By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.

I'd rather to make a good run as a bad stand.

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.

There was someone there and they had been there. There was no one there. There was someone there and they had been there and they had not left but there was no one there.

He believed in God even if he was doubtful of men's claims to know God's mind. But that a God unable to forgive was no God at all.

The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the name of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.

The rain falls upon the just And also on the unjust fellas But mostly it falls upon the just Cause the unjust have the just's umbrellas