Jockeys

There was apparently a new dressing room for Oaklawn Park jockeys, built in the barn area of the facility for morning training hours. Trainer D. Wayne Lukas told Rock it was near the track kitchen.
Rock found it, and saw several jockeys on their way out, including one on something he had never seen before. One of the riders rode out of the jocks' room on some sort or mechanical horse. It was about half the size of a real horse, made of hard plastic. It seemed to move on its own. Rock did not know its purpose.

The gunman

As Rock stood with his stepmother on the street in front of hers and his father's house, he noticed that a mid-1970s Chevrolet Vega had turned toward them. Rock was to the driver's left and stood next to a steeply banked, head-high concrete wall. The car was far left of center. Rock felt as if it were bearing down on him, that perhaps its driver intended to pin him against the wall. There was nothing he could do but watch, and hope. The car missed him by inches.
It was heavily dented, primer-gray, and going ten miles an hour at most, and continued for about half a block past Rock and his stepmother before it came to stop. They watched the driver step out. He had a pistol with him.
"Lillian, I think you should go in the house and tell dad to get one of his guns," Rock said.

Men's rooms

The doors to three men's rooms were no more than ten feet apart. Rock wondered why he hadn't noticed this oddity before. After all, he had been to Oaklawn Park nearly a thousand times over the previous thirty years, and must have walked past this very spot on the ground floor at least ten times each time he had come. He pointed out this anomaly to Dave Holzman, who was on his first trip to the track.
"Take a look at this, Dave. Three men's rooms right next to each other."
Dave pointed out two other rooms not much larger than an average bedroom closet that had commodes in them. "If these count as men's rooms, there's five I guess," Dave said.
"You'd think the women would complain," Rock said.
"What women?"
Dave was right. They hadn't seen a woman all day.

Paul's

Rock was at Paul's Restaurant with a large group of his running friends and a few of their grown children, and couldn't seem to get enough to eat. His plate literally overflowed with mashed potatoes and friend okra. He had already eaten two fried chicken thighs, and two more were on the way.
Elaine laughed. "Rock, do you ever get full?"
Sandy shook her head and joined in Elaine's laughter. "If I ate as much as Rock, I'd be as a big as a house."
A waitress brought a basket full of dinner rolls to the table. They were huge and looked absolutely delicious to Rock. He picked one up; it was warm and fresh as if it had come straight from the oven. Rock spread butter on it and took a bite. "Good god, this is perfect."
He ate the first in less than a minute and looked for another. Unfortunately for him, the basket was empty, but Rock noticed a full basket at a nearby table. The sons of one of his friends were digging in.
"Hey, do you guys mind if I take a couple of these?" Rock said.
"Help yourself,"one of the brothers said.
Rock picked up two. "Has this place always had these rolls?"
"As far as I know."
"This may sound crazy, but I've eaten here since 1986 and I just don't remember rolls at Paul's."

Car wreck

Cars had been allowed to park so willy-nilly in the high school parking lot that Rock's old red Datsun station wagon was pinned in on all sides. He would have to get at least five people to move their vehicles in order to drive out.
Rock saw a school boy and his girlfriend get into a small car. It seemed obvious to him that the boy was about to try to back out of the lot without looking, and Rock's car was among those the subsequent chain reaction might damage. He ran to the boy's car.
"Hey man, you can't back up," Rock said, but it seemed as if the boy couldn't hear him. He began to back up, striking the first car, which struck the next, and so on until Rock's became part of the pile. The boy managed to push seven cars into an adjacent street.
What was particularly odd to Rock was that no one else was paying attention. Kids were on their way home, walking by all around, and weren't in any way drawn to the wreckage or the noise produced.

Energy gel

This aid station was very near the finish of the marathon Rock was running. He arrived there somewhat desperate for anything that might raise his blood glucose level. Someone handed him an odd package of energy gel, made of two connected tubes which Rock assumed he was supposed to mix. He wasn't thinking clearly, and a man tried to show him how to combine the contents of the tubes.
Rock was confused, and really needed to go to the bathroom.

Joggers

Rock and three of his friends agreed to meet to jog along heavily wooded trails near downtown Little Rock. Two of them stood with Rock as they watched the final member of their group approach the parking lot in a 1968 navy blue Ford Fairlane, driving close to eighty miles an hour, entirely too fast for the winding descent into the lot. He lost control near the entrance and his car flew over a deep creek bed, slammed headfirst into a tree and flipped over.
Rock and the others watched as the driver stepped unscathed from the car. He looked exactly like a forty-year-old version of the late actor James Garner, and acted as though nothing unusual had just happened. No one seemed surprised. Rock had seen the man walk away undamaged from such catastrophes many times before.

Recruiting

North Little High's basketball team has won two consecutive state championships after fifty seasons of mediocrity, is on its way to others, and as of this minute, Rock knows why. Its coach, Johnny Oates, asked Rock if he would carry money to a sixteen-year-old guard in Little Rock. "He's a great player," Oates said. "One of our boosters really wants him to play for us."

Road rage

Rock was stuck behind two cars traveling fifteen miles an hour on a busy four-lane thoroughfare through a middle-class Little Rock neighborhood. A station wagon in the right lane was driven by a gray-haired woman Rock estimated was at least seventy years old. Rock was in the left lane, following a 1990s model Cavalier convertible driven by a young man with bushy blonde hair.
It was fairly clear to Rock he was being fucked with, and clearer still when the convertible came to a full stop.
Rock and the young man got out of their cars and squared off in a parking lot, not more than a foot apart. The man shoved Rock.
"Why were you tailgating me?" he said.
"What are you talking about?" Rock responded. "Why were you driving so slowly?"
"Because you were tailgating. I was trying to get you to back off."
"Man,  you were driving fifteen miles an hour. I was plenty far enough back."
The man drew back and landed a soft punch to Rock's right cheek. It caused no pain nor any damage, but Rock could see that the blonde-headed thug behind it was much larger than he and at least half his age.
Rock turned and walked away toward the nearest back yard. With the car incident completely forgotten, he realized after he climbed a fence that he was in a yard familiar to him. He saw an older man, named Paul, whom he had known for years.
"Pete, it's great to see you," Paul said. "How long's it been?"
They embraced.

A sportswriter's nightmare

It occurred to Rock shortly after he awoke that he had just dreamed the classic sportswriter's nightmare: A game was over. He was there to cover it for a newspaper, but did not know what happened. He didn't even know which team won. He was not aware of the result of a single play but would have to write and turn in a story about the game within an hour.
Rock wasn't sure where he was, though he thought he might have seen the stadium about twenty years earlier. Perhaps he was in Alma, or Van Buren. This was bad.

A new moon

Rock's living room was populated by thousands of people, and it expanded in diameter over the course of a few minutes into a moon-sized sphere. Someone decided to declare it an actual moon, and over multiple protests it become one and assumed an orbit of the earth.
Almost immediately thereafter Rock was specifically targeted and struck dead by Satan himself. He was truly in Hell, apparently subjected to view for eternity a televised debate between pro-choice and right-to-life advocates from his couch. He walked to both beds, hoping against hope he could find a spot where he would not hear the television, where perhaps someday he might be able to sleep. It was soon apparent he was doomed to the noise.
Next he began to search the house for his glasses, which he was unable to find until hours later, and at last ate a PayDay Bar and remembered the Patriots were playing the Ravens on Channel 4.