“Yeah? And what then?” Greyson asked.
Cargill sipped more mocha chai. “Well, while I was running from the cannibals (if they were cannibals) I literally ran right into Clete, and he was running from a gang of… of gangsters, I guess.”
“Gangsters in the middle of the jungle?” Greyson waved at the server.
“Why not? We’d already run into a gorilla tribe, the Jungle King, the elephant graveyard, and a river full of piranha.”
“Yes, sir?” The server inquired.
“Can I get a refill here?” Greyson indicated his empty mug.
“Right away,” she said.
“But gangsters don’t seem to fit the theme,” Greyson objected.
“Yeah, well, there they were. And it turned out to be a good thing, really.”
Greyson silently raised his eyebrows.


“You see, when Clete and I ran into each other, we fell over into the underbrush at the side of the trail, which ran fairly straight for several hundred yards at that point. The next thing we knew, the gangsters and the tribesmen ended up staring at each other along the trail.”
Greyson grinned. “I think I see where this is going.”
“Don’t laugh,” Cargill said. “It may look like a tired cliché now but Clete and I were scared out of our wits—not that Clete’d ever have admitted it. At the time it seemed like a fantastic stroke of luck.”
“I assume the natives and the gangsters decided to take care of each other?”
Cargill nodded. “They seemed to be natural enemies. As soon as they caught sight of one another, they raised a holler I swear you could have heard from Inner Mongolia, and charged. Clete and I crawled away, and not a hundred feet away came on another trail, just a bare track through grassy bushes.”
“Grassy? Meaning…”
“Meaning we were coming out of the weeds, though we didn’t realize it at first.  But only a minute or two further on we saw the little grass hut, or anyway a little grass hut, just like before. We just about killed each other racing to get into and through it, and when we got to the other side, I could hear cars honking on the street.”
“Here you are, sir.” The server poured more coffee. “Do you need a refill on the chai, sir?”
“I’m good,” Cargill said.
“Was that the end of it?”
“Pretty much. I don’t know about Clete, but I came back the next day to see if it would happen again, but I couldn’t find the right spot. I did follow that rivulet of water running through the patch. There was a little puddle in the middle with, I swear, tiny fish in it, the size of my little finger, and on the other side I found a couple of twigs tied together with grass stems lying on one side of the stream.”
“Your raft,” Greyson said.
“Or something like it.”
“And you and Clete?”
Cargill shrugged. “I suppose I should tell you we became fast friends and learned a valuable lesson about teamwork and forgiveness and brotherly love, but the fact is, we never really took to each other.  And two days later, the whole field was bulldozed for a housing development. Whatever the illusion, or whatever it was, was gone.”
“I’m not so sure.”
Cargill and Greyson looked up in surprise at the server.
“Pardon?” Cargill said.
“Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing,” she said. “And I think your illusion might have lasted longer than you think. This vacant lot of yours, did it happen to be on the corner of Old San Esteban and Willow View?”
“It was on Old San Esteban,” Cargill said slowly. “But Willow View doesn’t connect with it.”
“It does now,” she said. “I guess you haven’t been back there in a while, but I grew up in that neighborhood, too.”
Cargill and Greyson exchanged a slightly amused glance. The server must have been all of seventeen or eighteen.
“So?”
“So, we used to ride our bikes along Willow View to school, and you always had to watch out at that corner. If you weren’t paying attention, you’d end up getting lost for an hour and be late to school.”
“How does that relate to my weed patch?”
“Well, when you got lost, you’d always end up riding over a muddy stream with a circle of ruined cabins next to it.”