Page 13 - Where the Dream Ends ebook

Lord’s Gate

Lord’s Gate, as it is widely known here, is not actually a
gate; nor is it a particular aspect of heaven — though in some
respects it bears a closer resemblance to the Promised Land
than the biblical allusion might have you imagine. One flank
features the rotting remains of a local rum shop that long ago
relinquished two of its outer walls to the elements and is now
policed by a hoary cow who spends most of her time stomping
the floor and chewing cud in the manner of a Monday night
quarterback nursing a warm bottle of beer; the opposite post
is guarded by a strikingly similar structure, sans cow, housing
a single mother and her ten children.
Entering through the Gate on a paved surface, the road di-
vides: to the left a dirt path presses forward on the level for
about a hundred yards before petering out alongside a narrow
graveyard surrounded by banana fields. To the right, a badly
pitted secondary road of dirt and gravel rises erratically, pass-
ing an old banana packing plant and continuing along a grass

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