Point Reyes is a small-town setting where a farmers’ market, familiar neighbors, and a homespun noon signal create a vivid picture of community life. In the same place, news about Nic Sheff has spread through the town, making ordinary encounters carry the strain of his family’s private crisis.

A Town Marked by Its Own Sounds

In some towns, church bells or clock towers announce noon. In Point Reyes, the signal is stranger and more pastoral: a rooster crows, followed by the harmony of mooing cows broadcast from a public-address system atop the Western Saloon. The sounds briefly stop the narrator and those around him, turning the hour into a shared local ritual.

The Farmers’ Market and Its Community

At Toby’s Feed Barn, the narrator is with Daisy and Jasper in a scene he likens to Oklahoma! Neighbors and friends shop for tomatoes, cucumbers, salad greens, and Cowgirl Creamery cheeses. The market’s social fabric is visible in a chance meeting with the narrator’s brother, sister-in-law, and their children, beside baskets of Early Girls tomatoes, basil, and other herbs ready for planting. A mural nearby depicts local people, including Toby in his knit cap and the narrator’s niece as a baby, placing the market’s present-day bustle alongside a record of community life.

Local Concern and a Difficult Call

By this point, nearly everyone the family knows in town has heard about Nic Sheff, and people ask after him with evident nervousness. Laurel, whose daughter is addicted to heroin and has been in a near-fatal car crash, hugs the narrator and begins to cry. While Daisy and Jasper are away with their cousins listening to a fiddle-and-bass bluegrass duo, the narrator’s phone rings; expecting Nic Sheff, he moves away from the crowd to a quiet spot near caged chicks inside the barn. He answers, but no one is there. The unanswered call brings the family’s uncertainty into the middle of the market’s familiar communal scene: Point Reyes offers neighbors who recognize one another’s pain, but it cannot resolve what is happening to Nic Sheff.