borrowed<\/em> cars, several large fights, and a small Fourth of July fire that threatened a neighbor\u2019s barn, was easy to forgive\u2014boyhood shenanigans.\u00a0 When he met Jessica Dobson, two state titles later, he had already reached town legend status for wrestling and boyhood shenanigans, both.\u00a0 That was the summer before his senior year.<\/p>\nThere were exactly four entrances into Wallaceville, each marked with elaborate antique signage carved out of limestone in the shape of covered wagons.\u00a0 Wagon wheels adorned either side of the signs.\u00a0 They were mounted to spin and when Larry needed to cut weight he ran from sign to sign.\u00a0 He would spin a wheel and run across town before the previous spin had stopped.\u00a0 Larry wanted to cut four pounds the day he first noticed Jessica Dobson.\u00a0 He only cut two.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is that?\u201d Larry asked.\u00a0 He stopped, forgetting his run entire, at a relative\u2019s house across the street.<\/p>\n
Wilma Randolph, his mother\u2019s cousin by marriage, was observing and sipping sun tea with her neighbor, a three hundred pound near shut-in named Tamara.\u00a0 Wilma replied, \u201cThem is my new neighbors, Datsuns or somethin\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 Larry looked at Wilma, she explained, \u201cCalls hisself Mayor.\u00a0 S\u2019pose to run the new plant\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t see how you could be a mayor if you ain\u2019t been a\u2019lected.\u00a0 And you can\u2019t run a new plant until it\u2019s done bein\u2019 built,\u201d offered Tamara.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe girl?\u00a0 Who is the girl?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody got hisself a crush,\u201d Wilma playfully slapped Tamara.\u00a0 Tamara shook with laughter, \u201cHope she like wrastling.\u201d\u00a0 The women grinned.<\/p>\n
Larry watched Jessica move.\u00a0 This girl, t-shirt clad, pegged jeans, soft leather sandals, long auburn hair, pale and beautiful, a girl unlike any he had seen.\u00a0 Jessica dropped a box on the way to the house.\u00a0 The Dobson dog stopped behind her, wagging its tail.\u00a0 Larry instinctively moved to help.\u00a0 The women laughed harder. \u00a0He tried to put hands in the pockets of pocket-less shorts.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo on, give her a hand Larry,\u201d said the fat woman.<\/p>\n
Jessica picked up the box and went into the house.\u00a0 \u201cThey don\u2019t need no help,\u201d he mumbled.<\/p>\n
The girl returned.\u00a0 From across the street he saw the dampened bangs, and he ogled her as Jessica lifted the front of her shirt from her breasts, allowing cool air in, dropping the shirt again, where it adhered to her chest.\u00a0 Tiny buds showed beneath the fabric, enough to noticeably excite a seventeen-year-old boy wearing loose shorts.<\/p>\n
\u201cYep, that\u2019s a adequate girlfriend for young men,\u201d laughed Wilma.<\/p>\n
The fat woman heaved uncontrollably, half-laugh, half-gasp for oxygen, \u201cYou need someplace to put that thing.\u00a0 I got plenty of space.\u201d\u00a0 Tamara waved hands up and down her ample physique.<\/p>\n
Larry had exactly the place to put it, but it was at home behind the barn.\u00a0 Red in the face, he quickly ran there and fantasized about Jessica.\u00a0 All the lascivious excitement of youth dropped onto the grass in tiny beads and desire turned to satisfaction.\u00a0 But desire soon returned and Larry resolved to meet this girl.\u00a0 Somehow, in the middle of summer, they would have to meet.<\/p>\n
Mayor, unhappily, would notice Larry long before Jessica ever did.\u00a0 Five weeks after moving to town, Mayor mentioned Larry to a local contractor working on the plant.\u00a0 Larry had just run by.\u00a0 It was 3:00.\u00a0 According to Mayor\u2019s estimation, it was the same time Larry had run along that stretch of highway for the past three weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is that boy?\u201d asked Mayor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s Larry\u2019s son,\u201d replied the man<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s his name?