The Other Fellow

Dick Sands has served his time. Now he walks the road back to a town that doesn't want him. The moment he steps into the tavern, the air changes. Eyes follow him. Voices drop. The landlord, at least, remembers him from a previous release, offers him bread and broth. But the others? They've made up their minds about what kind of man Dick Sands is. They don't need to hear his side of it. Written in the late 19th century, this is a quiet, devastating portrait of what happens when a man tries to come back from the nothing he's been made into. Hopkinson Smith had a painter's eye for the small cruelty of ordinary faces, the way a community closes ranks against the one who's broken its rules. The question isn't whether Dick will succeed. It's whether any of us ever really get to start over.