Camp Robinson

Rock was with John Good and a soldier he didn't know in a warehouse at Camp Robinson. Good had retrieved several live explosive shells from an abandoned military vehicle earlier that day, and held one in his hand. He used it as evidence to support his claim that many new trainees were either careless or inept.

Ruth's return

On the final play of the game Rock's cat Ruth intercepted a pass and ran it thirty-four yards for a Seattle Seahawks touchdown. Rock was thrilled. He knew Ruth needed to score at least nine more fantasy points for him to win the $100,000 grand prize, and it appeared to Rock that she had.
Still, he watched from his bed in Levy and struggled with a simple calculation. He was nearly certain that fantasy rules awarded six points for a touchdown and one tenth of a point for each return yard, but could not convince himself that what Ruth had done added to nine or more points.
Ruth wanted out of the house. Rock wasn't sure he should let her go until the fantasy matter was settled. He also wondered whether Ruth's original owners would try to horn in on the jackpot, whose very existence he had begun to question.
Rock wasn't sure of anything. He paused to consider. Could this be real? He remembered that the preseason schedule had yet to start, and knew that no game in the history of the NFL would ever be played through daybreak, and, wait a minute, shit, cats don't play pro football.
Of course.
He let Ruth out.

Election Day

It was election day, but as Rock shopped at the Levy Kroger he thought it seemed more like the day before Thanksgiving. The store was packed with employees and shoppers, and Rock and everyone else had to walk around stacks of boxes, and workers with box cutters hacking away. There were intricately and delicately balanced displays of everything from Campbell's Soup to Kroger-brand pimento cheese all over the store, and though Rock had entered as a shopper, it became his job as a new employee to build a display, of something. He would never remember what it was.
The next morning Rock was in charge of a post-election parade. He had remote control machinery throughout his house to support his managerial responsibility, including a buzzer on his nightstand that rang every ten minutes. The buzzer—the snooze function of his alarm clock—and a cat named Jo eventually convinced him it was time to get up and take more direct care of the parade.

Ribs

Rock was at his big brother Jim's house and thought it was strange that his brother had used a raw rack of pork ribs to serve in place of a broken leg on the Habachi grill that sat in on his kitchen table. It kept the grill from wobbling, but seemed like an odd choice for the job.
When Rock returned several months later, the same rib was in place supporting the grill, though it was now thoroughly cooked. Rock asked about it. Jim laughed and said he would have to come up with a better, more permanent solution.
All the while it seemed perfectly reasonable to both that Jim sometimes cooked on a charcoal grill inside his kitchen.

Football practice

A high school football practice was underway. It was nighttime and the dark practice field's only light spilled in from a parking lot. As Rock drove his pickup truck across the grounds toward the exit, weaving his way around groups of players, he listened to a recording of a football broadcast on his in-dash cassette player, searching for a forgotten comment he heard years before and remembered liking.

Too much

There would be people on the road ahead that Rock didn't want to meet, so he decided to walk through the woods on an adjacent trail, hoping to remain unseen.
Within  fifty feet, he turned to see a mesh of gnarled roots and and tree trunks so tightly packed that he would have to squeeze between them to proceed. He did, but shortly thereafter came to a very steep hill hundreds of feet high, whose very existence was contradicted by nearby terrain familiar to Rock. He had heard of the trail's potential danger, but no one ever said anything about significant inclines.
Rock paused for a moment, looked above to see that the space was even tighter ahead, and concluded that, potential danger aside, he was unwilling to exert the effort required to continue.

Oaklawn Park

It was a much bigger payoff than Rock expected. He knew he had hit the place and show horses, but thought he bet only $2 on each. After he looked at his tickets he remembered he bet $75 on the place horse and $60 on the show horse. His total earnings were slightly less than $2,000.
An old acquaintance of Rock's named Sandy watched as Rock collected his winnings, and later reported the windfall to people in the press box. When Rock saw fellow reporter Todd and photographer Karen in an Oaklawn Park hallway, they acted delighted for him.

Texarkana

En route to cover a high school football game for the paper, Rock found a shortcut so significant that he was able to drive from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Texarkana, Arkansas, in an hour. He met the Texarkana coach in the hospitality suite before the game. "At my age, I feel lucky just to be here," the coach said. "My wife always says, 'Just make sure you don't miss the game.' "
Rock laughed. "I missed a game once," he said. "It was the Race for the Cure, twenty years ago. I overslept and got to the finish line at least half an hour after the winners. But, heck, I was there for the awards ceremony and interviewed everyone I needed to. They gave me the race story and no one ever knew I'd missed it."
"Here's one thing I notice about race stories in the paper," the coach said. "It seems like no one ever writes who finished second."

Squirt guns

It was too hot to be out, but Rock and Walt had no choice. As they walked under the midday sun across a weed-strewn vacant lot, they saw two eleven- or twelve-year-old boys run from hiding, laughing the whole time. The boys began to shoot water at Rock and Walt from large, shoulder-held squirt guns. Rock fired back with a cheap water pistol, but it only had a range of about five feet. The boys were twenty feet away and Rock and Walt were getting soaked.
The steamy weather made it easy to laugh off the assault. Rock got the boys to relax and asked them to let him examine one of their guns. It was shaped like a leaf blower, had a small gas engine, and weighed about thirty pounds. Walt agreed with Rock that it seemed impractical as an everyday squirt gun.

