Blackness Below The Bridge

Lane DeGregory: The roar of rush hour wakes him: trucks, cars and buses thundering across the causeway above his tent. Behind the shack next to his, someone guns a generator. Spanish music blares from a boom box. Homer Barkley turns on his side, pulls the covers over his head. His mother gave him these sheets when he got out of prison, to use at his brother's house, where he planned to stay. Instead, the sheets cover an air mattress Barkley hauled down here more than a year ago, when he found out he had to live on the edge of Biscayne Bay, with 70 other people convicted of committing sex crimes against kids. Home now is a spit of sand beneath a highway overpass. It's the punishment after…