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whiteness above the horizon. Next to him, above an empty bookcase, is a picture of a Maine chef with fingers wrapped around a lobster. The chef has contented eyes, like, if he cooks for the rest of his life, it’s fine by him.
    The pictures, motivational when I tacked them to the wall, now serve as a source of irritation. If I hadn’t called Roxie Scarborough after leaving Hawkinsville, if she hadn’t invited me for a drink so we could talk about old times, if I hadn’t said yes, I’d already be on the trail. But here it is, closing in on April. It’s almost a month past the start of thru-hiking season, and I’m still in town. I don’t beat myself up about it. A guy should have the right to enjoy himself after spending a year in the pen, shouldn’t he?
    I stare at the pictures until the light through the window turns gray, go outside and drive the streets in a beat-up Buick I purchased with part of my inheritance. Tonight, the air is hot, a simmer that dries from inside out, and the asphalt, slick from a spring shower, glistens like a black mirror. I breathe exhaust fumes and watch the shadows. Heroin, crack, meth, coke, weed, acid, it’s all there.
    Both sides of the street, buildings jut into the sky, and signs high on concrete walls jerk on and off. Under branched street lights, women in jacked-up skirts strut the sidewalk. If a john barters with a whore in bad shape, blow jobs start at ten dollars. Barter with a whore in worse than bad shape, and five will do. I drive past a Salvation Army, past a tavern with an open door, past a massage parlor with iron bars on the windows.
    A girl in a silver miniskirt waves me over. She has long legs, and she’s stoop-shouldered, tall, a young woman embarrassed of her height. I pull to the curb and roll the passenger window all the way down. She leans inside, dreadlocks framing a narrow face, and a boob slips from its fold. She smells of sweat and smoke, and I wonder when she last took a bath.
    â€œTaz, honey, you know Roxie would kill me for messing with you,” Laketa says, and stuffs her boob behind her halter top. “She’s down on Thirtieth Avenue. You know the house where TT Charlie hangs? He’s got some good dope.”
    I remember something I saw under the passenger seat when I was vacuuming the floorboards, dig out a plastic raincoat, and stick it through the window.
    â€œLook, Laketa, you stay dry, you hear. You sleep someplace warm tonight.”
    She shrugs into the raincoat, a grateful look on her face.“Roxie ever turns you loose you come see me. I’ll take care a you like you never seen.”
    I merge the Buick with the flow of traffic, tuck behind a minivan. Rain pelts the windshield, and taillights reflect off the street in long liquid lines. The humidity makes me wish for air conditioning, but that’s too much to ask with this crap car. It has one amenity, a radio that gets elevator music—only elevator music. I dribble my fingers on the dash and nod my head to a sleepy piano solo. Call it destiny, fate, whatever, but I knew I was headed for the gutter the summer I left my father at the dog pound, hitched east, and got a job at a zinc extraction facility in southern Georgia. Third shift was quiet, the nights lit with stars, and I spent my time hiding from this greasy operator who constantly chased me down. He was bucking for a promotion. Moving up in the world, he said.
    On the Thursday before my first payday, an hour into the shift, I was easing across the concrete pad when I stepped into a drainage ditch. Hydrochloric acid soaked through my pant leg and filled my boot. I giggled at the absurdity, one foot in the gutter, one foot out. I had a choice and knew it. I could pull the foot out, or step in with the other one. I sensed this was important, that the choice I made forecast my future. The operator whined for me to stop acting like an idiot and get out of there pronto. I looked at him,