The Wait

by Michael Compton, Sherry J. Compton

Four years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in an America still scarred with deep racial divides, a 14-year-old boy and his family take a road trip out West. Driving through state after state "where there were no black people," the boy is amused by the attention paid to his family by curious whites, but events in this short story take a dark turn when the family is forced off the highway in Texas by two belligerent "cowboys" looking for trouble. All proceeds will be donated to support adult literacy.

21 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 16, 2017

About the author

Michael Compton is the author of the mystery novel Gumshoe, co-author of the sci-fi series Inferno 2033, and screenwriter of the 2011 thriller Carjacked, starring Stephen Dorff and Maria Bello. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in Mystery Weekly, African American Review, The Baltimore Review, and many others. He is retired from The University of Memphis.