All articles filed in Southern Dust

It was nearing five o’clock and the breeze, muted here beneath the pines, carried the smell of the marsh.

The stranger sped them on in short strokes, stabbing the creek with his paddle like a heron spearing fish.

Lamar’s Rio slid into the lot Ed’s, a dive on the edge of town some three or four miles up Sixty-one.

“Don’t know how you can drink that in this heat.”

Dark eyes, half-hid by the glare on his wire-frame glasses, and a bristly white mustache.

Ron Holbrooke was strangling her.

“If we’re going to do this,” Lamar said, “the best way is by water.”

She didn’t tell Lamar what she’d actually seen in the woods till later that evening, in his studio.

On third Fridays every other month, the city’s French Quarter galleries opened doors to anyone strolling in off the streets, offering wine and hors d’oeuvres free of charge whether you could afford to buy paintings or not.

Lamar did not answer Devin’s calls or texts the week following the art walk. He couldn’t have said why if he’d been asked, but something kept his cell in his pocket every time she reached out. He didn’t want to ghost her, but he needed space to figure things out. Especially after the way that night…