Harmon I - Before the Burning

Harmon edged his old truck off the road and onto his gravel driveway. He pulled past the copse of pine trees - "Money in the bank son, money in the bank," his father liked to say - and cursed the worn out shocks on his truck when he hit the deep parts of the rutted driveway. He cursed again when the coffee sloshed over the side of the paper cup in his hand. Damnit, his internal voice hollered.

God, grant me the Serenity... the other internal voice spoke up. Yes, yes, accept the things I cannot change. That included his aching groin and the potholes in his driveway. He'd tried every summer for five years now to fill in the divots, but when the November rain came all his efforts washed away. The only solution left was to pave the driveway and Harmon didn't have the money for that. He could accept 'not having the money' and he could accept a set of shocks a year on his truck. But when he walked in the front door of his double-wide trailer that good old Serenity prayer started cycling again.

The house was in shambles. Broken glass crunched under his feet as he slowly made his way through the living room and into the kitchen. Cupboard doors stood open or hung askew from a twisted hinge, at first glance it seemed every single dish in the place was smashed, not just broken, smashed. Then Harmon saw the two coffee cups hanging from hooks he'd screwed in under the cabinets over the counter right after he and Amy moved in. All at once his senses were assaulted by the wreckage around him. As if everything his brain had recorded from the moment he stepped into his home was put on hold until he saw those coffee cups. His ears were blasted with the sound of the crunching glass underfoot and his eyes watered as the images his eyes had stored came at him like a Polaroid flip book.

Oh no. Amy! his mind clamored. He made his way back through the kitchen and living room and went to the bedroom door. He put his right palm flat against the door. Amy (and Harmon too, if you want to get down to brass tacks, though it had been some years now) had a knack for holding onto things that didn't work: sleeping all day, drinking all night, waiting for the house to clean itself. Not least on the list, but below bad habits, was bad friends. Amy kept friendships going with some of the underbelly of the little town of Sowell Pike. Harmon knew some of them, the ones that hadn't been carted off, either in a hearse or a cop car. Knew of them, more accurately put, a few years on the calendar was a few lifetimes in circles like that. But Amy held on, to the habits and the people. And now this.