Member-only story
The Shortest Day of the Longest Year: Out of Darkness Comes Light
I woke up in a tent on the ridge above Cat Gut on the shortest day of the longest year and shook the morning rain off the fly. My car was parked in a friend’s yard, his house looking like it could slide into the creek, and I nodded to old man chopping wood before kicking my boots and getting in the driver’s seat. He stared at me and spat.
In Charleston, I stopped for hot coffee and walked towards the Kanawha to see the barges. A woman screamed at a man outside the courthouse; not the stately sandstone courthouse, but the unceremonious cement block one where lives fall apart. “You’re dead!” she yelled, her voice shrill and breaking. He walked towards me and past me, his face placid, his gait quick but not alarmed, his leather briefcase tucked up under his arm.
She stood on the corner and broke into tears. Her face distraught and distorted, her stringy hair sticking to her cheeks as she sobbed, thin legs wobbling underneath her. Her arms hung heavy by her side, she did not even obscure her face with her hand, she just stood in the middle of the sidewalk, staring in the direction the man had gone, and sobbed.
“I just want to see my son,” she gasped.
I used a stick to scrape the rest of the mud off my boots and into the river, the dark soil disappearing quickly…
