We left Pittsburgh and its Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers was behind, a dark memory of flowing under bridges I never expected to see again and the city’s stench slowly fading as the bus plunged into the darkness, tires rubbing over asphalt as we continued west. I kept nodding, but could not sleep, jerked awake by some flaw in the road, my face reflected in the dark windows floating on a sea of black – the other passengers floating there, too, like ghosts. Sometimes, the headlights of the bus or passing cars illuminated the mileage marker like a countdown to our next destination. We passed through West Virginia, happy home of Wheeling, slowing through smaller towns, gray shapes of dilapidated buildings like grave stones, punctuated by monuments to Confederate heroes put up a half century after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, not to intimidate former slaves, but as a gesture of defiance to the carpetbaggers that had come south from the north to rape the Old South and to perm...
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