As I passed Ruby-Alice’s property, I recalled the solace of that little house among the pines, where I first felt Wil’s embrace, where Ruby-Alice cared for me after I emerged from the Big Blue. A twinge of wistfulness tugged at me for all I’d leave behind, for the unsuspecting landscape carrying on as it always had but doomed to be drowned. But, as I approached town, I thought of how this place also held the cruelty of ignorance, where some folks believed a lonely old woman was a devil and a beautiful tan-skinned boy was an outlaw and a skunk.
