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The Little Towns of West Texas know all the roads go somewhere else and never come back. They know Heaven is directly above them and from it comes great suffering. In their fierce localities they suffer without complaint. They believe in their names and in the Holy Ghost whose tongues of fire surround them. They are covered with cotton silt, insulated from the cold and the world as if wearing a coat of frost all year. They are mirages of mica shimmering in the distance, moving always ahead of the traveler. No stranger can enter them, no native can leave. Their seasons are summer and winter, the hot wind and the cold. Spring avoids them and goes a different way. At night the wind spins them upward into the darkness. At dawn it drops them back to earth in no particular order. If a house is found closer to the road or at a different angle, nobody notices. The horizon is always the same. The wind flays everything equally. Near the graveyards of the little towns of West Texas beer cans are crucified 5 on fence posts and shot full of holes. The wind plays them like flutes. Coyotes answer with voices that could wake the dead. But the dead sleep on, having everything they ever wanted, a cool, dark place to rest where the wind cannot rattle the lids of their coffins and the sun no longer torments them. Their mouths are pale crescent moons drawn down over teeth they paid for and intend to keep. They await no other transfiguration, having heard a voice roaring out of the desert and it was not a comfort to them. Now they sleep without dreams, rocked by the rhythm of the pump’s heartbeat and the faint susurrus of oil sliding like silk from beneath them. 6 ...

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