Fall Line by Joe Samuel Starnes

Author:Joe Samuel Starnes [Starnes, Joe Samuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: NewSouth Books, Fall Line, fiction, Georgia, scandal, the South, violence, revenge
ISBN: 9781603060813
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Published: 2011-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Night

Elmer was slowed getting home by traffic on North Highway after the fireworks. Along the dark shoulders people walked back to their vehicles, illuminated only by the moving beams of headlights. The sky was clear and black with stars beginning to appear. He could smell the smoke on his clothes, his hair, and his skin, and the inside of his truck was tinged with the odor of burning wood and leafsmoke, but when he rolled down the window the breeze that rushed in was of a fresh early winter night. The wind was blowing the smoke east, across the river. They probably could smell it all the way to Taliaferro County but they couldn’t at the dam, only half a mile away, because of the wind direction and with their line of sight blocked down below the giant concrete mass. There a whole mess of fools were yukking it up while, unbeknownst to them, a large nearby swath of the land burned, trees and earth and even houses scorched flat to a crisp.

Elmer hung his head and stared at the two-lane road and the taillights in front of him. He hadn’t slept much the night before, perhaps only half an hour or so. He had gotten out of bed at three o’clock and read a day-old newspaper until he left the house before dawn to ride out into the country. His eyes drooped with the need for sleep and his stomach growled, having had no nourishment since the bag of peanuts he bought from the Witcher boy. Some barbecue from the dam sounded mighty good, but he wasn’t about to go back there and put up with all those folks laughing and cutting up.

In town the streets were moderately busy, but he hit both traffic lights green and sped on to the southeast side of town where he lived in the mill village. He pulled into his side yard and parked his truck in the spot where the tires had worn down a smooth path in the grass. The Macon News had come that afternoon but he didn’t bother to read the headlines. He threw the newspaper down on his small square kitchen table and took the .38-.44 out of the shoulder holster and set it down on top of the paper. He removed his suit coat and threw it over a chair and then slipped out of the shoulder holster and set it down on the table. In his bedroom, he took off his dress shirt and tossed it onto the floor in the corner and sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled off his cowboy boots and let them lay where they fell. His dress pants came next, then his gray hunting socks. He reached into the closet and pulled on the tattered bathrobe that Sherry had given him their first Christmas. In the bottom of the closet he found the bedroom shoes that she also had given him, and he slipped those onto his feet.

In

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