Richard lay in his hammock, the bill of his hat covering his eyes, listening to the chorus of crickets and the crackling fire as the twilight sky collapsed into the night. Gizmo chased fireflies across the lakeshore, most of which he couldn't catch, but when he got them, he would stop in his tracks, drop his head, and sneeze at least three times. He seemed to have a slight allergy to them but was having the time of his life picking them off, and Richard wouldn't be the one to stop his fun.

They were tuning into what was shaping up to be another Red Sox victory over his FM/AM travel radio when it cut to static. Richard's head popped out of his hammock like a gopher out of a hole, looking at the tree stump that the small silver box was sitting on. The antenna sat perched at an angle, reaching out at least three feet, reminding Richard of the whippings he'd taken as a boy from his father with a thin metal rod of about the same length. The thought gave him chills.

"Damn it, Giz," he muttered. "Looks like we might not catch the end."

Gizmo had stopped chasing fireflies, outmaneuvered by the tiny flashing fighter-pilots, and sat in the grass. At the sound of Richard's voice, his head perked up and he wined as if understanding Richard's frustration.

Richard groaned, swinging his legs out of the hammock and rising to his feet. He didn't feel the familiar twinge of back pain that normally came along with standing up quickly. It seemed that his hammock in the forest was treating him a bit better than his two-thousand-dollar mattress in his old master bedroom in his old house. There really seemed to be something in the fresh air that was slowly healing him. He felt as if he were aging backward, and it was incredible.

He made his way over to the box and picked it up. It was a light little thing, made of nothing but a receiver, a speaker, an antenna and a dial. He had gotten it at Walmart before they left for the woods years ago and it had served him well so far. He looked it over as if the problem would be on the outside. He listened to it play its static, repetitive tone and tried turning the dial. He picked up nothing new, no matter how far to the right or left he turned it. He knew that it wasn't the battery; it was still producing that soft, fuzzy sound that all radios did when their signals died.

"Well," Richard said, stroking his beard. "Looks like it's busted."

The death of the radio upset Richard. He'd gotten lots of miles out of it and almost felt as if he'd built some sort of relationship with it. The radio had been his outside voice, the face of sanity and his only tie to the world he once was a pawn in. He felt that without it, he would simply become another animal in the woods; destined to die alone with his dog with no ties to the rest of the planet. This thought of isolation scared him, and he suddenly found the civilized man within him craving the sound of a voice other than his own.

"Giz," he said. "I think we're going to have to take a trip into town."

So he planned for the next two days. The two of them would take the truck down to the base of the mountain and drive into the nearest town, either to get the radio replaced or get a new one. Richard was equally nervous and excited at the thought of seeing new faces. He felt like a giddy teenager again, anxious to go on a first date or walk onto the field for the first football game of the season. He opened his bag and pulled out his wallet. He'd actually, over the last few years, used a dollar or two as firestarters. He was curious to see how much he had left.

"Thirty-five dollars," he said with finality. "That should do us."

Gizmo was up and wagging his tail. He barked once, and it echoed out across the lake.

"Yep," Richard said. "Ready to become the 'Blue-Ridge Mountain Man and his Trusty K9?'" He seemed to pause to wait for the dog to laugh, but the dog just stared at him with the same, happy gaze he'd had since he was a puppy. Richard poured water over the fire, listening to the sizzle, and stomped the remaining ashes with his boots.

"Oh, buddy," Richard said, falling back into his hammock. "Let's hope the world hasn't changed too much."