“It’s just a few blocks from the house Earl Rice Jr. left behind as a teenager to the places he remembers. But after more than four decades in prison, he has ground to cover.
“Skirting Franklin Street’s neatly trimmed lawns in long strides, and praising the glories of the afternoon heat, he reaches the park where he and his brothers used to go sledding. Across 18th, kids, laughing and shouting, bound down school steps. Rice slows, taking it all in.
“’For 43 years I’m behind a wall or some kind of a fence with guard towers … and then you come out here,’ he says. ‘I can imagine what Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong and them felt like going to the moon, because that’s what it seems like. I’m on a different planet!”