We packed up Friday night and left early Saturday. With both of us trading off on the driving, it was still a fourteen hour trip. If we pushed it we could get to the Flowage early Saturday evening. Fred took his turn at the wheel first and I sat in the back seat and snoozed. When I woke up it was early afternoon and the towns and the farmlands had started to fall away and there were longer and longer stretches of second growth timber and wild looking country that was largely devoted to Indian reservations. And even then, the shacks were getting fewer and fewer--an occasional wisp of smoke every few miles marking a cabin back in the brush. I took the wheel and when we had about two hours to go, I stopped at a cross-roads store to pick up some groceries. While I was picking over the bacon and the pancake flour and the cornmeal, Fred was glancing through the assortment of plugs in the beat-up showcase near the door. I took what we needed up to the counter and slid them across to the character who ran the place. He was an old man, the veins standing out big and blue on his arms and his face showing the effects of a lot more than just age. "Henney's pancake flour is real good flour," he said, glancing at the box I had picked out. "What's wrong with this?" "Nothing--just make a couple more cents on Henney's." I started for a moment, then decided to be obliging and went back and got a package of Henney's. "Do you have any white flour?" "Yep, we got flour. Comes in bulk--gotta ask for it." He fixed me up with a paper bag containing a couple of pounds, then started to figure how much I owed him, using a pencil and a hunk of wrapping paper. "Pretty dead around here, isn't it?" "Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't." Fred came over with a brilliant red and blue striped plug. "How much?" The old man glanced at the plug and then at Fred. "Two fifty, maybe." Fred dug for the money and I said, "When isn't it dead around here?" "Last night, for one." He pocketed the two fifty. "Lots of lights off in the woods a spell. Figured it was some city people. Local folks go to bed at a decent time of night." * * * * * I stood there looking at him and John Kelley's nightmare crawled out of the dim recesses of my mind where I thought I had buried it, and squatted right between my eyes, like a big, friendly collie dog making itself at home. Lights. Late at night lights. Lights like in a hundred news reports I had filed and forgotten. I opened my mouth to say something and then let it go. An old school bus had ground to a stop out in front. The driver came in and I didn't more than glance at him. Young fellow, tanned, wearing marine fatigue pants and a white tee shirt. A vet, I thought. You see a hundred like him every day. He jerked a thumb towards the gas pump in front. "Need some gas, Pop. About ten should do it."