"And this is a four-banger," he said and shook his head, reaching for the credit card. "Can you imagine if I was driving an eight?"

"The price was $2.71, right here, when I filled up Friday," I said. "It’s up a dime in two days."

"Pure greed." He signed a slip at the counter. The cashier nodded sympathetically, and behind us in line, I heard a young woman murmuring agreement.

We moseyed out of the convenience store, headed up the road on a cool, sunny morning. Uncle Chet drove and I perused the verdant Unadilla valley. The river was low, especially for April, auguring a hot, dry summer, I thought.

But today we were going to use water, for of all things, to wash the firewood. I’d gotten a load of logs about two weeks ago and wanted to cut them up, but they were caked with mud. Uncle Chet had brought over his pressure washer, and to spare the chain saw, we were going to clean the wood before sawing it.

"I wonder if gas’ll go to $3 again?" I mused.

"On its way to four," he said. "The Republicans want to nuke Iran, and that’ll let Exxon-Cheney justify any price."

"You think they’re serious?"

"You’ll know they’re serious as soon as Bush denies it," Uncle Chet said. "He lies about everything, and I’m beginning to think ’W’ stands for ’wacko.’ The real question is whether he’s an ordinary liar like the rest of his henchmen, or a pathological liar."

"What is a pathological liar?" I inquired.

"Believes his lies even when they’re obviously false," Uncle Chet said. "Almost everyone lies some of the time, but ’W’ seems pathological. That’s why he goes around saying things like ’If there’s a leaker in my administration, I want to know who."’

"When he did it himself."

"Right." He turned onto our dirt road. A dozen turkeys were feeding in the field. As we slowed down to watch, they skedaddled into the brush.

"He says things like, ’Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job’ while the black people are being flushed out of New Orleans. Everyone with a TV set could see that Brown and FEMA were doing a horrible job, that all this homeland security was a load of bull, but ’W’ lied and expected everyone to swallow it."

"You’re scaring me," I said.

"When he ran against Gore, remember how he railed against ’nation building’?"

"Sure."

"Look what he’s doing in Iraq: Some $300 billion to tear it down, $700 billion to put it back together. Isn’t that ’nation building?’

"Seems so."

"But we’re never supposed to remember what he said before," Uncle Chet said. "It’s the same with spying on people. In ’04, he said he was getting court orders before tapping anyone’s phone. Then in ’05, after he was caught, he said he couldn’t get court orders because that would take too long."

"He’s still saying that."

"But why didn’t he tell the truth before, and more importantly, why doesn’t he think we can remember his lies?"

We turned down the curving driveway.

"As far as nuking Iran goes, seems he’s all for it." He stopped by the sidewalk. "Those images of mushroom clouds over the desert would dominate the news, and no one here would smell the rotting flesh. I think he’ll do it in October and relegate all this pesky coverage about corruption and payola to the back page before the election."

"Of course they’re saying the Iranians are trying to make nuclear bombs," I said.

"Of course they are. But if ’W’ attacks them, you’ll know they don’t have any. Because that’s the Bush doctrine. If you have nukes, like North Korea, Russia, China, India, he won’t mess with you. But if you don’t have them, better get ’em quick, or watch out."

"So he’s encouraging proliferation."

"He’s doing his best," Uncle Chet said. "And the way you can tell is he continually says he’s doing the opposite, and maybe even believes it."

———

Cooperstown News Bureau Reporter Tom Grace is traveling with his Uncle Chet, who he says is imaginary. Grace’s column appears twice monthly.