The ground around second base is wet. The park sprinklers have just ended their early shift, slipping back beneath the grass.

The air is crisp, moist, almost autumn-like, except it is August and the afternoon will stretch for the upper eighties.

The trees in the park are quiet this morning. There was one robin and a lonely red-winged blackbird, and a distant rooster twenty minutes ago.

This small town orbits Idaho Falls. Even at six am it is not commuters that are awake and rolling but men in trucks, and not shiny F-250s with leather trim. These pull trailers rattling with machinery.

five thirty six,

neighbors' pickups door up

windows down like cops