About to be shot

Cars and pickup trucks were backed up for the new car wash just opened off Camp Robinson Drive near the southern edge of Levy. Rock took his place behind several vehicles in a driveway to wait to enter a bay door that led into the two-story prefab metal building and its ramp to the second-floor washrooms.
The driveway wasn't quite wide enough to accommodate more than one lane of traffic. Consequently, anyone who wanted to drive past the bay door to the parking lot had to wait for cars in line. Rock was unaware of this until a car pulled in directly behind his old Ford. Within a few seconds, he heard the driver shout, "You better get the fuck out of my way."
Rock was startled, and then frightened when he felt something hard pressed against his head. He turned to see the barrel of a gun held by a very large Arkansas State Trooper, whose face was reddened and creviced with anger. Rock knew he was about to be shot.

The rock wall

A wall of artificial stones gave Rock a scenic option for his descent from school to his apartment. Most of the other university students who lived in the complex used it, though there was a less strenuous route along a sidewalk that went around the wall.

Rock had begun to descend it from school one day when he noticed a blonde-headed man climbing toward him. The man, dressed in dark clothing, scowled. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his black pea coat, and he stared at Rock as they approached each other. Rock was immediately wary. Whereas the wall offered relatively safe lanes, it was steep, with single switch-back trails that would make it easy for anyone to dislodge anyone else. He knew it would offer this man a simple opportunity to push him to serious injury and perhaps death if their paths crossed. He decided to turn back to walk around on the sidewalk.
He kept the man in sight, though, and watched him begin to pick up rocks the size of baseballs and throw them at other students near the top of the wall.

City fair

Small city fairs like this one had delighted  Rock throughout his lifetime. Exhibits, vendors, and carnival rides were placed around a small lake near downtown, and hundreds of people wandered around them through tall old oaks and evergreens.
He knew lots of people there—Little Roch Hashers, several classmates from high school and college, and a pretty young woman from the Arkansas Traveller 100-Miler, who worked a kiosk selling snowcones and fruit-flavored soft drinks. Rock thought she was beautiful, but he couldn't remember her name, and she showed no sign of recognition as he filled a large paper cup with red punch.

The man

This man in Rock's bedroom, with a nearly textbook homeless look, unkempt, unshaven, with wild hair and filthy, tattered clothing, held a wastepaper basket full of food refuge and old snuff residue, and he began to dump it on Rock's bed.
Rock didn't know who he was or why he was making this mess, but the man was clearly angered. It seemed obvious that he had come to pick a fight.
"What are you doing, man?" Rock said.
The man shoved Rock's chest. Rock reached up to separate his arms and push him away. The man then reached under the bed and grabbed a crystal dinner glass full of some sort of paper product, stained brown and powdery years earlier by tobacco spit.
"I've heard about you," the man said. "I've heard what your neighbors say."
"What the fuck are you talking about, man? You need to get the fuck out of my house."

Hardwood

Major work was underway in Rock's house. He walked into his vast living room to see that all of his furniture and the large rug were gone. There was sheet rock leaned against walls in the living room and kitchen. His mother Jane was in the kitchen, dressed in jeans and an old flannel shirt. She held a can of paint and a brush.
"We have a lot to do," she said.
"No kidding," Rock said. "I guess we should get to it."
He walked back into the living room and noticed that its hardwood floor was filthy and heavily scratched. On an area near the kitchen, it looked as if parts of it were stained with splotches of black tar or tree sap.
"Man, I wonder where this stuff came from," he said.
He knew it would be tough to scrub away, but his first job would require a broom and dustpan and a good deal of time. The floor was at least twenty-five hundred square feet.

The system

There was a system set into place in Rock's house that would ensure the disposal of large, unwanted items on the day city trucks came by to haul such things away. What's more, it became apparent at daybreak that the same system had also aided Rock's interaction with his offensive linemen during his years as a professional quarterback.
Rock remembered that he had invited several of the linemen over for lunch. Clearly, it was time to get up. He figured he would have to call out for pizza.

