Tommy followed the poles to see where they led to. It was nearly dark when he found himself outside the building with the wire fence around it and the sign ohio power. Okay, he thought, so where do they get the stuff that lights the lights and shocks the shit out of you?

Back home he got out the phone book, looked up Ohio Power and wrote down the address. It was too dark now, but tomorrow morning he would go there and see where the power came from.

The next day Tommy went downtown to Ohio Power. He walked inside and stared, dumfounded. Just a lot of people sitting at desks, answering telephones and typing. A business office! Jesus Christ, struck out again! As he wandered along Main Street trying to figure out how he was going to find out where this junk came from, he passed the library sign in front of the Municipal Building.

Okay, he’d go look it up in the books. He went up to the second floor, searched the card catalog under "power,” found the books and began to read. It astonished him to learn about dams, hydroelectric power and the burning of coal and other combustible fuels to create energy to work machinery and light the lights.

He read until dark. Then he wandered the streets of Lancaster, looking at all the lights that had been turned on, excited that now he knew where the power was coming from. He was going to learn all about those machines and everything that had to do with electricity. He stopped in front of a store window and looked at the display of electronic equipment. A crowd had gathered around the TV sets in the window, and they were watching the man in a spacesuit climb down a ladder.

“Can you believe it?” someone said. “Seeing this all the way from the moon?”

"… one giant step for mankind,” the voice from the TV was saying.

Tommy looked up at the moon and then back at the TV screen. That was something else he had to learn about.

Then he saw a womans reflection in the window.

Dorothy said, “Billy, you’d better come on home now.”

He looked up at Billy’s pretty mother and started to tell her that his name was Tommy, but she put her hand on his shoulder and led him to the car.

“You got to stop this wandering around downtown, Billy. You got to be home before Chal gets back from work or you know what’ll happen.”

All the way back in the car Dorothy kept looking at him sideways, as if trying to size him up, but he kept quiet.

She gave Tommy something to eat, and then she said, “Why don’t you just go in and do some painting, Billy? You know that always settles you down. You look so edgy.”

He shrugged and went into the room where the art supplies were. With quick strokes, he painted a night scene of a road with telephone poles. When he was done, he stood back and looked at it. Pretty damned good for a beginner. The next morning he got up early and painted a landscape with the moon showing, even though it was a day scene.