When Ghosts Come Home

by Wiley Cash

she thought vaguely but powerfully of time and change and tragedy and life and all the ways we hang on to these things, store them, and then take them out over the years to leaf through the memories in their pages.

“That’s what it feels like to be a Black man in America, Winston. I’ve been on my belly for years, looking up from the ground, getting stepped on while I keep on crawling forward. The only difference between then and now is that I don’t have that one shot to look forward to.”

He was the kind of man who scared her, a man who acted like he had nothing to lose because he lived in a world without consequences.

All people, no matter their race, were motivated by fear and power more than they were motivated by money or pride,