Twelve Years, Eight-hundred and Seventy-two Miles

This story was originally published in Day One, a weekly literary journal dedicated to short fiction and poetry from emerging writers.

For twelve years, Zeke Honeycutt has been waiting for his father to be executed on death row. Haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child, he has been scraping together a living to raise his brother, Will—now fifteen years old—ever since they left foster care.

Unlike Zeke, Will, an oddball budding filmmaker, was too young to remember their parents, and to him their mother's murder is just a case file. Nonetheless, Zeke takes his brother on a road trip across the eight-hundred and seventy-two miles that stretch between LA and the Eyman Prison complex in Arizona to view the execution.

As they drive through the desert in their beat-up car, they keep up a steady banter about the mundane—school, girls, and everything in between. But as they move closer to their destination, each must confront the family history that left an indelible imprint on their lives.

Vivid and surprisingly funny, Twelve Years, Eight-Hundred and Seventy-Two Miles speaks to the irrelevancy of recovery once the worst has been survived.