Groff sluiced some of the water off his face and hair. "Well," he said. Somehow it hadn't occurred to him that the phones might not be working. There wasn't much sense in going back to the car again; he knew a mudded-in wheel when he saw one. You could push blankets and boards under those rear wheels all night and the mud would just swallow up what the wheels didn't slide right off. "Maybe you can help me," he said. "I'm stuck in the mud down the road and I've got to get into Hebertown." The grocer glanced at him appraisingly and then bent to adjust the flame on the gasoline lantern. "I'm all alone here," he mentioned. Mickey Groff waited. "I hate to close up before time," the grocer said virtuously. "I'd like to help you out--You stuck bad?" "Pretty bad. Anyway, I can't rock it out. I was hoping to call a tow truck from Hebertown." "I got a pickup truck with four-wheel drive," the grocer said thoughtfully. "You're welcome to wait here till I close if you want to. Wouldn't be more than a couple of--" "How about ten bucks if you do it now?" The grocer's eyes flickered, but he shook his head. "You don't know the people around here," he complained. "They wait till I'm just ready to close, and bingo, two-three cars come zooming up. Milk for Junior, catfood for the cat, coffee, they gotta have coffee, they wouldn't bother me if it wasn't so jeezly important. Sit down and wait, mister. It's only--" He squinted at the advertising clock above his door, shadowed from the flare of the pressure lamp by a stack of tall cans on a top shelf--"It's only half an hour." Mickey Groff thought of lying to the man, giving him a story about a medical emergency or a big deal with a deadline, something he couldn't decently brush off for the sake of two or three catfood customers. Then, because he didn't like to lie, he shrugged, made a disgusted grimace at himself in the near-dark and sat down in a spindle-back chair to wait out the thirty minutes. He knew what the trouble was; it was the old thing. He had been born, apparently, geared up about twenty-five per cent faster than most people. This was very handy in some ways; he was a Rising Young Businessman at thirty and pretty soon now he'd be a Rising Young Industrialist. His picture had been printed in _Nation's Business_ along with eleven other promising youngsters who owned their own plants, and one day it would appear alone. He knew it and he knew it would be due to his built-in overgearing. But that didn't make it any easier to sit and wait for the catfood customers.