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLarry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the boy\u2019s name, I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLarry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLarry, but I\u2019m no relation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor grimaced, \u201cYou know that boy runs by nearly every time my family steps outside of our house. We\u2019re in the front yard, he comes running up and down the sidewalk.\u00a0 If we\u2019re in the backyard, he comes up the alleyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, ain\u2019t a crime to jog.\u00a0 Besides he\u2019s conditioning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor what can a boy run all day long?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWrastling.\u00a0 You seen his name.\u00a0 It\u2019s on damn near every sign into town.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two men turned and looked at the wagon sign on the adjacent highway. Among other things, it read:<\/p>\n
State Champions: 2003, 2004, 2005 Wrestling Larry Laramont.<\/p>\n
That night Mayor picked Jessica up from her new friend\u2019s house.\u00a0 The friend lived in the country on a lonely gravel drive.\u00a0 Mayor hated these \u201ccountry bumpkin\u201d roads.\u00a0 One of the perks of his job was a new car.\u00a0 At any speed, the small rocks dinged and dented the car, depreciating the value of the perk with each pockmark.\u00a0 So when Mayor and Jessica slid into the driveway, he was already in a foul mood.<\/p>\n
That was just after 6:00.\u00a0 Jessica, Larry knew, should have been home by 3:30, 4:00 at the latest.\u00a0 This 6:00 business disoriented him.\u00a0 All of his reconnaissance could be void if her schedule became erratic.\u00a0 If he could not rely on her to return from practice at a consistent hour, how could she be relied on for anything else?\u00a0 What if something was going on behind his back?<\/p>\n
Jessica\u2019s absence radically altered Larry\u2019s routine that day.<\/p>\n
Since the moment he laid eyes on her, his days had been structured around Jessica\u2019s comings and goings.\u00a0 The peak Jessica hours were between 3:30 and 5:00.\u00a0 It was then that she was home alone.\u00a0 It was then that Jessica would slip out of her loose track clothing and into a bikini, sunbathing in the afternoons, or into cutoff jeans and a tank top, reading a book on the porch.\u00a0 It was then that Larry would fill his mind with fantasies.<\/p>\n
The fantasies took two forms.\u00a0 The first were often ethical, even romantic, in nature.\u00a0 But Larry found them impractical and unlikely.<\/p>\n
Running by, Jessica drops something, perhaps a moving box, perhaps a grocery bag, but most often a small child.\u00a0 Oh no!\u00a0 The child stops breathing, for it was sucking on a piece of candy and the candy has become lodged in its throat.\u00a0 Jessica, in a screamless panic, seeks help.\u00a0 Here comes Larry, just running, cutting weight, nothing more.\u00a0 Larry takes the position learned via video in health class.\u00a0 The child, writhing for breath, responds to the deft and strong hands, as Larry boldly performs the Heimlich maneuver to success.\u00a0 Phone numbers are exchanged.\u00a0 Week\u2019s end, Jessica and Larry, boyfriend and girlfriend. <\/em><\/p>\nLarry reserved the second fantasy for regular, often daily, visits behind the barn.\u00a0 These provoked guilt, so he controlled them as much as he could, out of respect for Jessica.<\/p>\n
On a typical night, Larry\u2019s run would have ended with dinner, between 4:30 and 5:00, at Wilma\u2019s house.\u00a0 Because Jessica was not yet home, that evening he only planned to pause briefly at Wilma\u2019s to say he would be running longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of running yourself skinny, why ain\u2019t you just go and talk to the girl?\u201d Wilma said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat girl?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat pretty one you leaving me for,\u201d goofed Tamara.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou in love, boy.\u00a0 A\u2019mit it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He tried to change the subject.\u00a0 \u201cI got another scholarship offer the other day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo time to study when you spend it all studyin\u2019 that little girl right there,\u201d Wilma nodded toward the Dobson\u2019s. Larry looked up.\u00a0 They were home.\u00a0 She was home.\u00a0 Mayor was there.\u00a0 Jessica was there.\u00a0 He stared.\u00a0 Long legs.\u00a0 Loose track shorts.<\/p>\n
