(This month, July 2026, marks three years of work on a novel. I finished the initial draft in November 2024, and managed two more complete, top-to-bottom rewrites by July ‘25. The past year has been spent whittling. My hope’s that in another six months or so, maybe even by the year’s end, I’ll have whittled enough to start showing it off. At its most basic, the book follows two teenagers, Annie and Joey, in a post-collapse country, on a journey from Southwest Virginia to Memphis. The following passage occurs ~190 pages into the ~240 page manuscript.)
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That morning it was cold and clear and the trees looked like flames in the wind. After a time they rounded a bend and rode between two hills high with scrubgrass. At the crest of the left one three crosses faced easterly, throwing long scrawling shadows out into the road. Shoulder to shoulder, must’ve been twenty feet across each and forty high or more. On the righthand hill was a billboard, bleached empty, daybreak by daybreak eroded to a bare white wall. Without a word between them they turned from the road and up toward the crosses.
The foremost was vacant. The other two set a few yards back, not quite so tall, and draped with naked strangers, one on each. A man and a woman: spindlylimbed, tan, arms wrapped round the uprights, legs dangled over dun crossbeams. Two thin children riding petrified giants.
Hey there, said Annie.
Howdy, she said.
How long you two been up there? If you don’t mind my asking.
Oh, I don’t mind it none, she said, smiling, but I can’t say I know. She turned to other. How long you been up there?
The old man had his eyes shut and didn’t open them nor answer. He clung to his station, cheek thatchy and white on the roughhewn wood post.
He don’t know either, she said. I been up here a good many years, though, and still not so long as him there.
You aint gone up together?
Kindly, miss, I don’t know this man from Adam.
Yall climb up yourselves?
Aint nobody in all this world done a thing by themselves.
Amen, cried the man.
Well, said Joey. Alright.
Where you two headed? she asked.
Memphis. Maybe West Memphis.
You don’t know?
Annie grinned. Does anyone know where they’s headed?
Amen, cried the man. He opened his eyes. Joey shot her a look.
Well why you gone up, then? said Annie, shading her sight with a hand.
Repenting, she said.
Repenting.
You said it.
Repenting what? said Annie.
No need for a reason, though I’m sure I’ve aplenty. Lord knows I do. But repenting’s a gift all its own, dear sister. Sure as that sun rises yonder.
Uh huh. How long yall reckon to stay there?
Til it don’t.
Wind and time had worn them smooth as driftwood. Her eyes were twin furnaces, hot beneath her furrowed brows. The old man’s eyes were marble white. Joey leaned back in his saddle, tipping his hat back the better to see. So how d’you stay fed up there? he asked.
The Lord provideth.
He do?
Has so far.
How’s He do that?
He fed all the hebrews some fortyodd years in the desert, she said. Two scarecrows on crosses aint nothing for a feller like Him.
Amen, cried the man.
Amen, Annie echoed.
The woman smiled. You found Jesus then, sister?
I found something. Or rightly maybe it’s found me.
Hallelujah, cried the man.
Yes indeed.
So yall talk to God up there? asked Joey.
Every day, dear brother. Every breath, every hour.
And He talks back?
Sometimes. But He don’t talk any tongue known to these ears of clay. Ye learn to listen without really listening. And He talks. And sometimes He sends him a vision. She nodded toward her bearded double.
A vision?
Tell em, she said.
I see a whirlwind come down upon us, he cried, his weatherblown voice far too great or too forceful for the long-winnowed frame of its issue. A cloud and a fire enfolding itself and a brightness about it and out of the midst thereof, out of the midst of that fire, out of it all manner of creatures winged and rugged, alight like burning coals, like lamps, and from the fire the lightning and appearing now from the dimming firmament rides a wheel, a wheel of flame, a wheel within wheels and more creatures within it, inside it, their eyes peering forth from the fire and the lightning and Lo, they say, Lo: prepare ye the way of the Lord, saying: stand on thy feet and listen, now, listen, I make with thee a covenant, saying: awake, awake as in the ancient days, that time has come again, saying: cities shall burn and their shadow be cast out in flame and all things sought shall be found in time and saying such things is a voice like great waters and the beating of wings, itself a sound perfect and terrible, and in the midst of this speaking a face, a face perfect and beautiful and like to that which there is no like and no other and from it another, another, a voice like wild honey that pours from its lips, booming and terrible and so low as to silence all that tolls and toils about it. Fall upon thy face, ye heathens, now, and listen!
Finished, he pulled himself back to his post. He closed his eyes again.
And I see them hills over yonder, she said. And when the sun goes down they turn colors you’d never believe.
Amen, said the man.
Well, said Annie, I reckon we best get on. But I’ll pray for ye.
Thank ye kindly.
Annie turned back her horse and trotted it on towards the road. Joey started to follow but didn’t. He looked back once more toward the strangers.
You think the world is ending? he asked her.
What world?
They rode on toward the delta, the pillar saint shadows unfurling at their heels: three black crosses laid long over yellowing grass, two burdened with souls and the centermost abdicate.
you think the world is ending // what world — loved this, the dialogue especially