. . . the Yankee dollar and Confederate dumbness combined to heal the wounds of four years of fratricidal strife. . . - Robert Penn Warren

He was a lawyer now and it had taken him a long time. It had taken him a long time because he had had to be a lawyer on his own terms and in his own way. But that was over. But maybe it had taken him too long. If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting. In the end they just ask you those crappy little questions.

For fire flames but in the heart of a colder fire. All voice is but echo caught from a sound-less voice. Height is not deprivation of valley, nor defect of desire. But defines, for the fortunate, that joy in which all joys should rejoice.

So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west. For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the oldfield pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. IT is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar's gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.