The Sentinel's Wages (Lexington Avenue Express Book 13)

The Sentinel's Wages (a Lexington Avenue Express short story - 1,350 words) The color and texture of the journey changed each day, bowing to the whims of the Mississippi weather and season. For the most part, Roy Swink ignored these familiar transformations, choosing to measure the distance he traveled by the familiar landmarks drifting past the windows of his pickup truck. Roy didn't pretend to understand the world anymore. He thought things had been fine, but his wife had left him anyway, taking the kids. He figured he was free to leave too, but chose to stay on at the old place, looking after his livestock when he wasn't working at the refinery in Tallulah. On a warm summer morning, framed by dense green foliage, the dawn highway flowed west, merging, rolling, and merging with the brightening gray horizon. Roy always read the familiar letters on the squat water tower. JUNE BUG ... he wondered how the town was christened so. Two miles further along. "What's this?" he muttered as he saw the FOR SALE sign on the mobile home. 44 ACRES - HOUSE TRAILER - LIVESTOCK. The message was posted on the barbed wire fence surrounding a small, rocky pasture where a dozen or so goats constantly grazed. As usual, a brown hulk of a dog was laying among the rocks, a goat resting beside him, her neck draped over his in slumber. For the next few months, Roy gazed at the pasture as he passed it each empty dawn. The mobile home beyond was vacant; he never saw lights or vehicles anymore. The size of the little goat herd shrunk steadily throughout the summer until one morning, only the ever-present giant of a dog remained, a lone figure laying in his usual spot among the granite stones jutting from the pasture floor. For the next week, the scene remained the same, the dog always positioned near the entrance of the crumbling barn. With each passing day, Roy found himself thinking more and more about the lonely animal. Finally one morning, haunted by the image of the solitary creature, he decided to take the next exit and stop for a closer look. Minutes later, pausing at the mailbox, Roy drove through the entrance, passed the abandoned mobile home and stopped at the open gate of the goat pen. From this distance, the scene was far from picturesque. The ramshackle lean-to barn stood near collapse in one corner of the grazing area, a muddy pond in another. The stench rising from the rocky pasture was strong and would only increase as the sun climbed higher in the August sky. The giant dog, his ribs showing beneath sagging skin, took an odd, circuitous path but eventually approached the gate where he stood appraising the stranger. Roy knew dogs well and instinctively understood he had nothing to fear from the animal.

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