Tryout

His quarterbacking days were long past. Rock hadn't thrown a football in at least ten years, and he remembered that his last attempt was feeble at best. Nevertheless, someone asked if he would help split time with a professional quarterback at a tryout for wide receivers.
They were gathered in an indoor facility about the size of a basketball court. Athletic equipment was spread everywhere, including dozens of blocking sleds and tackling dummies. There were about twenty receivers on hand, and Rock watched as the pro hit them in stride with each pass.
Then it was Rock's turn. He threw several passes, none of which came close, until his final, which found an overweight, middle-aged white man running a post pattern, but the pass surprised the receiver and he let it drop to the turf.
"You got a little anxious on that one, Rock," the pro quarterback said. "You let it go too soon."
Rock agreed. His pass arrived at the receiver's shoulder just as he turned to look for it.

CPR

Everyone should learn CPR. Rock swore that would become his crusade after he watched helplessly as a man died at his feet.
Rock had gone to the Democrat Building in downtown Little Rock to visit his former boss Jeff Krupsaw, but before he made it to Jeff's desk, and after he walked out of the stairwell into a hall on the third floor, he saw an old acquaintance he'd known for more than thirty years. Typical of those sorts of characters from Rock's past, he had no idea what his name was but recognized him immediately and remembered that they had always been on friendly terms.
The man was perhaps two sentences into a story about something Rock would never be able to recall when he reached for his chest. He struggled to continue his story, and then paused, and virtually collapsed into small leather desk chair.
Rock felt panic rise. "Should I call for an ambulance?"
The man nodded yes, and Rock pulled out his cell phone to call 911. He screamed, "Does anyone know CPR? Please, does anyone here know CPR?"
Rock's stricken acquaintance stood from the chair and collapsed to the old tile floor near a large, wooden blackboard, just before a young, slightly overweight blonde woman walked past.
She looked at Rock and smiled, then quickly walked by as though nothing out of the ordinary was underway.

Rock is fat

Rock started a diet several days ago, but it has yet to pay off. Further inspiration came when he ran into Little Rock radio talk-show host Tommy Smith and several of his cohorts from the Buzz's Show with No Name.
"Hey Rock," Tommy said. "Good to see you, man."
"Heck, it's good to see you, too, Tommy."
Tommy shook his head and laughed. "Jesus, man, I can see you been packing it away, just like the rest of us."
Rock looked at his midsection. "No shit, man. I've been on a cheesecake and milkshake diet."
"It looks like it's working," Tommy said.

The wrong way

Basil Julian had driven with Rock from Magnolia, a small college town in southwestern Arkansas, to Prescott, an even smaller town forty-five miles away. When they attempted to return to Magnolia, Rock could tell something wasn't right. Basil was driving in reverse down the highway at full speed, which made it seem to Rock as if they had taken the wrong highway.
"Are you sure we're on the right road?" Rock said.
"No, I'm never sure of anything, but I think we are."
A couple of minutes later they arrived at an intersection that looked completely unfamiliar to Rock. "Man, we're on the wrong road."
That had also become obvious to Basil. "Yeah, you're right. We gotta go back."

The railway bridge

Rock was struggling with his balance on the railway bridge, far above a rocky canyon, and in an instant realized he was horizontal, stretched out between a railroad boxcar and the edge of the track. A very tall man was with him, and he also wore running clothes. Rock consequently assumed he was on a run with the Little Rock Hash House Harriers.

An odd assignment

Jeff Krupsaw called Rock from the paper to ask if he would watch a specific football game on television and write a game story. Rock agreed, but shortly thereafter he awoke and walked into his den. He wondered what game Jeff had asked about. He turned on his television and found one but was too sleepy to watch, so he went back to bed and slept for another hour and a half.
Rock woke up at about 1:45 p.m. and walked back to his den. He looked for the game again but couldn't find it. About a half an hour passed before Rock grew certain that Krupsaw had not truly asked him to watch a football game. Among the factors that convinced him were that the coming football season was still a little more than a month away.

Deadra and the diner

Rock was in a neighborhood park somewhere in Little Rock when he met an overweight young African-American woman named Deadra. She commented immediately on the cats who had gathered nearby, and Rock was happy to say that one of them was his. "She's gray on top and white on the bottom, the little one there in the back," he said. "Her name's Jo."
"Look, there's a racoon with them," Deadra said.
She said she wanted to see the cats run around instead of just sitting in one place, but for the next few minutes Rock noticed they only moved when Deadra wasn't looking.
There was a classic diner across the street, tucked right in with the neighborhood's baby-boomer 1950s brick houses, the sort Rock's young professional acquaintances tended to buy. It looked as if someone had dipped the diner in pink stucco many years earlier, back when they were common and popular. Rock couldn't wait to go inside.
Deadra agreed to split a peanut butter sandwich with him. He also ordered two diet Cokes. As they waited, Rock's mind wandered off into a scenario in which he was given the opportunity to lie on sheets that had a thread-count of one-hundred thousand. Afterward he joked that he had sex on them with the AT&T girl: "I came inside her and failed to notice."

Pool party

It was the day before Rock's longtime friends Tom and Corky Zaluedek were moving out of their house, and they were about to host a pool party for the Little Rock Hash House Harriers.
Rock arrived early and had to urinate, but all of the bathrooms had been shut down or boarded up. He wandered to the back bedroom that Tom and Corky shared, where he found Corky alone. He asked her what he should do.
"Don't tell anyone, but we've been using the swimming pool," Corky said.
When Rock arrived poolside, he saw that the water was brownish and murky, as if it belonged in a farm pond. Getting into the water was out of the question, but the backyard was unfenced, and he was too self-conscious to simply pee into the pool from the side. There had to be another place.

Jackie

They were students in a trade school of some sort when Rock ran into a former high school classmate named Jackie Hill. Within a day or so they had rekindled their friendship.
As they sat beside each other in a break room, Rock placed a palm on the back of Jackie's head. "You know what, your hair looks nicer now, at fifty-six, than it did when you were a teenager," Rock said.
Young women in the room were clearly impressed by Rock's kind words.

Odd press box

Only people seated on the first row of the press box could see the basketball court, which meant that only three or four people had more than an idea of what was happening.
Rock was there with old friends Chris and Erin, but the lack of a good view meant little to him. He wasn't there to write a game story, only a sidebar for which he already had all the information needed. The Vratils didn't care, either. In fact, they knew several of the sportswriters, young men they had befriended ten years earlier when they lived in Springdale, Arkansas. It was clear to Rock that his friends were having tremendous, loud fun as they reminisced about good times they had in Springdale.

Money from above

Jesus Christ agreed to give Rock five-thousand dollars if the next guest to spend a night in Rock's house in some way praised a Biblical deity upon awakening.
The next quest of Rock's was a bald-headed, middle-aged man who managed the Academy Sports franchise in Sherwood, but Rock failed to record his words the morning he woke up. Jesus agreed to help Rock with time travel, which would of course be required in order to establish whether than man had indeed said, "Praise the lord," as Rock claimed.

A long ride

It seemed to take forever. Rock volunteered to help a neighbor get home to Lubbock, Texas, and then found out the trip would include two five-hundred mile rides on a large and loud, very powerful motorcycle. He had to be taught to ride it, but after one trip, insisted on taking his car, a relatively plush Chevrolet Impala.
Rock climbed into bed with his cat Jo after the final drive and realized he was absolutely exhausted.