Befriending Jeremy "Kin I have a lift?" he asks at the Conoco Station out front.   Navajo beads.  Red headband. "It's neat, it sure is," he comments after getting in; he points out the window at colored rocks then rattles on about old Bogie flicks. "I liked that part in the Maltese Falcon where he wisecracks to the Fat Man's gunman, 'Cheap criminals always make grand patter.' Talk like that beats the shit outa the stuff that usually passes for language. Sometimes I think . . ." "Where you go to college?" I ask. "I quit," he answers. You sucker him into a gray zone.   "Truth's a cryptic code," I lead him on, "it's what you see when you use an M16 to perform surgery on a Buddhist's gallbladder." I conclude by cackling like a nitwit. Later I tell him a story about an accountant who molested boys, killed them and buried them in a cornfield. Jeremy's uneasy now.  Can't look me in the eyes. Afterwards, stuck with me for the night, he squirms awkwardly into his sleeping bag. "Good night," I say, feeling badly for him. "What?" he stammers as he jerks up into a sitting position, frightened of me, his new friend. Memory: Old Lady Phillips, in a house near the carpetmill back home, ate (no one knew why) fried cucumber slices when her belly ached. Now, like biblical oil, night air soaks cattle hair in distant barns. An hour after dawn, while smoking my first cigarette, I sense something moving under the ground and within rocks. "Hey, Jeremy, wake up, it's a great day," I shout as I grab his shoulder and shake. He opens his eyes, whines, "Get away!" "Stop acting so paranoid," I order, then ask "You think new experiences can actually change a person's life?" "Who the fuck cares?" little Mister Irritable snaps. "If you'd ever killed a man, you'd care!" I screech.