At nightfall, my brother

At nightfall, my brother

At nightfall, my brother and I drive along the Ohio River down the West Virginia panhandle toward Moundsville and its Grave Creek Mound of the Adena, where Davis Grubb set The Night of the Hunter in black and white, and they give you three scoops on a cone for cheap at Johnny Shar's Big Dipper Ice Cream next to the penitentiary.

Grandma will die soon, I guess. We repeat this trip, me and my brother back and forth as she loses what the lawyer calls the "command of her faculties."

The coal barges flow with unusual speed and silence through the water.

And my wife and daughter, staying in Sistersville down river and two blocks from the ferry, are wondering where I am. I am running late, it is late, and if I had climbing iron to get back to them sooner I would use it. Family will confound and impassion me until I am dead and I will navigate it as such with empathy and compassion as my spur.