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EDITOR’S NOTE: Following is Chapter 9 of “Adrift in America: Diary of a Minimalist Mariner,” a work found in the nonfiction section:

Caldwell, Texas. March 17, 1989.

It is one fine hot day in Caldwell. I am leaning on the passenger door of the truck, waiting for my clothes to dry in the laundromat. In the side mirror, I can see my face being turned rosy by the sun, aided by a kingsize can of beer I am storing just inside the open window on the passenger seat. A few feet away, a man with chestnut arms and face, about my age, leans against a post at the laundromat entrance and sips what appears to be beer from a white coffee mug while his clothes spin around in the machines. His hat explains to whom it belongs and at the same time makes a strangely appropriate observation about the weather: The hat says, “Daddy’s Hat, Daddy’s Hot.”

He can see I’m reading his hat when I ask, “How’s it going, Daddy?”

“Fine enough, sir,” he says, although it comes out something like “Fahn enuff, suh.”

We smile at each other. I bring the can out for a sip and put it back in the truck. He takes a sip from his cup.

We smile at each other again. It is time to start a conversation.

“I was wondering, sir, if you could tell me what these trees are that I’ve been seeing along the road. They look like hardwoods, but I don’t recognize them. There’s some of them across the street, in front of that white house there.”

“What whaht house?” he asks.

“That white house,” I say, pointing.

“Poce sokes,” he says.

“Poor soaks?” I ask.

“Not poe. Poce.”

“How do you spell that?”

“Poce. P, o, s, t.”

“No, not the fence posts. The trees that are behind them.”

“Poce. Poce sokes,” he says.

“Ah, post oaks,” I say. “I guess I’ve heard of them. Small, hardy oaks that were cut for posts by the early ranchers.”

He nods his head. We smile again.

He comes closer to the truck and looks at the Maine license plate. He frowns.

No one is quite sure how the state of Maine got its name. The most common theory is that the state was named because its coast was the mainland that colonial ships followed on their way back to Europe. Or because the Gulf of Maine was the first high sea that those ships bounded over. But there is a lesser-known theory that the state was named for a rural district in France that is still called Maine.

“How you get this truck here?” Daddy asks. “You a long way from home.”

“I drove,” I say.

“Not by boat?” he asks.

“Say, just where do you think Maine is?” I ask.

“Somewhere in Europe, ain’t it?”

I look at him, and we grin at each other again. I bring out the beer can and lift it toward him, he lifts his cup toward me, and we have a drink on it.

“It might as well be, Daddy,” I say. “It might as well be.”

– Sid Leavitt