The Man of Legends

by Kenneth C. Johnson

of trees and sky. I also seen ’em reflected in this big pond o’water! Surroundin’ a stone island in the middle o’the room! I heard these Arab-lookin’ visitor guys talkin’, sayin’ the water represented the River Nile. The stone island’s almost as big as the whole damn room, but sitting up ’bout three feet out of the water. The water’uz dead still. In the middle of the island I seen what Will told me about: the Temple of Dendur. In front is this big stone gateway. Before I crossed the stone bridge over to it, I read a sign that said only part o’Dendur had survived ages of weather and earthquakes. It said these last ruins’uz gonna be flooded by them building some high Aswan Dam over in Egypt, so museum people had took it apart and brung it to New York. Then I crossed the stone bridge over the water to the island. I stopped at the big stone doorway. I reached out and touched it. That’uz pretty cool. At a couple thousand years, this temple thing was sure as shit the oldest thing I ever seen or touched. I checked out the ’Gyptian carvings that’uz all over the doorway’s walls. Had all kindsa flat bird people and what a sign said’uz “hieroglyphic pictographs.” But didn’t see no