By the devil’s mischievous happenstance, his route carried him directly past the courthouse, and he couldn’t help but stop for a second, looking at the aging adobe building with a bitter cocktail of irony, pride, and a stiff ounce of fear, all brewing in his belly. As he stood there, staring at the cold dark bars on the sole window, that cocktail birthed a niggling feeling throughout his guts, urging him to move on quickly. As the warning neared crescendo, where it simply must be heeded, he sensed movement from the corner of his eye. A lithe little coyote sauntered like a ghost out from behind a shuttered shop only two streets up and then sat back on its haunches right in the center of Court Street.

I’ve been thinking about this . . . too much.