When you know you are going home, you look for a road that leads home.

From Alfred’s journal

A man stood at the corner of Pine and Third this afternoon turning a paper map over twice, and a woman with grocery bags told him the river was east. He said he knew where the river was, he just did not know whether he wanted it. Then he folded the map and went east anyway. For years I thought the hard part was the walking, that anyone who knew the way had the easy half of it; I watched him and thought instead that when you know you are going home, you look for a road that leads home, and he had been standing there a long while doing the other thing first. Switch asked what I was staring at and I said a man deciding, and Switch said that is not a thing you can see. Maybe not. The wind came up off the water and the map went in his coat pocket, and he did not take it out again before the block ended.