Redemption Road

by John Hart

The old man leaned back in the chair and looked small in the rumpled suit. “Did you know that my family and Adrian’s have been together on this river for two hundred years or more? No reason you should, of course, but there it is. The Jones family. The Walls. When my father was crippled in the First World War, it was Adrian’s great-grandfather who taught me to hunt and fish and work the land. He cared for my parents, and when the Depression came, he made sure we had butter and beef and flour. He died when I was twelve, but I remember the smell of him, like tractor grease and grass and wet canvas. He had strong hands and a lined face and wore a tie when he came for supper on Sundays. I grew up and followed the law and never knew Adrian that well. But I remember the day he was born. A group of us smoked cigars on the porch right there. His father. A few others. It’s good land on the river. Good families.”

I’ll burn the world. I swear it.”

After that, the hatred came like a thief.”

pointed the old car at skinny roads that ran wild into the country.

It was the same empty escape—the same race—

Everybody runs dark at times, and anybody can snap. All we can do now is work the fallout.”

Her face was in the world above, a slash of color, a kite.