Once it was over, he would spend his dawns somewhere far away, hundreds of miles from there, maybe more, depending on how the trains ran east and west through the night. There was nothing but water to the south, and he wasn't about to go north. It would suit him just fine if he never saw that damned river again. Or another city, either, with the noise and filth and staring faces. He imagined the dry flatlands to the west, and he considered the low hills of Mississippi and Alabama. Finally, he thought about the deep piney woods of north Georgia and decided that would be a fine place to disappear, now and forever. He would go up on a mountaintop and never come down again. The same orange sun cast its rays over the town of Jackson and through the east-facing windows of the colored ward of the State Hospital. The warm patterns of light creeping up the wall as the earth turned roused one patient, then the next, and on down the ward until the noise and motion had them all up and stretching and shuffling.