Toys for the office

It was apparent that someone had brought two high-tech looking toys, which Rock noticed as soon as he walked into the coaches' office.
"What the heck are these?" he said.
"They are dangerous toys is what they are," said a young, blonde-headed coach with undisguised contempt in his voice.
They were new to Rock. One was shaped like a spaceship, with yellow plastic gull wings two feet across and a red fuselage about three feet long. The other was a three-foot tall gray plastic robot with a flesh-tone head in a gray helmet.
It seemed each were designed to roll around the floor in pursuit of whoever happened to be up and moving about, which for the moment was Rock.
"Watch out," said one of the coaches, a light-skinned, likable African American with a tight, almost red afro. "Those things will start firing on you, and it kind of hurts."
Another coach stood to demonstrate. He cut between Rock and the approaching robot, which drew a plastic ray gun from what looked like a cell-phone holster around its waist. It pointed the gun at the coach and fired a ray of tiny sparks into his midsection.
"How much does that hurt?" Rock said.
"Just a little," the coach said. "It just feels like a very mild shock."
The spaceship turned toward the black coach after he stood from his desk and walked into a small snack room that connected the assistants' office with  the head coach's. The robot joined the ship and rolled toward the coach, who stood between two small tables, a handful of chairs, and two rows of vending machines.
A coach seated at his desk laughed. "I'll tell you what, Rock, you really don't want them to team up on you."

Practice

Rock and another coach tried to direct a football practice, but chaos began to take control as the drills grew more detailed. The final straw came with a particularly complex play that had everyone running in seemingly endless circles around the large rug in Rock's back bedroom.
It wasn't long before he began to question whether or not this mess was a football practice at all. Nothing about it made much sense.
He was prone on the rug and clearly unbalanced. His right hand seemed injured. At any rate, he knew it hurt like hell.

Cold Dr. Pepper

They were in a shady spot on the west side of the backstretch of Oaklawn Park's racetrack, on a hill perhaps twenty feet off the track. Rock had never noticed it before. Greta, a 25-year-old retired jockey Rock had somewhat adored for years, sat beside two fifty-year-old female riders and a small, frail, deeply wrinkled old man. They each held bottles of soft drinks, beaded with water, apparently drawn from a nearby wooden trough filled with ice and dozens of bottles of Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper.
As Rock walked toward them, Greta glanced his way, but her expression displayed nothing, a reaction that in no way surprised him.
"Hi y'all," Rock said. "Greta, is there any chance I could take one of those Cokes?"
"They're for the workers," she said.
It was exactly the response Rock expected, but after a pause of a few seconds, Greta stood and walked toward the drinks. As she reached into the slush, she said, "What do you want?"
"Oh, thanks. How 'bout a Dr. Pepper."
Greta handed a bottle to the man, who opened it with an old, rusty church-key opener. Rock took it from him and thought it tasted better than anything he had ever drunk.
"Wow," he said. "I didn't realize how thirsty I was."
As he drank, Rock watched Greta mount her horse and ride away.

A recruiting visit

There were three high school basketball players, boys all, who had worked throughout their senior seasons toward college scholarship offers, each aided along the way by Rock and his friend B.J. and an elderly woman who seemed to have a romantic inclination toward the least talented of the three.
Each of the players hoped to attend three different schools at the same time, including Arkansas State University. Rock, B.J., and the woman agreed to pool funds to cover whatever the scholarships failed to cover.
The boy who the woman seemed interested in had been offered full rides to all but Arkansas State, and Rock was in Jonesboro to watch his recruiting visit.
Arkansas State was in a game, playing before a large crowd when the boy walked into the gym dressed as though he were a character from an old Tarzan movie. He wore a tan loincloth of black-spotted animal fur and nothing more. He was barefooted, and when people in the grandstands saw him enter, they erupted in loud cheer.
It was clear to Rock and B.J. that the fans knew of this player, and they figured this had to help his and their cause.

Roll

A judge in Houston, Texas, decided to start ticketing every fiftieth driver who rolled through a stop sign near the museum district and Memorial Park Golf Course. He set up his court near the sign and watched with several city employees and jurors as policemen rushed into place to pull over drivers who failed to fully stop.
The fiftieth was a middle-aged woman in a late-model luxury car, and she at first seemed confused. But after the judge told her that the fine was only five dollars, Rock could see relief roll across her.

Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton was at their grandmother's house in Nashville when Rock and Jim arrived, but it didn't seem odd to either to see a former U.S. president standing in the front yard.
Rock spoke to him using his best Clinton impersonation, a sort of raspy, southern-twinged draw that had become one of Clinton's prominent trademarks.
Clinton looked displeased. "You know, I get tired of people doing that," he said. "I hear it all the time, everywhere I go.  I suppose next you're gonna say, 'I feel your pain.' "

Rock's 100

The start and finish of Rock's out-and-back 100-mile course were in his back bedroom. Most of the course was set in a confusing array of flour and toilet paper that was difficult for Rock to explain to several ultra-runners gathered in his living room.
They gave him a hard time about it as they joined him to scout the first mile. The first thirty feet or so were through his house, then it was out his front door to Orange Street. After a block, runners would meet the trail, which was indistinguishable from much of the Arkansas Traveller course.
One of the women mentioned how comfortable his house would feel after a 100-mile trail race. It was cold outside.