As he walked across the tarmac trying his best to keep the broken glass, can tops, and pebbles from cutting his bare feet, memories welled up of the mornings in fall, winter, and spring when this parking lot was full of cars. Toyotas. Hondas. Ford Rangers. Old Cadillacs. Those nice Volkswagen Rabbits purchased by eager-to-please parents or Pontiac Firebirds from overly indulgent, well-to-do parents; those pickup trucks given to grandsons by grandfathers who could no longer shift the gears; the Chevrolets, the Mercurys, the Chryslers that doubled as family cars, and those cheap, easy purchases that the thrifty and the hard-working bought with their savings from summer jobs and after-school jobs in the supermarket or the shoe shop or McDonald’s. Those assortments of clinking, honking, grinding, guzzling machines were emblems of pride, an accumulated source of self-importance among Horace’s peers. People who drove to school were a notch above those who rode the bus, whether they drove a Mazda RX7 or a 1954 Dodge truck, for they were independent. They were one step closer to being grown up.

Horace made it across the parking lot with only a cut or two on his feet. He sat down on a squat pylon among a row that separated the lot from the schoolyard, and examined his feet one at a time, picking out pebbles and such. Once again he sat beneath a high nightlamp, and once again he was oblivious to his nakedness. He looked up at the dim monolith, gray and silent, its windows reflecting the crescent moon, its flat top blending in with the sky.