Read from Lamb Bright Saviors by Robert Vivian:

"When you come to a small town for the first time, far away from any other place, you have to be careful to keep the joy in till you find somewhere safe where you can let it out in secret, like maybe in a diner with an old man sitting alone and staring out the window. Every diner has one old man sitting at a booth next to the window, with what happened to him long ago buried so deep inside him it ends up in the lines of his wrinkled face.

In the old man’s eyes you can see the window curving back, piling up the distance where a pretty girl sits in a room somewhere, her laughter ringing up near the ceiling then fading away in the wind outside. That’s how it happens. The room is locked up or gone but he keeps trying the door because the pretty girl’s in there talking to him in her pure canary-bird voice, which he loves and hates at the same time, like the voice of every pretty girl. That’s what he keeps thinking about after everyone has died or left him.

The first hour after you come into town is usually the best because you don’t know what will happen, though you’ve been in lots of towns before. Don’t take the joy out and spill it over the table because you’re liable to knock people down with sudden bolts of gladness. Unless you know CPR or can give mouth-to-mouth, I wouldn’t risk it. Get a lay of the land and have a Coke first, or, if they have it under glass, a piece of key lime pie. Then take a careful gander around the room and size up the situation while the joy shoots off sparklers inside you."