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It was quiet, though, and that was really all he needed He was a quarter hbor was even farther away than that After a , that was exactly what he wanted One of the things he'd never gotten used to on the rig was the endless noise Unnatural noise Fro supplies to helicopters to the pu of s pumped oil around the clock, whichto sleep, the clamor continued He tried to tune it out while he was there, but whenever he returned to the trailer he was struck by the alh in the sky In thefros he'd listen to the way the crickets and frogs sometimes synchronized their rhythm a few , but every now and then the sound made him think of ho the memories away Instead, he tried to focus on the simple routines that doround
He ate He slept He ran and lifted weights and tinkered on his car He took long, wandering drives, going nowhere in particular Now and then he went fishing He read every night and wrote an occasional letter to Tuck Hostetler That was it He owned neither a television nor a radio, and though he had a cell phone, only work nuroceries and essentials and stopped at the bookstore once a month, but other than that he never ventured into New Orleans In fourteen years, he'd never been to Bourbon Street or strolled through the French Quarter; he'd never sipped coffee at the Cafe Du Monde or had a hurricane at Lafitte's Blacksym, he worked out behind the trailer beneath a weathered tarp he'd strung between his hoo to the movies or kick back at a friend's place while the Saints played on Sunday afternoons He was forty-two years old and hadn't been on a date since he was a teenager
Most people wouldn't or couldn't have lived their lives that way, but they didn't know him They didn't knoho he had been or what he had done, and he wanted to keep it that way
Then, out of the blue on a warm afternoon in mid-June, he received a phone call, and memories of the past rose aneson had been on leave for almost nine weeks For the first ti hoht made him uneasy, but he knew he had no choice Tuck had been more than just a friend; he'd been like a father And in the silence, as he reflected on the year that had been the turning point of his life, Dawson saw a flash ofthere at all, and he wondered again whether he was going crazy
The call had coan Tanner, an attorney in Oriental, North Carolina, who inforements best handled in person," Tanner explained Dawson's first instinct after hanging up was to book his flight and a rooe for a delivery
The followingthe front door to the trailer, Daalked around back, toward the tin shed where he kept his car It was Thursday, June 18, 2009, and he carried with hi he'd packed in the ht when he hadn't been able to sleep He unlocked the padlock and rolled up the door, watching sunlight strea ever since high school It was a 1969 fastback, the kind of car that turned heads when Nixon was president and still turned heads today It looked as if it had just rolled off the asseers had offered to buy it from him Dawson had turned them down "It's more than just a car," he told them, without further explanation Tuck would have understood exactly what he meant
Dawson tossed the duffel bag onto the passenger seat and laid the suit on top of it before sliding behind the wheel When he turned the key, the engine came to life with a loud rum
ble, and he eased the car onto the gravel before hopping out to lock the shed As he did, he ran through aTwo minutes later, he was on thein the long-ter the car but had no choice He collected his things before starting toward the ter for him at the airline counter
The airport was crowded Men and worandparents or Disney World, students shuttling between home and school Business travelers rolled their carry-ons behind the line and waited until a spot opened at the counter He showed his identification and answered the basic security questions before being handed his boarding passes There was a single layover in Charlotte, a little more than an hour Not bad Once he landed in New Bern and picked up his rental car, he had another fortythere weren't any delays, he'd be in Oriental by late afternoon
Until he took his seat on the plane, Dawson hadn't realized how tired he was He wasn't sure what time he'd finally fallen asleep--the last tiured he'd sleep on the plane Besides, it wasn't as though he had ot to town He was an only child, his mom had run off when he was three, and his dad had done the world a favor by drinking himself to death Dawson hadn't talked to anyone in his family in years, nor did he intend to renew their acquaintance now
Quick trip, in and out He'd do what he had to do and didn't plan on hanging around any longer than he had to He ht have been raised in Oriental, but he'd never really belonged there The Oriental he kneas nothing like the cheery ie advertised by the area Visitors' Bureau For most people who spent an afternoon there, Oriental came across as a quirky little town, popular with artists and poets and retirees anted nothingon the Neuse River It had the requisite quaint don, coalleries, and coffee shops, and the place had more weekly festivals than seemed possible for a town of fewer than a thousand people But the real Oriental, the one he'd known as a child and young man, was the one inhabited by families with ancestors who had resided in the area since colonial tienia Wilcox, and the Collier and Bennett families They were the ones who'd always owned the land and farmed the crops and sold the timber and established the businesses; they were the powerful, invisible undercurrent in a town that had always been theirs And they kept it the way they wanted