The women laughed, \u201cYou in love, boy. A\u2019mit it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frustrated, bold, exhausted Larry walked across the street.\u00a0 The run had begun at 2:50 and did not end until that minute.\u00a0 Without realizing it, on the hottest day of the year Larry had run 21 miles, his longest ever, and all of it through a town that was less than half a mile wide.\u00a0 Mayor walked into the house.\u00a0 Jessica rummaged through the car for something lost.\u00a0 Larry stood outside of the Dobson fence, determined to discuss her sudden inconsistency.\u00a0 He had lost ten pounds of fluid during his extended run.\u00a0 Jessica bent further into the car.\u00a0 A behind the barn fantasy intermingled with fury at her tardiness.\u00a0 Then, without notice, the air left the world.\u00a0 Larry fell to the ground.<\/p>\n
On a strange bed in a strange house he woke up.\u00a0 It was not much after 7:00.\u00a0 A dim light on in the room.\u00a0 This was a girl\u2019s room with posters of clean-shaven men Larry did not recognize.\u00a0 He noticed a scent, and then another.\u00a0 A potpourri of perfumed items, shampoos, candles, fragrances he had never smelled before.<\/p>\n
A school picture of Jessica on the nightstand.\u00a0 Senses returned.\u00a0 Larry touched the picture for reference, and then stuffed it beneath his shirt.\u00a0 Footsteps.\u00a0 Mayor entered the room.\u00a0 Jessica stood behind him, twirling her hair, never looking at Larry directly.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou okay boy?\u201d asked Mayor without concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say your obsession got the better of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI got to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo son.\u00a0 You got to feel better first and then we got to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Larry tried to sit up, \u201cSir?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to promise me you won\u2019t run by this house again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instinctive sarcasm, \u201cNot much town to run in.\u201d\u00a0 He sat up a little more.<\/p>\n
\u201cJessica is a good kid.\u00a0 We don\u2019t need muscled-up stalkers bothering her, understood?\u201d<\/p>\n
The disorientation that had clouded Larry\u2019s mind lifted.\u00a0 He had not considered two things. First, he recognized that stern-faced Mayor did not like him.\u00a0 This made no sense.\u00a0 Every father of every daughter in town would gladly call Larry son-in-law if given the chance.\u00a0 And second, Larry acknowledged that the fall, the heat, and the heavenly scent of a young woman\u2019s room had conspired to loosen his bladder.\u00a0 Larry had wet himself in Jessica\u2019s bed.<\/p>\n
Escape. <\/em><\/p>\nMayor continued, \u201cI just can\u2019t have boys, athlete or no, obsessing over my little one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Escape with the evidence. <\/em><\/p>\n\u201cI know it\u2019s nothing illegal, but I just don\u2019t think it\u2019s right, a boy obsessing after a girl that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one motion, Larry lifts the sheets and comforter from the bed, hops to the floor, and bolts out of the room.\u00a0 Down the stairs, nobody notices the wetness.\u00a0 Out of the house, nobody follows.\u00a0 All are stunned.\u00a0 Nobody follows.\u00a0 At home, two washings later, Larry would sleep with the evidence for all of the coming school year, confident Jessica never suspected a thing.<\/p>\n
School started and Larry was king again.\u00a0 His name adorned school walls when wrestling season rolled around.\u00a0 The only seeming hitch to his season was a dramatic drop in weight class that concerned the coach, but not Larry.\u00a0 Although they never spoke, Larry secretly dedicated every match to Jessica.\u00a0 With pen ink and a small knife, he tattooed a \u201cJ\u201d on the inside of his right biceps, convinced it would give him added strength.\u00a0 He would watch the \u201cJ\u201d flex when he went behind the barn.\u00a0 Larry was king.<\/p>\n
