Palmer clearly understood he did not have to work.  This was not mentioned -- nobody really told him anything -- but was sensible.  Indeed, at no point did anyone try to tell him he had to work.  There were plenty of people to do the work.  And look at them!  They loved it!

Hundreds upon hundreds of laborers were toiling in the gully, which passed as a field.  Each of them, male or female, wore yellow linen shirts and gray slacks.  Each was equipped with a bandana which some chose to tie across their forehead.  Palmer himself wore a white silk shirt and yellow cotton trousers.  Every one of the workers smiled as they lifted rocks from one location to another, or built small wooden sheds in which they were to store their tools and implements.  As far as Palmer could see, however, theirs was wasted effort.  Another work crew, another day, would simply move the stones back to their original position, dissemble the sheds, or collect, categorize and quarter the rakes, shovels, picks and hoes.

Palmer rarely talked with these people.  They were so annoyingly happy about what they were doing.  To make matters worse, they seemed to know that another crew would eventually demolish the work they had done. 

"You just don't understand, buddy," one laborer had told him, "We like working with our hands.  Oh, sure, at first we were a bit miffed about our projects being taken apart.  But if you notice, the system is regimented so well that we go in a circle around Dobblers Mountain, there.  The crews, which undo what we have done, are so many miles behind us that we are a quarter of the way around the mountain, and cannot see what they're doing.  Also, when we swing past again, we simply re-do what we did at first."

"But don't you look upon all this as busy work, mindless repetition?  All you do is re-do what you've previously done."

"Naw, not at all.  As I say, we enjoy working with our hands, and when you enjoy something, you can do it all day long.  Hell," he said as he wiped gritty sweat from his neck, "the only way we ever found out about the other crews behind us what when a lazy, no account ass like you told us.  Yep, some lazy, shiftless butt who sat up on that ridge for twenty, thirty, some odd years, told us.  Hell, all you guys eventually come down into the gully.  You eventually talk to us and laugh at us.  But you'll see.  It's you that's being laughed at."

"Palmer shook his head in disbelief.  "Don't you feel like you're getting nowhere.??

"Where's there to go, buddy?  We can go anywhere we want; any time we want.  Getting nowhere?  That's not the point.  We are doing what we enjoy doing, just like you."

When Palmer did not respond, the worker continued, "Hell, man, you think we're getting nowhere?  You guys just sit on top of that ledge and don't do shit.  I'm not sure you are the ones to be complaining."

Palmer asked him, "Why don't you go for re-training."

"Ya just don't understand, do you?  We are doing what we want to be doing!  You loafers talk about progress, getting somewhere, about identity with a task, and all that hog wash."

The interviewee shook his head sadly and continued, "We like the feel of the earth, and the texture of the clay as it breaks apart in our hands, the density and weight of the stone we have to struggle against to get on the other side of that ditch.  We like the strength transmitted in the depth of our fiber when the hammer pounds the nail.  You ever know the wholesome, solid feeling you get from sinking a three-inch nail into a beefy side of lumber?  You ever know the feeling of thrusting a spade into the resistant texture of the brown soil and working looses a mound of earth?  No.  I didn't think so."

"You enjoy that, huh?"

"Enjoy it?" the laborer took on a dreamy, far away look, "Hell, man, they use to call that poetry, and use to sit for hours in front of a blank sheet of paper trying to get the sound of it all through a pen.  Ya can't do it. You gotta wrap your calloused hands around the silently bragging piece of  domesticated wood they stick on the end of an ax, and swing that ax with the force of the wild wind which blows into your face as a reminded.  Hell, man; you can't write about that shit.  You gotta work it through your sweat.

"Now, don't get me wrong," the man continued, "I'm not putting down writers.  Hell, they've got a job to do, too..  They've made me see a thing or two about lifestyles, which I could never call my own.  But they basically guess at it.  Oh, sure, they might work the field, but when they go to write about the Kansas housewife who has to tame dust and pray the rainless spell will end, why, they're sitting in front of a blank piece of paper and, even if they talked to that woman, or even if they've been thirsty, they just make it up.  You know what I mean, buddy?

Palmer sat on the ridge for an interminable length of time.  He saw myriads of workers come around the mountain.  After a while, he began to recognize a few of them.  Soon, he was able to pick out more and more of them.  Then he had heard all of their life stories, knew them in nearly the most intimate way possible, and had swallowed the micro-details of their history and fantasy.  He had heard every one of their names, every momentous event in their lives, which they chose or were prompted to tell him.  He recognized not only their faces, but knew the exact location of every mole and wart on their face and neck and hands.  He had heard every one of their complaints and dreams.

