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By Root 480 0

TINDELL ACRES MONTHLY RATES J. PROUTT PROPRIETOR. He turned left on the gravel road and passed the office—a streamlined aluminum trailer whose cinderblock steps and flowerboxes attempted to give it a rooted look. Also his mother, Louisa Brindle Gower, a persistent voice continued in his mind; a sister, Brindle G. T. Roberts, and eleven grandchildren. Behind the office, a dozen smaller trailers sat at haphazard angles to one another. They might have been tossed there by a fractious child, along with the items of scrap all around them—discarded butane tanks, a rust-stained mattress, a collapsed sofa with a sapling growing up between two of its cushions. Morgan drove past an old woman in a man’s tweed overcoat. He parked in front of a small green trailer and got out. The woman turned to look after him, brushing wisps of gray hair from her eyes. It was obvious she planned to start a conversation. Morgan would not admit she was there. He rushed toward the trailer, keeping his head ducked. His mouth felt too large. He had, he observed detachedly, all the physical symptoms of … shame; yes, that was it. How peculiar. He felt insufficiently shielded by his cap, which was trim, narrowly visored, of no particular character. He turned up the collar of his jacket before he fumbled at the door.

“Cold enough for you?” the woman called in a thin, carrying voice.

He bowed lower over the lock.

“Yoo-hoo! Mr. Meredith!”

Services will be private.

Emily was cooking breakfast. He smelled bacon, a special Sunday treat. Josh was toddling through the living room in a pair of sodden corduroy overalls with one strap trailing. Morgan scooped him into his arms and Josh chuckled.

“Did you get the paper?” Emily asked.

He set Joshua down again. “No,” he said.

He had left it in the truck. He would dispose of it later on.

There was no reason to feel so embarrassed. Bonny was the one who ought to feel embarrassed. (For it was Bonny who had done it, he assumed. Of course it was. Wasn’t it?) What a silly reaction to have! He considered himself with a remote, bemused curiosity. Even his posture seemed furtive—the way he walked the length of the trailer with as little noise as possible, stooped, head ducked, as if trying not to disturb the air. He went from the living room (one couch beneath a small, louvered window) through the narrow aisle between a table and the counter that was their kitchen. Sidling past Emily, he kissed the back of her neck. She had a ripple of bones down her nape that reminded him of the scalloped spines of some seashells.

He continued into the bedroom, with its single built-in bureau and bed. A Port-a-Crib took all the remaining space. To reach the little curtained closet in one corner, he had to clamber across the bed. He took his cap off and set it on the shelf next to Emily’s suitcase. He took his jacket off and hung it on a hanger. He had bought the jacket last November at a place called Frugal Fred’s. Having left his extra clothes behind when he fled Baltimore, he had found himself with nothing warm enough to get him through the winter, and he’d paid five dollars for this heavy blue jacket that must once have been part of an Air Force uniform, although it was bland and dull now, undecorated. All the insignia seemed to have been removed, leaving empty stitches on the sleeves and across one pocket. He supposed that was some sort of regulation. They wouldn’t want anyone impersonating an officer, naturally. Yes, it was only sensible. But sometimes he liked to imagine that the insignia had been ripped away. He pictured a scene in a field—the ranks of men standing at attention, the bugle call, the drums, Morgan stepping smartly forward, his commanding officer stripping him of his stripes in a single dramatic gesture. Whenever he thought of this, he walked straighter in his jacket and took on an impassive expression: the look of a man who had willfully, recklessly directed his life on a collision course toward ruin. However, he knew it was a jacket that no one would glance at twice. And his cap was what they called a Greek sailor