Tobias Wolff - This Boy's Life--Ending Excerpt lyrics

When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are right, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that the falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous a**urance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever. That a**urance burns very bright at certain moments. It was burning bright for me when Chuck and I left Seattle and started the long drive home. I had just dumped a load of stolen goods. My wallet was thick with bills which I would lose at cards in one night, but which I then believed would keep me going for months. In a couple of weeks I was leaving for California to be with my father and brother. Soon after I got there, my mother would join us. We would all be together again, as we were meant to be. And when the summer was over I would go East to a noble school where I would earn good marks, captain the swimming team, and be welcomed into the great world that was my desire and my right. In this world nothing was impossible that I could imagine for myself. In this world the only task was to pick and choose. Chuck felt good too. His trunk had no guns in it. He had escaped Tina Flood, he had escaped prison, and before long he would escape me. We weren't friends any more, but we both had cause to rejoice and this helped us both imagine we were friends. We sang along with the radio and shared a bottle of Canadian Club that Chuck had brought along. The deejay was playing songs from two and three years before, songs that already made us nostalgic. The farther we got from Seattle the louder we sang. We were rubes, after all, and for a rube the whole point of a trip to the city is the moment of leaving it, the moment it closes behind his back like a trap sprung too late. The night was hazy. There was no moon, Farmhouse windows burned with a soft bu*tery light, as if they were under water. We went from farmland to forest and then picked up the river and followed the river into the mountains. I looked at the country we pa**ed through with a lordly eye, allowing myself small stirrings of fondness for what I thought had failed to hold me. I did not know that the word home would forever after be filled with this place.