"You're going to die.
Ain't you pop?"
Vernon asked.
His father raised himself straight.
"Maybe I am.
I don't know."
"I'll go with you then."
"No, son."
"I've got to."
His father watched smoke billow black into the sky,
and then leaned into Vernon.
"Listen to me son," he said.
"I've been thinking on what to do with you,
and I want you to listen close now."
Vernon wiped his stinging eyes and tried
to focus on his father's mouth.
"Tomorrow," his father said, "I want
you to pack your belongings into a bag,
and walk yourself into the town to the Baptist church.
Go on to pastor Gould and tell him everything.
Tell them how I killed the man, and how
you had to carry the body because I was too weak,
and how I made you help burn him up.
Tell them you need help that you need the Lord.
They can't turn you away.
Your fruit has to be picked or go rotten.
You go straight son, and they'll give you a life.
You'll be a symbol to them of how
someone can come out of the fire and become righteous.
You'll be a symbol, and they'll take good care of you
always because folks need something to believe in,"
he said.
"And I'll be assembled too."
And then he was quiet, and draped his good arm
around Vernon's shoulders.
His head lolled and then Vernon was looking
into his father's gray eyes.
"This thing we've done Vernon," he said.
"It's outside of so much.
I'm worried about all the things that'll change,
but I've been thinking about all them
things what can't be touched.
Ain't a woman in the world more beautiful than your mother.
I was thinking about how much I loved her,
and how that ain't changed.
And that got me thinking about my heart,
and how when it rains, your skin and hair gets wet and cold,
but your heart don't know if it's raining, or hot, or windy.
It just keeps on beating."
He lifted his arm back from around Vernon.
"Well, that's how I like to think of it at least.
It ain't all clear in my mind just yet,"
He motioned towards the cave entrance, "Go on now.
Take your mother out tonight and try and just forget about me."
In a gesture they often shared when Vernon was a child,
his father kissed his cheek, and Vernon
touched his father's hair.
And then rose and did not look back.
He was barely conscious of his movement
as he wandered up and up from the tunnels.
He mindlessly negotiated the sandstone facade.
He walked the woods thinking he should climb back to the cave
that there was more to be said that he should stay and help
his father.
But the ground passed quickly beneath him,
and he did not slow until wire patching his boot soles
snagged the grass of the dense sedge prairie.
And then Vernon turned to face what was behind him.
Above the tree line rose the smoking sandstone peak.
And black smoke smeared the sky like an oily thumb dragged down
pretty paper.
In that smoke were brass, buttons, and blood,
and Vernon's eyes burned from smoke.
His hands and arms were beaded with black sweat.
Smoke clung to his hair, his clothes, his skin.
He tasted smoke on his teeth.
Flames fired behind Vernon's breastbone,
and coughed, and spat, and wheezed.
He became lightheaded.
He dropped to one knee.
Sedge swayed in his eyes, and he could no longer see the peak.
He saw only smoke hazed sky.
Sky had been sullied for so long,
Vernon couldn't recall a day without smoke.
He lay on his back in the grass, but could not
quell the heat in his chest.
When blowing smoke swirled in the sky above where he'd lay.
Higher, swirling higher.
And though he longed to believe his father, to understand him,
he knew smoke was not rain, and it found his way to his heart.
He watched the sky and thought of all the fires
the world has ever seen.
Fires from wars and fires from bombs.
So much smoke.
Where has it all gone?
And new smoke curled beneath whiffs of old smoke drifting
ever higher, higher.
Where does it all go?
And he inhaled deeply, and his insides burned,
and Vernon knew all that smoke was now
just the air we breathe.
[APPLAUSE]