Amid the Maples

PROLOGUE

Like a giant, silver scaled snake, its sides striped from nose to tail with gaudy reddish orange, its luminescent tongue waggling, testing, and tasting the barren Texas desert, the El Capi­tan speeds southbound.  The train nears a rare and unpaved crossroads to long forgotten nowhere.  The discordant wail of the diesel horn pierces the tranquil desert silence not yet disturbed by the roar of the on coming train.  Diurnal predators scurry frantically for shelter while the nocturnal hunters burrow deeper in their dens.  Morning has long since passed overhead.  Now, evening waits impatiently for the afternoon to die  In the train, a boy is bored with the clacking tedium of flanged wheels counting mismatched seams in the iron rails.  At first, the boy was fascinated with the vastness of the Texas desert.  Hours of unchanging landscape has numbed his mind and seduced his eyes.  Now he stares, but does not see.  The boy does not like the desert.  It is barren, without value.   He thinks of Linda, of her golden hair, her resplendent blue eyes, and the love now lost.  He thinks of the harm he has done to an old man.  He thinks of his heartbroken friends, John and Seanelle.  With a saddened and loving smile, he remembers Stony, the old man that had loved him.  

He closes his eyes trying to quell the memory of his mother in the courtroom, her eyes flowing tears.  When he opens his eyes, the aches still clutch his heart.  The boy is reluctantly racing to a harsh world he does not want.  By nightfall, he knows he will never again be a boy.  He mentally curses the unrelenting train that rushes him across the heart of Texas and is racing through the final hours of his youth.   He was born a city boy, though his childhood was not squandered on city streets.  He mowed lawns and shoveled sidewalk snow.  He savored the sweet earth-smells of baled alfalfa and new-mown hay.  He learned to de-tassel seed corn, and shell it for the hybrid seed company.  He picked and shucked sweet corn and roasted it over the burning leaves of fall.  Now those days and joys of his youth are ending.  That world will be gone before the sun is buried in the West Texas sand.  His brown hair, darker brown eyes, and soft speech has allowed him refuge in a world of anonymity.  That was a world he loved.  He could hide in that world.  It was comfortable, like faded jeans, a fresh T-shirt, and old tennis shoes.  That world was ending as well.