Michael Coombs
Family Business The car came to a lurching stop in the mud. Jaye stepped out, taking a long stride over the trench of it that her tires had dug up. She looked back at the dirtied sedan uneasily. In the soupy nighttime darkness you could only make out a faint grey orb on the windshield, mimicking the moon. She turned and faced the brush-strewn path ahead of her. An arrow-shaped wooden sign pointed down it, with “SAHGITAW THIS WAY” carved into the face of it. Jaye sighed, stuffed her hands into her pockets, and began the walk. Crickets chirped incessantly, grouped in many little choruses that echoed together through the woods. She felt the crunch of curled brown leaves beneath her flats, making the ground uneven and demanding short, certain steps. Only the moon could be her guide (a flashlight was risky, too risky), and so she kept her eyes straight ahead and let her ears take care of the surroundings. She was sweating more with each passing second and she felt the armpits of her thin khaki shirt begin to soak. Together with the wet southern Virginia air and the swampy terrain, it left a taste in her mouth of long summer campout nights spent peeing behind bushes. Her fingers started to tingle. She walked faster.
Volume LV | 11
