The White Road

The bar flared, a small wall of flame shooting up to scorch beards, eyebrows, hair. The man with the gun at his belt leaped back, his left arm covering his eyes while his right reached for his weapon.

“Ah-ah,” said a voice. A Glock 19 was inches from his face, held firm in the grip of the man in the bright shirt. The other’s hand stopped instantly, the gun already uncovered. The small man, whose name was Angel, yanked it from its holster and held it up so that he now had two guns inches from the barfly’s face. Near the door, Louis’s hand now contained a SIG, trained on the man with the knife in his belt. Behind the bar, Little Tom was dousing the last of the flames with water. His face was red and he was breathing hard.

“The fuck you do that for?” He was looking at the black man, and at the SIG that had now moved to level itself at the center of his chest. A change of expression flickered in Little Tom’s face, a brief candle flame of fear that was quickly snuffed out by his natural belligerence.

“Why, you got a problem with it?” asked Louis.

“I got a problem with it.”

It was the man with the knife at his belt, brave now that the gun was no longer aimed at him. He had strange, sunken features: a weak chin that lost itself in his thin, stringy neck, blue eyes buried deep in their sockets, and cheekbones that looked like they had been broken and flattened by some old, almost forgotten impact. Those dim eyes regarded the black man impassively while his hands remained raised—away from his knife, but not too far away. It seemed like a good idea to make him get rid of it. A man who carries a knife like that knows how to use it, and use it fast. One of the two guns now held by Angel made an arc through the air and came to rest on him.

“Unclasp your belt,” said Louis.

The knife man paused for a moment, then did as he was told.

“Now pull it out.”

He grasped it and pulled. The belt caught once or twice before it freed the scabbard and the knife fell to the floor.

“That’s good enough.”

“I still got a problem.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Louis replied. “You Willard Hoag?”

The sunken eyes betrayed nothing. They remained fixed on the interloper’s face, unblinking.

“I know you?”

“No, you don’t know me.”

Something danced in Willard’s eyes. “You niggers all look the same to me anyways.”

“Guessed you’d take that point of view, Willard. Man behind you is Clyde Benson. And you—”

The SIG lifted slightly in front of the bartender. “You Little Tom Rudge.”

The redness in Little Tom’s face was due only partly to the heat of the burning liquor. There was fury building in him. It was there in the trembling of his lips, in the way his fingers were clasping and unclasping. The action made the tattoo on his arm move, as if the angels were slowly waving the banner with the name “Kathleen.”

And all of that anger was directed at the black man now threatening him in his own bar.

“You want to tell me what’s happening here?” asked Little Tom.

Louis smiled.

“Atonement, that’s what’s happening here.”



It is ten after ten when the woman stands. They call her Grandma Lucy, although she is not yet fifty and still a beautiful woman with youth in her eyes and few lines on her dark skin. At her feet sits a boy, seven or eight years old, but already tall for his age. A radio plays Bessie Smith’s “Weeping Willow Blues.”

The woman called Grandma Lucy wears only a nightdress and shawl, and her feet are bare, yet she rises and walks through the doorway, descending the steps into the yard with careful, measured strides. Behind her walks the little boy, her grandson. He calls to her—“Grandma Lucy, what’s the matter?”—but she does not reply. Later she will tell him about the worlds within worlds, about the places where the membrane separating the living from the dead is so thin that they can see one another, touch one another. She will tell him of the difference between day-walkers and nightwalkers, of the claims that the dead make upon those left behind. And she will talk of the road that we all walk, and that we all share, the living and the dead alike. But for now she just gathers her shawl closer to her and continues toward the edge of the forest, where she stops and waits in the moonless night. There is a light among the trees, as if a meteor has descended from the heavens and is now traveling close to the ground, flaming and yet not flaming, burning and yet not burning. There is no heat, but something is ablaze at the heart of that light.

And when the boy looks into her eyes, he sees the burning man.



“You recall Errol Rich?” said Louis.

Nobody responded, but a muscle spasmed in Clyde Benson’s face.

“I said, do you recall Errol Rich?”

“We don’t know what you’re talking about, boy,” said Hoag. “You got the wrong men.”

The gun swiveled, then bucked in Louis’s hand. Willard Hoag’s chest spat blood through the hole in his left breast. He stumbled backward, taking a stool with him, then landed heavily on his back. His left hand scrambled at something unseen on the floor, and then he was still. Clyde Benson started to cry, and then it all went down.

Little Tom dived to floor of the bar, his hands seeking the shotgun beneath the sink. Clyde Benson kicked a stool at Angel, then ran for the door. He got as far as the men’s room before his shirt puffed twice at the shoulder. He stumbled through the back door and disappeared, bleeding, into the darkness. Angel, who had fired the shots, went after him. The crickets had grown suddenly quiet and the silence in the night had a strange anticipatory quality, as though the natural world awaited the inevitable outcome of the events in the bar. Benson, unarmed and bleeding, had almost made it to the edge of the parking lot when the gunman caught up with him. His feet were swept from under him and he landed painfully in the dirt, blood flecking the ground before him. He began to crawl toward the long grass, as if by reaching its cover he might somehow be safe. A boot caught him under the chest, skewering him with white hot pain as he was forced onto his back, his eyes squeezing shut involuntarily. When they opened again, the man in the loud shirt was standing over him and his gun was pointed at Clyde Benson’s head.

“Don’t do this,” said Benson. “Please.”

The younger man’s face was impassive.

“Please,” said Benson. He was sobbing. “I repented of my sins. I found Jesus.”

The finger tightened on the trigger, and the man named Angel said:

“Then you got nothing to worry about.”



In the darkness of her pupils the burning man stands, the flames shooting from his head and arms, his eyes and mouth. There is no skin, no hair, no clothing. There is only fire shaped like man, and pain shaped like fire.

“You poor boy,” whispers the woman. “You poor, poor boy.”

The tears begin to well up in her eyes and fall softly onto her cheeks. The flames start to flicker and waver. The burning man’s mouth opens and the lipless gap forms words that only the woman can hear. The fire dies, fading from white to yellow until at last there is only the silhouette of him, black on black, and then there is nothing but the trees and the tears and the feel of the woman’s hand upon the boy’s own—“Come, Louis.”—as she guides him back to the house.

The burning man is at peace.