Tommy Wayne Comes Home

I used to dream of this road.

Red clay, ruts deep as memory, cicadas screaming like the world’s got something to confess. Every time I closed my eyes, I’d see it stretching ahead, winding homeward toward Piedmont and that old white house with the porch that sagged in the middle.

Aunt Lily Pearl’s house.

I was fifteen when I left it, though truth be told, I’d already been gone long before my feet hit the road. You can’t live in a house full of secrets without hearing them breathe. I heard one too many, and I made the mistake of letting it out into the daylight.

I still remember her face that night; the lamp behind her throwing long shadows, the way her hand trembled on the Bible like it might steady her. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Tommy Wayne,” she told me. But I did. I knew enough to ruin her, and half the town besides.

So, I left. Fifteen years of running. Through towns where nobody knew my name, jobs that lasted just long enough to forget my own reflection. But Piedmont’s the kind of place that grows in your bones like a sickness. You can’t stay gone forever.

When I crossed the bridge over Terrapin Creek yesterday, the boards still creaked in the same places. The water below was low, slow-moving, thick with summer. I stopped halfway across and thought about jumping once, years ago. Now I just spit in the water and kept walking.

People pretended not to see me. Clyde did that little half-nod he does when he’s dying to stare but too polite to. Clara Mae nearly dropped her basket of peas. And Miss Delilah Boone? She turned right around on her porch, though she knew I’d seen her.

Nothing changes here, except the paint peeling faster.

They think I’ve come back for forgiveness. Maybe I have. Or maybe, I’ve just come to finish the story nobody else could tell right.

Because of that letter,
The one I found, the one they all pretend didn’t exist,
It wasn’t just words. It was proof.

And now that I’m back, I reckon it’s time folks in Piedmont remember what truth costs when you’ve been paying on it fifteen years too long.

*****

New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.