Checked a clock in a jewelry store, another in a hotel lobby, a third in a supermarket. Twelve hours to go. He bought a can of sweet corn, some hamburger, an onion, a tomato, a jar of mustard and a package of sesame rolls and drove up into the hills north of town, into White River National Forest, parked his truck facing downhill, cooked his supper over a scrub-oak fire and made camp for the night.

He decided not to eat the onion. He brushed and flossed his teeth, had a long walk in the woods, took a shortcut coming back and got lost for two hours. Near midnight he slid into his sack and tried to sleep. Sleep came hard. About four in the morning, judging by the stance of the Big Dipper, he dozed off, dreaming of a symphony orchestra with one vital violinist missing.

A bird coughed. A daddy longlegs walked across his face. He rolled on his side and saw the bright green leaves on an aspen tree trembling before the morning light. A mountain bluebird swooped like an arc of electricity from the aspen into the shaggy dark arms of a spruce. He heard the sound of mountain water.

A worm fence four aspen poles high, looking fifty years old, zigged and zagged across one corner of the meadow. He thought of West Virginia. For a moment. He looked at the smooth white bark of the aspens and read the names of the sheepherders dead and gone—Garcia, Vargas, Barrutti—and the vague heart-shaped growth-expanded symbols of youthful love, enclosing the initials of brave lads and dark-eyed lasses long forgotten. His heart swelled with joy. Yes, he would bring her here for the day. They’d picnic in the shade at the edge of the trees, they’d drink from the mountain brook, they’d walk up that soft brown lane that led into the depths of the aspen groves, he’d carve her name and his own

inside a heart for all the world to see.

My God! He shivered alert, dashed through the goldenrod, morning glory, dockweed and locoweed to the window of his pickup. A two-dollar Westclox pocket watch hung on the dashboard, suspended by a leather thong from the choke rod. The hands on the watch read ten after ten. Impossible. Horror and panic flashed through his nerves: the train was due at ten-thirty. He grabbed the watch, held it to his ear: no sound. He shook it, banged it on the roof of the cab. The thing began to tick then stopped again, dead. He hurled it over the trees, out of sight.

Glancing again at the sun for reassurance, he skinned on a pair of Levi’s blue jeans. No underwear for Henry. Then remembered the baggy slacks with the drape shape and the reat pleats at the waistband—only fifteen years old. His Eisenhower pants, 100 percent virgin Dacron. His wino pants. His dress-up pants. He peeled off the tight jeans and stepped into the slacks and tried to see himself in the side mirror of the truck. Wrong. This would not do. He dropped the slacks, balled them up and stuffed them down a badger hole. Again he pulled on the Levi’s jeans—old and faded and not very clean but at least they fit. Then reevaluated what he had long ignored, that the crotch was frayed to a frazzle. If he sat with legs spread his scrotum could be seen, leaking out like some obscure form of marine polyp.