Three weeks later, on a dry Thursday afternoon when the summer heat had finally begun to break into early autumn, I took a personal vehicle down Route 11 on the return route from an inspection tour at Fort Gregg-Adams. I did not take Interstate 81. I stayed on the old state highway, letting the small blue sedan follow the curves of the low hills until the green wooden sign announced the corporate limits of Oak Haven. The faded billboard near the culvert was still standing, its rusted iron legs half-choked with wild chicory and goldenrod. But the cruiser cut-out behind the hedge was empty.
Near the town limits, the white speed limit sign—FORTY-FIVE MILES PER HOUR—stood freshly washed beneath the trees. Below it, bolted firmly to the same galvanized post, a new blue-and-white metal marker reflected the afternoon sun: TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT SUBJECT TO CONTINUOUS AUTOMATED TELEMETRY AUDIT. VIRGINIA STATE POLICE MONITORED. I slowed the sedan to forty-four miles an hour.
I looked through the clean glass of the passenger window at the gravel shoulder where Cleary had forced my wrists behind my back, where he had laughed at the unbranded terminal, and where he had assumed that the quietness of my voice was the sound of someone who could be erased. The grass had already begun to grow back over the tire ruts his cruiser had torn into the ditch. The blacktop stretched out ahead of me, level, silent, and open under the wide Virginia sky. I did not stop. I did not accelerate. I simply held the steering wheel at ten and two, kept my eyes on the white center line, and drove through the center of the town until the county line markers fell behind me and the road opened wide toward home.
FINAL THANK-YOU NOTE
Thank you for making room for these pages today.