D
arkness. Pitch black in every direction, the moon and a million stars obscured by passing storm clouds. The drone of an eighteen-wheeler laboring down Sugar Run pricked the silence for a few moments. Then everything slipped back into absolute quiet once again.
Butch stumbled through a grove of knotted black walnut trees, fingers and toes throbbing and burning from the cold. His nose ran, and his eyes blurred from tears that wouldn’t stop, but he kept his feet moving forward.
A hard wind swept through the limbs of barren trees, trunks groaning against the resistance and branches rattling. From somewhere in the night, a barred owl hooted, sounding lonely and lost.
Butch knew he was lost as well, but it didn’t matter.
He wondered if his parents even knew he was gone. But that didn’t ma
