The House Trail

You lead a wagon. The road is the evening. Every fork is a Living Historic choice: work, a home, conscience, courage, a neighbor, temperance, a true word, and something left for the people after you.

A good choice keeps the house and makes miles. A subversive one — cruelty as the joke, a no that does not hold, appetite instead of the job — leaks the evening. If the house hits zero, you have died of a bad story. Stories are the test. Blood is not.