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Because she is not lying. Every word of that was accurate. I have been furious about the shock cord since four in the morning. I did price the chair. She has taken nine true bricks and built a wall out of them, and the wall stands, and behind the wall is the entire night, safe, and nobody will ever get at it.

And I would not have got at it either.

That is the part that gets me. If I had come up this hill this morning and asked her what happened during the hold, she could have done that to me, and I would have gone away satisfied, and been wrong for a week.

The safety officer's radio goes at eight fifteen.

She has it on her shoulder strap and she keys it and says, "North site, confirming one pole set, near arch, second section," and a woman four hundred miles closer to the coffee than any of us says something back that comes out of a small speaker on a wet mountain at full volume.

"Copy pole set. Is that the tent from the hold?"

"That's the one."

"Great. Can you get his answer about the hold again on camera, wider, and this time can he be standing next to the tent?"

The safety officer's hand goes to the volume dial. It goes there fast and it goes there about two seconds late, and the last of it comes out into the rain in front of six people.

"And ask him if anything happened."

Junie does not look up from the trough.

Nobody on this bench moves except Bear, who takes the rig off his shoulder, sets it on the tripod, and puts both hands in his pockets, and stands there in the rain with his hands in his pockets for the length of time it takes a safety officer to write a line in a box on a laminated sheet.

Coby and Stitch arrive at eight thirty.

"Collab," Stitch says, coming over the lip with a camera and a tripod and no permission of any kind.

"You cannot be here," Neve says, and then puts her hand over her own mouth, because Neve is contractually barred from speaking to contestants and has now spoken to two of us in eleven minutes.

"We're allowed to visit," Coby says. "Page twenty-two. Social interaction between teams is encouraged." He stops. He looks at the tent, which has a limp. He looks at me. He looks at Junie, who is filling a trough. He looks back at the tent.

"Bro," he says.

"Do not," I say.

"Bro."

"The pole failed at the second section joint."

Stitch has already got the camera up.

They stay for forty minutes and film eleven minutes of Coby standing in front of my shelter explaining my joinery, incorrectly, in a hushed voice, as though it were a nature documentary, and at one point he refers to the birdsmouth as a duck's foot and Junie has to go behind the woodpile.

Their own shelter, they tell me, has now collapsed three times.

"It's got a design philosophy," Coby says.

"It has got a ridge pole and no plate."

"That's the philosophy."

At nine forty, Neve raises the first real card of the day.

Describe the twelve hour hold in your own words.

I look at it for a while.

"There was a storm," I say. "The roof held. We stayed in the tent, and in the morning I repaired two grommets and the near arch, and I will need a pole set."