A Good Man is hard to find

art writing...The sun blistered down upon the old country road like a watchful eye, burning the cracked earth, illuminating the ghosts of wildflowers that once lined the ditches. Dust stirred up by passing cars danced in the beams of light, swirling as if spirits of the land protested the invasion of strangers.

The grandmother sat in the passenger seat, a faded lace collar peeking above her floral dress, clutching her purse as though the red leather bag held more than tissues and peppermints—it held dignity, memory, and an arsenal of stories she’d sprinkle into conversations like salt. She adjusted her hat, an old thing with a tattered veil, and stared at the children in the back seat as they poked at each other, ignorant of the history bleeding from the fields they passed.

Bailey, her son, gripped the wheel with the stoic silence of a man who'd learned that quiet was the only defense against chaos. His wife, a soft shadow of a woman in a sun-faded blouse, watched the landscape with hollow eyes, her mind lost somewhere between the world of maps and the aching place of longing.

They were going to Florida. The children wanted the beach. Bailey’s wife wanted escape. The grandmother wanted none of it. She wanted Tennessee. She wanted the past, where men tipped their hats and women wore gloves. Where people cared about manners and sin and the price of a soul.

But the South had changed, and so had its people.

In the back seat, June Star, freckled and fierce, propped her bare feet against the front headrest while her brother John Wesley made airplane noises with his lips. The baby slept in its mother’s arms, its soft breath the only innocent sound in the car.

As they passed through small towns where the skeletons of gas stations and diners stood like old soldiers at attention, the grandmother tried to pull them into stories. She told them about plantations and gentlemen callers, about a time when you could tell a good man just by the tilt of his hat or the shine of his shoes.

“They don’t make men like they used to,” she said, her voice breaking like an old record. “A good man is hard to find these days.”

Bailey sighed.

But the road had other stories in mind.

---

The old diner sat like a blistered memory at the crossroads, a place that had once known the sweet perfume of fried chicken and fresh biscuits, now drowning in grease and the stale breath of broken dreams.

Red Sammy stood outside, leaning against the gas pump, wiping sweat from his forehead with a rag that might have once been white. His eyes, tired but kind, held a glimmer of the past, though they’d been clouded by too much sun, too many lies.

“You folks headed to Florida?” he asked, sizing them up.

“Yessir,” Bailey answered, tired.

“Florida’s no place for decent folk anymore,” Red Sammy said, shaking his head. “Full of crooks and cheaters. Had a fella last week try to pay me with a phony twenty.”

The grandmother perked up like a hound catching scent.

“You see, I always say, people don’t have respect for nothing no more. Not even themselves,” she chimed in, her voice laced with both nostalgia and spite. “Back in my day, a man was as good as his word.”

Red Sammy nodded. “Preacher said it last Sunday—world’s going to hell on a red wagon.”

The grandmother beamed, as if she’d won the argument she’d been having with the world for decades.

But the children were restless, and Bailey, eager to get back on the road, ended the conversation with a polite nod. They left the diner behind, the smell of fried food trailing them like a ghost.

---

The road stretched into nothingness, winding through forests dense and dark, like the lungs of the old South breathing secrets. The grandmother, still simmering in self-righteousness, spotted an old dirt road.

“I remember this road!” she cried out, excitement pulsing in her voice like blood. “It leads to an old plantation with a secret panel in the dining room.”

The children perked up.

“Secret panel?” June Star leaned forward, her cynicism briefly disarmed.

Bailey grumbled, but the grandmother pleaded, her voice trembling with the urgency of memory. Against his better judgment, Bailey turned down the road.

But time had played its cruel tricks.

The road narrowed, the trees clawing at the car like desperate hands. The plantation was nowhere to be found. The grandmother’s memory had betrayed her.

And then the accident.

It happened fast, like sin creeping into the heart. The car flipped into the ditch, metal screaming, glass shattering like promises.

When the dust settled, the family emerged, battered but breathing.

The grandmother, shaken but intact, clutched at her hat, whispering prayers through trembling lips.

That’s when they saw the car—a black hearse-like vehicle creeping down the road, its occupants shadows with faces.

And out stepped the man.

He was pale, thin, with cold eyes that looked through people rather than at them. His smile was tight, humorless. His companions stood behind him, silent sentinels.

The grandmother gasped. She recognized him from the papers.

The Misfit.

---

There’s a way evil walks in daylight that’s different than shadows. It wears the face of reason, politeness even, but its heart is hollow.

The Misfit introduced himself as though he were a gentleman caller rather than a killer.

The grandmother, fueled by terror and grace, tried to appeal to the slivers of goodness she believed must still exist in the world.

“You're a good man,” she whispered, her voice sticky sweet, desperate, trembling. “I can tell you’re a good man.”

The Misfit looked at her, head tilted like a dog hearing a sound it couldn’t place.

“Lady,” he said, “I ain’t a good man, but I ain’t the worst.”

His men took Bailey and the rest into the woods, the muffled gunshots like punctuation marks on the grandmother’s crumbling gospel.

She clung to the Misfit’s shirt, tears staining his collar. She spoke of Jesus, forgiveness, of the days when the world made sense.

And for a moment, something flickered in his eyes—regret, perhaps, or confusion.

“I wish I’d met you sooner,” she whispered, as if they were in a parlor rather than the edge of oblivion.

The Misfit stepped back, gun shaking slightly in his hands.

He fired.

She fell, her hand stretched out toward him, as though she were blessing him.

---

Later, as they buried the bodies under the indifference of the trees, the Misfit lit a cigarette, his face unreadable.

“She would’ve been a good woman,” he muttered, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

His men laughed, but the Misfit didn’t.

The road stretched before them, endless and cruel, like the burden of a man who’d long since given up on the idea of redemption.

But still, he walked it.

Because even in a world gone to hell on a red wagon, a man has to walk somewhere.

And maybe, just maybe, the grandmother’s touch lingered on his collar, a ghost of grace in a graceless world.