Press parking

 Press parking for this sports event was on a multi-lane interstate highway bridge that ran across a major river near the downtown of a major American metropolitan area. Consequently, writers, reporters, and photographers were required to walk to the event in high-speed vehicular traffic. Neither Rock nor anyone else questioned this.

Trip to Hays City

 The convicted killer in the Dodge City federal courthouse was never identified as Rock. Still, Rock himself knew the matter of his guilt would be established by daybreak. He would hang for sure. A one-way trip to Hays City (long the Kansas equivalent of Huntsville, Texas) was inevitable, and he knew that, too.

Another Aikman reunion

 The Aikman children and two of their three surviving parents were celebrating one of many reunions. Though it did not seem at all odd to Rock at the time, they had chosen his maternal grandparent's house in Nashville, Arkansas, as the site. Three Aikman children, all at least fifty-six years old or older, were maternal first cousins of Rock's, which he later supposed justified their selection. It wasn't until he awoke the following day that he remembered the same place, known as the Crutchfield house to many of the city's residents, had been gutted by fire the proceeding November.

Clarity swept through

 Rock's survival depended on a chance to salt a russet potato and bake it before daybreak. This matter at first seemed certain, but then clarity swept through his kitchen. There were no potatoes in the refrigerator. There had not been any in years. All Rock knew now was a cat named Joe wanted out.

This is new

 The limousine offered a straightforward view of Oaklawn Park's infield, and Rock sat in the backseat with the Oaklawn owner. A dozen or so others, primarily college-aged, were crowded in with them, and they all watched as a wedding party of four walked toward a stage set up near the infield's largest concession stand. "This is new, isn't it?" Rock said. "It is," the owner said. "We thought it might appeal to our sentimental sort of fans." The party reached and stepped onto the stage. In the very instant of their arrival, it swung up with a violent mechanical jerk and tossed all four at high speed out of the facility and into the racetrack's enormous parking lot, a quarter of a mile away. It appeared as an unsurvivable event, and Rock wondered if it might ruin Oaklawn.

What can you do?

 Rock sat in a New Orleans airport diner, joined by a sportscaster from Chicago he met at a tournament completed earlier in the day. He noticed a look of alarm in his acquaintance's eyes and turned to see three middle-aged men approach. Each appeared angered. The sportscaster stood, said, "Shit, I'm not dealing with these idiots again," and hurried away. Rock discovered the oldest of the men knew he wrote for a newspaper when he was asked to investigate their problem. "There ain't a single flight going to O'Hare before nine a.m., and we gotta get there by ten at the latest. What can you do about it?"

The old cabin

 The old cabin at the state fairgrounds where Rock set up camp had fallen into significant disrepair. Most significantly, a good part of the floor was rotted through. Rock returned to it after a rock concert in the adjacent coliseum and would be challenged overnight to not fall to the gravel and dirt below the cabin.

The voice of Larry Jones

 At times, in this circumstance, the continuance of mankind on earth hinged on matters Rock had awakened to. It did not this time, but he had to confirm he had dreamed the silliness he lived for much of the night. One sound of the recorded voice of Larry Jones, an Oaklawn regular who has trained two fillies to Kentucky Oaks wins, settled the issue.

Nothing but a shirt

 Rock was seated on a concrete stairwell along a sidewalk adjacent to a parking lot on the northern edge of the UALR campus. As he read one of his textbooks, several students approached. Just then, Rock became aware he wore nothing but a shirt, which he tried to pull down to cover his nakedness. Clearly, there was a break between classes, and he wondered how he could get to his car.

Seven carries

 Several minutes passed before Rock realized he had never seen a housecat play in a high school football game. Nevertheless, he had seen one the night before who looked exactly like his cat Joe. This cat wore  No. 5 on his jersey, and Rock watched as he rushed for thirty-five yards on seven carries. Rock tried to interview him after the game, but the cat couldn't speak. Instead, he licked Rock, who knew then the cat indeed was his roommate, Joe. Suddenly, Rock was in some sort of haywire conflict of interest. He wondered whether he could write a story about a cat named Joe Perkins who had just run for thirty-five yards in a high school football game.

California circuit

 This unimaginable circumstance was in place for Rock for the second time in a month. As a byproduct of a phone call to a Santa Anita Park horse trainer, Rock had been fined one-thousand dollars for his attempt to play a golf shot from a dirt road on the perimeter of a golf course on a professional golf circuit in California. In both instances, he tried to play his previous shot from a road clearly out of bounds but with his feet planted on the course. He was fined each time by a California state trooper apparently designated to make sure everyone was penalized for Rock's breach.

Mount Springfield

 "This reminds me of Mount Springfield," Rock said from the top of a steep, rugged hill, nearly five hundred feet above the western edge of Arkansas Tech's campus. He was with Steve Goff, a copy editor from the paper he worked with in the sports department twenty-five years earlier. Like Rock, Goff remembered Mount Springfield from the old Simpson's cartoon. It was a mountain of worldwide geological significance just outside Springfield that appeared in one episode and was never again mentioned in the animated sitcom's thirty-year network run. In a somewhat similar illogical circumstance usually reserved for television programs, Rock had lived in Russellville for several years and visited there at least a hundred times over the course of his life without any notice of this mountain that towered over the Tech campus. Yet, there he was, and he could not see any route down that would not require advanced mountaineering skill and equipment.

Far behind the others

 Rock and David Meroney, a Little Rock Hasher nicknamed Cornhole, led two much younger and less experienced Hashers down a steep, rocky descent that seemed to fall into an abyss. Far behind the others, Rock was relieved to find a mass of sand. He jumped in and was nearly gleeful. Then he saw this soft path led to a cliff that dropped into a one-hundred-foot freefall destined to end in a cathedral of jagged stalagmites. He caught his balance just in time to not die. Fearful of death, Rock clinched to whatever would save his life and chose to embrace patience.

He was afraid

 Rock wondered whether he should have stayed in Fayetteville, a part of his state that had become a national jewel since he left the university. At the same time, literally, he thought it would be nice to make it from his front bedroom to the front porch. His cat Joe wanted in, but Rock could not maintain balance. Indeed, he was afraid to stand.