Tree rider

It was impossible to understand. As Rock and an overweight blonde friend of his stood on the back deck of her apartment, they saw a man on horseback desperately gripping a rope slung over a branch at least 150 feet above a dry, rocky riverbed. Submerged in the mystery of this circumstance for Rock was how the horse kept from falling from between the rider's legs, but most of all, he had no idea how the man's strength was possibly adequate to support his own weight and that of a thousand-pound horse.
Obviously, there was more. "What's happened here?" Rock said. "How did he get in that position?"
"I don't know," his friend said. "All I know is that if he lets go, he's dead."
The man screamed for help. Rock could think of nothing to do. The man fell, and he and his horse smashed into the rocks and gravel below. They both lay still as Rock reached for his cell phone.

No escape

Man's time was short. Rock learned from an old college friend that a wave of fire had already begun to spread around the earth and that it would reach them by evening, an hour or two hence.
They were in a small Indian town north of New Dehli in an old abandoned filling station. Rock and his friend stood in what was once the office, but a large group of the friend's former fraternity brothers—men Rock vaguely recalled from Wyoming—was gathered in an adjacent two-bay garage.
Rock was immediately impressed that they seemed at ease with the coming flames. One of them said he heard the fire would miss higher levels of the Himalayas, but Rock subsequently learned the mountains were more than four-hundred miles away and that they would not spare anyone from death anyway. People there would be instantly frozen.
"We found out too late to make it," Rock's friend said. "I mean, I think I'd rather freeze to death than get burned up."
"Same here," Rock said. "This is awful."

The hospitality cabin

There's a long hospitality cabin, painted white with a green roof and shudders, next to the Burns Park Golf Course driving range. It sits in front of an old, battered range-ball dispenser that has dropped yellow golf balls into green plastic buckets for as long Rock can remember. He had seen the cabin there since 1986, thirty feet below and two parking-lot levels away from the clubhouse, but he had never once been inside. Best he could recall, he'd only seen anyone in or around it one time, maybe twenty-five years earlier.
Now he waited there for his cousin Crutch and sat at a long wooden table with platters of dinner rolls and fried pork chops stacked on it. Crutch was supposed to come in from Russellville, seventy-five miles away, but Rock didn't know when he would arrive. He wondered how long he would have to wait and how well pork chops freeze.

The stray big leaguer

It didn't seem at all odd to Rock that a stray Siamese cat from his neighborhood had made the roster of a Major League baseball team. The cat was clearly fit and well nourished. Rock was happy for it.

A blowout revisited

Rock was on the sideline early in the first half of a Dallas Cowboys game at Cowboy Stadium. Dallas was already so far behind that Rock was reminded of the one-hundred-and-six-to-nothing loss he and his Worms Titans teammates experienced in Heidelberg, Germany.
He spoke of it to an overweight, balding middle-aged man who stood beside him. "Man, we played that game more than forty years ago," he said.
The man's eyes widened.  "Believe it or not, I think I know the game you're talking about," he said. "Was it in the fall in of—let me think—1972, or maybe 1971?"
Rock was stunned. "That's incredible," he said. "It was 1972. Don't tell me you were there."
"Well, not that year, but I played there the next two seasons. The guys were still talking about it."
The man told Rock the coach of those Heidelberg teams had retired to Fort Worth.
"His house can't be more than a few miles from here," he said. "As far as I know, Coach is still there."

He could only guess

It might have been a Hash run. Rock couldn't remember for sure, but he was working his way on foot through a busy three-way intersection on the eastern edge of downtown Little Rock and couldn't figure out how to get back to his car.
He knew it was parked at a strip mall on University Avenue near Jeff Krupsaw's house. Nevertheless, he could only guess which way to go. He wasn't even sure where he was. Surely it was somewhere close to I-30, but little about this intersection was familiar, except that it looked typical of other decayed sections of downtown, with dilapidated, shuttered brick buildings and sad people watching the heavy traffic pass by.