State came and went and Larry was victorious at the lower weight class.\u00a0 Four state championships meant a scholarship to pretty much anywhere he wanted.\u00a0 During and after the season he traveled from college to college on recruiting trips, everyone wanted him.\u00a0 He entertained many of them, knowing all along he would go wherever Jessica went.\u00a0 Twice on these trips he was offered sex, then he thought of Jessica\u2019s likely disappointment and politely declined. By February he discovered Jessica\u2019s post-graduation plans and made arrangements for a scholarship at the same college. Surprising her with the news would have to come at just the right moment.<\/p>\n
By the time the Sheriff found Larry in the park, Jessica had already lived in Wallaceville for a year.\u00a0 Larry never exchanged one direct word with her during that year.\u00a0 Larry could have asked her to any number of events.\u00a0 He had been given a rust-colored Firebird with a big block engine.\u00a0 She would have liked riding to prom in that, but she never attended any dances.\u00a0 Or he might have invited her to the senior parties that streamed through the summer after graduation. \u00a0Those were weekend events.\u00a0 On the weekends, Jessica was never around.\u00a0 So Larry patiently suffered, confident that college would finally bring them together.<\/p>\n
Then in August she appeared, magical, full of charm, a strange last effort at assimilation into a community she would soon leave.\u00a0 Larry noticed her immediately.<\/p>\n
Ten, Twenty-five, and then fifty students at the party.\u00a0 The field of corn grew in high stalks and surrounded three sides of the group.\u00a0 Cars parked haphazardly on the weak patch of lawn.\u00a0 A row of trees marked a nearby low area, where wetlands never converted to farm.\u00a0 At the edge of the field a fire pit, bonfire blazing in the sweaty air.\u00a0 Everyone of note was there, even a favorite teacher stopped over.<\/p>\n
Larry was still the king, although his reign was waning.\u00a0 He absorbed large doses of bourbon from a bottle and spat it into the fire.\u00a0 Flames burst horizontally and the alcohol burned out on the opposite grass.\u00a0 He stopped spitting and drinking when Jessica walked out of the dark and into the firelight.<\/p>\n
They were two then by the fire, the others had gathered around a truck bed where large speakers played and everyone cheered and danced.\u00a0 Larry full of drunken charm.\u00a0 Jessica cautious, yet graceful.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou the new girl, right?\u201d asked Larry, staring at the fire like some gypsy about to read a fortune.<\/p>\n
Everything she said sounded like a nervous question.\u00a0 \u201cYes?\u201d she replied with a smile, he was getting somewhere.\u00a0 She spoke again, \u201cYou were at my house last year?\u00a0 When you passed out from running too much?\u201d<\/p>\n
Alcoholic logic provoked confidence, \u201cMaybe I passed out because of you.\u201d\u00a0 It came out wrong.\u00a0 Things became tense.\u00a0 She looked toward the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, because you\u2019re so pretty.\u00a0 No other girls around here like you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks?\u201d She smiled.\u00a0 Fire high now, higher than before.\u00a0 Larry offers a drink, she sips from the bottle.\u00a0 Then a statement, her first.\u00a0 \u201cI feel like I don\u2019t know anybody here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTough to move afore your senior year.\u00a0 When you come back next summer you should come to more of these little soirees.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then the crushing blow that triggered the tirade, \u201cOh, my boyfriend and I are planning on getting an apartment together after this first year.\u00a0 He wants to go straight through the summers.\u00a0 My dad won\u2019t let us get married until we\u2019re done with school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Larry never heard a word after \u201cboyfriend.\u201d\u00a0 He looked out at the cornfields in inebriated sorrow.\u00a0 At that moment Jessica died to him.\u00a0 After several awkward seconds of bitter silence, she crept into the dark and away from Larry. \u00a0When he looked up she was gone.\u00a0 Steady pulls from the bottle did not help.\u00a0 She was gone.\u00a0 Due to some random, unforeseen folly, she was gone.\u00a0 The fabric of the future had been rent.<\/p>\n
