And then the bus crossed a small bridge, turned right off the highway, and slowed. At a restaurant, the big orange-and-white machine groaned wearily to a stop. Dust swirled around its wheels.

“Caxton.”

He lifted his suitcase off the rack, said “Thank you” to the driver and stepped out into the blazing afternoon. The bus groaned again, pulled back to the street. Soon it was out of sight.

He stood in front of the restaurant for a moment, his eyes roving across the drab, unlovely town, across the gray rows of grocery stores and cafés and cleaning establishments and offices and churches, all so quiet now; across the slowly moving people, also gray, also quiet.

Then he transferred the cardboard suitcase to his other hand and began to walk.

He asked a large man in overalls where a good hotel was. The man told him, “Up George to the tracks. The Union. It’s a nice place.”

He thanked the man and walked to the rotting railroad-tan depot and paused. He brushed the lank strands of hair from his eyes and opened the glass door of the Union Hotel.

Three women sat on a red leather couch. They glanced up without interest and returned to the television program they’d been watching. The sound was turned high, but the loudspeaker was bad and it was difficult to understand what was being said. In a chair by the wall sat a middle-aged man in a blue sports shirt, dozing.

There was no one behind the desk. He set down his suitcase and peered into the long hall. It was empty.

A big clock hung silent on the wall, its hands lodged at ten-fifteen.

He cleared his throat loudly, but nothing happened, so he went to the couch. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said softly to one of the women, “I hate to interrupt you, but there doesn’t seem to be a desk clerk around.”

The woman looked up. “You want a room?” she asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Well,” she said, nodding her head toward the sleeping man, “that’s Billy there. Give him a push.”

He hesitated.

“Never mind,” the woman said, “it’s the commercial, anyway.” She strained to her feet, walked over to the desk and brought the flat of her hand down on a rusted call-bell. “Billy!” The man mumbled something. “Billy, now. Well, that’s the way it is. You just hold on and I’ll get Mrs. Pearl Lambert.”

The woman went into the hall and knocked on one of the doors. It opened, and there was a muffled conversation; presently another woman came out.

She was extremely short, perhaps not quite five feet tall, and her face was parchmented and wrinkled, but there was a definite swing to her stride. She had on a thin kimono.