Fiction | September 28, 2020

Every day, I stepped off the school bus on Flat Run Road, and every day, on the other side of the fence, Judy Puckett sat astride a four-wheeler, gunning the engine. “Sarvis Morton, you’re dumber than a dummy!” she’d shout, then tear into the pasture, over the hill and through the coal chute. We lived in Pentress, seventeen miles from Morgantown, and even with the sock factory and a post office with Wi-Fi, Pentress was easy to miss. But Judy never missed the sad exhale of the school bus, or me, abandoned along the roadside after it wheeled away.

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