Bud’s 1980 paint-peeling Ford Pinto–named Diablo after The Cisco Kid’s horse—gently slowed to a stop on the south side of the Ship Canal. Bud pushed Diablo off the street onto a grassy patch. The Pinto held everything that Bud owned—hundreds of empty plastic bags, stacks of newspapers and his collection of unwashed socks. Bud was out of places to go. Right there on a grassy shoulder was the place called “The End of the Road” and with it a state of mind John Barth called, “cosmopsis”.

Bud couldn’t decide which among his few choices to do next, his own brand of emotional paralysis. Money gone, out of gas, his solitary hope leaking air like Diablo’s illegal tires. After a week, the city, without the ceremony due the Cisco Kid’s horse, hauled Diablo to the junk yard. Bud had been on foot for a year. Things have not improved. Bud has stalled out like old Diablo, but no one has come to haul him away. Bud is out of options.

Bud spent the wet and cold autumn, winter and spring afternoons sitting on his white upside-down empty paint-bucket contemplating his future. The future did not look inviting. His eyes were fixed into time like Laocoon’s—blank like the Greek statue and wide with terror. Serpentine Fate had Bud cornered in a cold concrete garage.

There are a few books at nearby Fisherman’s Terminal in a passageway near the showers. “Borrow, Read and Return” is the policy. Bud found a copy of “Fahrenheit 451” on the shelves and took them up on Part One of their offer. He hauled the paperback book back to his concrete corner to begin Part Two.

Most days Bud spent “thinking little at all about nothing in particular” just like Montag in the book. Bud had read that many years ago in New Orleans and he liked it then. In order to fend off boredom Bud started reading the book again. But soon enough night came down like a falling anvil and with it the chill of a damp Seattle night. He hadn’t read very far before it was too dark to read any further.

Bud had a tent hidden in the brambles by the railroad tracks. It was his home away from his afternoon shifts in his “office.” When he returned home, book tucked in his jacket, he pulled a few dry twigs together, tore out a few pages, lit them with a match and started a small fire. The fire did not feel even close to the promised 451 degrees but he was, for a few moments, warm. Bud remembered the first line of the burning book—“It was a pleasure to burn”—as he held his hands close to the fire.