BooksBarbecue
Back At Dawn
Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
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  39. Copyright

The modest streets of my youth, Spencer, Ohio, little more than a tiny dot on a state map. With a population just shy of a thousand, the town once bore my name at its four borders and, as far as I know, still does to this day. In my mind I could see it, the single traffic light that hung in the town’s center at the intersection of two state roads, the only ones by which to come and go. A general store, a gas station, a bar, a bank. Fields and farms on the outskirts, and opposite our simple home, behind the bank, there stood a hitching post where the Amish tethered their buggies. A quiet place of porch sitters, unlocked doors, and secrets never kept, a haven of gossip as all small towns are. Hours could pass without a single car on those wintry nights when the ice froze on the insides of our rickety windows, the fierce winds howling like coyotes creating statues of us in our beds. And in the summer the feedlots of the surrounding farms were cleaned and the manure spread in the fields and left to bake beneath the August sun. It was always then that a wind blew in from the west and the smell entered every home and stayed firmly rooted for weeks, so strong that it penetrated our dreams.

August, that month I can never escape.

My teeth began to itch and in that seat I could smell the manure from that August all those years ago. I shook my head free of it and clutched tightly to my bag. No more looking out the window. In time my breathing slowed. My eyelids grew heavy. I squeezed them shut against the darkness. Eventually I fell asleep.

two

1

THE BUS WAS PARKED. My head throbbed and I needed to piss something fierce. I don’t know if I was shaken awake or whether I had felt the driver standing over me. He had wiry hair and bloodshot eyes, supporting his weight with his elbows on the back of the seat in front of me. Within his pale, downcast face he possessed the look of madness most commonly derived from pulling a double shift, functioning on too little sleep and too much caffeine, and thus appeared as though he was liable to fight or to cry (maybe both) at a moment’s notice.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he asked.

I sat up and wiped the sleep from my eyes. The bus was empty. I was groggy. I was always groggy after too much Xanax and not enough sleep.

“We in Chicago?”

“We’ve been in Chicago for twenty minutes now.”