Thursday, December 29, 2011

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 5

     Dig and Abida drive through central Virginia:


     The weathered green signs that whizzed by on their right said Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway, and even without this periodic reminder, it seemed to Dig as if the landscape were in a perpetual state of outcry.  The soil still rich with the memory of blood.  Every tree and hill and gully bearing out the textured virtuosity of cannon balls and chain gun fire.  Sweaty palms and fingers carving auditory scars on the landscape with their crank crank cranks on the chain gun winch.  Beards and coats and uniforms – both gray and blue – all soaked in the stink of the unwashed and the first latent strains of the Unforgetting, and older still the crack of the whip and the choking hovering pathology of cotton.  A land overwhelmed with sensory assault, and at once knowable and unmistakable for the northern visitor and his anticipated pageantry.  At once his nation.  At once his own.

1 comment:

  1. Nice passage Micah. Tasty too with a nice conjuring of war ghosts. Those last two simple sentences end the passage beautifully.

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