The Ruins

It was the battle of the headlights versus the Southwest Mississippi darkness. And the darkness was winning.  “It’s like driving through ink,”he thought as he flew past Alcorn State’s entrance.  He dodged a startled doe and pulled his Porsche off the road.  A turn of the key killed the engine.  The car’s headlights only lit a few feet in front of him.  Nothing but ink. About 20 feet ahead of him, the former mansion’s columns stood like haunted sentinels, guarding the surrounding countryside.  But he couldn’t see them.  And he really didn’t care.

He flicked the lights off and sat in the darkness.  One sense was now gone: Sight.  He reached out with his hearing.  An owl hooted off in distance. He could hear a creature scrambling through the brush.  He then felt the  humidity blanket him like a wet towel. He took a deep breath. Something was blooming off in distance tickled his nose. Honeysuckle? Probably. He then opened his eyes to allow his eyesight to slowly adjust to the darkness.  The 23 columns began to apparate out of the blackness on that cloudy Spring night.

The Windsor Ruins. The grand mansion written about by Twain, spared by Grant and lost to a freak fire after the Civil War.  Windsor, the glorious mystery of Port Gibson. Only scraps of its former glory remained — so much like his life.

He did his best thinking down here. He remembered the first time his parents had taken him here as a child. What magic. His eyes closed again and memories flooded through his mind. Like a drunk in Vegas, he had made a crazy bet on the wrong hand  — and then had lost everything.  Pain shot through his chest again. The darkness got even darker.

He opened the car door and lit his cigarette lighter.  A faint flicker of  flame lit his broken path as  he slowly eased over the chain.  Gravel crunched under his feet. Each step was a step away from a failed life.

He had driven 120 mph down Highway 61 that night. Secretly, he had hoped his tire would have blown out so his car would’ve hit a tree.  No luck.  He had a dark chuckle. Things were so bad that he considered having a fatal wreck good luck.

He walked over to a fallen column and leaned up against it.  He extinguished the now burning hot lighter and pondered the past few years.  The fraud. The investigations.  The collapse.  All because he had allowed his ego to drive his life’s bus.

He filled his lungs with the warm, humid nighttime air.  He held it for 10 seconds and deeply exhaled. He did it again. And again.  The columns peered down at him, like protectors of a broken soul.  He closed his eyes and prayed for redemption.  And then he broke down and cried.

Like a wounded coyote, you could hear him howl for miles.  Copious tears flowed down his face. He let go.

And at that moment, he turned his problems over to a higher source.  The release felt like the air rushing out of his lungs.

The clouds broke and a full moon rose over the horizon.  Shadows zigzagged across the now lit the path back to his car.  The columns had a luminescent glow in the moonlight.

That night a broken man did something that never happened at Windsor ruins: He began to rebuild.