Highway 24 Read Online Free

with its mishmash of brick and limestone facades crammed together like refugees in a bread line. He passed the open door of a doughnut shop and heard the clink of coffee cups and old men drawling. The scent of freshly fried dough drifted past him on the breeze, as enchanting as a siren’s song. He hesitated, wondering if he should fortify himself before confronting the sheriff. At least he would empty his bladder. He found the unisex toilet at the back of the shop. The loose door handle wiggled in his hand. Once his thoughts turned to relief, he couldn’t move fast enough.
    Back in the main part of the shop, he passed the woman behind the counter, who wore a floor-length white apron stained with cinnamon and maple frosting. Her thick curls strained against a hairnet.
    “Could I help you?” she asked. Paul shook his head no. She frowned and made no effort to hide it as he stepped toward the exit. He kept moving. Sustenance would be his reward for talking to the sheriff.
    As Paul approached the intersection beyond the doughnut shop, a man on the corner caught his attention. He held an open, soft-cover book that draped over the fingers of his left hand while gesticulating wildly with his other hand. Two onlookers smiled with bemusement and curiosity.
    “The Lord spoke to Moses and His people.” The man’s voice boomed, without apparent effort, a natural orator. “But did they listen? No. They fashioned a calf, a golden calf, to honor with their greed and their wickedness. ‘You shall have no other gods,’ He commanded. You shall not make idols.” He punctuated each of the last three words with a shake of his right fist.
    Paul turned to walk behind the preacher, but the man stepped backward, blocking Paul’s path without losing eye contact with the others in his audience.
    “‘You shall honor your father and mother. You shall not commit adultery.’ And,” he exclaimed, turning to Paul, “you shall not steal a life.” The man stared for an uncomfortable duration. Paul finally looked away. “Can I help you, brother?”
    “No, I have an appointment.” Paul moved to the man’s left, but the preacher stepped forward, again blocking Paul’s path.
    “Are you lost, brother? I can always tell a soul that’s lost.”
    The word lost struck a chord in Paul’s exhausted mind. Maybe the preacher man could help, at least speed him on his journey. “Do you know where to find the sheriff?”
    The preacher raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Follow me.” Paul hastened to keep pace as the man glided along the sidewalk with surprising speed. “Are you in some sort of trouble? I could intercede for you.”
    “No. I saw an accident last night.”
    “An accident. And you stopped to help no doubt.”
    “There didn’t seem to be much I could do.” Recalling the facts without thinking about the apparition entrenched his sense of absurdity. But recalling how the shoe hung from its gibbet in his car sent him back into the realm of ghosts. He followed the preacher across a street paved with red bricks. Rugged weeds clung to life in the fissures that crisscrossed the uneven sidewalk. They passed a greasy spoon and a tavern.
    The courthouse burst into view as they rounded a corner. It jutted from the land, rising above the mundane like a Mayan pyramid emerging from the jungle, a monument to a former era. The limestone bricks shone golden in the morning sun, and the central spire towered seven stories into the unblemished sky. A white clock-face with black roman numerals marked the four points on the compass. The massive structure held dominion over a city block and formed the hub for eight sidewalk spokes which branched toward the street and cut across the manicured lawn. All roads led to the courthouse.
    “Is the sheriff’s office in there?”
    “Oh no. It is a lovely building. A grand expression of an ideal. Justice.”
    While the preacher prattled about justice, Paul imagined the men in the quarry. Their shirtless backs