—Didn’t fuckin’ Abraham have to sacrifice his only son, or at least begin to, I mean he was like just about to knife his own kid’s throat and all that but he didn’t.

—He didn’t, she says. He didn’t. And she opens the door and steps into the cold and walks along to the railing, and you see her but hold off on running after her mainly for reasons of drama; to run to her would be unseemly, and there is more dramatic element in letting her stand out there a moment (and you realize of course how much the dramatic element has played a role in all this, and how young and stupid you sound, stoned, like your own sons).

Y) Pressing the iron into the wrinkled blouse, wedging the bow around, a ship working across the sea—you think fleetingly of his tongue.

Z) In the winter, the waves rearrange the landscape into seasonal formations—beaches grow short and stout. You watch a time-lapse film at the National Seashore visitor’s center. You came here on the way back from the beach just to warm up. The dated film clatters away—shifting sands, a flex and wane of the days jolting past one after another with great rapidity. Something about the time lapse. The music swells—you’ve seen the movie before—and the view expands as a helicopter shot pans back and slowly reveals the Cape itself hooking out feeble and deprived like the quivering, wanting hand of a drug addict longing for the needle. You’re lonely seeing it, those spots of wanton love and lust. The lights go on and you clutch Irene’s hand. She doesn’t know a thing. The elements are stable and calm. Nothing has shifted. The boys are already out in the tourist information area. They’re stealing maps again. One distracts the attention of the ranger with a stupid question and the other grabs a whole batch; it’s the thing they do—these kids—stealing maps of all kinds, in large numbers, to be distributed one way or another to the rest of the world. There is no reason in it, but they’re your kids. You don’t support the theft part, but the random stupidity of their teenage desires you support wholeheartedly.

DUSTMAN APPEARANCES TO DATE

Leaning into the wind, holding his hat, headlong toward the shed, with the billowing dust forming a squall line to his left, he seemed bent over before the immensity of his situation—the split-rail fence, the chicken wire, the barbed wire, the rugged boards of the stockade—yet at the same time he seemed resolved to be singular and hopeful. One imagines he got to the shed and harnessed the anxious horses and rubbed the sides of their heads and spoke to them while the sand seeped in the cracks and knotholes and the granular hiss sang against the boards. He’ll persevere, live on, and make it work, or not work. The foreclosure papers might be served. Later he’ll be seen swaying over the Oklahoma landscape when the wind is right, part dust dervish, and part dust devil, a composition of wheat chaff, dirt, and bits of road litter cohering into something that might catch your eye. His story began to spread. You see the dustman again t’day, Earl? Spot you another one of them dustmen? Nope, can’t say I did.