He had forgotten to put the sunshade in the windshield when he had parked the Hummer, and now he would be forced to suffer. A wall of heat greeted him like a dragon’s sneeze. In many ways it reminded him of his days at the mill. Working near the blast furnaces in the dead of summer. Sweating so much that he had a permanent thirst. It was so bad at times that he actually looked forward to the rigours of twice-daily football practices, because they were a vacation by comparison. Years later, when he was stationed in the Middle East, everyone bitched and moaned about the desert heat. The air was dry. The sun was brutal. Lips cracked and skin chafed. To combat the conditions, American soldiers were forced to hydrate on a regular basis. Commanding officers were required to stand there and watch their soldiers drink their daily dose of fluids, whether they were thirsty or not. During this ritual, Payne did his best to lift their spirits by downplaying the heat. He assured his squad that it had been much hotter in Pittsburgh when he was a teenager.
