Little America is the kind of mirage that gradually invades your vision like a distant fire on the horizon. It becomes more clearly defined as you approach at night...a beacon, a lighthouse on the vast Wyoming high desert, a steaming array of quonset huts lit by strings of incandescent lights like the bridge in Apocalypse Now. The Heron suddenly stood up in the seat and shouted "UFO!!" I popped open another beer for him and tried to speak in comforting tones, though I could have been speaking Swahili for all the cognizance the bird could muster. "We need food," I said, at last, and we pulled in and parked. It took me fifteen minutes to figure out how to activate the gas pump, and anothert five to find the Heron's American Express card to pay for it. The restaurant was like an underwater chamber peopled by hirsute escapees from a primate study. The waitress who took our order must have been 65 years old and wore a two-foot high bouffant hairdo that looked to be made from an amalgam of fiber glass and cotton candy. I ordered eggs and hash browns for me and the heron. And coffee. Lots of strong black coffee. Truck-stop coffee that hits your tongue like a pistol shot and leaves your mouth shouting "medic!" Coffee you could spread on toast with a bread knife.