God lives in Levy

It's kind of crazy, but something has been arranged so that the young landscaper who lives across the street from Rock is now in charge of the earth. Crazier yet, Rock is this man's boss and can replace him at any point with anyone he chooses.
Nothing has been quite the same for Rock since he was laid off from the newspaper back in 2009, but things seem to be getting better (except that he's hungry, his left hip hurts, and he says the word "motherfucker" way more than he used to). Now all he needs to do is learn how to use his MacBook Pro to keep track of the world ruler who lives across the street.

DiGiorno and Colette

Rock tried through most of the morning to find a suitable spot on the Arkansas-Little Rock campus to start a run for the Little Rock Hash House Harriers. He discussed the matter with several Little Rock policemen, one of whom asked him to join them for lunch at Walgreens. Rock agreed, and when he walked into the store saw at least a hundred policemen seated at a lunch counter that ran along three sides of the building's interior. Hundreds of empty DiGiorno frozen pizza boxes were stacked behind them. Though all appeared perfectly normal to Rock, the battalion chief seemed compelled to explain this choice for lunch. He attempted by saying that the department saved a great deal of money because of all the leftovers the men took home with them. Rock was convinced.
As Hashing friends Don and Kayce drove him home, south on Fair Park Blvd., they told Rock of a girl they knew named Colette. "I think she's your type," Kayce said. "She's definitely petepretty."
"Man, we'd love to introduce you to her," Don said.
Rock was skeptical but pleased. He asked if they could show him a picture.
Before they responded, Rock noticed to their right a flea market opened in an abandoned strip mall. His attention was particularly drawn to several large slow-cookers, each of which contained one of a variety of stuffed animals.

Pot

Rock had enough marijuana for perhaps half a dozen hits. He found it in an ash tray earlier that evening, and now it was on the table in front of him and Loftus as they sat in a bar on Beale Street. Rock lighted a roach, pinched it between his right thumb and index finger and inhaled the smoke. He felt the buzz within seconds. Loftus said he was concerned Rock might be arrested, but Rock told him not to worry. Loftus said laws against pot were still in effect. "You could get deported," he said.
"No, Loftus," Rock said. "Nobody really cares about this stuff anymore. The cops have more important things to worry about."

The paper

There was something Rock needed to do, but he didn't know what it was and was afraid to ask anyone. He was at his large antique desk in the dark-paneled, dimly-lighted news room of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The middle-aged son of the paper's owner sat nearby, talking about something Rock couldn't quite understand. Meanwhile, Rock scribbled random thoughts on a yellow legal pad.

A big onion

To Rock there was nothing abnormal or surprising about this onion, even though it was the size of a basketball. It was exactly what he'd hoped to find when he walked into the supermarket. His plan was to come back later to buy it. He of course realized this did not fall into any ordinary grocery-store protocol, but began to look for a place to hide it. He finally decided on a spot on the floor adjacent to the display case that held all of the other onions, where he covered it with a large burlap sack.
Satisfied that he had adequately disguised the onion, Rock walked to the register to pay for a twelve-pack of soda pop. He saw a friend there from the Little Rock Hash House Harriers named Lacey, and as they stood in line he noticed she was holding a pack of cigarettes. She was a runner he had known for years, disciplined as an athlete in every way. He couldn't imagine her smoking. "Lacey, you don't smoke, do you?" he said.
Lacey explained that the pack was for someone she worked with. Rock was doubtful, but let the subject drop.

The Great War

The Great War was over; Rock heard the announcement over the radio of his B-17 and relayed it to Bill Brass, who was nearby, providing cover with his American biplane. Rock's pilot had no difficulty landing the bomber, but Brass' plane was entangled in bed sheets and the unplugged power cord of an oscillating fan. Rock freed the plane in short order and Brass flew away unharmed.

Split the wickets

They were near a sharp turn on a rural, two-lane highway at least twenty miles north of North Little Rock. Rock didn't know why they chose this spot, but he and several others had, and despite the traffic, were having enormous fun playing several tricky and physically challenging games. A tall, overweight woman named Tammy, who Rock worked with at a restaurant in Fayetteville in the early 1980s, introduced one called split the wickets, in which a player would stand with their legs spread, and another would attempt to run between them at full speed.
Rich Yeager went first, and his head struck Tammy's upper thighs so hard that he fell to the road. Rock and the others laughed at the slapstick, but their laughter stopped when at least five large, young, menacing-looking black men began to approach them from a red Chevrolet Malibu, which one of them had just parked thirty feet away.
Rock was fearful, and immediately walked toward his car. Twenty feet before he reached it, he saw several young black women standing near his driver's side door. They had not taken an aggressive posture, so Rock felt he could reach his car without interference. Nevertheless, he remained very concerned about the men from the Malibu.

High-dollar sushi

Four or five women in their early to mid-twenties, dressed in the style of the goth or emo subcultures, were with Rock in a crowded downtown bar. He sat directly across the table from a particularly pretty and sexy blonde, who spoke to him about the sushi served at a nearby restaurant. She said it cost $700. "If someone bought me that sushi, he could do anything he wanted with me," she said.
Rock believed he saw in her a look of interest, though his thoughts blended with sudden commentary from the other women. They agreed the idea of $700 sushi sounded ridiculous. Rock concurred, but he was aroused by the blonde's comment and briefly weighed the cost against the potential return.

Electrical outlets

Rock's life depended on whether or not the oscillating fan in his bedroom was plugged in. If the people with the British accents instructed him to leave it unplugged, he would survive. Otherwise he would not. Whether or not Rock's laptop computer was plugged in bore on their instructions, but Rock was unclear how. He considered, and at last decided to leave his laptop plugged in. He never received final instructions from the British-sounding people, but chose to leave the fan unplugged and felt safe.