Christina Murphy lives and writes in a 100 year-old house along the Ohio River. The River and she share much in common as they both keeping moving from east to west. Christina's work has been published or will appear in *Acappella Zoo*, *Modern Short Stories*, *ABJECTIVE, Blue Fifth Review*, *Counterexample Poetics*,* Greensboro Review, Storyscape*, and *Descant,* among others, and has received an Editor’s Choice Award and "Special Mention" for a Pushcart Prize. She always appreciates hearing from readers and can be reached at 446river3@gmail.com.

The Photograph (February 20, 2009. Issue 15.)

He was damn mad. It was the best photograph he had ever taken in his life. An abandoned train track in a town he had seen decline for the last twenty years. A sad reminder of better times and an image of a desolate future. And then it happened. He was driving back to his job on the newspaper, a flat tire, a guy who offered to help, and the punch from the guy that knocked him out cold. When came to, everything was gone, including his digital camera that held the picture. Just his luck. And here he was in nowhere he could decipher, with no landmarks to tell him how to get home.

He sat up in his car and felt the large welt forming on his jaw line and something that tasted like blood on his lips. He looked in the rear view mirror and saw that his lip was cracked and a piece of his front tooth was missing. If the guy had not stolen his GPS too, he would have found his way, but he had nothing to help him, and his head really ached. He stood outside the car and waited for someone to come by. It was getting near twilight, and he had a hard time seeing up the road in the gray darkness. But he did hear the rumble of a truck coming, and he moved to the edge of the road to signal and hope the guy would stop. He did.

“Can I help you fellow?” the truck driver said after he rolled to a stop and put down his window. “Hey, what happened to your lip?”
“A guy robbed me.”

“No kidding. I’m glad I came along. Let me help you.”

He climbed in.

“Just about five or six miles from here, we can catch the main highway. Are you headed toward Bancroft or Parkersville?”

“Parkersville.”

“Okay,” the guy said—and then proceeded to tell him his life story.

He was so tired he barely listened. Just enough to say “uh-huh” a few times.

“Here we go,” the guy said. He turned onto the highway and then onto the exit for Bancroft.

“Hey, wait, I need Parkersville,” he said.

“I know,” the guy said. “We’re taking a short cut.”

“There’s no short cut going this way,” he said.

“We don’t need a short cut any way,” the guy said. “I’ll handle things.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

The guy looked at him angrily. “You don’t need to—so just shut up, okay?”

He took in the warning, and a cold fear began to build inside him.

In a few minutes, the guy pulled the truck off the highway and onto the shoulders, then across a field, and behind some trees.

His heart pounded furiously when the guy set the door locks.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Not much. Your fingerprints.”

“What?”

The guy reached behind him and pulled out a gun.

He panicked, grabbing at the door handle and pounding on the window.

“I’m not going to hurt you, so just settle down. If you don’t, I’ll break out your other tooth.”

He sat there and watched as the guy took a rag from under his seat and began wiping the gun clean.

“Put this in your hand and hold it like you were going to shoot it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to.”

He took the gun and held it.

“Wrap your hand around the barrel and put your finger on the trigger.”

He did as he was told.

“Thank you,” the guy said as he used the rag to take hold of the tip of the gun barrel. He reached forward and put the gun into the glove compartment, and then covered it with the rag.

“Okay,” the guy said. “Now I’m going to take you to a bar up the road and let you off. You can call somebody from there to come and get you. And don’t even think about telling anybody what happened. Who’d believe you any way?”

He watched as the guy maneuvered the truck through the trees and onto a paved road that brought them, in about ten minutes, to Addison’s Bar & Grill.

“Get out,” the guy said.

He heard the click of the doors unlocking and jumped from the cab. In an instant, the truck had pulled away, and he was alone in the parking lot.

He walked into the bar and the odor of cigarette smoke and greasy food made him feel queasy. His heart was still racing as he sat down on a stool by the bar. He wanted a beer but realized his wallet was gone, too.

“Yeah?” the bartender said.

He rubbed his lip. “Could I just have a glass of ice water, please?”

The bartender looked at him curiously then put a glass down in front of him.

“Fix up your lip, buddy. No charge.”

He took a sip and the cold water made his lip throb with pain. He tried again, and as he brought the glass to his lips, he looked up and saw it. He couldn’t believe it. There in front of him, hanging on the wall, was a framed picture of the deserted railroad track. It looked just like the picture he had taken, but it was older and a bit faded.

He asked the bartender, “Where’s that picture from?”

“My father took it. A few years ago before he retired from the railroad. Photography was his hobby, and he gave a bunch of these to folks around here.”

His heart sank, then filled with bitterness. His whole journey was useless, and everything he had gone through meant nothing now. His perfect picture was just another picture of the same scene, and certainly nothing special at all. He brought the glass up to his lips to take a sip, and as he did, a big piece of his tooth broke free, slipped into the water, and floated ghostlike to the bottom of the glass.