We didn’t talk about it much. We just decided to go on and try to be happy. Who knows, maybe having the world seem like it’s coming apart draws people to the things they really love. Maybe it’s fear. Anyway, Bobby Tree and I settled down to make a new start. We’d been loving each other since we were fifteen years old, and we knew each other’s past. “Look at it this way, baby,” he told me. “Sooner or later we’d get back together. Why wait till we’re old and gray?” And he pulled me close to him until I could feel his body taut and fine against mine, and the same old music started playing. “Dance with me. I want to be your partner. …” It has been our song since the first time I heard it on the radio, riding in Bobby’s old red pickup toward the river to take the canoe from Pinewood down to Five Feathers on the east fork of the Big Black. I hadn’t been going out with him more than a week and already we were getting in trouble. “I’m going to Fayetteville to a cheerleading camp,”
