The streets of Memphis’ town had been orange groves when he was a boy. He remembered as, one by one, the groves were bulldozed to make room for neighborhoods, for the people from up north, finally tired of the long winters, to settle into their respiratory diseases and neurological disorders.
I saw a flame on the water a couple of miles out. The Coast Guard found John the next day, washed up on a small island. They pulled the plane and two more bodies from the bottom of a deep channel.
Shane Hinton is the author of the story collection Pinkies and editor of the anthology We Can’t Help It If We’re From Florida. He teaches writing at the University of Tampa and lives in the winter strawberry capital of the world.
