"Any how. Our preacher preached this evening about how the dead will rise." Roy drops his Bible into the grass. "I guess we could go up north somewhere."

The words drift skyward. They sit till they are half buried in gold leaves. Roy's white shirt gleams. He pulls Nathan against him and for a while they become one flesh. Roy is rapt, as if he is singing inside. Or maybe it is more as if he is blossoming, a flower opening at this very moment. Nathan remembers, oddly, Preacher John Roberts leaning over the pulpit toward the congregation in puzzlement, in confusion at the notion of the Disciple John resting his head on Jesus's chest. Nathan rests his head there on Roy and understands. In the distance they hear the voices of people searching for them in the woods. They stand and go. They never look back.