He got an old, dull knife from the tool box and, seeing with his fingers, separated the two strands of wire and cut away the insulation. Twice he received a slight shock. He scraped the wiring clean and managed to join the twin-ends of the wires, then screwed in the bulb. The sudden illumination blinded him and he shut his lids to kill the pain in his eyeballs. I got that done, he thought jubilantly.

With the bulb and socket in hand, he walked back to the dirt cave and placed the bulb on the floor. The light cast a blatant glare on the bleak clay walls. Next he plugged one end of the wire that dangled from the radio into the light socket and bent down and switched on the button; almost at once there was the harsh sound of static, but no words or music. How come it don’t work? he asked himself.

He toyed with the dials of the radio and wondered if he had damaged the mechanism in any way. Perhaps it needed grounding? He rummaged in the chest, found another length of wire, fastened it to the ground of the radio, then tied the opposite end to a rusty pipe. Rising and growing distinct, a slow strain of music entranced him with its measured sound. He placed the tool chest against the wall and sat, deliriously happy.

He searched again in the tool chest and found a half-gallon can of glue; he opened it and smelt a sharp odor. Then he remembered that he had not even looked at the money. He took a wad of green bills out of the sack and weighed it in his palm. He broke the seal and held one of the bills up to the light and studied it closely. The United States of America will pay to the bearer on demand one hundred dollars, he read in slow speech; and then: This note is legal tender for all debts public and private. . . . He broke into a slow, musing laugh. He felt that he was reading of the petty doings of people who lived on some far-off planet. He turned the bill over and saw a beautiful white building with soaring columns and wide, curving steps leading up to an imposing entrance. He had no desire to count the money; it was what it stood for—all the manifold currents of life swirling aboveground—that captivated him. Next he opened up the rolls of coins and let them slide from their paper wrappings to the ground; the gleaming pennies and nickels and dimes piled high in front of him, a bright mound of shimmering silver and copper. He sifted a few of the coins through his fingers, listening to their tinkle as they struck the conical pile.

He got the typewriter and pulled it forward and took a sheet of paper and inserted it and typed: itwasalonghotday. . . . He looked at it and was determined to type the sentence without making any mistakes. But how did one make capital letters? He experimented and luckily found how to lock the machine for capital letters and then shift back to lowercase. Next he learned how to make spaces. Then he wrote correctly and carefully: It was a long hot day. The sheet was dirty and he took it out and inserted another and retyped the sentence in neat, black characters without making a single error. Just why he picked that particular sentence, he did not know; it was merely the ritual of performing the thing. Holding in his hand the white sheet with the single sentence printed across its middle, he looked around, neck stiff, eyes hard, and spoke to some imaginary person: