Chapter 4

So how do you go about searching for your long-lost grandmother? Most people should know where their grandmothers are, should know where to go when they need to be loved or spoiled, but I did not. Most people could…

Chapter 3

The years went by in a blur. I wasn’t really living them, after all.

I went to Harding, of course. It was expected and affordable, though my grades could probably have carried me many other places. I lived at home,…

Chapter 2

I grew up in a world where everything that happened was the will of God, where from the way the wind blew to the price of bread was a measure of God’s divine favor or disfavor, and though that…

Part II:

Hawa

Prepared then, and disposed as I was by the discourse of my companions, and Phoebe’s minute detail of everything, no wonder that such a sight gave the last dying blow to my native innocence.

—John Cleland, The Memoirs of Fanny…

The sign on the side of the highway reads, in painted red lettering: THE HIVE. IN OLD SEARCY. ALL ARE WELCOME.

It is raining softly, as I suppose it must, even in this world long past its apocalyptic prime.

I am sitting on the bank of the White River just outside the town of Augusta, population unknown, though the sign at city limits posts the number 3,496.

I don’t know how long we have been sitting here against the wall when Jimm breaks our silence by asking, “Gil? What do you believe?”

The sign by the road reads “JUDD HILL PLANTATION AHEAD” in the sloppy, hand-painted letters of someone using too big a paintbrush for his job. Letters in red.

Little Rock Air Force Base is not actually in Little Rock—it is rather north of the river, beyond North Little Rock (which is its own separate city) and on the edge of Jacksonville, which might have become one of those white flight cities for those fleeing the “problems” of Little Rock had not its very Air Force neighbor brought men and women of all races to that spot on the highway, thus forcing choosy families to migrate further north, to Cabot or Beebe.