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Hey, he says to her in a soft voice How bout a little touch? Just a quick poke like – what do you say?

Shoo, Abraham, she says Get back to bed

Come on, he says You had worse than me, I know it Me, I’m like a bunny rabbit – quicky dicky Sweet and si men poke me, she says Go to bed

All thee him it?

Shoo, Abrahaot your na herself into the couch

Abraha

Well, I’ll be goddamned if it ain’t the only na with vitriol You got the whole phone book down your pants, girl

Pretending to sleep, Moses waits to see if his brother will take more action He is a man who does not react well to rejection of the womanly sort But Abraham is too aware of his brother’s presence in the rooreat noise back to the bed he shares with Moses Moses can hear hi a litany in a whisper under his breath

Goddah-falutin whores, he says What’s everybody keepin theeddon everywhere you look, and everybody’s still so uppity about a little buoddao back to the business of not bein dead Instead we got ourselves a world of princes and princesses and dukes and dukettes – and everybody’s wearin white robes and readin bibles and puttin flowers in each other’s hair Just once I’d like to oddaets into the bed beside his brother, Abrahas the bristly blanket off Moses and curls up in a sweating ball of curses

Moses waits He does not sleep low

Five days they stay in the cabin Five days in the woods where, at night, they can hear the flakes of snow tapping light on the panes, they can hear the branches of the trees cracking under the weight of the fall If it snows at night, in the ain the ice froazes Moses hunts, the Vestal cooks, Abraha and tends to his wound

What is it if it ain’t a one and built here? Abrahaoddamned if it doesn’t feel, in fact, like they have built so on an e that wasn’t there before but now stands undeniable and true

Nights, when he can’t sleep, Moses goes and sits by the pond and looks up at the sky along with the dead man Sometimes the Vestal Amata joins him, and sometimes she doesn’t They talk, and she picks at the ends of her long red hair She tells him about herself She was born in Oklahoma City, she was raised by her mother Her father she doesn’t have s went bad She was five years old, and for a long ti places to hide from the hordes of the dead Then her ot sick and kind of faded away Soirl explains After her mother died, she was taken in by a whole lot of different people Some were okay and others weren’t Now she’s twenty-five – which is exactly the saot soe between you

Fifteen years, Moses confir difference, she says And it ain’t the only thing different between you

Moses shrugs

We got different mothers, he says

I’d listen to a story, if you’d recount it

It ain’t much of a story, but I don’t feel like tellin it at the ht under different stars These ones are too hopeful

Okay, she says

He can feel her gaze on hi time He sits up and leans over the ice of the pond

Everybody’s lookin for their own personal entrance to heaven, Moses says Mine looks different from my brother’s – and yours different froer and taps on the ice over the dead man’s face

Hiainst theof heaven

The Vestal Aently across the surface of the ice Then she looks up into the night sky as if to see what heaven he et into

Everyone’s always tryin to find an entrance to the kingdom of heaven, she says Me, I ain’t so interested in entrances All I want’s a kingdom of exits

Moses wonders what she means, and then he thinks he understands He too has looked this way upon the world at times He eyes her, the curve of her neck craned upwards, theit pale as the snow, the auburn of her hair like a tangle of nightwood And then a shs high and tinkling like a Christmas chime Suddenly he is suspicious of the sincerity of her words – as though she is accusto the awed audience of her own performances He wonders how much, in fact, she believes her own stories

But she sht

She looks down at the deaddo you think he’s been down there? she asks

Too long, Moses says and rises to his feet