© 1999

Folks there called it Missoura. Daniel Sinclair used to call it Missoura. Now he called it Missouree. That pretty much summed up his status in the small town of Egypt, Missouri. Outsider.

His was a bigger fall from grace than most, because he hadn’t always been an outsider. No, Daniel Sinclair had been born into the welcoming, nurturing arms of Egypt, Missouri, which was the only way you could ever really belong. You could live there twenty years, but if you hadn’t been shot from someone’s loins on that sacred soil, you were an outsider. And if you were born there and left, well, then you could add traitor to your resumé. And if you came back, nobody forgave you and everybody talked about your hoity-toity accent, which was really no accent at all, but rather the absence of one, a fact there was no use in arguing. You would never convince anyone in Egypt that he or she was the one with the accent.

In California, they’d teased Daniel about his lazy drawl. In Missouri, they teased him about his city talk. A guy couldn’t win.

Daniel stood looking out the door of the one-story clapboard house, past the flies that clung to the screen waiting for their chance to get in, and past the gray-painted porch at his battered blue truck, which was waiting to take him someplace he didn’t want to go. As a kid, he’d harbored the horrendous misconception that once he became an adult, he wouldn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do. Then he’d grown up and realized what a bunch of shit that was.

“Beau!” Daniel shouted over his shoulder, preparing to announce his departure.