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

I SAT STARING AT the computer screen in front of me, eyes fixed on the blinking cursor. I printed the new pages and added them to the pile. It was ten and I had yet to spend a single minute on actual work, and instead created an outline of the few events yet to happen. It didn’t take long, and when I finished I just sat there taking it all in. It was an odd sensation, the feeling I assume a marathon runner experiences when hitting the last mile. If I included the months of thinking about the novel before I started writing it, which I did while still in New York, then it had been with me for slightly over a year.

“What the hell are you doing?” Linda asked behind me, a reasonable question, given that I was staring at the computer screen with an awkward grin.

“Just taking it all in, my dear. I think I’m going to finish my book this week. And it’s about damn time, too.”

“That’s great. How far are you now?”

“Two hundred and fifty-one pages.”

“Hot damn, Stratton, that’s excellent! You going to celebrate?”

“You know, I haven’t really thought about it. Maybe, though. Interested?”

“Absolutely,” she said, and I was flattered by the genuine excitement in her voice.

2

I finished ten days later, on a Friday.

I had clocked in earlier than normal and was seated at the café by six fifteen. I had intended to write for two hours, but when I realized how close I was to finishing, I refused to stop for the sake of my job and I was still there four hours later. And then I finally came to the last paragraph. I paused before writing it, certain about what I needed to capture, namely, American loneliness, uncertainty and fear, insecurity, the inclination to always look ahead or behind but never in the now. The end of any story can either make or break it, and I felt I had to embody these things to make mine a success, to make it worth reading.

Barrack Gray leaves his little hometown as he had always yearned to do, but it’s not the way in which he had intended. He simply begins walking with a bedraggled old beagle named Charley. Walking, but toward what? He doesn’t really know, but he hopes it’s something worth walking toward, that it’s worth leaving behind everything he knows, for there is comfort to be found in the familiar. He holds to this hope, the very hope that resides in bulk in this country, the hope that keeps the human spirit alive. Regardless of how dire any situation might be, there is always hope to lift it.