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rest of the North Ward was a haven for the tubercle. Workshops had signs about every thirty feet indicating proper receptacles for bloody spittle. But nobody was safe, mill worker or not. A swirl of opposites intruded on this Piper's otherwise distant mentality - life, piercing noise, liberty, acid air, and pursuit, hot pursuit, of what, bloody sputum? Total silence. Listen to this place. Nothing. There were trees here on South Mountain. So where were the birds? Crickets? Did the past scare them away? Kill them off? Sound here was that of a burial ground, wind over cold stone. Yet this ground was not hallowed. Accidents on South Mountain are called offspring. Here, the night noises of passion have no competition. Imagine the distance over which an unguarded ecstasy of submission can travel from here. Groaning teens lapsed into the ultimate primordial urge must be heard for miles from here, all the way to North Mountain. Everybody can't be deaf down below, not anymore. Are the passions floated in the southerly winds a welcome alternative to what was before? Is the South Mountain groan a sound of renewal? Inevitability? Or are the older valley inhabitants reclaiming lost youthful years, vicariously, to sounds tossed as gestures of disconnection to the valley from the runabouts on South Mountain now coupled under the Evening Star? Maybe that was reading more thought and vitality into this place than reality could support. People, below, were grubbing dead dirt for worms. There was no single source of vitality left. And yet life evolved from there. His. This was the birth place of Jazz Man, his father. It was from down there that Jazz Man pulled his bride from the ruthless din. They threw off the silk to spin the club circuit, a fabric swiftly pleated into the new and ever larger growing swing-jazz-blues crazy quilt. Theirs was a world of musicians, not