Charles W. Vincent

Crimson and White

On a night colder than any in memory, somewhere on the backroads of an old New England countryside, a man traveled home to a small, unnamed town where white smoke billowed from brick chimney tops. On the eve of a winter holiday, families gathered inside their dwellings, held up from the nips of cold air and whips of sharp wind blustering outside. The man, instead, drove alone through a bleak and dreary scene far from there, his only companion an old, clunking, dilapidated green car that had seen many years past its prime.