Continued from Volume 10, Issue 12 of The Voice

   th-th-th-th,

   Seriously.

   mmmm—th-th-th-th

   One more try. If the car didn’t start—and he doubted it would—he was going inside, cracking a beer, and forgetting all about Kansas, Alice, and the stupid Suburban that he had wasted an entire Wednesday filling with the mediocre sum of his forty-two years on earth.

   mmmm—

   Come on,

   th-th-th-RRRRR!

   Finally.

   Good thing, too; he had already finished the beer.

   Good-bye, Topeka. He thought as he hit his head on the Suburban’s ceiling as it ran over one of the many fault lines running through his driveway. Twenty minutes and he would be on the interstate, six hours more and he would be standing on a doorstep he hadn’t seen in over thirty years.

   Well over thirty years.

   And with that he was off; no longer a resident of Topeka, not yet a resident of Elkhart County.  He fashioned himself a minstrel—one who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

   Or bottle, he laughed.