he made better.

Another professor said, "Many are called but few are chosen--a career takes 20 years."

When he said that, I realized that Tulane never intended to graduate me, and Brenda, or Larry, they just accepted us to get our tuition, and, in my case, matching funds from the federal government. They accepted us in bad faith. They bargained with us in bad faith, intending to flunk us out, and make us feel like it was our fault, feel that we couldn't hack it, that we didn't measure up.

Why, those bastards.

I was glad I got them for a year.

At least I got a year out of them.

At the end of my fellowship year I had written two books and half of a third book. I felt like I had gotten my sea legs under me as a writer.

I might not have found my voice yet, but I'd found my rhythm, my work habits, my seat.