Free No Way Home by Patricia MacDonald

to her room.
    The Old Stone Arch Bridge, known alternately as Three Arches or just the Arches, was located at the end of a short dirt road, not too far from Bride’s Mill. At one time the sturdy old stone bridge had been part of the main route used by local farmers, but by now the mill was closed and the farmers drove their trucks on smooth bridges over modern highways. Trees and vegetation had overgrown the base of the Arches and nearly hid the bridge from view as you approached it. It was normally a quiet, deserted spot, but today the rutted road was dotted with cars. Three deputies, two in uniform and one in dungarees and a sweatshirt, scoured the bushes and the decaying riverbank where Michele Burdette had died. The rain from the day before had left the area muddy, and their clothes were already dirty as they rooted through the area in search of a murder weapon. A number of cars came and went at intervals along the road as people arrived to look.
    This familiar, all but forgotten spot had taken on new interest now that a murder had been done there. People came to stare and to shudder, as they imagined the body on the riverbank, as it had been described in the county paper, a frail girl face down in the muddy weeds, one leg twisted by the trunk of the weeping willow tree, arms outstretched to the bridge abutment, her head bashed by force of some blunt object not yet in evidence.
    The Reverend Ephraim Davis slowed his Ford wagon at the top of the street and pulled over. He had not come to gawk or to speculate, and it bothered him to see the parade of people coming and going. He could see them shaking their heads and murmuring to one another as they returned to their cars, but he knew that beneath that display of dismay they found it exciting. Ah well, he thought, it’s only human to be that way, and this is a small town. An event like this murder is not taken matter-of-factly.
    All the Reverend Davis wanted to do was to get out of his car, walk down there, find the sheriff, and tell him what he had seen. Then he could go home with a clear conscience. It seemed simple enough, and yet the preacher remained in his car. Another car pulled up, a brand-new Mercury Marquis, and the reverend recognized the man who got out. He was the local pharmacist, Bomar Flood. The wiry druggist was wearing a bow tie and Wallabees, and he fairly bounced down the road toward the bridge. The reverend recognized him because he had gone into the pharmacy to get a refill on his high blood pressure medication, and when he had admitted to the inquiring druggist that he was under a lot of stress, the nosy but nonetheless kindly man had pressed upon him some vitamin samples that he recommended to help relieve tension. The reverend had tried the vitamins, but he knew there was no capsule that could relieve his symptoms.
    The Reverend Davis sighed and chewed his lip. A family was emerging from the road now, the man in a flannel work shirt, the wife shepherding her two kids as if they had just taken them to an amusement park. Why, he wondered, had it been God’s will that he should see what he had that night? He was virtually a stranger in this county, and a black man to boot.
    He tried to imagine himself telling it to the sheriff the way it happened. Founders Day had been festive and tiring. The black people of Felton held their own fish fry to celebrate, and in this case, segregation was a matter of personal taste. The Reverend Davis had eaten his fill and then decided to take a basket of the leftovers to a shut-in from the parish who lived outside town. On his way home from seeing the old woman he was tired from the day, and her peach wine, and half indignant for her difficulties, so he was distracted and somehow got on a road he didn’t recognize. As he drove slowly along, looking for a turn he was familiar with, he saw the white girl walking down the road up ahead.
    Ordinarily he would not have stopped to ask a white girl for directions. It was the