To the right of the hurrying car, beyond the shoulder of the highway, stood a gathering of cows. Not far beyond rested more brown shapes, half-hidden by the shadow of a barn. On the side of the barn an old Coca-Cola sign was vaguely visible.

Joseph Schilling, seated in the back of the car, reached into his watch pocket and brought out his gold watch. With an expert dig of his nail he lifted the lid and read the time. It was two-forty in the afternoon, the hot, midsummer California afternoon.

"How much farther?" he inquired, with a stir of dissatisfaction. He was weary of the motion of the car and the flow of farmlands outside the windows.

Hunched over the steering wheel, Max grunted without turning his head. "Ten, maybe fifteen minutes."

"You know what I'm talking about?"

"You're talking about that town you marked on the map. It's ten or fifteen minutes ahead. I saw a mileage sign back a ways; at that last bridge."

More cows came into sight, and with them more dry fields. The far-off mountain haze had, during the last few hours, settled gradually into the depths of the valleys. Wherever Joseph Schilling looked the haze lay dully spread out, obscuring the baked hills and pastures, the assorted fruit orchards, the occasional calcimined farm buildings. And, directly ahead, the beginnings of the town: two billboards and a fresh egg stand. He was glad to see the town arrive.

"We've never been through here," he said. "Have we?"

"The closest we've come is Los Gatos, on that vacation you took back in '49."

"Nothing can be done more than once," Schilling said. "New things must be found. As Heraclitus would say, the river is always different."

"It all looks alike to me. All this farm country." Max pointed to a herd of sheep collected under an oak tree. "That's those sheep again ... we've been passing them all day."