The way there

This moped had sat in Rock's garage for years. He thought it would be fun to ride it to the Little Rock Hash event underway at the large city park between his house and the U.S. Pizza in Levy, but first, he would have to fill up its gas tank.
The nearest gas station was at the corner of Pershing and Pike Avenues, at the base of the climb up Pershing to Fort Roots. All the way there, Rock was troubled by the moped's controls, particularly the accelerator, which was a pedal below and behind his right foot. It was easy to miss and hard to depress, and he struggled with it as he crossed Pike and rode the bike up into the minimart parking lot.
As he approached a pump, Rock noticed there was no tire on his front axle. He couldn't imagine how he had ridden so far on nothing but a dented, oddly-shaped wheel rim.

Coronavirus

Everyone was sick. The trainers, the horses, Rock, and half the people in the Oaklawn press box felt awful. A trainer named Robertino Diodoro joked that the coronavirus had found its way to Hot Springs. All Rock knew for sure was that it had been sixteen years and eleven months since he had been this ill
The stakes for Arkansas-bred horses was scheduled for early Sunday morning, but it looked as if it would be postponed until at least the horses began to feel better. Either way, Rock didn't want to get out of bed. He hoped his cat Joe didn't get sick, all curled up as he was beside Rock's pillow in Levy.

Deeply engaged

Rock's father Richard was deeply engaged in a novel. He sat across from Rock in a small cafe that could have doubled as a library. It was time to go, Rock knew. His mother Jane was in their car in the parking lot, but his father was consumed by the book, so much so that he made notes on a yellow legal pad as he read.
Rock finally got him to agree to leave, but as they walked toward the car, Rock noticed an offtrack betting facility in a wing of the strip mall to his left. He had completely forgotten there was a bet he intended to make, an exacta on two horses who were currently at odds of 5-1 and 7-1. The place had a tote board on its roof, visible in the dark of six p.m. all the way to Central Avenue.

Just sit put

Someone had set up some kind of run for the Little Rock Hash House Harriers that did not require their actual participation. They could just sit put, or lie prone, and feel as if they were on the run.
Rock was with a group not far from his house on a run up and down steep wooded hills, and yet he could sense his cat Joe curled in a ball next to a pillow tucked under his head on his back bedroom bed.

Thunderstorm

As a thunderstorm rolled through Levy late on a Tuesday night, Rock lay in his back-bedroom bed. He tried to watch a cops-and-robbers shootout on a black-and-white television he didn't know he owned, but the loud thunder interfered with the show.
There was something else, too. Voices from his dead neighbor Tom's backyard and perhaps, yes, gunfire. Real gunfire. Rock was suddenly filled with panic.

Cats

The trick was to pick up the cats and place them in one of several large plastic pitchers of lemonade Rock's uncle Jim Aikman had placed on a picnic table near the softball field. The idea, introduced by Jim, was to turn the cats into softball players, which made perfect sense to Rock.
"The only thing I don't understand is, how are they able to hold a bat?" Rock said.
He asked this as he struggled with a very aggressive, shaggy fifteen-pound yellow version of the cats around the table. There would be no getting this flailing animal into a pitcher of lemonade, he thought, but before his assessment took hold and Jim answered his question, Rock could see that one of the cats had grown to the size of a typical outfielder. Its hands had opposable thumbs. He wore a pinstriped uniform and had already begun to take practice swings.
Rock also noticed the pitchers were the size of garbage cans. All he would have to do is drop this crazed cat in.

An oversight

Someone tried to enlist Rock's help in a count of consecutive NCAA Division I indoor track and field championships won by the Arkansas Razorbacks, but he had no idea. He didn't even know they were on any kind of meaningful streak.
Sure, Rock and everyone else in Arkansas understood the significance of the Razorbacks' reign as the nations' premiere track program, a nearly forty-year run begun in 1982, five-years after the school hired John McDonnell as its head track coach. Rock knew much about it, but these people said the indoor team had won somewhere in the neighborhood of one-hundred or more consecutive national championships. They showed him charts and graphs on his laptop. It was clear the streak was very long, but Rock couldn't figure out how to find its length. There were no obvious lists, which seemed an incredible oversight. Why had these people come to him, he wondered.

Carry

Grouped with Arkansas State Golf Association president Jay Fox and two of his carbon-copy golfing friends, Rock's drive traveled nearly five-hundred yards. They were on the first hole of a course unfamiliar to Rock, an uphill par-five that demanded carry over its entire length. Most of what should have been a fairway was a rock-strewn, narrow hiking trail that led to a green at least one-hundred feet above the tee box.
None of Rock's partners had seen his drive, but the ball was about five feet short and right of the green. He pointed it out to Jay, who—along with his friends—seemed unimpressed, even put out a bit.