A Town That Never Forgets
Story Clips is part of an ongoing blog series where I clip real headlines and make up a story based on the words.
Uniform rows of flat stone cast shadows where the weeds go hungry. A weathered church stands guard from a distance, just as it will for tomorrow’s wedding.
The Mother’s pained sobs fill the space between the ebbing breeze. Merely a trickle, it crashes like a whitewater rapid in the ears of the black-clad enclave flanking her. Young, old, the entire town made time. The sound is another log on the pyre of their hatred.
As the last hero this echo of Alces, Oklahoma would ever see descends into memory, the Mother’s eyes find the one responsible for today’s assembly. In them is a swirl of confusion and pleading. He knows his presence absolves nothing. What’s done is done.
She’s bolstered by callused hands as the weight of finality buckles her knees. An animal moan escapes her throat. His gaze shifts to the pit before him. Some look down, others skyward. Most bore into him.
So many touched, so many seeds for the future were sowed in the dash under Trey Colby’s name. He brought a cool drink of vitality to the hamlet’s wind-chapped lips. A six-foot-something teddy bear upon which most everyone had pinned their hope and admiration, the Colby boy was a son to those with children of their own, a brother unbound by blood. He was a soul older than the seventeen years his hyphen spanned and a presence the eldest in town felt they’d known since sepia-toned adolescence.
Despite collective opinion, no one was to blame. He was driving himself and the Colby boy home from football practice as he'd done hundreds of times before. A chip preceded a crack in the axel existing long before his father gifted him the hand-me-down vehicle. The crack was emphasized by the bite of winter rust. The snap he and Trey heard at sixty-two miles per hour was the last thing he remembered before waking up to the stench of burnt rubber, gasoline stinging his eyes, wheat fields growing out of the sky, and silence from the passenger’s seat.
All the muscle and promise the heavens could muster meant little to a three-inch edge of jagged steel. Trey’s heart, big as it was, offered no resistance. And that was that.
He didn’t die with Trey Colby, but his name did.
After the Reverend had gone to prepare for tomorrow’s oaths ’til death. After the wriggling black throng retreated. After the greens and yellows and purples of spring took hold of the silent field once more. After the Mother had gone. He remained.
Two roads were before him. To leave meant stowing every memory he’d known, all he’d loved, and starting anew. To stay meant to wither in the shade of a headstone.
He weighed the choice and the choice weighed him back.
