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20 The Holy Ghost Moves to Kilgore After five years in the red dirt hills of east Mississippi, the Holy Ghost moved to Texas. East Texas. Pine trees, oil derricks, and roses. He picked up that awful accent hard in the r’s and clenched in the jaw—he always was good with languages—but He couldn’t quite materialize the skin: gritty skin that ages early, crinkles in tiny rectangles above a starched collar line. It’s Irish, maybe Scot. Suited to damp mists and overcast winters, too prone to fever blisters for the Sun Belt. There was brown skin around to inhabit, He knew, but given his theological bias, the Holy Ghost took to the folks in charge. He got obsessed with that white skin —the broken cuticles, the freckles— and once He saw a burn healing in stiff scales across the back of a middle-aged, veiny hand and got downright sorry for Himself. He felt cheated. Where once He’d been so proud. Immaterial! Invisible! Indwelling! What good was all that now? He mused sourly, when He’d got less purchase here than Black Spot, than fire ants hilling on the hot medians. The dry breeze off the rose fields reminded Him of attar that once invoked his presence, vials of great price broken for Him. But no body to break for anyone. Not even disembodied. Never any body at all. ...

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