Chapter 104: Unexpected visitor

DEACON

I'd grown up in the country and was accustomed to the noises of the farm. Bugs chirping, crickets singing, frogs croaking, the groan of tree branches in the wind-I was used to all of those sounds. When I went away to college and then med school and then my residency in Gainesville, I'd learned to live with the city's soundtrack: honking cars, the air brakes on buses, and people shouting in the street.

Living in the town of Harper Springs was some kind of happy medium, I decided as I sat in the dark of my living room, shaking the glass in my hand to hear the ice clink. I had the bugs and crickets from the farm along with the distant noise of cars and the occasional siren. Tonight, even though my windows were shut and the air conditioning was humming, I could hear the sound of a baseball game. My next-door neighbor was an older gentleman who liked to sit on his front porch and listen to the games on his ancient radio. Since he was more than slightly hard of hearing, he had that