This is Mr Carver’s crippled but game effort to be cool, and Gary respects that. David Carver works for the post office, and Gary figures he must be on vacation this week. The boy makes a vow to himself: if he has to settle for a regular nine-to-five job when he grows up (he knows that, like diabetes and kidney failure, this does happen to some people), he will never spend his vacation at home, washing his car in the driveway.

I’m not going to have a car, anyway, he thinks. Going to have a motorcycle. No Japanese bike, either. Big damn old Harley-Davidson like the one Mr Marinville keeps in his garage. American steel.

He checks the rearview again and catches sight of something bright red up on Bear Street beyond the Josephson place-a van, it looks like, parked just beyond the southwestern corner of the intersection-and then swoops his Schwinn back across the street again, this time to 247, the Wyler place.

Of the occupied houses on the street (242, the old Hobart place, is vacant), the Wyler place is the only one which even approaches seedy-it’s a small ranch-style home that could use a fresh coat of paint, and a fresh coat of seal on the driveway. There’s a sprinkler twirling on the lawn, but the grass is still showing the effects of the hot, dry weather in a way the other lawns on the street (including the lawn of the vacant Hobart house, actually) are not. There are yellow patches, small right now but spreading.

She doesn’t know that water isn’t enough, Gary thinks, reaching into his canvas bag for another rolled-up Shopper. Her husband might've, but-

He suddenly realizes that Mrs Wyler (he guesses that widows are still called Mrs) is standing inside the screen door, and something about seeing her there, hardly more than a silhouette, startles him badly. He wobbles on his bike for a moment, and when he throws the rolled-up paper his usually accurate aim is way off.