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chance to see something like this again ever.”
    He thought a minute, then took three cold Cokes out of the machine, poured half of each one out the window and filled them from the bottle in the sack and walked out the door.
    One truck was dumping grain—there was a farmer named Hansen there—and two more were waiting. He handed Hansen one of the Cokes, went to the other two farmers and gave them each a Coke and talked to each of them alittle. Pretty soon I was walking down the street with Python by my side and four big men following along behind.
    We had to walk past the hardware and grocery, then along the side of Bemis’s all-service station. Five people walking like that attracted attention so we picked up one here and one there until I looked back and we had nine men and three women following, none of them talking, just following in the early morning behind Python and me.
    We found Mick another block down from where he’d been. He was doing a drawing of an old car up on blocks in back of Harrison’s house. It was an old Ford, and Mick was leaning the tablet against a tree while he worked. I stopped in back of him and watched him draw. All the people with me formed a rough circle around in back of me and if Mick saw us or even knew we were there, he made no sign. His fingers whipped the chalk around, and the car came into being on the paper. When he came to doing the small oval emblem that said Ford in writtenletters I heard somebody in back of me cough and say:
    “You know, when Harrison was young, he went to sparking in that car and he used to shine it and shine it so the emblem just stood out, caught the light and stood out. Just like on that drawing. How could that be?”
    And so it did. And when he was done with the old car he moved on. Only this time he didn’t fold the drawing into the tablet but tore it from the pad. He handed it to Fred who took it, looked at it, and passed it on to the rest of the people.
    There was no sound except their breathing. I thought it might be because they didn’t like the drawing but it was the other way. They saw what I saw, or thought I saw—saw that the drawings were more than just drawings. Were somehow
inside
of what they were drawings of, so that they showed all of what that thing had been or would be.
    Showed not just the old car, but in some strange way what made the thing that way, how it lived and maybe died.
    Mick was drawing now by Harrison’s mailbox, how it leaned out and over the curb, the way the shadow from it went. His hands started the big, looping movements to form things in when he suddenly stopped.
    His nose went in the air.
    “Could it be,” he said, “that there is something drinkable nearby?”
    Fred nodded and held out the Coke bottle he was carrying.
    “No, no, I didn’t mean anything sweet.”
    Fred said nothing, just held the Coke bottle out. Something in his eyes went to Mick and Mick nodded and took the bottle and drank back about half of it.
    “There.” He sighed. “I’ve been a touch off since I woke up this morning in that strange position and that helps. That helps.”
    He studied us as if seeing us for the first time. “Now, tell me, where did you all come from?”

Ten

    IT CAME TO ME that night that I should be an artist.
    Well—not that fast. It wasn’t just one of those silly things you hear about where somebody watches a video and decides to be a rock star or a rodeo rider or an airline pilot. Not wacky like that, or not like we used to do in the orphanage when we would study pictures in magazinesand try to imagine how it would be to live the way they lived in the pictures.
    It was not from what Mick was doing, not from how he lived—not that. Who wants to live in a rusty old station wagon drunk all the time with your rear end sticking out the window and not knowing where you are?
    It was something else. Not something that Mick did so much as what his work made me want to do.
    If I could have wrapped the rest of that