The myriads of laborers had become exceedingly stale.  They were repetitious and brutish.  After so much time, he could not help but look upon them as quite humorless and disgusting.  He would look down from the ledge and see a face, any face, and this would set off a chain of associations which included the name of the person he saw, the tales of their lives, the descriptions of their remembered relatives and acquaintances, the daily events of those persons, and who know what all.  Damn memory, which grows more and more acute, anyway!  The people in the gully would collide and gel into a brew mixed of former hopes and fears, location of scars, detailed work experiences, and a pantheon of verbal miseries from which he could not escape.  He would try to imagine them saying or doing something else, but even his imagination had worked in circles as the laborers marched around and around Dobblers Mountain.  He recognized the things he made up to keep himself entertained as having been expressed before, repeatedly, over and over again.  He wondered how his memory can have become so all eventful at the same time as his imagination became stagnant and pitiful.

On a good day, he would frame a bon mot, which, although he ended up repeating it to himself ad infinitum, sounded good at first.  Heaven, he concluded, not once, not a dozen times, must be heaven because of comparison not only with what was, but also with what might have been.  In the beginning, he shared his thoughts with workers and, although they would nod with glee, they did not seem to share his understanding.  Further, as days drudged on, the workers sickened him.  He thought how odd it was that events, which do not pass in close proximity, too, become monotonous after so much repetition.  He despised seeing the laborers and their stupid, inane smiles.

Palmer tried to keep his eyes closed, but this became tedious as well.  He eyes snapped open impulsively.  He rubbed mud over his eyes, smothered his face with earth, and yet inevitably swept the mess away in the hope of seeing something new for a change.  He hoped to see refreshing sights.  He hoped he would be relieved from this damnable terror of doing nothing.  Heaven is so full of hope.

To make matters worse, it seemed every time he was finally able to close his eyes, some agrarian laborer would call to him.

"How ya doin', Palmer?  Long time no see."

 "Hey, Palmer; what's up."

"Palmer, my man.  How's it hangin'?"

Oh, the myriad upon myriad of trite, worn out phrases.  Palmer might wave back disgustedly..  He generally though to throw some clot of soil at the workers, but refrained.  No one knew what the punishment would be when it was finally reckoned.  It was always best to remain cool headed.

Quite often, Palmer questioned himself in a rhetorical fashion, and questioned the laborers in an animate manner, why he never saw another "slacker" like himself.  He was given various replies, a torturously repeated number of times.  Most answers were a version of, "They're here, down here with us."  This answer always seemed ridiculous to Palmer, if only because he did eventually attempt to join the workers, but could not.  Frequently he was told, "You won't believe me if I told you."  Too often for his liking he was simply greeted with a shrug of the shoulders.

Day after day, intrepid hour after intrepid hour, agonizing minute after agonizing minute, excruciating second after excruciating second, Palmer sat within what he feared was his fatal destiny.  Occasionally he would scream in a horrendously vibrant voice.  None of the laborers seemed to recognize his terror.  If they did, they did not respond to it.  How cruel.  Yet Palmer knew the reason.  He had had it told to him so many, many times before.

"All you lazy asses end up screaming after a while.  Doing what you want is just too tedious for some people."

Once he had asked, twice, three hundred thousand times he had asked if this was hell.  He was consistently, adamantly told it was not.  Early on he had asked several times if he was condemned to repeat the fable of the grasshopper who did not prepare for winter and was caught without supplies.  He was incessantly told he was not living any predictable fable.  Indeed, there were no cycles to the years.  No winter came to call him unprepared.  No spring came to fill him with youthful mirth.  No autumn came with its cool prompt to reflection or, in Palmer's case, the chill of forgetfulness.  It was summer always, forever, eternally, throughout infinity.  And Palmer had been told why this was so on numerous, far too numerous occasions.

All these workers liked working in the summer.  There was another mountain around which those who enjoyed working in spring labored.  There was another for those who enjoyed winter.  A fourth for those who liked fall,  And there were various seasonal locations for those who felt good working near water, and those who enjoyed working plains, and those who enjoyed desert locations.  And so on and so on and so on.  And so on.

And there were areas for computer scientists, readers, engineers, masons, corporate executives, and even for secretaries, sanitation workers, and janitorial personnel.

"Yes, Palmer was assured seven hundred, possibly seven thousand times, "there are people who REALLY DO enjoy being sales people."

I don?t believe it!  I don't believe it!  I cannot believe it goes on like this interminably, without cessation!  Forever and ever!  Day in and day out!

The funny thing was, Palmer had long ago given up trying to determine what was a proscribed day or night.  There were none.  It seemed the group of workers by common, silent ascent, agreed when they had worked a sufficient amount of time and went off for leisure activities or sleep.  It did not matter how long they worked: one hours, several hours, more hours than a typical day can have filled.   At some unspoken point, each worker gently laid his or her tools on the ground and joked gaily as they shuffled off for poker or play tennis, shuffleboard or golf, or to become an audience for this or that comic's heaven.  There are always big laughs, nothing but big laughs.  The comedians wanted them (and worked for them), and the audience wanted them just as much.  An hour or so after they left, the sun on the left horizon would descend, and it would be night.  The sun on the right horizon, however, was always shining.  It shone in the distance, over what the workers referred to as Bright City.  Bright City never closed.

