``Yes I was branded,'' he said with a laugh, ``I was branded good. Bled out pus a year or more before it healed. I was young then and didn't think nothing of it. Nobody thought nothing of it then. It's what they did and at that time half the men in the county had the prison brand. They're all dead and gone now and all a sudden the people ask me let's see your brand. It don't matter to me.'' He got up slowly from the bench and lit a cigarette. He turned and looked at them. So scrubbed, so clean, so lily white. He ducked his head at them and turned away. He walked up the middle of the near empty street, past boarded up stores, empty buildings.
Sometimes it pays to get off the freeway. You find stuff you couldn't have imagined. A branded American, alive and well in the e-world. Talking of the old days. Sitting on a bench outside a handsome old court house. And Bill had recorded the image and there it was all digitized and stored on his power book. The silvery keloid scar on the black skin.
``You could sell it,'' Monica said. ``He'd never know. He wouldn't care anyway.''
``No way,'' said Bill.
But back in Los Angeles with the image touched up a little here and there, cropped and enlarged and enhanced with all the art in him, it became spectacular. Not just the brand but the hard anger overlaid with weariness in the old man's eyes. Bill stared at it most of one long night. He knew what he had to do. Go back to that town and find the old man and listen to his story. Double Take would buy it in a minute, he was sure. He budgeted three days.
It took them too long to find the town. Twice they took the wrong exit. Not remembering the name was a definite drawback. A certain Dr Pepper sign at last convinced them they were in the right place and they walked the town and stopped at the court house, the gas station, the sad little cafe with the booths that had not been updated since the forties. No one seemed to recognize the photograph.
``Don't know him. He's not from here.''
Maybe they tweaked the photo too much. Bill brought up the original on his power book. Still they said they did not know him.
They walked the town from edge to edge. They walked unpaved roads where children still played singing games. They asked and many did not answer them and some did and no one knew the old man in the picture and the children followed them and sang to them and Monica wished she had her video camera and Bill photographed the children because he could not help himself.
They sat down on the bench outside the court house where they had first met the branded man.
``Now what?'' said Bill.
A woman came out of the court house and stood beside them.
``Just stop and think,'' she said. ``Just stop and think.'' She ducked her head at them, got in her car and drove away down the empty street between the boarded up stores, empty buildings.