I walked to the train station at night. I was going to drive. It was a hot day, I had already been out walking in the sun, and I thought—just drive to the train station. But when it was time to go, I decided to hoof it. I knew that I would regret driving there, and not feeling my feet on the earth, not being connected to the streets, not absorbing at a pedestrian’s pace. The pedestrian’s pace was equivalent to writing longhand. Walking was the longhand of transportation. It took me about a half hour to get there. At the station, only a gray-haired man with a guitar, sitting on a bench outside the visitor’s center. The man was softly strumming his guitar, gently plucking bluesy notes, almost as if he were shyly practicing his playing where there was no audience. Either that, or he had a lover’s fingers, making sure his touches registered subtly and tenderly, delicate hints preferred to bold statements. The man left after about fifteen minutes. Now the station was empty. Just me and the legacy of the tracks. Railroad America, and its industrial modeling of eternity, its abbreviated span of endlessness. I called to mind my friend Bear, a road dog through and through—weary, hopeful, forlorn, incorrigibly romantic. Bear was now settled in Memphis. I found an iron railroad stake. I put it in my backpack. It seemed like the perfect thing to drive through a vampire’s heart. I hadn’t come across any vampires yet, but still…. You’ve got to trust in the little things you find along the way.