Darkness would descend in an arc over the ridge upon which Palmer sat.  He would then saunter into the motel to sleep in the musty, dank room.  He consistently tried to feel it as a relief when he would punctiliously arise, shower, dress, shave, breakfast, and move off to the ridge.  There was nowhere else for him to go.  There was nowhere else to go.  There was nowhere else.

Occasionally Palmer would wonder why he was not sitting on some ridge overlooking sheep farmers or welders or watching creative writers agonize over which verb or pronoun to use.  He thought their professions might have been more foolish than physical laborers.  "At least we get exercise everyday," people kept telling him.  Good, Lord, shut up!  Shut up!  Just SHUT UP!  But he knew being on another ridge would be equally tedious and dull.  He knew what it would be like.  He knew what conversations would occur.  He knew over and over and over again how they would react to him, what their life stories would have been, what sights they would have seen in the prime of their lives and now had the opportunity to drill into an unwilling listener. 

     Palmer was sick to death of his own thoughts.  He wished these damn people would come up with some new memories, or refreshing insights, or unique perspectives.  Damn them all, anyhow.  They kept repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating the same tired and trite and boring crap.  I wish they would all just shut up.  Shut up!  SHUT UP!

Palmer was screaming from his spot on the ledge.  The workers ignored him, as usual.  Clank, clank, cheer-rang, clank, heir instruments spoke when he did not question the workers.  Ever these nonsense sounds had memories and statements, which grated on his nerves.  After as while, he became aware of a pattern they shared.  Although never a laborer himself, he thought endlessly that the men and women in the gully ought to throw their instruments on the ground and walk away in protest.  Of what?  On the damnable indeterminacy of existence.  But they continued on, smiling their stupid smile and sharing their worn out old jokes.

Then Palmer would feel the weariness of self-blame.  Why was it their fault they each had their own particular memories or insights of favorite topics of conversation?  They, at least, were happy!  This was their heaven, this toil beneath the left sun, this endless breathing in dust and dried sweat.  His unhappiness cannot have been their fault.  It was all his fault for not asking the right questions.

No!  Not true!  He had asked every damn question of each and every damn worker there was to ask.

So the recurrent pattern of tedium, guilt, and hostility worked itself in multiples as the sun on the left rose, the sun on the left sunk.

How many times had he called this hell?  How many times had he cursed God, and was unable to die away from his ledge?  How many times had he begged and pleaded and screamed out clots of blood for pity, for mercy, for extinction, for change, for lovable, enjoyable, inexplicable, indeterminate change.  The word hardly possessed any meaning for him anymore.

Then one day, with no preface and no announcement, no drums or fife or fugal, Palmer shaved, dressed, showered, breakfasted, and walked past the ledge, and stood in the gully with the others.  Then he noticed his white silk shirt was in fact yellow linen, his yellow cotton trousers gray.  He was positively tingling when he fingered the red bandana in his right hand.  He was dizzy with joy.  Had he not tried to get into the gully to work prior to this instant?  Of course he had.  Hundred of thousands of times!  But now, the hoe was at his fingertips.  He took the object firmly into his hands, feeling the hard, polished surface of the wood.  His smile nearly hurt his face.  The first strike to the ground caused a shock of sensations the hurl throughout his body.

"This is great!" he said giddily to the woman on his left.  She smiled in return, and bent to help a friend push a large stone into a wheel barrel laid on its side.  Palmer lunged forward to help, along with three or four others, set the barrel into an upright position.  Suddenly a man in a tan silk shirt was standing in front of him.

"What's your name?" the man asked.

"Terry Palmer," he answered brightly.

"Tell me something, Terry Palmer.  Don't you feel a bit ridiculous out here in this hot sun moving crap from one place to another?"

"Works gotta be done," said someone on his right.

Palmer smiled and asked the interrogator his name.

"Henry Mason."

"Look, Henry Mason.  This may surprise you.  Or, again, you may have heard this answer before now, or you may hear this answer another twelve hundred seventy three million times.  But, Henry, it feels damn good to work.  It can tell you that, Henry.  It feels damn good."

Mason simply looked pitiably at Palmer, shook his head, and climbed upon the ridge where he sat down to enjoy the spectacle.

"See you soon," Palmer said, more to himself than the other.  Then he pushed the thin silver blade of the hoe through the thick, profuse patch of useless greenery, which covered the foot of the mountain.  It will grow back, he thought.  But for now, I am the victor.  For now, I am happy.