He’d slept late again, he realized with chagrin. That was two days in a row. All his life he’d risen with the sun—or before—but lately . . . He shook his head Wand rubbed his eyes. Rolling off the great, mushy cushion that served as a mattress, he stood and walked to a water basin on a table near the door. He submerged his face for the count of ten, then rubbed it briskly with his hands. Rinsing, he parted the annoyingly long hair and combed it from left to right across his scalp, and looked intently into the polished silver mirror above the basin.“Starting to look like a hobo,” he growled, remembering the ones he used to see wandering around the stockyard train station when he was a kid. “Acting like one too. Waking up when I feel like it—damn, I bet it’s nearly oh eight hundred!” He glanced at his watch: 0750. He frowned, shaking his head, then looked at the mirror again. His hair was halfway down his ears, and starting to curl a little against his collar in the back.
