Then two more pickups. A white Chevy and a blue Dodge with a cracked windshield. They parked behind the red Ford.
Then a car. A little brown Corolla with a dented bumper.
Then four more. A station wagon. A sedan with a donut spare tire. A rusty old Buick. A minivan with a handicap tag hanging from the mirror.
They kept coming. One after another, their headlights cutting through the fog, pulling off onto the shoulder and parking along the ditch in a long, neat line.
Tyler set his coffee cup down on the porch railing very slowly.
I counted. I couldn’t help it.
Eleven cars. Fourteen. Seventeen.
People got out.
An old man in a feed store cap and suspenders. A young woman with a baby strapped to her chest in a carrier, holding a toddler by the hand. A heavyset man in a Walmart vest, like he was coming straight from a night shift. Two teenage boys, brothers maybe, carrying a laundry basket between them. A woman in scrubs. An old lady with a cane and a canvas tote bag. A man with a prosthetic leg. A family of five, the kids still in pajamas with jackets thrown over them.
