"We went to Louisiana and heard some blues, once," he says quietly, almost to himself, the memory stealing up out of the depths of his mind like a ghost. "Crackly. Like it was really fucking far away." The echoes of a dead world. But someone, somewhere, wasn't letting it die completely. He'd smiled a thin, sardonic smile, made some kind of comment about whistling in the dark. But now he sees why people do just that.

Sometimes that's all you have.

"Hang on." He turns the wheel sharply, swerving to avoid a place in the road where the asphalt has crumbled away entirely, long years of rain or maybe one big flood.