The man pulls on his clothes. His hands are steady. Twenty-two years he has lived in this house. Poured the concrete for the back patio with his own hands. Watched his son take his first steps across the kitchen floor.

Down the block a door splinters inward.

His wife is praying. He can hear the words though she makes no sound. He thinks of his father. Of the stories his father told him. Of other men in other times who stood at windows in the dark and watched trucks idle in the street.

The neighbor’s lights come on. Then go off again.

He thinks: There is no law but power. There is no nation but the one you make with your hands and your labor and your love. They can take the document. They cannot take what he has built.

The knock comes.

He does not answer. He walks to his son’s room and lifts the boy from the bed. Carries him to the back door. His wife follows. They move through the yard in the dark. The frost crunching beneath their feet.

Behind them glass breaking. Voices shouting. The bark of commands.

They keep walking.

Somewhere a phone glows in a dark room. A message sent through satellites orbiting above the earth. A witness. A record. A frequency the jamming cannot reach.

In the old stories the righteous were always running. Were always finding the next country, the next wilderness. The next door that might open.

He does not know where they will go. Only that they will go. That they have always gone. That the ones who build and labor and love have always outlasted the ones who kick in doors.

The sun is coming up now. Pale light on the frozen fields.

They keep walking.