Tail yellow trees lined the city streets: elms, cottonwoods, aspen, birch. In the October wind, showers of yellow leaves tumbled and swirled ahead of the bus. Lisa imagined the bus passing through a rotating yellow tunnel. As the sun blazed out again, the yellow seemed to become fire. But it was a cold fire, and Lisa shivered again.

The streets of Sutton looked nearly deserted; few cars, and even fewer people on foot. Most of the pedestrians were old men and women who looked up grimly at the bus as it passed, as if the bus were an unwelcome intruder. The people looked afraid, Lisa thought, afraid or all worn out with worry.

The bus stopped at the railroad tracks. Lisa could hear the clanging ding, ding, ding of the warning signal. She watched the swinging pendulum of the signal with its glaring red eye. The train was near. She could hear the brazen blasts of its whistle. The ground beneath the bus shook, and Lisa glanced up at the gray towers of limestone, waiting for them to crack from their mile-high perches on the hills.

There was a commotion in the bus. Even Mrs. Turner had leaned over to gawk out the window. Lisa's heart slipped up into her throat. For a moment, she thought the rock cliffs had begun their plummet. Then she saw the cause of the commotion. A group of about a dozen boys was running toward the railroad tracks, leaned forward, sprinting, as if determined to collide with the oncoming train.

The boys, of high school age, resembled a pack of savages. Their long hair, shoulder length or longer, flew and flopped behind them in the wind like shocks of wheatstraw. Some of the boys' looked naturally blond. The others had darker hair, but well sun bleached. All the boys were well built, their tanned muscles gleaming with sweat. And they were naked, or nearly so – shoeless and wearing nothing but dirty gray jockstraps, jockstraps that bulged as if stuffed with fists of limestone. The appearance of the boys shocked Lisa nearly as much as their apparently suicidal mission.