PULLING out of the Waffle House parking lot, Luther can hardly hold his eyes open. It’s Monday, 6:00 a.m., and since Friday evening he’s managed only four hours of sleep at a welcome center outside Mount Airy, North Carolina.
He takes the first left onto Pondside Drive, a residential street so infested with trees that when he glances up through the windshield he sees only fragments of the magenta sky.
He follows Pondside onto Cattail, a street that dead-ends after a quarter mile in a shaded sequestered cul-de-sac, its broken pavement hidden beneath a stratum of scarlet leaves.
Luther kills the ignition and climbs into the backseat.
Lying down on the cold sticky vinyl, he takes out the tape recorder, presses play, and drifts off to the recording of Mr. Worthington begging for the lives of his family.
When he wakes it’s 11:15 a.m. and the crystal sunlight of the October morning floods the Impala, the vinyl warm now like a hot water bottle against his cheek.
In downtown Statesville he picks up Highway 64 and speeds east through the piedmont of North Carolina and the catatonic towns of Mocksville, Lexington, Asheboro, and Siler City.
The sky stretches into infinite blinding blue.
Near Pittsboro, 64 crosses the enormous Lake Jordan, its banks bright with burning foliage. Luther cannot remember ever being so joyful.
By midafternoon he’s hungry again.
At a Waffle House in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he orders his new favorite dish: hashbrowns, triple scattered all the way, and a cold vanilla Coke. Through the window his view is of a tawny field turned gold by the leaves of soybean plants.
Halfway through lunch it dawns on him.
He was careless at the Worthingtons.
He left something behind.