Consider the road, any road. How things would look without it, why it is where it is, what it brings us to when we don't have anyplace to be. Where these stories take place the road cuts through fields of potatoes, corn and tobacco, past ponds and broken down barns, clotheslines and kitchens with lights left burning through the night. Where people don't kill each other very often or shoot at each other much, and bombs are not falling from the sky or exploding outside the market. It's paradise really, for the lucky ones. Like most places it's where people are trying like mad to love or keep from thinking about it.