Ohio

Rock woke up several hours late for his new job. He was a television news anchor, but he couldn't remember where the station was or when he had last been there. All he knew for sure was that he was in Ohio, his cats Jo and Pam were with him, and that his house was a mess.
It seemed he had achieved a certain level of fame there, but his TV job was done, and he had moved back to Levy. He didn't know why, but his reputation was apparently ruined. He remembered there were stories about his demise in papers across Ohio.
Ten minutes after Rock ate a small PayDay bar, he was nearly certain that his responsibilities were complete and that there was nothing to do but clean his house.

Disney World

Several Little Rock Hashers were at Disney World in Orlando, including Rock, who shared a hotel room near the amusement park with Emon Maloney, down from his new home in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C.
It was hours after they checked in before Rock noticed that the room's walls were decorated with college football logos from schools in the Big 10 and Big 12 Conferences. The only exception was the Southeastern Conference's Texas A&M.
"Hey, I wonder what this A&M logo's doing up here," Rock said.
He began to break down which conferences each of the other schools were in, but after he had gone through a half a dozen or so, Emon interrupted. "Rock, stop it, man. I'm sure your radio audience would be impressed, but I don't care anything about any of this."

The dating service

This was unlike any dating service Rock had ever heard of, and for reasons unbeknownst to him, he had signed up. It was programmed to match Hash House Harriers with people who were talented and experienced enough at slowpitch softball to have an aptitude for golf. As a consequence, it would match Hashers with someone to whom they could offer golf instruction.
Rock was way out in the woods, a mile or so removed from the Current River and an old, rickety general store near Van Buren, Missouri. As he pulled a strand of toilet paper from the men's room in the store, an overweight blonde woman approached him. Rock did not find her at all attractive.
"I've only played fastpitch softball, but the dating service sent me out here for you," she said.
He didn't know what to say.

Time to turn back

Rock was in way over his head. A married couple and their daughter, each close friends of his, had reached the top of a two-hundred-foot climb up a nearly vertical rock cliff. He had ridden with them to this remote site, hours away from North Little Rock, and they were about to leave.
As for Rock, he was fifty feet up the cliff and somewhat panicked. His choices were to continue to the top and ride home with Ron, Elaine, and their daredevil daughter Susy or climb down and wait on the river bank for several more days. There was a group of Little Rock Hashers below, and they were having a blast.
Rock was far past ready to leave, but after a quick assessment, he concluded that a fall was probable if he continued his climb. He would have to turn back.

Dirty clothes

Paul Azinger was in the hall, evidence that this was a much more significant golf event than Rock expected. Randy Rainwater walked out of their hotel room to speak to him, and Rock suspected from the overheard conversation that Azinger's nice-guy image from television was genuine.
Rock listened as he dug through his suitcase, and it soon became obvious that every shirt he had was filthy. He pulled out one of a dozen and saw it was covered with grease splotches and dried fried chicken crumbs that adhered to the material like old scabs to flesh.

A chance to win

The Little Rock Marathon was in shambles. Almost without exception, entrants' race numbers were registered in other people's names, and the course was so poorly marked that runners were spread all across downtown.
Fortunately for Rock, he knew every turn of the new route. He was running very well and thought the disorganization might work to his advantage. He had a chance to win.

A living

It was a nice way to make a living, but it confused Rock at times. For instance, he wasn't sure what tracks raced on Monday nights. He couldn't find the past performances anywhere, but he soon realized it didn't make any difference. Golden Gate Fields was the only American track still racing and it was a minute from the ninth and final race.

A declarative statement

One of the students in an English literature class offered the teacher a breakdown of a thoroughbred race on Turfway Paradise's Monday card as her example of a declarative statement. It seemed to Rock that the teacher, Ms. Fuller, was lost in some other matter and did not hear what the student had to say.
"Pardon me, Ms. Fuller, did you hear that?" he said.
Ms. Fuller did not respond. She rather kept her head down, apparently absorbed in whatever she had turned to in the book she held open. Several students laughed softly.
Rock tried again. "I beg your pardon, Ms. Fuller, did you hear what she had to say?"