They sat on a bench and Sproule held his wounded arm to his chest and rocked back and forth and blinked in the sun. What do you want to do? said the kid. Get a drink of water. Other than that. I dont know. You want to try and head back? To Texas? I don't know where else. We'd never make it. Well you say. I aint got no say. He was coughing again. He held his chest with his good hand and sat as if he'd get his breath. What have you got, a cold? I got consumption. Consumption? He nodded. I come out here for my health.

The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of their claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transciencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.

in dreams it is often the case that the greatest extravagances seem bereft of their power to astonish and the most improbable chimeras seem commonplace.

They spoke less and less between them until at last they were silent altogether as is often the way with travelers approaching the end of a journey.

I have no enemies. I dont permit such a thing.

I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics.

What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky worm-bent tabernacle.