Struan 2011

Her mother paused, the cigarette between her lips only just lit. The lighter teetered in her fingers. Then she tossed the cigarette out the window. It landed by a storm drain clogged with sewage.

There were no other cars on the road. The great city seemed to Amy like a ghost town.

They hooked onto Peachtree Street from their neighborhood avenue. It was the same route she’d biked in the summer to see Mason back when they were dating. He’d run up to her that morning prior, as they were loading pasta, canned green beans and jugs of gasoline into the back.

She heard the feet running up their driveway. When she looked up, Mason stood before her. Sweat licked his features. His greasy mop of hair was tossed to one side. She scanned his frame, bony and emaciated, ribs like the teeth of some animal. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The body she’d once admired—taught muscles earned on long morning jogs—was gone.

“Mason. Your feet are cut.”

His toes bled onto the pavement. She tore her eyes away when she saw the shards of glass protruding from his feet.

He begged her to let him join them. She couldn’t. As he kept pleading and she kept denying him, it became clear what he really needed. When her parents weren’t looking, she handed him a jug of water and told him to go. He had thanked her, looked at her one last time, and fled.

Amy spotted a barricade up ahead. Their Volkswagen rumbled towards it like a fly to a web.

Her father rubbed his palms on the steering wheel. Biting her lower lip, her mother stared out the windshield. Amy looked up and down the mountains of concrete and glass that towered above them, stenciled husks of a buildings they had once known. It seemed as if there was no way to escape; nowhere to run. Her mother ran her hands through her hair.

They approached an outpost surrounded by chain-length fence. Gun turrets were mounted high on walls. She looked around. Barbed wire everywhere. She wondered if it was similar to the other barrier they would cross when they reached Mexico. Texas was burning. The fence had turned around.

They pulled up to the gate. A man stood in the booth, a shiny yellow uniform draped over his shoulders. His hair reminded Amy of a crow’s nest, tufts jutting out at odd angles.

Her dad pulled a stack of papers up from the dashboard. Most of them were official-looking documents, signed by flowering signatures. Several were stamped and crumpled.

“Atlanta city limits,” the guard said.

“These are papers from the Chief of Police,” her father said, handing over the documents. “I got them signed last month.”

Stepping out of the kiosk, the man looked at the paper and then shifted his eyes through the car. Amy felt his cold stare land on her like a moth, the dark particulate of his eyes casting a physical weight on her skin.

“Temporary leave papers?” the man asked.

“Yes.” “To Mobile?”

“Yes.” “Why?” “We’re helping my parents move into a nursing home,” Amy’s father said.

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