working on: the coming of darkness

Summer faded into fall and the leaves began to drop. To rot by the road and on the mountain side.

Old Man Bishop killed a hog. Invited the whole town out for pulled pork and revival. The place needed a soul cleaning and a man from Alabama was coming to do just that. In a tent down by the river.

We left Hutchinson Holler at the end of October. When the ladies auxiliary came out to decry the devil on his holy day. Momma tore up roots that never took and carried us back down to the railroad. Back to what she knew before she knew nothing.

The air lost its thickness when the gossip died down and the cool began to come.

Life went on. For most. But for me there was nothing left in the whole wide world but a boy and a grave and the man who put him there.