The road to Hoosegow, Oregon smells like crushed juniper berries. My companion and I have been walking it for miles. She says it smells like pine needles and rubbing alcohol, but I know she means gin. I don’t tell her that. She doesn’t like to talk about old friends. I stopped drinking G&Ts a while back because they taste like two weeks, two years ago. They taste like air from a Kenmore a/c unit at noon in a squalid hotel room in Laughlin, Nevada, like six letters from abroad with pictures enclosed, like the question I couldn’t gather courage to ask. On the road to Hoosegow, Oregon, she kicks up dust and we throw stones.
Erik Wilbur 