He cleaned it up and left it in Ruth Ann's garage. How Pignatelli envied them. They were camped that year among the sycamores in a nameless bend of No Business Creek. Billy Joe asked. It was becoming like a joke.
Nobody wants to get old, yet every year they get older.
The year two thousand found them walking the ridge that leads north and east from Cumberland Gap like a road in the sky, while the wind ripped the leaves from the trees all around them. It was the coldest October in years. Life was still sweet. Billy Joe married again. Nation moved back in with Ruth Ann.