Nathan chuckled quickly, "Oh this is a great story! I'm in Prof.Ballard's Creative Writing class, and it's the first day. He startsthings off with a... icebreaker exercise. Everyone is sitting in a circleand we are to take turns saying our name, what we did that summer, and alittle something about why we are in the class. I don't even rememberwhat I said. But it gets to be Trisha's turn, and I'd never even met herbefore, and she says 'Over the summer I was magically transformed from amiddle. She had begun at dawn and worked until evening glimmered along the horizon in her rose garden. It is in many ways a delicious sensation of muscles stretched and used after too long a time of indifference. Indeed, if but for a moment, this pleasing pain distracts her from the deeper ache in her heart, the echo of emptiness left by the recent death of her husband. In the hinterland of consciousness, gliding between reality and dreams, Shelli wonders why the fragrance of the roses is suddenly. "We get a lot of cars in here. Any wreckson the highway at least, or ones from the town. Mostly the reservefolk just run theirs until they fall apart. And then we take theparts. A lot of the metal gets used in projects. We just make what wecan from the bits and pieces. Like this fellow." She pointed to ahuge structure in the corner of the barn.It was about 25 feet tall, and was a kind of a Pacific First Nationstotem pole, but built entirely of auto parts welded together. It wasmassive, and. And that was that. Brent could be a hard-headed son-of-a-bitch sometimes. He was on the fast track to general and gave it up without thinking twice. And deep down she was grateful that he was willing to sacrifice so much for her. She felt guilty because she could no longer care for herself, early on, he had to do everything for her. He drove her to and from the hospital. He cooked for and fed her. He made her do the exercises at home. Some days she hated him for pushing her as hard as he ran.