THE DEVILFISH by Phil Comer

The modern world seldom stills except when the power grid fails. One such occasion was a Christmas Eve night, a blackout during a rare cold snap in Central Florida.

Landon Fuller

Eventually, Landon's voice broke the silence; the lone flickering candle illuminated memories from long ago. Just shy of his one-hundredth birthday, Landon asserted that his earliest memory was harvesting winter wheat in Charleston, South Carolina. The men hauled the wheat by wagon to the mill. It took all day. They packed a lunch.

A small reticent man of sharp wit and keen mind, Landon steepled fingers before his face and leaned into the flame correcting himself: An earlier memory was a trip by steamship and train, summer vacation to the home of his mother's mother in Crystal River, New York. He and Henry, his twin, made friends with two older boys whose father was the Crystal River station master. The twins helped the boys chalk lines on a tennis court. Also that trip, Landon and Henry saw their first moving pictures in a nearby town.

Landon and Henry Fuller were born to Sally Landon Seward Fuller and Paul Hamilton Fuller in Charleston, South Carolina, on August 7, 1902. Landon survived his twin by a number of years.

"No," Landon leaned back, arguing with himself, "harvesting winter wheat had to be the earlier event. The black and white Charlie Barnwells were among the farmers that day."