Wednesday - Chapter 1
Another Pine Haven morning finds Joe Richards on the Hovington House's front porch, watching the setup for a funeral across the highway.
New to The Road Cain Walks? See the Table of Contents to start the first chapter.
At the base of Memorial Hill, a blue canopy shielded a freshly dug grave, a back hoe weaving its slow way along the cemetery sidewalk. An older man in uniform stood in the rain beside a sheriff’s department cruiser.
Sipping his coffee with his shoulder to a porch column, Joe guessed the man was the sheriff.
The screen door opened and shut. Dan chose the same rocker as yesterday. “At least it’s a good day for it.”
Joe glanced over his shoulder. “If you say so.”
“I mean it. There’s harmony in a rainy funeral. My Martha’s was so cold and nasty I had to hug myself. It felt like a goodbye should.”
“You think the weather made a difference?”
Considering it, Dan nodded. “It helped me stop avoiding the memories and start looking for them. That’s why I decided to take this trip.”
“What do you mean?”
“The field where I met Martha sat fifteen minutes from our house in Milwaukee, but I didn’t step one foot in it again until she died. I found the spot where my trailer parked all those years ago—the night she saw my act. Sixteen and beautiful, her friends dared her in, but she did one better by volunteering. She used to joke that I hypnotized her into falling in love with me. I knew I was in trouble when she ran away from home.”
“That’s a hell of a start.”
Dan smiled into his coffee. “It was, but I’d tucked the memory away. Finding it again was healing and I wanted more, so I made a plan to tour the life we lived together. The field in Oklahoma where we first slept together. The diner in New York where we decided to start our own traveling show. The boarding house in North Carolina where she asked me to marry her. Have I told you that part?”
Joe shook his head.
