Jake stirred as a carelessly discarded candy wrapper brushed against his face swirling into the brush behind him. The cloying sweet oily smell of petroleum distillates carried on the soft breeze, as the fine dust eddied like ripples on a pond, and the lightning teased of the coming rain glinting off the crisscross of tracks. The last splashes of brilliant reds and purples of a gulf coast sunset painted the horizon. In the distance, a heron mourned the fading day and the steady chug of a tanker drifted in and out. A quiet heaviness tinged with a coiled tension waiting to burst forth had settled over the water. Read more ›