Before the rampage, Larry spoke, briefly, to one last person.\u00a0 Ryan McCormick, a little guy who wrestled five weight-classes beneath Larry, stepped to the fire.\u00a0 Pale yellow firelight on their faces.\u00a0 Shit-faced and simple, Ryan bellowed, \u201cYou gonna horde that or share?\u201d<\/p>\n
Larry handed him the bottle, almost empty.\u00a0 \u201cI might just quit wrestling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan reacted, \u201cWhat the hell you goin\u2019 do that for?\u00a0 You a machine, a Warrior machine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bottle in Larry\u2019s hands now, \u201cYou still got that old deuce-deuce up in your car.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBetty?\u00a0 Locked and loaded.\u00a0 Never know when a squirrel might need a nut. Plus, my mom won\u2019t let me have no guns in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Out of the trunk Ryan withdrew a 0.22-caliber rifle, purchased at a yard sale.\u00a0 The box of shells was stolen.\u00a0 Drunken Larry pointed the gun at the moon, \u201cIs she true?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTruer \u2018n shit,\u201d said Ryan, closing the trunk door on his Ford Escort.<\/p>\n
\u201cI be the judge and jury of that.\u201d\u00a0 Larry pointed the gun at the fire.\u00a0 They were 100 yards out.\u00a0 He aimed at a small hole through the wall of people and fired.\u00a0 Sparks flew out of the bonfire.\u00a0 People yelled.\u00a0 Larry smiled sadly.\u00a0 A young man scorned has little legitimacy.<\/p>\n
Larry takes the gun and the shells and throws them into the tight backseat of his Camaro, Warrior singlet and headgear from State still there.\u00a0 No rules against drunken driving exist and nobody cares when he pulls away from the group and drives, headlights off.\u00a0\u00a0 He knows Jessica has left.\u00a0 Given a car for graduation, a VW convertible, red.\u00a0 It is nowhere to be seen.\u00a0 He will find her and attend to the situation.<\/p>\n
The pink spray paint he borrows from his father\u2019s shed.\u00a0 Meant to mark pavement, it will do.\u00a0 The green, black, and brown face paint are from Halloweens long past.\u00a0 He covers his face in camouflage, splotchy, without pattern.\u00a0 He fashions a shoulder strap out of dark leather belts for Sunday outfits and wraps the gun around his shoulder.\u00a0 He is ready.<\/p>\n
Nobody can stop him, because he runs.\u00a0 He leaves his house, gun across back, carrying a bag, contents include eight cans fluorescent pink spray paint, one pint Early Times, one Nalgene bottle of water for dehydration.\u00a0 By Mayor\u2019s plant, nearly complete now, he runs, laying low in a ditch as a car passes.\u00a0 It is late, later than 3 A.M.\u00a0 Jessica is a girl, he reasons, girls have curfews.\u00a0 He runs by the wagon train sign and spins the wheel.\u00a0 This will be fast and fierce he tells himself.<\/p>\n
From a tree in Wilma\u2019s yard he can see into the Dobson\u2019s home, into Jessica\u2019s bedroom.\u00a0 He loads and aims the gun at windows.\u00a0 Mayor, boom.\u00a0 Mrs. Mayor, boom.\u00a0 Dog, boom.\u00a0 Jessica, boom.\u00a0 He does not fire.\u00a0 Instead, he climbs down and snakes across the road in zigzag pattern, leaping and rolling commando style, stopping next to Jessica\u2019s car.\u00a0 The spray paint comes out. He paints.\u00a0 On either side and on the hood he paints, pausing at regular intervals, pink spray bleeding into pink spray, splotching his clothes.\u00a0 And then finishes his task.<\/p>\n
Retreat, not for fear, but for space.\u00a0 No good angle to get all four.\u00a0 Ducking behind a garden retaining wall, he fires twice.\u00a0 Air blows out of Jessica\u2019s right side tires.\u00a0 Nothing stirs and he leaps a picket fence, landing one foot in dog excrement.\u00a0 He ignores the foot and fires again, six times.\u00a0 More air escapes from more tires and the driver\u2019s side windows crumble.\u00a0 The boy wipes perspiration from his face.\u00a0 Camouflage comes off on his hand.\u00a0 He is not done.<\/p>\n
This act is private, maybe just the family will know.\u00a0 Maybe Mayor will wake up early, find the car\u2014nobody has stirred yet in the house\u2014and fix everything.\u00a0 There must be more.\u00a0 Something grand must come.\u00a0 He waits and thinks.<\/p>\n
