Night came down on the jailhouse like a heavy blanket, smothering every sound but the drip of a leaking pipe and the low hum of crickets outside the barred window.
Ikrist Raya sat on the edge of the narrow cot, arms wrapped around his knees. He could still feel the sheriff's palm slamming the table, hear the sharp crack that made him flinch again and again even though it was done.
He traced shapes on the cold metal frame of the cot — imaginary flowers, a chicken scratching in the yard, Amie's doll with its yarn hair. His mind flickered from picture to picture, trying to push away the walls that felt like they were pressing closer each hour.
Down the hall, a man coughed — a ragged, choking sound that turned into a low prayer. Somewhere farther off, another cell door banged once, twice, then fell silent. Ikrist wondered if the men locked up around him knew what people were saying outside. If they cared. If they, too, had people waiting for them who still believed they'd come home.
He leaned his head back against the cold brick wall. He could see the edge of the tiny window above him — the sky through it looked cracked and distant. He pictured the moon over Alcolu, the same moon shining down on his mama's porch. Was Amie still awake? Would she sneak outside to look up and wish him home?
His stomach growled. He hadn't eaten since breakfast. A deputy had shoved a tin plate through the bars earlier — lumpy grits gone cold before Ikrist could touch them. His throat was too tight anyway. He wanted his mother's cooking — cornbread warm from the skillet, the kind she'd wrap in a cloth and hand him when he came in from the woods smelling like pine and sun.
A key turned in the lock down the hall. Boots echoed closer — the slow, heavy steps of the deputy. Deputy Croft this time, not the sheriff. Croft paused outside Ikrist's cell, a ring of keys rattling against his belt.
Ikrist looked up, blinking through the darkness. The deputy didn't bark orders like Hammond. He just stared for a moment, his eyes shifting down the hallway as if to make sure no one was listening.
"You alright, boy?" Croft asked. His voice was quiet, tired — not cruel, but not warm either.
Ikrist shrugged, pulling his arms tighter around his knees. "I wanna go home," he whispered.
Croft sighed through his nose. "Ain't that easy." He shifted on his feet. "You remember anything else? Anything at all?"
"I told you," Ikrist said, his voice trembling. "I told you all of it. I just showed 'em where the flowers was."
Croft studied him, the way a man might study a stray dog too skinny to bite. "Sometimes," he said slowly, "sometimes tellin' 'em what they wanna hear makes it easier."
Ikrist's eyes widened. "But that'd be a lie."
Croft's mouth twitched — not quite a smile. "Yeah. Sometimes lies grease the wheels. Let folks sleep easier." He turned the keys in his hand like he might unlock the door, but he didn't. He slipped something small through the bars — a biscuit wrapped in wax paper, still warm enough to smell like home for half a second.
"Eat that. Try to sleep." He paused, then added, "Don't make no noise tonight. Sheriff's temper's got no bottom."
Ikrist took the biscuit with shaking hands. He wanted to thank him, but Croft was already gone, the echo of his boots swallowed by the hall.
Ikrist unwrapped the biscuit. It tasted like flour and lard and a bit of salt — not at all like his mama's, but enough to remind him of her. He tore tiny pieces, chewing slow, wishing each crumb could carry him back to the porch, to the yard, to the soft hum of his mother's hymn.
When the biscuit was gone, he lay down on the cot and pulled his knees up to his chest. His eyelids burned but refused to close. He mouthed a prayer his mother had taught him — one he hadn't really said since he was little: Keep me safe, keep me strong, keep me comin' home.
Somewhere outside, a train whistle cried out in the night. The low wail slid under the bars and curled around him like a lullaby. Ikrist imagined that train carrying him far away — maybe up North like he'd always dreamed, to a place where folks didn't look at you and see trouble before you opened your mouth.
But when the train's cry faded, the dark pressed back in. Ikrist pressed his palm to the wall, feeling the cold bite his skin. He thought of Amie's flower crown, of his father's rough hands fixing fences, of his mother's eyes that could hush any storm.
He promised himself he'd see them all again. Somehow.
In the dark, the promise felt too small — but he whispered it anyway, again and again, until sleep finally found him, curled small on a cot meant for grown men who had no more dreams left to dream.