“Now he allowed himself to look around, to take in the vermilion glow surrounding them just as it faded. ‘Wow,’ he said.
     ‘My grandmother called this the gloaming.’
     ‘Sometimes it just knocks you out.’
     ‘In five minutes the skeeters will be swarming and we’ll be eaten alive.’
     ‘The gloaming. Sounds Gaelic.’
     ‘There it goes. It was almost like liquid.’ ”

—Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke, 2007.