Almost the End of the World

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Sighting Rock Junction, Arizona, at noon on 22 August 1961, Willy Bersinger let his miner's boot rest easy on the jalopy's' accelerator and talked quietly to his partner, Samuel Fitts.

«Yes, sir, Samuel, it's great hitting town. After a couple of months out at the mine, a juke-box looks like a stained-glass window to me. We need the town; without it, we might wake some morning and find ourselves all jerked beef and petrified rock. And then, of course, the town needs us, too.»

«How's that?» asked Samuel Fitts.

«Well, we bring things into the town that it hasn't got -mountains, creeks, desert night, stars, things like that...»

And it was true, thought Willy, driving along. Set a man way out in the strange lands and he fills with wellsprings of silence. Silence of sagebrush, or a mountain lion purring like a warm beehive at noon. Silence of the river shallows deep in the canyons. All this a man takes in. Opening his mouth, in town, he breathes it out.

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