People

John Quitman owned 400 people

In Morgan City, Louisiana I stayed at the Morgan City Motel, a small, lonely $60.00 room.

Captain Sawyer was my Commanding Officer when I arrived at the 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, the 1/1 Cav, at O’Brien Barracks in Schwabach, West Germany

Ursula is fifty-four and has a son and some ex-husbands and lives alone in a pre-fab house on two acres of sun-baked scrub grass in eastern Tennessee

Titus showed me one of his rifles, a Masterpiece Arms .338 Lapua Magnum with a Defiance action and Trigger Tech Diamond set at 1 pound with a Valdada Recon G2 optic 4.8-30x56mm scope

As it got dark, John lit the twenty-five foot tall bonfire he’d spent the previous day constructing

The Star Motel is one of those privately-owned brick motels built in the sixties with tired carpet, frayed towels and a clogged bathroom sink.

On the wall, centered on that narrow passage at eye level is a photo. Arriving at work in the morning, coming back from a coffee break or the restroom or a meeting, he can’t sit down without looking at that picture. And his visitors, as he fields questions from his chair, are forced to confront it, to think about it, to lug that image out in their memories when they leave.

Don (he titles himself Jah’ Don) makes Caribbean soul food. His mission statement is to make food with “flavor you can feel.”

James and George are HIV positive

One of our two waitresses complained that eating raw broccoli gives her gas so bad she can’t breath

Vincent is my neighbor two doors down. Forty-seven, untrimmed beard, divorced, four kids, three at home with the ex.

Michael went to jail for the first time when he was fourteen. Since then, he’s spent almost five years in detention or jail. The girl he had a crush on when he was a freshman in high school was shot in the face with a shotgun at a house party.