In the waning daylight Vernon drives his truck through Branden. He passes the paper mill, where he’s spent most of his life for the last thirty six years, bumps over the railroad track and thinks, as he often does, of his father. He tries to imagine the day the train brought the man to Louisiana, the deeds he ran from, the future that must have held such hope, now but a distant blink in the past. Vernon feels a pinch of sadness blindside him, then reaches for the bottle on the floorboard, takes a long pull at the stoplight, begins to feel the numbness again before the light turns green.

He rolls past the abandoned shops at the edge of town, guides the old truck along the mile long stretch of broken sidewalk that stops at the highway, shifts through the light blinking red and crosses the bypass road. Even the Walmart lot is mostly empty.

Outside town, Vernon slows down in the curve that fronts the old home place. A porch light is on, and for a moment he considers stopping. But, as he does every day, he decides against it, pilots the truck back onto the road and continues toward Natchitoches.

Vernon slows again to read the sign out in front of Mt. Olive church. The preacher there had hauled in one of these chest high neon signs on wheels and was always changing that sign, trying to say something witty to the people passing by. This time Vernon rolls down his window, stops in the middle of the road. Humidity and the roar of crickets pour in. Vernon reads

If you meet me and forget me

You have lost nothing.

If you meet Jesus and forget him

You have lost everything.

He slides back into gear and continues. Then he feels the truck slowing, feels his hands jerk the wheel all the way to the left, sees the sign approaching again and the white concrete of the church’s parking lot. He reads the words once more, leans his head back, laughs out loud, shouts.

You believe that if you want to Leonard. Doesn’t matter to me. Doesn’t mean anything. Not one thing. He punches the gas pedal to the floor. The words of the sign grow larger.

Vernon screeches the truck to a halt. You have lost everything. No sense ruining his truck too. No sense letting everything go. He backs off a few feet, jumps out, runs over, lifts the handle of the sign, then flips it onto one side until he hears the crash. By the time a light switches on in the vestibule of the church, Vernon is back on the road, headed home.