All success is imitated, so with the diminishing of the Wall Drug signs, other businesses posted their own, though most of them were homespun and poorly conceived. There’s a rule in outdoor advertising: a good billboard should never contain more than seven words, and five or less are preferable. I saw one billboard with seventy-three words. (I was so amazed that I actually stopped to count.) I just shook my head. Who was going to read that at seventy-five miles an hour?

I ended the day shy of nineteen miles in the tiny town of Kadoka: population 736. I stayed at the America’s Best Value Inn and, at the hotel clerk’s recommendation, ate dinner at Club 27. I had the filet mignon with a baked potato. It wasn’t nearly as good as the filet mignon I had in Hill City, but I wasn’t complaining.

After the last two days of solitude, I was in the mood to talk to someone. Anyone, really. Unfortunately, my waitress wasn’t, so I just listened in on other diners’ conversations.

The next morning I ate a ham and cheese omelet at the Nibble Nook Café, then started off. The service road had ended at Kadoka, so I resumed my walk along 90 for another five miles or so until another frontage road appeared.

A little after noon an old, loaded-down pickup truck sped by me, close enough that the wind of the vehicle nearly knocked me down. The truck disappeared over a slight incline. About twenty minutes later I caught up to the truck. It was pulled over to the side of the road, its hazard lights flashing, the road around it strewn with an eclectic array of items. I surmised that the truck’s cargo had been held in place by a queen-sized mattress, which had flown off.

The driver was grumbling and cursing as he collected his things, which were scattered over a fifty-yard radius up and down the service road, like a big, chaotic yard sale.

The man was a little shorter than me and much wider, probably carrying an extra fifty pounds. He wore a bushy beard and a Chicago Bears jersey. He reminded me of the kind of guy you’d see at a football game, shirtless with a painted face and wearing a rainbow Afro. He glanced over at me after throwing a pillow into the truck.

“Need a hand?” I asked.

He grimaced. “Sure. Why not?”

I slid my pack off and began picking up his things, most of them of little value, including a dozen faded T-shirts, some VHS cassettes of porn, and some plastic dishes—most of them now broken. The man just grunted and cursed.

“Looks like you’re moving,” I said.

“Got that right,” he replied. “Finally got smart and dumped the old nag.” He turned and threw a dish rack into the truck’s bed. “You know how you spell relief? D-I-V-O-R-C-E. You know what I mean?”

“No,” I said.