Blog Post # 7: Ray Atkins has a Case of the Sweetwater Blues

My current work in progress, Sweetwater Blues, is a story about decisions and consequences.  It is a novel that explores how a life can change in the time it takes to flip a coin or blink an eye. The excerpt that follows deals with the recollections of a young man who, along with his lifelong friend, found out just how quickly lives could alter course.

Rodney and Palmer were deep into their celebration when they decided that the night was still young enough for another journey to the beer joint. It was a decision that changed the world. Many times during the ensuing years, Palmer Cray marveled that he was able to remember those moments at the cemetery so well, considering that he didn’t recollect much at all from the time period right after. But the memories were there, etched into his neurons just as surely as if they were carved onto the walls of his cell. All he had to do was close his eyes, and it all came back to him, unbidden and unwanted, as welcome as a hurricane. The stars were like Christmas lights strung against a backdrop of black velvet, sparkling beacons forever just out of his reach. The only cloud in the entire sky had wrapped itself around the moon like a cape against the chill of the evening. It was white and billowy, like chiffon. A wispy ground fog slithered to and fro among the white tombstones like a lazy snake easing from one grave to another in search of a mouse. Fireflies danced.

It wasn’t just visual images that came to him. He could inhale the scents of summer as they lingered on the gentle breeze, the thick, sugary perfume of the fat honeysuckle vines as they hung from the branches overhead, the cloying sweetness of the gardenias, and the overripe richness of the magnolias.  The crickets and the tree frogs croaked and skreeked back and forth as they skirmished for ascendency. From a great distance came a long, mournful note as a freight train approached a marked crossing. It was a slow moment in time, a rare glimpse of perfection, a calm before the gale descended and the tides surged. They had all the days of the world before them. Their lives were each an unblemished canvas, and they could paint just about whatever they wished.