“Yes, sir,” he says, removing his broken straw hat, and spitting out his blade of chewed grass, “Go straight, you’ll pass a barn, that belongs to old Jake Robinson, it’s on your left, and a bit farther, a tree, it’s burned out, was struck by lightning in 1993, dead as a fossil, that’ll be on your right, a quarter mile past the barn, after the dead tree, struck by lightning in 1993, you’ll come to the end of the road at a T junction, the gas station is on your left.”