All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 230

230

A day in Union City beneath a fierce sun.

He’d walked since first light, stopped only to notice the lake, more bayou. The sodden willow limbs that teased the water, their roots sunk beneath combs of algae. He saw logjams, shifting sandbars, and distant cypress. He made sure to breathe in all of it. He rode three buses, head down, but no one noticed him or cared much. When they passed cop cars he breathed even, too tired to worry, too close to turn back.

On city streets he kept his cap pulled low but moved with a casualness as he shopped windows, then settled into a corner booth at a coffee shop and nursed a coffee. He stood in the shadow of the first monument to the unknown confederate dead, for a moment thought of his father. He’d take an awkward route, board whichever bus left soonest. The first would leave Union City at eight-thirty the next morning. It would head back up to Evansville where he’d spend a little over five hours waiting for the 1167, which would carry him through the night and across the state.

At four in the morning, as the first cardinals sang, he would step out into Alabama.

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