He climbs Wilma\u2019s maple again.\u00a0 Eight shots in a town with two hundred fifty-three people.\u00a0 Somebody must have heard. The bourbon burns his dry mouth.\u00a0 Twenty minutes pass and the bourbon is nearly gone.\u00a0 No movement anywhere.\u00a0 He is in the clear.\u00a0 He no longer waits.<\/p>\n
The idea.\u00a0 One last thing, a public record of this tragedy is needed, something Mayor cannot hide.\u00a0 For the first time, he thinks of the family name, Laramont.\u00a0 It means something to him now.\u00a0 A one hundred fifty year reputation must be kept intact; a transient teenage girl cannot destroy a legacy.\u00a0 He must destroy the girl.\u00a0 There is only one way.\u00a0 The people must know a Laramont has been cuckolded.<\/p>\n
The boy crisscrosses town.\u00a0 Running through the humid night wall, drunken tears streak the camouflage.\u00a0 Footsteps pound the pavement.\u00a0 He does not hide any longer.\u00a0 He stops four times, exhausting six of the spray paint cans.\u00a0 And now there are four monuments, a broadcast to the world of Jessica\u2019s evil.\u00a0 His will be done.<\/p>\n
The Sheriff was the first to notice Larry\u2019s monuments, though he was called to town for a different reason.\u00a0 Someone had heard multiple gunshots at the park; a picnic table with shelter, a cracked asphalt basketball court, and a swing set. Probably just kids, but Wallaceville had never had a problem of this nature in his two years at the county level.\u00a0 It was worth a look.<\/p>\n
Larry would have been crushed by the Sheriff\u2019s passive reaction at his work.\u00a0 The planned statement of shock and awe so powerful to a drunken boy, registered only, \u201cHmm,\u201d from the Sheriff.\u00a0 And, \u201cThese folks ain\u2019t gonna like that much.\u201d<\/p>\n
He drove into town and found the boy against a dying pin oak.\u00a0 He surveyed the scene and noticed the pink explosions against the maple bark twenty yards off.\u00a0\u00a0 Streaks marked the boy\u2019s face and the Sheriff could see there had been some serious sorrow that night.\u00a0 The entrance to town was a likely testament to that sorrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cUpsy-daisy, son,\u201d he poked Larry with a baton.\u00a0 \u201cLet\u2019s get you home.\u00a0 You got some cleanin\u2019 up to do.\u201d\u00a0 The boy grunted and stood with the Sheriff\u2019s help.<\/p>\n
At the Laramont\u2019s, the Sheriff offered near condolences, \u201cLooks like this one got hisself a broken heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Larry, Senior replied, \u201cWell, we all been there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the truth.\u00a0 That\u2019s a lesson we, all of us, endure.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 5 A.M., about the time the Sheriff drove into town, Mayor Dobson woke and prepared for work.\u00a0 Two pieces of toast and a cup of coffee later, he walked to the garage and pulled his S.U.V. into the alley.\u00a0 The late summer light was dim on the horizon.\u00a0 He noted nothing unusual until he reached the drive into the construction site.\u00a0 Two cars, one a Mercedes, the other a BMW, already there.\u00a0 A meeting.\u00a0 Chicago investors.\u00a0 He had forgotten.\u00a0 Exactly fifteen minutes to run home and change clothes before several other high-end foreign cars would appear.\u00a0 He turned around in a hurry.<\/p>\n
Three hundred yards toward home, the sun cresting the horizon behind him, exposing the world before him, Mayor slammed on his brakes.\u00a0 Anti-lock.\u00a0 They pumped to a halt along the gravel shoulder. There could be no doubt.\u00a0 Two hundred fifty-three people, only one Jessica Dobson.\u00a0 He read every word on the wagon wheel entrance to himself:<\/p>\n
Welcome to Wallaceville, Illinois<\/p>\n
Population: 250<\/p>\n
Home of Wagon Train Dayz<\/p>\n
State Champions: 2003, 2004, 2005 Wrestling Larry Laramont<\/p>\n
State Semi-Finalists:\u00a0 1987 Girls Cross-Country Stacy Johnston<\/p>\n
And across the etched \u201cWelcome to Wallaceville, Illinois,\u201d defacing, obvious, covering three feet of the eight-foot by ten-foot sign, Mayor read the pink bleeding spray painted sentence:<\/p>\n
JESSICA DOBSON IS A WHORE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cSomebody got hisself a crush…”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2131,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions\/2131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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