I jump into VW van with good time sing along travelers and head south toward sites of ancient ruins of Minoan civilization. Beautiful red dirt and blue sky. Terraced into hillsides, the unwalled palaces of Knossos and Phaistos, puts Spoonman in mind of his mother's kitchen. Double Axes remind me of my grandmother. Bull horns bring to mind my father. Images of bare breasted women holding snakes in each hand, the arena where young men and women would vault over the horns of charging bulls, murals of dolphins and blue monkeys, all these worked their way into my memory, never to be dislodged. From the highest terrace, I looked across the plains below, and saw a priest in a black cassock and a tall brimless black hat riding a little motor scooter. Trailing him by a quarter of a mile were my two friends from the village each riding motor scooters and raising their fists at each other. "Pig", "Butcher", I could almost hear. Where were they going? I borrowed an Englishman's binoculars, and saw further ahead, in front of them all, down the road in a cloud of dust, a solitary blonde, also on a motor scooter, heading straight for the blue Mediterranean.

I commandeered my own motor scooter and joined the pursuit. It was a great chase that brought to mind old western movie chases. Villagers and farmers, women at their bread ovens, old men with their small coffee cups would freeze as one by one the procession of motor scooters would rip through their dusty streets. My head was lost in the speed, and in thunderous chords of Jimi Hendrix music. Soon, I saw the sea just over the next rise, red rooftops of the little white beach houses against the sand. As I hit the beach I saw a crowd gathered down the way. I headed towards the water, where the sand was firm, and raced towards the assembled crowd. The actual story of what happened, perhaps will never be known. The versions I heard that day, if all put together would so contradict each other as to make impossible any account of the truth. There were foreigners from every continent, blondes from Nigeria, blacks from China, Orientals from Sweden, the usual Germans, French and English, an entire commune of hippies from Oregon, four Carmelite nuns from Chicago, the Greek Olympic sailing team; they each had a story to tell.

I will tell you what I saw with my own eyes. On the sand, lay my two friends, wrapped in the still embrace of death, there were no weapons, though several of the assembled testified to the presence of all types of weapons, which had suddenly, before my arrival, been washed out to sea. As for myself, I saw no weapons, just these two, their faces inches apart, as if frozen in mid-insult. The white bearded village priest in the black cassock lay on his back with a sharpened piece of driftwood driven deep into his chest, his still burning eyes open, united at last, with some unspeakable truth. A glow of light, extra bright, as is common in the Mediterranean, shone over us, as if clouds had opened on an otherwise cloudy day, to drive away shadows from this moment that would live forever in the eyes of the assembled witnesses. And the girl? There she was, as if she had just emerged from the sea. Out of breath, holding herself up with one arm, the water washing up around her, her legs buried in the wet sand. Her eyes, languid and empty, invited no questions. No one spoke. Everyone knew better. A moment like this, everyone united in a conspiracy of blamelessness. No one believed what they had seen. No one desecrated the silence, least the whole thing vanish, the strange glow fade, and the inevitable pull to life drag us drag us all into this dream. ...>