Hey Joe
The following is author commentary for The Road Cain Walks, Monday - Chapter 2. If you haven’t yet started the story, you can find the first chapter here.
Joe Richards might be the most important character in The Road Cain Walks. He was the star of the original draft and costar of the daydreamed scene that inspired me to attempt a novel. In its rewrite and upcoming final edition, he stewards one of three major story threads. The first begins with Mitch Hafferty in his cruiser, this one with Joe arriving at Starks Prison.
In the Shallows
The problem with diving deep into who Joe Richards was before his introduction is that much of his backstory is integral to the plot. More than one twist depends on revealing how he relates to the events developing in Pine Haven. A direct contrast to Mitch Hafferty’s meat and potatoes background, Joe’s life has been riddled with drama and conflict. As Mitch’s past led him to devote his adult life to protecting Pine Haven, Joe’s made him avoid it.
The reader meets Joe as he arrives at Starks Prison. The first foreboding raindrops on his windshield stamp it as the same moment Mitch Hafferty sees the sheriff and coroner approaching the deer stand crime scene.
For the most part, Joe is all business in his introductory chapter. It makes a logical sense—his entire purpose for being at the prison is work—but there is also a hint of something beneath his surface. As he waits to see the warden, his mind wanders for just one paragraph, the direction it travels showing a weakness in his self-constructed shell.
As Joe drove to Pine Haven, he anticipated a kind of pain waiting for him. He dreaded it to the point its relief makes him laugh. Joe’s Pine Haven is the same small town Mitch Hafferty sees, but instead of cozy quaintness, he finds a littered highway. The place is beneath him. He’s risen above it somehow. The sentence after teases the shape of his lingering trauma, his dread of the town linked to a dread of his father. Before that sore spot can be probed further, work resumes its welcome distraction.
