Opening Sentences

"I could tell the minute I got in the door and dropped my bag, I wasn't staying."
                                                              - Toni Cade Bambara

I could tell the minute I got in the door and dropped my bag, I wasn't staying. Looking around the room at all of the mourning souls I could tell no one wanted me there. This was my father's funeral though and I had every right to come back for it. I had been only fourteen when a little boy was killed in our town. It had been an accident though; I didn't know he was playing under my truck. I had been leaving our house to go get some milk from the market. Eleven years later and no one had forgotten what I had done. Jim, the little boy's dad, tried to kill me the day after the accident and so I had run away. I had to get out of Alabama so I hitched a couple rides to Florida. The last eleven years I spent rebuilding my life and in just one minute in my old home all of that came crashing down.

This is the beginning of Carson's story. A story filled with death, and even courage. Carson's father suffered a stroke two weeks ago and died as a result. The day he died was eleven years to the day that Carson had run away. His father's health had declined significantly in the past five years. Not only did his father think he was dead, he had also been tormented by Jim for the past eleven years. The other people in town didn't know what to think. They felt sympathy for Jim because he had lost his son, but they also felt sympathy for Carson's father because he was innocent of any wrongdoing.

Carson thought they should all be blaming him, his father did nothing wrong, yet the entire town avoided him up until his funeral. Then Carson understood, they weren't here for his father, they were here for him. The only reason people were at his house was because they were curious. They wanted to know if he would show. Jim would finally have another shot. One day, that was it. He wasn't staying any longer than one day. He walked slowly through the crowd, his eyes drawn to the floor.