When the hillsmen became literate, Trinity disbanded (logos, humility & letterless authority). Freed from death wish, Ghost began to renovate, formlessness now fashionable in the mind of man – and woman, raw at the wrist. Man, of course, saw sinless implications, sexless bent, promise of bandwidth.

Ghost, no longer divisible, took long-distance busses to homes of the unwary, struck up conversations, found flint in hearts beating beneath metal. It moved among women putting up persimmons; got shot on a doorstep of a professional mourner. Consummate bit player, it fixed the cigarette burns in chiffon, took out a policy opposite a man with one arm and a quota. Jumped off bridges to cheers.

Ghost witnessed sad hands on a steel drum, pancaked face of a saint reclining on rails. It hit the bell with a greased mallet and found no comfort in The Calculus: Ghost gave blood to the bleeding. There was no tense for redemption: Ghost renewed needles. Words became the blue light between the horns, death, an anagram. Ghost had a pulse now and four cards to a Vermont autumn.

Someone swallowed Drano and someone wrote a bad play. A woman gave birth in a hailstorm. Ice broke suddenly. The hillsmen traded marimbas for metaphor. Ghost burned books. The hillsmen ran their tongues across their mustaches. Ghost exorcised iron, packed clown cars with oratory.

Ghost held the sun still. Shadows were seen as the run-on sentences they were. A couple kissed in a Pinto.  The hillsmen stood for days on giant silent plains, and changed their name.