Once over the fence he had stood in the back of the amphitheater and looked down its graduated steps and over its low, backless seats like picnic table benches that sloped to a wide, elevated triangular stage with a wall on either side and a clear view to the woods behind in the middle. Looking to see what was calling him, he saw instead this buffalo, standing on the stage, whereupon she had begun her tirade, which was just beginning to annoy Horace. Why was he here? He sat on the edge of the stage, his genitals resting on the wooden floor, listening to this interminable lecture that did not interest him in the least. He wanted to ask her, Do you know why I’m here? but was not given a chance.

People just don’t like to be nice anymore, she was saying. It seems to me that everyone is trying so hard to be vulgar. It’s as if they were trying to outdo one another in their impropriety. Don’t you think?

Uh-huh.

There it was. The feeling. As if he had forgotten to be someplace. As if something important were happening and he was key to its getting done. As if someone were dying and needed to say goodbye.

He rose. I’m sorry, he said, I have to go—

Go! But I haven’t finished my—

I have to. I’m sorry.

Horace turned to walk away.

Rude. Rude. Rude. The bison stamped its foot on the stage. Well, I never!

Ignoring the beast, Horace stepped up on stage and walked past it, turned around once he reached the back. Nothing or no one was there, just an empty theater. The theater and the compulsion to move on, toward . . .

He wanted the voice to return and tell him what to do, not this vague ringing in the mind, this subtle urging.

He wandered backstage, which was no more than elevated concrete platforms that jutted back and into the woods, a little prop house, chairs, narrow trails that wound and cut through the woods around the full length of the theater. He remembered the long hours he had spent back here, first building, then moving, then fixing, then rebuilding. In June he would start at eleven in the morning and would work well into the evening after stopping for dinner at five. Just before the show went up he worked from ten in the morning until two or three into the next morning, stopping only to grab a greasy hamburger and fries. Once the show went up in early July, he was at work until twelve or one in the morning. Sometimes later.