Need some air in here, the doctor grumbled. A student shrugged. The rest were nodding—not in agreement but in slumber. Doc went to the nearest window and tried to open it. But how? There didn’t seem to be any sort of hinge, sash, latch, catch, crank or handle. How do you open this window? he asked the nearest student. Don’t know, sir, the student said. Another said, You can’t open it; this’s an air-conditioned building. Suppose we need air? the doctor asked, calm and reasonable. You’re not supposed to open the windows in an air-conditioned building, the student said. It screws up the system. I see, Doc said; but we need fresh air. (Outside, below, in the sunshine, little birds were singing in the forsythia, fornicating in the hydrangea.) What do we do? he asked. I guess you could complain to the Administration, another student said, a remark always good for a laugh. I see, said Dr. Sarvis. Still calm and reasonable, he walked to the steel-framed desk by the blackboard, picked up the steel-legged chair waiting behind the desk and, holding it by seat and back, punched out the window glass. All of it. Thoroughly. The students watched in quiet approval and when he was finished gave him a sitting ovation. Doc brushed his hands. We’ll skip rollcall today, he said.

ONE FINE DAY in early June, bearing west from Blanding, Utah, on their way to cache more goods, the gang paused at the summit of Comb Ridge for a look at the world below. They were riding four abreast in the wide cab of Seldom’s 4 × 4 pickup truck. It was lunchtime. He pulled off the dusty road—Utah State Road 95—and turned south on a jeep track that followed close to the rim. Comb Ridge is a great monocline, rising gradually on the east side, dropping off at an angle close to ninety degrees on the west side. The drop-off from the rim is about five hundred feet straight down, with another three hundred feet or more of steeply sloping talus below the cliff. Like many other canyons, mesas and monoclines in southeast Utah, Comb Ridge forms a serious barrier to east-west land travel. Or it used to. God meant it to.

Smith pulled the truck up onto a shelf of slickrock within twenty feet of the rim and stopped. Everybody got out, gratefully, and walked close to the edge. The sun stood high in the clouds; the air was still and warm. Flowers grew from cracks in the rock—globe mallow, crownbeard, gilia, rock cress—and flowering shrubs—cliff-rose, Apache plume, chamisa, others. Doc was delighted.

“Look,” he said, “Arabis pulchra. Fallugia paradoxa. Cowania mexicana, by God.”

“What’s this?” Bonnie said, pointing to little purplish things in the shade of a pinyon pine.

“Pedicularis centranthera.”

“Yeah, okay, but what is it?”

“What is it?” Doc paused. “What it is, no man knows, but men call it…wood betony.”

“Don’t be a wise-ass.”

“Also known as lousewort. A child came to me saying, ‘What is the lousewort?’ And I said, ‘Perhaps it is the handkerchief of the Lord.’”