A simpleton

A sad, humorless young man, perhaps twenty years old, had assumed a significant status in Rock's house, despite his nearly complete lack of mental acuity. For a reason Rock had no chance to figure, this simpleton wanted to clean under the back bedroom bed.
Rock could tell that his housecat Jo was confused.

Lost

Rock remembered when the apartment at the top of his climb belonged to Frank Broyles, the former University of Arkansas football coach and athletic director since deceased. It was on a ridge that separated the school from Dickson Street, home to a dozen or more bars and restaurants within walking distance of the campus.
In those days, when Rock was a graduate student, he could simply walk around the complex, but on this nighttime trip, it had become the only portal he could find from the dark cliffs to the food and beer. With no other apparent option, he stepped onto a deck adjacent to the apartment that he hoped was uninhabited. He figured he might be able to kick in the back door or find a way through what looked like a kitchen window, but before his thought progressed further, a young woman stepped from the door. As he watched her turn his way, he worried that she would panic or scream when he came into view. Instead, her only discernable reaction was one of disinterest. She said hello and nothing more.
Rock told her he was lost. "I'm just trying to get home," he said.
She escorted him through the apartment toward the front door, past another woman who seemed as unmoved as the first.

A place to stink

Few things pleased Rock more than to have made people laugh, and this had worked well. He sat with a group of men somewhere and told them about a nook he had seen near the rear of a movie theater. It was adjacent to the main hall, furnished and decorated in the same peach-colored theme of the entire auditorium, but dimly lighted by two accent lamps.
One of the men asked if it was reserved for smokers.  "I wondered the same thing for a minute, but there was no way," Rock said. "I mean, the smoke would've spilled right out into the whole room. There's no way anyone would've let anyone smoke in there. I don't know. Maybe it was a place where smokers could just sit and stink together."
Rock later questioned what the men had found so funny.

Two existences

The latter of two existences had begun to envelop Rock's house from front to back. He knew that once it reached his bedroom, it would sweep him from his current circumstance into a sort of no-mans land from which there was no likely return.
Rock knew this wouldn't end, so he chose to hide from the inevitable. He let his cat Jo out and climbed back into bed.
Later on, it occurred to him that he had seen cars across the street from his house, which let him know he was still in the present. He turned on the TV in his back bedroom and was relieved to see a contemporary newscast.

Crackers at Miss Jo's

There was nothing to eat but square Ritz crackers. Rock and his mother were at the house in Nashville, Arkansas, that belonged to Jo Baker, or Miss Jo as Rock had known her since the 1960s, but she was apparently out of town.
Rock was hungry, and his mother told him he could eat anything he wanted.
"Have you ever seen square Ritz crackers?" he said.
"I've never even heard of them," his mom said. "I wonder where she got them."
There were slices of ham and small chunks of cheese on sandwich plates all around the kitchen.

A nap

Rock's new recreational vehicle, with no one at the wheel, was traveling along I-40 near Fort Smith, Arkansas, and quickly approaching a slower vehicle in front. He noticed as he awakened from a nap, but he felt nearly paralyzed in the RV's rear bunk and before he could do more than budge, the vehicles made contact.
The collision was slight, but Rock was panicked. He could not see past the wreck and had little idea what to expect next. He knew he needed to pull over or come to a stop, but he couldn't get up.

Arkansas State

Rock sat with his mother on the home side of a football game at Ouachita Baptist University. A woman from the school with a handheld microphone was attempting to interview a man near Rock over the stadium's public address, but the sound kept breaking as he tried to answer her questions. It seemed there was a short in the system. but whatever the cause, the man was clearly frustrated by the interruptions and finally gave up. As he sat, the woman turned to Rock.
"Sir, would you mind if I ask you a few questions?" she said over the PA.
Rock cringed. It was the last thing he wanted, but he knew he had been put on the spot and consequently he had no choice. As her first question, she asked how old he was when he first attended a game at Ouachita.
"I was probably five or six the first time I saw ASU play..."
No electrical shortage arose to interrupt that faux pa. For the sake of the home crowd, Rock had just confused Ouachita with Arkansas State. He recognized his mistake the instant he made it, even before the seemingly good-natured boos began.

Hawg

One of the sports guys had arranged for a football game between several older retired men who once played for the Arkansas Razorbacks and a dozen former football players on staff at the paper.

Rock stood beside one-time Razorback and Green Bay Packer lineman Hawg Hanner in the dusty attic of the old Democrat Building. It was where they planned to play, on a wooden floor made of warped, splintered boards in a vast room lighted only by whatever sunshine could cut through windows turned translucent by an accumulation of years of dead bugs and dirt.
This was the first time Rock had seen Hanner since he interviewed him twenty years earlier.
"You guys don't stand a chance against us," Hanner said. "You know that, right?"
It seemed to Rock that Hawg had been dead for at least ten years.

Perfect order

This was new to Rock. His house was full of freshly polished antique furniture. Everything was in perfect order. He had never owned such substantial beauty, and it was clear that his father was truly impressed.
The only problem was that Rock felt suddenly overwhelmed by the prospect of debt. He sat in dread on a new chair in his back bedroom and worried about the financial burden of it all. He couldn't remember what he had paid for the red baseball hat in his lap, but surely it was too much.