Pastoral Genocide

Unreasonably so, David Patterson was in Africa. A peace corps dropout turned drug mule turned sunken-eyed enigma, David hadn’t spoken with the Western Hemisphere in over two years. It was what it was, a nomadic journey into the only place where nomadic journeys were still remarkable. He had grown up in Connecticut, gone to college in Iowa, and become generally disinterested in the idea of conclusion. His exodus had been a quiet, insignificant thing that was shackled by neither maps nor time nor currency. And so, he drifted, lost in the dark. Cape Town to Johannesburg to Maputo to Mombasa, different places that tasted vaguely the same. He knew he’d go back, someday and somehow. Now, though, wasn’t and couldn’t be the time. The idea of house and home was intimidating, overpowering, tyrannical. Throughout his life, he had been scared of many things. But nothing, literally nothing, terrified him more than the thought of acquiescence. Because, to David, the beginning of the end was merely the end.