Stories - FD Thornton

  Through the shadows on the curtains, I can hear the roar of a CSX horn blow from across the road—a long line of tracks that run north from Atlanta, south to Brunswick’s Ports. It’s been an exhausting few weeks, first with relentless rain and then the humid heat, complicated by the fact we’ve had to suffer two weeks without a refrigerator. ​ But beyond all that bullshit we put up with, presented to us by the faceless shareholders of a corporation, we now live in a country determined to bring back nostalgia, like it’s some comfortable chain to wear around our necks. ​ I remember when the country turned 200 years old. It was 1976 and I was in the ninth grade. Our former Governor Jimmy Carter was running for President against President Gerald R. Ford. We had just lived through our uncles and our big brothers fighting in Vietnam, then witnessing every day as soaps and game shows were interrupted by the Watergate Hearings. The grownups were mad and I was mad, because I had to liste...

  With my head on a swivel I spy the corners of my room like a prisoner with a slit for a window and a gym mat for a bed. Plotting and wondering about my next move, because that’s all you got to do. Except for the few moments you are outside or when you get mess call to prepare meals. It’s a routine with a hierarchy born out of intimidation and necessity. Where everything’s a little game you have to play, the side hustle, the secret deals. Funny thing about this prison, is it’s all voluntary. No one sentenced you other than yourself. But you stay because you have to, because you’re needed, because you think you got nowhere else to go. So you serve your time, till a hearse finally rolls you out and they bury you in the cold, cold ground. Don’t sound like much and it doesn’t mean there isn’t a little excitement. Like a visit from a friend or a phone call or two, don’t forget the long letters home that get spied upon by god knows who. So you don’t think about it much—you...