Sawyer Peterson shook his head slowly and looked out to the horizon. People were now standing next to their cars talking about whatever they could to pass the time.

It was blazing hot. Shade was nowhere to be found. The traffic had come to a dead stop on the freeway.

“I just leave before it gets dark,” Sawyer says.

“I learned this the hard way.”

“For the life of me, even on that full moon night, I could not find my way out of the cemetery. There were so many overgrown and tangled vines that I just could not get my sense of direction.”

”And that was when one of the souls from the cemetery started screaming at me. But I would not have it. And once I told the soul that I would not have him screaming at me because I could not do anything about his past anyway, then he stopped. Not right at first did he stop though.”

“And not before he told me, you think I am just going to roll out the red carpet for you to be here? I don’t want you here. You, with your salvation and your redemptive ways. No, I will not just roll out the red carpet for you. I will make it as difficult for you to do your job as I can.”

Sawyer thought that the guy on the motorcycle he had been talking to looked a bit taken aback.

And then Sawyer started in on his notorious self-critique. It was purely introspective and his words were not audible.

Why did I do this?

Why did I have to start up a conversation with a complete stranger? About a cemetery.

Sure, just jump right in. Why don’t you just tell him your whole life story.

I should have just kept my mouth shut. He probably thinks I am nuts.

Or delirious.

The heat.

Maybe he will think it is the heat. The heat can do strange things to people. Making them say things that are delirious. Like with heat stroke?

Maybe he will think I have heat stroke.

“Ah heck,” Sawyer said. And then he began talking again.

* * *

The cemetery.

Sawyer’s life had a lot to do with the blasted cemeteries these days.

Like a magnet, Sawyer had always been pulled into the direction of knowing. Toward wanting to know more about the father that he never actually met.

And sometimes he felt like the only thing he really knew about his father was his name. Virgil. And that he had met his mother in Boulder City before Sawyer was born.

Sawyer had been through a lot. But there was still a lifetime ahead of him. A life to amend faults, of which he was now keenly focused on.

A life, simply to be lived. Maybe even cherished again, like when he had been in Yosemite at first.

And maybe talking about the cemetery could just serve as a reminder for Sawyer of the decisions he had made that had brought him to this point. Without that sly feeling of remorse that always seemed to lurk in the periphery.

Just maybe.

And what about this father of his? Who was he? And did everyone know where he had been when he went missing?

The disappearance of Virgil would transform more lives than just Sawyer. There was always the ripple effect. Always.

There was Sallie, of course. And then there was Clara.

Definitely there was Clara.