The Weight of Salt and Iron: A Narrative of Restraint and Rusted Truth
CHAPTER 1: THE FRICTION OF OXYGEN The formica was pitted with three decades of small-town grease and cigarette burns from the years before they passed the county ordinances. It smelled of bleached rags and the bitter, metallic crust that formed around the spouts of the industrial-grade ketchup bottles. Beneath the rim of his black veteran…