Mercy Sometimes on a Friday in August all a working man wants is a long cool desert between each workday. The small mercy of a dark bar and a cold beer. The Want To of Monday and Tuesday becomes the God Help Me Get To of Wednesday and Thursday until by Friday it melts into a murmur and waits there unforgotten and howling. Unspoken and so unheard. Every day John Dalton drove to his job and did his work and collected his pay and watched the words of himself seem to disappear into the heat of late summer. But Dalton still listened for the voice of that life he hoped for…. still listened late at night in the long moments before sleep…for that howl…something wild and fierce and please God deafening so that it might shout the August silence out of him. By Friday Dalton was full of the work and the week. He carried every hour of the 40 on his back until by Friday, like an animal it was dragging him. Sometimes when the teeth and locked jaws of Get There by dawn and leave at 8 were sh
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