And we drove, snapping and shooting, with autumn tumbling down on us and time falling over us. In that perfect place under the trees by the bridge, we let ourselves be amazed. At the Turkey Red Café—dusty—we stood, with cotton in our pockets and not enough money to buy discontent.

We are desperate to create memories in these last days, yet the fall has left us behind. Our best moments were autumn moments, you know—when the limestone of poorhouses turned osage orange in the sunset.

And so we’ll drive on, separately, with the dust pillowing out behind us. But before that goodby, we will stop on our dirt roads, and in the suspended glittering dust, we’ll play some Lyle and dance like a western Kansas wind. We’ll whip and drag and fold—grace shattered and held together by steel rods and the love that filters through the late afternoon between us, and finally settles, content, on the road.