I met Mr. "Ambrose Bierce" in his cozy bungalow in Athens, GA, during a particularly humid period in August. He greeted me at the door and welcomed me in, but kept looking away, claiming he had a phobia of face-to-face meetings. I shrugged and followed his lead through the hallway and out to the back porch, which had a fine view of the R.E.M. slums; kudzu, gnarled trees, and rusting machines everywhere, half-asleep. Fireworks and hand guns were heard off in the distance and the whole scene just made me a bit nervous and, admittedly, a bit moist.

On the porch his first words to me were,

"Red or white?"

And I did not know what to think. I told him I preferred blue or maybe even pink, depending on what you're referring to.

"Yes, I do think the blue Russians are my favorite Russians of all."

I asked, "Why Russians, why not the sky or trees or the grass?"

"Bluegrass, I do like that also," he responded. "How about Bombay Sapphire?"

"Bombay Sapphire? What, um, the hell is that?"

"Brewed in Madison county. Once a year they have this big festival where they tread the sapphire, which causes their heels to bleed profusely and they take the bloody sapphire juice and distill it in vats in an abandoned Civil War munitions factory. Later, the mayor of Madison passes out bottles from a horse-drawn buggy, a bottle for every one of the Madisonites..."

"And that's the Madison mentioned in 'Selfish Birthday.."'

"So I've heard say."

At that instant a loud screeching of tires came from nearby, a truck gunning its engine and speeding down the road. The cloud of bitter smoke which soon filled the porch drove out the smell of fresh-baked pizza I'd noticed earlier, and I had to stiffle a gag.

"That's Logan... treating Boulevard like it's his own private drag strip. Always burning rubber, rubber and god knows what other stuff. Did you see how souped-up that thing was? And that's just an old Mail truck. He's got other things at his house - appliances, turntables, pool filters - he's got them souped up all crazy-like too with the engines and the exhaust pipes. I have a 16mm film of his place I can show you, maybe I'll break that out later."

"So you make home movies?"

"No. Just that one."

"How come just one."

"I dunno."

I had no idea how to revive that line of questioning, so I changed the subject.

"You recorded an album recently..."

He perked up, put down his shot glass, and for the first time turned to face me. I don't know how to describe his face other than to say that the watercolor-tatoo of an eye he had misapplied to his forehead seemed oddly natural there, like he was born to have a blurry third eye; and his green-blonde hair was parted on the left.

"You've heard it?"

"Yes, I wanted to ask what inspired you to record it."

He seemed to clam up again the instant I said 'inspired', but after a bit he came around again.

"Fellow I know, up north, another repairman, for a living he stitches up torn record sleeves, fixes radios that have been damaged by cosmic rays... Well, we had this party, and only us showed up. Turns out later the others were supposed to come had a shoot-out with IRS agents on the subway.

Anyway, we were kicking around, even though Ashtabula was doing their best to blast us into a good mood, it was still in our hearts about as exciting as washing sand out of lettuce, so we just sat down, grabbed the wheel, and recorded an album."

"How long did it take you?"

"How long is the album?"

"Twenty-five minutes."

"Twenty-five minutes."

"That seems awfully quick."

"Oh, well it would have taken even less time than that, but we kept getting interrupted by these sounds - weird - clicks, or like typing sometimes, or static, or scratching - it was like someone was spying on the room, little men or something like. Never smoked 'em out though. Which song did you like best?"

"I would say, 'Emily at the Waterfire'. I wonder if you could tell me what a waterfire is." Obviously he didn't hear this question right.

"What that song's about?"

"Um, yes, what it's about, and what a waterfire is?"

"Suppose that the most beautiful or sexy or handsome or charming angel or devil came to you and said, 'Shirley, I will come and live with you forever and make you feel as absolutely happy as you could possibly want, with just one condition: you can never, never fall in love with me, or have any feelings at all like love or even affection or liking directed toward me; and if you violate that condition, I will have your ever-living soul and tear it in two and leave it on the street to die. Would you accept?"

"And... Emily is that angel, or devil?"

"No, I am."

"In the song, you mean."

"In the song, yes, definitely in the song."

I had a hard time making up my mind about this character.

"And the waterfire?"

"Oh, that's just wack, I don't know...that's just pure totally made up."