John Brandon - Citrus County

The pastures gave out and the air changed. Toby smelled cars on the breeze, and in another five minutes he broke from the woods onto a vast construction site, apparently shut down, that was bordered on the far end by an expressway. Toby had heard about this road. It went to Tampa. It was Citrus County’s last chance to become part of the rest of Florida. Toby was in the middle of nowhere. The only other human beings around were the truckers, rushing past one at a time in their semis, each truck dragging with it the same windblown wail.

Toby could not stop thinking about Shelby. They would never have another way to think of each other but this way. Toby’s guilt was towering in another plane. He didn’t feel it. It was so big, it was elsewhere. Toby hoped, because that was all he could do, that he was capable of thinking of all that had happened with Shelby as a sad, unlucky, disheartening jumble that had been thrown at him and that he’d handled the best he could. That’s what life would be for Toby, figuring out the best ways to think about the things he’d done.

Toby wasn’t ready to turn back. He went into the almost-finished building. It was going to be a do-it-yourself warehouse store. The shelves were all up, not yet stocked. There were signs to help shoppers find large appliances, paint, lumber. Toby wandered and found himself in the garden section. The plants had been delivered and left to fend for themselves, plants from unimaginable states and provinces and hemispheres. Some were bursting their pots and growing down to the floor, some were dying. Leaves covered everything. Toby found a hose and followed it to its spigot, reeling himself toward the wall. He turned the valve and heard the sound of water finding its way and felt the hose stiffen in his hand. Every plant in every row, the rotting and the unruly, was due a share.

John Brandon was raised on the Gulf Coast of Florida. During the writing of this book he worked at a Frito-Lay warehouse and a Sysco warehouse. During another part of the writing of this book he was unemployed. During the revising he was the John & Renee Grisham Fellow in Creative Writing at University of Mississippi. His favorite recreational activity is watching college football. This is his second book; the first was Arkansas , also a novel.

The author thanks Paul Winner, Anna Keesey, Tim Hickey, and Heather Brandon. Their help was invaluable.