Liars’ Bench

Originally Published in About Magazine Along the side of a highway, that you’ve probably never traveled, there sits an old stone building. It was built before the road was paved and it was built strong. It was small because it fit the place in which it lived. It was a place of community. It was a place for lost souls and where men gathered to tell their tales. It was there, sitting on an old church pew, that I got the education that every boy should get. How to spit. How to cuss. And how to tell a good lie. Will Human ran The Human Store in the shadow of the Ouachita Mountains for as long as I could remember. It was every bit the type of old country store that nostalgia is made from.   Will could almost always be found sitting in his rocking chair in the back watching one of the stacks of VHS movies he’d rented that week and smoking a cigarette. There was no air...