He almost missed it, and when he jammed on his brakes and signaled a right, a lumber truck blared its five-tone horns at him, and the driver leaned over to mouth some unheard obscenity.

Along the twisting, climbing highway, it was peaceful and deserted. The pickup labored on the grades, but now Neil had made up his mind what he was going to do, he didn’t feel the same desperate urgency. Through the forests of pines and cottonwoods, madrona, and red-barked manzanita, he climbed into the clear fragrant mountain air.

The Petrified Forest itself was just below the brim of the mountains that sloped down to the town of Calistoga. Neil had always promised Toby that he would take him there to see the giant petrified redwoods, but it was one of those trips that they’d never gotten around to taking. He drove past the wooden gates of the entrance with his pickup blowing out blue smoke.

In Calistoga’s main street, a sleepy one-horse thoroughfare at the head of Napa Valley, Neil parked the pickup in the shade of an old flat-fronted hotel building and climbed out. It was way up in the high eighties, and he wiped his forehead on his shirt sleeve. Beyond the main street, there were only the dark-green, forested mountains, and the air was heavy with the scent of the trees. The sky was cloudless and inky blue.

He walked along the street until he found a drugstore. Inside, it was air-conditioned and smelled of menthol. He went up to the prescription counter and waited while the short, bespectacled druggist wrote the label for a large bottle of stomach pills.

“Can I help you?” the druggist asked him. His spectacles had such strong lenses that his eyes were hugely magnified.

“I’m looking for an old man named Billy Ritchie,” said Neil. “I guessed, since he was old, he might come in here for prescriptions.”

The druggist finished off his label. “Sure. I know Billy Ritchie. I’d like to know someone in town who doesn’t. A real old character. Where are you from?”

“Out by Bodega Bay. I met a friend of his, an old sailor, and the sailor said I ought to drop by and see Billy if I was passing.”

The druggist nodded. “Sure. If you cross the street here, and take the first on your right, that’s Washington Street, then take the fifth right again, that’s Lake Street, you’ll find Billy in the green-painted house on the left. You can’t miss it, his name’s on the mailbox.”

“Thanks.”

Neil left the store and crossed Lincoln Avenue in the shadowless midday heat. He walked as far as Lake Street, sweating and short of breath, and the house was right there. A small clapboard cabin, painted the color of lawn mowers. It was shaded by maples and firs and looked deserted. Neil went up to the door and knocked.