Heading South

by James Murphy

All these years Gene has grown up in Tuscaloosa he's been aware of the flat landscape sloping, as he imagines it, all the way to the Gulf. That landscape never visited, like adulthood, seems exotic, colored more by legend and rumor than by reality. Part of this foreignness, he knows, is because the next town to the south is Demopolis, its name suggesting nothing of southern Alabama. Graduated now, Gene thnks of facing the uncharted days and years ahead with the same restless anxiety he views that unexplored area of the map, blank and unrecorded in his consciousness. To migrate south is to enter into an unknown unregulated as yet by years and events just as there are roads and towns he, Columbus-like, has yet to find. The northern way explored, Gene keeps his face toward the south as he steps forward, his thumb toward the highway and the cars barreling by with purpose.

6S

James Murphy is retired and loves to write engagingly, whether it's letters or journals or some riff playing in his head.