I walked through Hattiesburg for thirty-seven and a half days, long enough to feel the years from 1965 back to 1908 moving under the streets.

I walked hot sidewalks where creosote clings to your shoes, past porches that had already decided what they were going to keep.

Stood under oaks that dropped acorns without looking.

Cicadas tuned the wires for evening.

I climbed the water-tower ladder just far enough to see the town settle.

Watched old men close their eyes on the second verse of Amazing Grace.

Went to the courthouse at noon.

Ceiling fans turned the air slowly. Thick pages being moved along.

Men in seersucker wiped their foreheads and waited for the heat to finish talking.

Sat in a car outside a dark house trying to decide whether to go in.

Stayed in the car longer than I needed to.

Ate a bowl of gumbo in a kitchen that smelled like August.

Tasted tomatoes still warm from the vine.

Stood over a smoker where the meat fell apart at a nudge.

I walked to the park at dusk and heard basketball echo against double rims that hadn’t been replaced in decades.

Kids ran the same lines their fathers had.

You could hear it in their feet.

Waded a creek that still held the summer you once described.

The rope swing was gone.

The water remembered anyway.

Sat on one pew, in one church, on an ordinary Sunday.

People stood when the hymn began.

The fans kept turning.

On the last half day, because a whole number never tells the truth, your mother stepped out of the doorway drying her hands on a towel.

She said very little.

Your father stood beside her, leaning the way men do after waiting a long time to speak.

His voice stayed low.

I didn’t write any of this down while I was there.

Didn’t need to.

The town was doing what it does.

Thirty-seven and a half days.

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